MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bshacklett | 2025-04-04 13:55:35+00:00
I was hoping someone would bring up Bullshit Jobs. There are definitely a lot of people spending the majority of their time doing "work" that doesn't have any significant impact to the world already. I don't know that some future AI takeover would really change much, except maybe remove some vale of perception around meaningless work.

At the same time, I wouldn't necessarily say that people are currently fine getting dopamine hits from social media. Coping would probably be a better description. There are a lot of social and societal problems that have been growing at a rapid rate since Facebook and Twitter began tapping into the reward centers of the brain.

From a purely anecdotal perspective, I find my mood significantly affected by how productive and impactful I am with how I spend my time. I'm much happier when I'm making progress on something, whether it's work or otherwise.
by M95D | 2025-04-04 13:55:35+00:00
Yes, that the current trend in the western world. Money is all that matters. There's only lowest accepted quality. Anything above that is a waste of money, profits that are lost. Nobody wants masterpieces. There is no market for that.

That lowest-accepted quality also declines over time, as generations after generations of people become used to rock-bottom quality. In the end, there's only slop and AI will make the cheapest slop ever. Welcome to a brave new world. We don't even need people anymore. They're too expensive.
by Nursie | 2025-04-04 13:55:39+00:00
1. Yes, some of them. Spent a little time in New Mexico. I've travelled through the gulf states and Alabama. Particularly outside of Albequrque and Santa Fe, the general level of deprivation in NM was quite clear.

2. I'm glad that people in the UK have access to healthcare. I'd be very happy if that went to the US. That doesn't change the raw GDP figures though.

I agree it may change the experience they have of being poor if you aren't also deprived of medical care. But here's another thing - people in the UK are less satisfied than ever with the NHS as well - it appears to be floundering.

(In answer to the below "people have always been less satisfied with the NHS" - perhaps so, but this time it's serious, they haven't been this less satisfied before - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/02/patient-sati... )
by emptyfile | 2025-04-04 13:55:54+00:00
Getting so tired of HN, every thread has these kinds of vague, ignorant, semi-political comments. Just a throwaway opinion with some unrelated quote to appear smart, not related to the posted link, nothing added to the discussion.

The Suez Crisis happened 70(!) years ago, the article is talking about where modern day UK spends its money. It's literally right there in the opening sentence, if you only bothered to open it:

>Britain is a rich country with the world’s 6th largest economy and the highest tax income for decades, which raises a simple question - why do we seem so broke?

Aside from strictly technical topics, this community is now worse than Reddit.
by varispeed | 2025-04-04 13:55:56+00:00
It's a common misconception that IR35 only affects a narrow group of high-earning professionals - TV presenters, consultants, and the like. But that framing misses the wider picture and, frankly, suits the narrative that was used to sell the legislation to the public.

In reality, IR35 has had a broad and damaging impact on a much wider group of skilled workers - IT contractors, engineers, healthcare professionals, tradespeople - many of whom built small, legitimate limited companies as a way to work flexibly, compete fairly, and build some financial security. It was one of the few viable paths to independence left, and IR35 has made it effectively unworkable for many.

Large corporations didn't like losing contracts and talent to smaller, more agile competitors. IR35 conveniently removed that competition by making small operators too much of a compliance risk to hire. Meanwhile, public sector bodies were discouraged—sometimes even penalised—for engaging small suppliers, further consolidating the power of the big consultancies.

The media focus on celebrity cases wasn't accidental. HMRC gained free publicity and public support by targeting high-profile individuals - knowing it would reinforce the idea that IR35 was closing tax loopholes rather than quietly dismantling a thriving small business ecosystem. The result is a workforce with less autonomy, less incentive to go above and beyond, and fewer opportunities to build something for themselves.

