MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tomrod | 2025-04-30 13:54:46+00:00
People are certainly aware of the trade deficit. A trade deficit is not a bad thing.

- A growing trade deficit can reflect a robust economy. As U.S. consumers and businesses increase spending, imports rise, leading to a higher trade deficit. Simultaneously, higher U.S. interest rates attract foreign investment, strengthening the dollar and making imports more affordable.

- The U.S. trade deficit is counterbalanced by a capital account surplus, meaning foreign entities invest heavily in U.S. assets. This influx of capital supports economic growth, funds government debt, and contributes to job creation, particularly in sectors like manufacturing.

- Trade deficits allow U.S. consumers access to a wide array of affordable foreign goods. This access enhances purchasing power and living standards. Moreover, U.S. firms benefit from importing competitively priced intermediate goods, boosting productivity and innovation.

- While the U.S. often has a goods trade deficit, it maintains a surplus in services, including finance, education, and technology. This surplus offsets the goods deficit and underscores the U.S.'s competitive advantage in high-value service sectors. Wikipedia

- The U.S. dollar's status as the world's primary reserve currency enables the country to run trade deficits without immediate financial repercussions. Foreign nations hold dollars to facilitate international trade, which supports U.S. borrowing and spending capabilities.

- Concerns that trade deficits lead to job losses, especially in manufacturing, are often overstated. Research indicates that factors like automation and technological advancements have a more significant impact on employment trends than trade deficits.

- Trade deficits foster global economic interdependence, which can enhance diplomatic relations and geopolitical stability. By being a major importer, the U.S. strengthens its ties with exporting countries, promoting mutual economic interests.

While trade deficits can present challenges, they also offer benefits that contribute to the U.S. economy's dynamism and resilience. It's essential to consider the broader economic context rather than viewing trade deficits in isolation.
by tmottabr | 2025-04-30 13:54:49+00:00
The rational is more or less like this..

And i know i simplifying things A LOT here.. but that is the mentality behind it..

When crude oil price go up then gas station raise their prices because they know next they they buy it will be more expansive and they will need more money to afford it, so they raise their prices prices immediately..

On the other hand, if crude oil prices drop, it means that next time they buy it will be cheaper, but the gas they currently have was expensive, so they need to keep the prices up to recover what they already paid for it..
by card_zero | 2025-04-30 13:54:54+00:00
Your idea is that there is a reasonable "level of infringement" of rights which is higher in public places. So, I gave you a range options that might be too high, or not high enough, in order to get you to do the work of establishing why. The component of why was missing from the assertion.

It's true that I didn't want to do this work myself, but then, I don't know how. It's your idea.

Society is based on coercion. Coercion is awful. Society is awful. We prefer it to the alternative. So we continually argue and wrangle and split hairs about how best to arrange the appalling system of controlling people. Shrug
by WinstonSmith84 | 2025-04-30 13:55:03+00:00
as a "crypto" enthusiast, this is sad to see that he is making this industry looking really bad - obviously he doesn't care, money is money. In the future, maybe even now, we are going to have those associating crypto to Trump ..

The lack of regulations in crypto make these scams legals without any fear of any repercussion
by phillipcarter | 2025-04-30 13:55:09+00:00
> But reshoring manufacturing is going to be costly

So like what the Biden admin was doing?

I'm sorry, but "a moron steps in and runs a wrecking ball through the global economy" is not something you look at and say, "wow, his predecessors really messed this one up". No, they did not create the conditions for this needless harm. The answer is, plainly, that Trump is a disastrous moron.
by BjoernKW | 2025-04-30 13:55:27+00:00
What's the benefit here (other than the usual nebulous 'because data protection and politics', that is)?

Where do you want to move previously cloud-based applications to?

Who is going to maintain that non-cloud infrastructure?

How do you address and mitigate the risks involved (e.g., security, resilience)?

Unless you can answer those questions, no business will even consider migrating from their existing cloud systems.

That said, there are companies such as VMware that sell "local cloud" setups. Their customers seem like your likely customers.
by rvz | 2025-04-30 13:55:47+00:00
> The only one which will not is open AI.

I think you meant Anthropic. OpenAI is "planning" to release an open weight model this year likely competing against the Llama models. [0]

I have not seen an open weight AI model ever being released by Anthropic at all.

[0] https://openai.com/open-model-feedback/
by fullshark | 2025-04-30 13:56:02+00:00
You of course are correct, but the posters on this board are likely some of the winners of globalization/neoliberalism so they are downvoting you.

I remember Obama and Clinton railing against NAFTA when they were competing for rust belt votes in the primary and it was insincere nonsense. Of course Obama's policies after getting elected revealed he thought as much and that was why so many democrats (now a globalist/neoliberal party) like him.

https://www.npr.org/2008/02/26/38185288/clinton-obama-and-na...