This isn't just about tax - it's about economic structure, incentives, and who gets to participate in the rewards of their own labour. And when those opportunities disappear, so does productivity, innovation, and local economic resilience.
by miltonlost | 2025-04-04 13:55:58+00:00
Those aren't nearly close enough to be considered stolen. Possibly allusions (which is not stealing), but even then, the only similarity of the bests is "The best" usage. Nothing about the rest of the lines, or before, are similar enough to be "stolen" (potentially the Ginsberg troping Yeat's "full of passionate intensity" of the worst into his best's "madness, starving hysterical", but that too is allusion, not stealing).

The best lack all conviction, while the worst // Are full of passionate intensity.

vs

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, // dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

How is this stealing in any form?
by ryandrake | 2025-04-04 13:56:03+00:00
Republicans have for a long time wanted to end free weather information and hand that job over to for-profit companies like AccuWeather[1]. Trump v1 nominated AccuWeather's CEO to run the organization[2]. Project 2025 calls for breaking up NOAA and commercializing it[3]. This is not some hidden agenda, and you don't have to speculate about their intentions. As is the case for everything these guys do, they are open and brazen about it.

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/noaa-pro...

2: https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/14/politics/noaa-nominee-accuwea...

3: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-what-pro...
by neilwilson | 2025-04-04 13:56:18+00:00
Gary's angle is wrong. He's got a book to flog and a channel to promote.

It's crystal clear we can build new houses and new businesses, so suggesting 'wealth' is a zero sum game is ideological folly.

As to his thesis, here's the demolition of mathematics within it: https://birchlermuesli.substack.com/p/copy-garys-badeconomic...
by spencerflem | 2025-04-04 13:56:28+00:00
I wasn't trying to say the contents of the ads aren't novel- just that what they're selling very often isn't.

Its also so very rarely factual - the idea is more for you to believe that 'Disney Land is an important milestone for all happy families'. Or 'Stella Artois is the type of beer a sexy intellectual orders - that's you right?'

I completely believe that ads are a huge part of our culture.
by gchadwick | 2025-04-04 13:56:36+00:00
It's even worse when paired with the ability for a local authority to go bankrupt when it can't cover the bills and be forced to sell off major capital assets (e.g. buildings, sometimes of significant public interest like concerts halls, leisure centres and other community venues).

Of course the actual place continues to exist so the local authority will continue to exist in another form, this time with fewer major capital assets and they're paying rents to the people who now own them instead.

As pointed out in the article you could see this happen when something entirely out of the authorities control (e.g. spending on SEND children due to the massive increase in eligible children in Central Bedfordshire's case) causes it too.
by ecb_penguin | 2025-04-04 13:57:02+00:00
> Are you legally required to carry a means of communication? If not, how can this possibly be enforced?

Obviously not... If you have no means to communicate you are not required to communicate. I don't know why you'd think otherwise.

> For example, how fast can I drive to get to a telephone if I don't carry one or otherwise cannot use it?

This would obviously depend on circumstances and how safe you're able to drive without causing more incidents.

This is also why we have courts, and judges, and juries. They look at the totality of circumstances and arrive at judgement.
by spacebanana7 | 2025-04-04 13:57:19+00:00
> New wealth "creation" is a lie.

Perhaps the bigger issue is old wealth destruction. We live in a world of effectively infinite low cost electronics, clothes and food, but the things which used to be abundant are now actually quite scarce.

Housing is most obvious example here - but the costs of driving (excluding vehicle purchase), childcare, wedding, and energy are now radically higher than ever before. In these areas it feels like we've gone backwards in productivity.
by superkuh | 2025-04-04 13:57:19+00:00
Funny. NOAA spent 2015-now moving all their weather servers off premises and moving from HTML and static images with maybe a bit of client side javascript to entirely web application remote hosted monstrosities that all require javascript to even see. If they'd just stuck with what worked instead of chasing the shiny glimmer of modern web dev they wouldn't be in this exact situation. No doubt they'd be being attacked a different way. But I still miss the old sites that were actually websites. My bet is that the lingering ones like https://forecast.weather.gov/ will be the only remaining after these political attacks.
by SamoyedFurFluff | 2025-04-04 13:57:23+00:00
I think it’s more nuances, it’s saying that our definition of potential, best, etc, doesn’t weigh empathy for our fellow humans heavily enough. It’s an argument to flip that instead of our brightest minds being spent on ads, to instead say we are not rewarding our brightest minds at all but our most mercenary ones.
Show HN: FeedWise – An RSS Reader to Reclaim Your Attention
by fs_software | 2025-04-04 13:57:32+00:00
Hi HN, I'm a solo dev and I've been building FeedWise, a simple RSS reader designed to help you take back control of your attention. I launched it today and would love your feedback!

I found myself overwhelmed by algorithmic feeds on platforms like YouTube and X, losing focus on what truly mattered. I missed the days when I controlled my information diet. FeedWise is my solution: an RSS reader that puts you back in the driver’s seat.

For those who still value the power of RSS, FeedWise lets you subscribe to any RSS feed (articles, podcasts, YouTube channels/playlists, subreddits, newsletters, even Hacker News). You can easily search, filter, mark items as read/unread, as well as mute feeds to temporarily hide distractions and catch up on your terms. It also includes a dark mode for comfortable reading, and device sync is included for everyone.

The mute feature has been a game-changer for me, letting me focus on what's important without the anxiety of unsubscribing and potentially missing out later. It's about reclaiming attention from the noise.

FeedWise started as a personal project to learn new tech stacks (I’d rebuild it every year or so), but it became a tool that genuinely improved my life. Now I want to share it with others who feel overwhelmed by algorithmic feeds.

Questions or critiques are more than welcome. Thanks for checking it out!

https://feedwise.net
by tpougy | 2025-04-04 13:57:53+00:00
I was using OpenRouter + Roo Code extension + VS Code for the last few weeks and it has been a breeze. Roo Code is a Cline open source, comunity driven, fork. It has some additional features compared to Cline that I found very useful. Check it here: https://github.com/RooVetGit/Roo-Code.

When used right with vs code the experience seems almost the same as using cursor, but you can choose your AI provider.

PS: In the last few days I tried Roo Code with Google Gemini 2.5 thinking (signficantly better that Clude 3.7) but found that the OpenRouter option to use Google Gemini 2.5 thinking has a bad rate limit, the solution was to create a google developer account and use the google gemini api directly which dont have such bad rate limit and is also very cheap (I used it a lot and the cost was zero).
by MrMcCall | 2025-04-04 13:58:07+00:00
I think it can be best summed up in Craig Ferguson's joke he made when chatting with Robin Williams that he liked to go to London and do to the English what they had been doing to his people (the Scots) for hundreds of years.

Much was made of the double rainbow that appeared when the queen died, and I say that was God saying, "Things are going to be better now, now that that evil bitch is dead."

Maybe if the royals weren't spending their world rapings on 13 pomeranians (or whatever), there'd be more money for the poors.

I do like Harry, though, he's got enough of his awesome Mum in him to counteract his father's evil.

And now King Donald is decimating America. Such is the way of kings, my friends.
by cantrecallmypwd | 2025-04-04 13:58:11+00:00
This. The problem with looking at trade deficits is that they are comparative trade phallus envy that somehow "demand" regulatory "action" when others don't buy enough of our stuff. How dare them! These deeply-unpopular actions alienating allies certainly won't motivate them to purchase more but than can and will convince them to purchase a lot less. Losing customers abroad who don't want American stuff and losing customers at home who can't buy stuff from elsewhere or stuff from home since prices shot up and they were laid off. Nothing good will come of any of this because the leader is, no doubt, using breaking things for personal gain and to weasel their way into staying in power indefinitely by creating protests and/or war to justify it.
by mubou | 2025-04-04 13:58:40+00:00
The issue with variables and loops that OP described is worse with React, since you create closure inside the render function for event handlers, and if that closure captures any state variables (rather than a getter function for example), then you'll end up referencing stale state. React relies on linters to protect against this, but that only goes so far and the API design makes it easy to screw up, so you have to be on your toes.