Trump is the reckoning that comes when you tell the exurbs / blue collar work force you ultimately don't care about them and they should all just learn to code.
by akudha | 2025-04-30 13:56:18+00:00
What is the best case scenario here? Even if the tariff war ends next month, wouldn't production/shipping etc take weeks/months to recover? How are small businesses with limited cash flow expected to survive in the interim?

The most scary thing are medicines, medical equipment etc. Healthcare is going to become even more expensive, no?

Above everything else, why would other countries/allies/trading-partners trust the U.S govt again? I just can't comprehend how this is good for anyone, other than those with spare cash to buy up distressed assets
by ethbr1 | 2025-04-30 13:56:20+00:00
> Of course it’s pure speculation

This is what I was taking issue with.

And also, please don't do the currently en vogue thing of mentioning something unrelated to buttress an argument against Trump.

There's plenty of on-topic fuckups from this administration that you don't need to do the Fox News-style "and what about..." emotion bait.
by coldpie | 2025-04-30 13:56:43+00:00
> most economists certainly did not expect this already for the first quarter

For me personally, I've largely stopped buying non-required stuff. Not because of price increases, but because I'd rather have the cash on hand to help me & my friends to survive the next few years. Two of my friends lost their jobs in the Trump job cuts, and many of my friends are in less secure financial positions than I am. I'd rather be able to give them some cash than buy stuff I don't need, so I'm hanging on to my savings for now. Dark times ahead, and cash will be more useful than another guitar or whatever.
by _bin_ | 2025-04-30 13:57:14+00:00
Sure, I think this just looks a little alien from an American perspective because most of our rights are set up as explicit negatives to block the government from legislating them away, more than to prevent Joe or Jane Teacher from taking a phone. "Congress shall pass no law..."

I guess the nordics don't have a common-law tradition and so never inhereted the in loco parentis doctrine that allows schools to take substantial actions regarding students? I'm not familiar with their legal history.
by jvvw | 2025-04-30 13:57:32+00:00
I've learned a massive about the world in the process - before I started playing I wouldn't have had a proper image in my head for what certain parts of the world were like really. And there's lots of weird and curious things you learn along the way - it's an interesting mix of so many different things.

And it's just fun which is the main reason for playing. I probably spend about half an hour a day playing and I don't intentionally spend time learning stuff like car meta - I try and mostly go on what places actually look like. I have learned a few things that are fairly useless but nothing that has been too arduous to learn, and e.g. when I was learning the names of provinces of different countries, I was trying to learn stuff about the province at the same time so I know something about the culture, food etc. too.
by ben_w | 2025-04-30 13:58:05+00:00
There is plenty of space, but at the same time virtually every discussion I've seen about PV has someone acting like it's a gotcha that they use a lot of space.

In response to some of these, I myself have suggested (with maths to back it up) putting PV between railway tracks* — not because it's a good option (everything in the linked blogpost, and everything JoeAltmaier says in the other comment, is I think correct), but because weird options like this are sufficient.

* and on other occasions by the sides of roads, but that doesn't matter here
by unbalancedevh | 2025-04-30 13:58:09+00:00
I work for a major tier-1 supplier for the trucking industry, and the outlook is not good. This year was supposed to be a good year as customers pre-buy to avoid upcoming changes in emission regulations, but the drop in trade with China means that goods aren't coming into the ports, so trucks aren't needed. OEMs are dropping their forecasts and pushing out new development, which means our projects are getting cancelled. A couple months ago we were talking about how we're going to hit our variable compensation profitability plans; but just yesterday we were told that we're going to have to take a mandatory 2 weeks of unpaid leave this year. The damage has already been done, and the next couple years don't look promising.
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by laskoviymishka | 2025-04-30 13:58:47+00:00
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by theFco | 2025-04-30 13:58:52+00:00
I feel the statement "autistic people will never write a poem" may be trivially true, because (I suspect) many people will never write a poem. The implication that this is invalid or wrong is perverse. And the fact that now we have to argue for the dignity of autistic people by saying that there are autistic poets is also non-sensical.

These are all cruel suggestions about people, we should challenge why RFK makes statements like this. Not take them at face value, as if they merit being answered.
by egorfine | 2025-04-30 13:59:06+00:00
They are still plenty of ambitious people in the EU and new folks are growing up. Problem is, path to success in the EU is ridden with endless fights with the bureaucracy even for the simplest things.

Re: general culture: there are much more social protections in the EU (paid vacations, maternity leave, etc) which are truly good and nice but no tech startup is actually practically possible while conforming to these laws.
by bumby | 2025-04-30 13:59:23+00:00
>Are the goods not being traded to the US "things that Americans can do without"? I think for a large portion of that, the answer is "yes".

How does one reconcile this with the fact that 2/3rds of the US economy is based on consumer goods? I agree with the general premise that we probably don’t need so much frivolous junk, but like it or lump it, that’s what our economy has been based on for decades. It would potentially take just as long to remake the economy into something else.
by ndsipa_pomu | 2025-04-30 13:59:32+00:00
Whilst I can see your point of view, I think that fluoride in water is an issue that provoked knee-jerk reactions.

Here in the UK, there's areas with and without fluoridisation - the reason being that naturally the water in different areas has different fluoride concentrations with some areas having no need for adding fluoride as it's already there. The benefits were very easy to determine as (presumably) cavities were more common in those areas with low fluoride content, so it's less about experimentation and more about ensuring that more people can gain the same benefit.
by justinrubek | 2025-04-30 13:59:54+00:00
I am one of these people. I've been in terrible financial shape for years, and fairly recently, things have started to improve. I've chosen to deploy a fair amount of my savings to acquire things I need (and some wants, of course) under the assumption that they will be more out of reach in the future. It feels bad to do so, but it's not worth the risk to not.
by llm_nerd | 2025-04-30 14:00:24+00:00
>I think you've got the causal arrow wrong on this.

My point was precisely that the US benefitted by geographical happenstance. Not sure how I got this wrong.

Regarding existential threats, nuclear proliferation is going to go through its worst period in human history. We are going to end this decade with a number of new nuclear bomb participants, and it's a profoundly obvious, inevitable outcome of the current US administration's myopic policies. And with that the probability that some American cities become glassed keeps spiralling ever upwards.
by lenerdenator | 2025-04-30 14:00:36+00:00
He's incredibly conservative. He very much likes the idea of Neo-feudalism. You have a class that owns everything (of which he's the prime example right now) and then you have a class that labors to rent things from people like him. Those who don't - or can't - play that game are simply not fit to survive.

It's a school of thought so old that we barely recognize it anymore, but that's what he wants to return to. Lots of tech bros are into it.
by 9rx | 2025-04-30 14:01:12+00:00
> The problem is the wild disparity in purchasing power.

While disparity in purchasing power might be a problem, what does that have to do with currency value? If you traded in apples instead of dollars/euros, the same disparity would be present. The urban accommodation seeker would have to pay three apples to every one apple the rural resident pays, changing nothing. This has little to do with currency.

> Media and politicians only focus about the national economy though!

For the soundbites to give a broad picture to the people, sure. There isn't enough time in the day to go into great detail. That is only presented to pique your interest, though. If it does, you're going to dig deeper. If you don't care, then, well, they didn't waste your time giving you a four year economics degree for no reason. Tradeoffs, as usual.

> They lack the legal authority and the tax income to do anything meaningful, and most issues are caused on a national level.

Assuming democracy, they have all the authority you are willing to give them. If you've misguidedly given too much attention to the nation and not enough attention to the municipality, time to fix the people (this is becoming a recurring theme!) There is no need to modify your screwdriver to make it better at driving nails (which also can't be done without fixing the people!). Just use the damn hammer already.
by readthenotes1 | 2025-04-30 14:01:21+00:00
IMO For impact on normal people's day-to-day life, the suspension of the de minimis rule that allowed boxes under $800 declared value (i.e., construction cost) to be imported with no tariff will have more of an impact than any other recent change.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/what-the-end-of-the-de-...
by arcticfox | 2025-04-30 14:01:58+00:00
> As an autistic English professor who studies literature and neurodiversity, I was especially unnerved by Kennedy’s contention that many autistic people will never write poetry.

> It couldn’t be further from the truth.

Screw this English professor with autism - RFK's comments are literally correct if you read them. Many autistic people like my child will never speak, he's not talking about English professors with level 1 autism. Stop ignoring those of us with much greater challenges, it's so condescending.
by timerol | 2025-04-30 14:01:58+00:00
Imports do not subtract from GDP. Reasoning about the economy from an accounting identity does not lead to useful knowledge. Historically times of increasing imports are also times of increasing GDP. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/imports-do-not-subtract-from-g...

A reasonable question here is "did companies spend down petty cash to import goods in Q1" (no change to GDP), or "did companies stop investing and producing domestically in order to afford to import more goods in Q1" (reduced GDP).
by throwaway13024 | 2025-04-30 14:01:59+00:00
I joined a startup after working for 10+ years in regular companies and there was an incredible mix of highly competent and experienced people who knew how to get things done and were willing to put their egos aside to grow the product. As a small group, we made a product that was easy to sell. It was our market's "Iphone" moment. Our competitors were shaken and concerned because of our momentum and modern approach (they used Windows software on a yearly update schedule, while we were based on ios/android/web and updated daily).