Edit: To be clear, this is specifically a React hooks problem, not the old React with classes.
by pjc50 | 2025-04-04 13:58:52+00:00
Not quite immediately post-45. That was when the modern welfare state was being put together. Winning a war was the peak of state capacity. Things were still going OK around 63 and the "white heat of technology" speech (why can I not easily find a full transcript of this?). Wheels came off in the inflation era leading to the "winter of discontent", followed by a massive and explicit backlash against socialism and in favor of individual profit. Thatcherism. North Sea oil solved the money problems, but papered over the more structural problems. Blairism managed a second financial services boom, but then .. 2008. And we've never recovered.
by Nursie | 2025-04-04 13:59:03+00:00
> IT contractors, engineers, healthcare professionals

You're not disagreeing with me, other than that I don't consider those "working class" occupations. In general in the UK those are quite often middle to upper middle class.

> tradespeople

Still do run small limited companies AFAICT. Certainly the ones I used to interact with. Mostly because they have multiple clients and are a lot harder to point at and say "that's not a real business!"
by threetonesun | 2025-04-04 13:59:12+00:00
I don't think that's how it's meant to be read, if you consider it in the context of the original quote, it's about good and empathetic minds going to waste because of the demands of society. We put so much social and economic capital into tech that it's better to push five lines of code for Facebook than be a doctor, which are the "good minds going to waste".
by fennecfoxy | 2025-04-04 13:59:15+00:00
Probably an over-representation in the training data really so it's causing overfitting. Because using training data in amounts right from the Internet it's going to be opinionated on human culture (Bart Simpson is popular so there are lots of images of him, Ori is less well known so there are fewer images). Ideally it should be training 1:1 for everything but that would involve _so_ much work pruning the training data to have a roughly equal effect between categories.
by nathan_compton | 2025-04-04 13:59:45+00:00
Small children typically ignore race, but there does seem to be (at the very least) a cultural tendency towards racism as people move into adulthood. There is a good book about it called "Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?" https://www.amazon.com/Black-Kids-Sitting-Together-Cafeteria...

People's characters need to be formed, I would at least argue, to overcome a normal tendency to be uncomfortable with difference.
by kburman | 2025-04-04 13:59:46+00:00
I wish this were a joke, but I’ve actually worked on a production application designed like this.

They use a single table with columns named PK1, PK2, PK3, PK4, and so on, dumping all kinds of data into it. users, orders, addresses, and even blob data. For example, PK1 might be the user ID if the row is a user entry, or PK2 could be the address ID if it’s an address object. And if PK1 happens to contain a #, that might mean it’s a user profile object because apparently that’s how they chose to distinguish it.

As more entities were added, the table just kept morphing into this unstructured, unreadable mess.

There’s absolutely no good reason for this kind of design. It’s just a lack of understanding of how NoSQL systems are meant to be used. The team was told to “utilize NoSQL solutions,” and this is the chaos they produced.

I wish I could unsee it, but the damage is already done. It still gives me nightmares.
by Cthulhu_ | 2025-04-04 14:00:21+00:00
If not Minecraft, there's other games that scratch the "manipulate your environment and build something" itch. Space Engineers, Satisfactory, Populous from back in the day, uuh. There's a long list.

Actually, before Minecraft, Notch worked on a game called Wurm Online, which was a tedious and buggy MMO but which allowed you and your friends to manipulate the sandbox world, dig holes, flatten the environment, build roads, etc. With teamwork, they could do some really interesting things. But like I said, it was pretty tedious and slow.
by grumpy-de-sre | 2025-04-04 14:00:40+00:00
The post 1970s financialization of everything [1] is probably behind most of Britains decline. The UK was just an early adopter [2].