I don't think the founder realised how lucky they were to have this combination of people, as this was their first startup after years in enterprise sales. There were other competitors that started around the same time as us, but they failed to deliver. I don't think we were necessarily better at developing, sales or marketing individually, but as a team we were able to work together really well.

When the founder raised a significant amount of money, they decided it was time to scale up and become a "real" company with proper hierarchy, reporting lines and processes. They hired people from FAANG who had impressive resumes, but were more concerned with titles and proving themselves. Constant rewrites, re-orgs and workshops to improve working processes made sure that progress halted, and most of the original team left. Today, the product is still alive as a minor actor, but they lost a lot of momentum and the competitors had time to launch their own "cloud" products.

It was painful at the time, but now I look back and I see it as an important lesson.
by WorldMaker | 2025-04-30 14:02:06+00:00
A related factor is what part of the ratchet we are in. In the 1800s the ratchet was "ever upward" and if economic factors shutdown some pumps there were plenty of incentives to keep that shutdown temporary and through more capital investment at it to bring back when market forces shifted again. In the 2000s we may truly be in the "downward spiral" ratchet where enough pumping shuts down, those shutdowns are permanent. There's far more competition from increasingly cheap solar and wind and other renewable energy sources than there ever was.

Eventually permanently decreased supply can also drive prices back upward, sometimes faster, as less competition means more supply-side bargaining power.

(Permanently decreased suppliers of oil may be a win for the planet in the long run, hopefully, but breaking the entire economy is perhaps the dumbest way to try to do that.)
by Loughla | 2025-04-30 14:02:16+00:00
You joke about these things but I'm afraid that's where we're heading.

Trump will close off as much opposition as he can in the next two years. Then spend a year convincing people that term limits aren't required by the constitution. By then we'll have had so many scandals and constitutional crisis events that just get ignored that it will happen.

Am I being overdramatic? Because this feels different. It feels openly hostile.
Ask HN: When will Wayland eclipse X?
by Rooster61 | 2025-04-30 14:02:17+00:00
Right now, I'm seeing between 80% and 93% usage of X in favor of Wayland, depending on which source I'm reading. I'd like to see Wayland get more traction, but I'm also aware that many of the things that make it appealing directly cut into its usability due to the many tools and hacks that rely on X's inherent security holes. How long does HN think it will take Wayland to pass the 50% mark in terms of usage across the Linux ecosystem?
by srveale | 2025-04-30 14:03:02+00:00
I don't necessarily disagree with the main argument, but

> did your boss ever have to send you a memo demanding that you use a smartphone

Yes, there were tons of jobs that required you to have a smartphone, and still do. I remember my second job, they'd give out Blackberries - debatably not smartphones, but still - to the managers and require work communication on them. I know this was true for many companies.

This isn't the perfect analogy anyway, since one major reason companies did this was to increase security, while forcing AI onto begrudging workers feels like it could have the opposite effect. The commonality is efficiency, or at least the perception of it by upper management.

One example I can think of where there was worker pushback but it makes total sense is the use of electronic medical records. Doctors/nurses originally didn't want to, and there are certainly a lot of problems with the tech, but I don't think anyone is suggesting now that we should go back to paper.

You can make the argument that an "AI first" mandate will backfire, but the notion that workers will collectively gravitate towards new tech is not true in general.
by fads_go | 2025-04-30 14:03:12+00:00
> very likely would vote for the tariffs anyway as the majority would support anything the president would say.

Very true, however,

1) it does slow the process somewhat and therefore also reduces total throughput, this keeps government more stable and also gives more time to respond. Slow and stable may or may not be the best way to run a company, but the government is not a company.

2) It would put the individual congresspeople on record, and they are somewhat more dependent on/accountable to their local population. If for example all the farmers realized that the tariffs would destroy the farmer's livelihood, we could see Iowa withdrawing suport.

The US goverment was set up the way it is for reasons.
by roxolotl | 2025-04-30 14:03:19+00:00
Sure why wouldn’t I? We do it already with things that aren’t healthy all the time. If we could, let’s say alleviate all allergies, with only very minor impacts to the environment or human health why wouldn’t we.

That being said it’s a false equalavincy. You can’t avoid the air you can avoid the public water supply.
by throwawaymaths | 2025-04-30 14:03:34+00:00
Anyways, this is all immaterial to the original question, which is if LLMs can do randomness [for single user with a given query], so from a practical standpoint the question itself needs to survive "all things being equal", that is is to say, suppose I stand up an LLM on my own GPU rig, and the algorithmic scheduler doesn't do too many out of order operations (very possible depending on the ollama or vllm build).