Embracing that nonsense (including rampant neoliberalism) has really rotted the backbone out of our society.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

2. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-the-GDP-sha...
by TheOtherHobbes | 2025-04-04 14:00:48+00:00
There's a throwaway quote about the school Gates was attending spending a few thousand dollars a year on a terminal and computer time.

The inflation factor is around 5X, so that's maybe $15k to $20k in modern money.

There were very few schools in the world with a five figure budget for computer experiments for a handful of pupils in the early 1970s.
by IndianITGuy | 2025-04-04 14:00:50+00:00
I run an IT consultancy and often work in both commercial buildings and private residences across the UK. When it comes to the latter—trust me, the elites (and even the upper-middle class) still have an extraordinary amount of money.

What’s changed is that no one cares about the public sphere anymore. You wouldn’t believe the contrast between Britain’s crumbling high streets and the lavish interiors of some of these homes. I’ve seen marble floors, $10K TVs, $100K kitchens, $150K bathrooms. Home offices decked out with $50K worth of gear. Wine cellars, indoor spas, private gyms—you name it.

Even on the commercial side, it’s wild. It’s not uncommon to walk into a privately-owned or government-owned building and be greeted by a $5 million art piece in the lobby. Then you start looking around and adding up the costs—“they probably spent $10K just on that fancy trim around the doorframe.” Or you notice a particularly heavy door, Google it, and realize it costs $15K per door. Then you start counting the doors—there are thousands. The rabbit hole goes deep, and the amount of wealth becomes staggering. It’s just hidden in plain sight.

But all of this wealth is cloistered. No one’s investing in the public-facing world. There’s a broad cultural resignation—from the elites to the average person: “Why bother fixing the outside world? Just survive the workday and retreat into your private kingdom.” The mindset has shifted toward building personal fortresses rather than shared prosperity.

So yes, Britain feels poor—but it’s not because the money is gone. It’s because it’s been withdrawn from the commons and buried behind closed doors.
by mytailorisrich | 2025-04-04 14:01:15+00:00
No, actually his plan for Brexit was the most coherent, and Truss/Kwarteng were on the right track but executed appallingly badly.

If you go for Brexit the "hard way" as the country did then your way forward to compensate and to create growth is to find new competitive advantages and there are not many options apart from going low tax low regulations.

This never happened. Truss/Kwarteng made a bad and short-lived attempt and that was it.

I am not saying Brexit was a good idea but this is one of those massive changes of course that require "going big or going home" instead of trying to keep things as they were when that's impossible, and slowly fail (it does not mean that it would necessarily succeed but at least you're going for it).
by layer8 | 2025-04-04 14:01:40+00:00
There is some truth to it, but it also isn’t exactly accurate. #2 isn’t true for me in its generality. Some new things were exciting and revolutionary, but by no means all. Regarding #3, some new things still excite me today, and many more could excite me, but nobody is making them. Even #1 isn’t accurate. What’s true is that “excitability” goes down over time the more one is aware of the flaws and trade-offs.
by feoren | 2025-04-04 14:01:52+00:00
> It's very difficult to decide which module to put an individual function in

It's difficult because it is a core part of software engineering; part of the fundamental value that software developers are being paid for. Just like a major part of a journalist's job is to first understand a story and then lay it out clearly in text for their readers, a major part of a software developer's job is to first understand their domain and then organize it clearly in code for other software developers (including themselves). So the act of deciding which modules different functions go in is the act of software development. Therefore, these people:

> Quite often coders optimise for searchability, so like there will be a constants file, a dataclasses file, a "reader"s file, a "writer"s file etc etc.

Those people are shirking their duty. I disdain those people. Some of us software developers actually take our jobs seriously.
by ceejayoz | 2025-04-04 14:01:52+00:00
There aren't that many (11) levels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_of_the_People%27...

Functionally, the US mostly works the same way - people start in small local roles and move to county, state, and national levels over time. It's just not enforced as a hard rule, just a practical thing.