MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by fxj | 2025-04-18 09:27:56+00:00
The neutrino was also a particle that nobody could observe at the time when Pauli proposed it. It was just a manifestation of the energy and spin conservation.

The Higgs is the same. It is not needed, but it solves the mass problem of the weak force. It is the only scalar field so far that we have observed and it was not clear whether it would exist at all.

Quintessence and sterile neutrinos are also just pieces that make the equations of the world look prettier, but they are also candidates for dark energy and dark matter.

Pauli wrote in his famous letter:

"I agree that my remedy could seem incredible because one should have seen those neutrons very earlier if they really exist. But only the one who dare can win and the difficult situation, due to the continuous structure of the beta spectrum, is lighted by a remark of my honoured predecessor, Mr Debye, who told me recently in Bruxelles: “Oh, It’s well better not to think to this at all, like new taxes”. From now on, every solution to the issue must be discussed. Thus, dear radioactive people, look and judge."

https://icecube.wisc.edu/neutrino-history/1931/01/1931-pauli...
by perlgeek | 2025-04-18 09:29:10+00:00
Even if civilizations are relatively common (which, as others have pointed out, doesn't necessarily follow from life being common), the distances involved are really huge.

We have some ideas for crossing huge distances, but none of them are really practical. There are ideas for accelerating tiny probes with light sails, but when we manage to send them somewhere with 90% of the speed of light, we have no way to decelerate them again in a controlled fashion.

What I want to say is: there's good reason to think that doing anything over 200 light years or so is just infeasible.
by nodfyr | 2025-04-18 09:29:24+00:00
All these papers miss the fact that our main evidence for dark matter (or something like it) is the cosmic microwave background. I see no mention on how this very convoluted model can reproduce it.

The evidence is in the oscillations of the primordial plasma seen directly in the CMB. These come from the gravity pulling the plasma and pressure pushing back. Without DM they would be too shallow, DM helps by pulling the plasma gravitationally without opposing the fall with pressure of its own.
by delusional | 2025-04-18 09:29:58+00:00
Sentry's sales team is incredibly aggressive. I've seen multiple colleagues hijacked for sales presentations over a few months. It would not surprise me at all if they just asked random employees to be added to the company slack, and even less if those people then just did it.

I can only commend the hustle on their part, but it does feel a little like a high pressure time share situation.
by KaiserPro | 2025-04-18 09:32:55+00:00
the other important thing to note is what is that filesystem designed to be used for?

For example 3FS looks like its optimised for read throughput (which makes sense, like most training workloads its read heavy.) write operations look very heavy.

Can you scale the metadata server, what are the cost of metadata operations? Is there a throttling mechanism to stop a single client sucking all of the metadata server's IO? Does it support locking? Is it a COW filesystem?
by flyflewflaw | 2025-04-18 09:33:44+00:00
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
by snappyleads | 2025-04-18 09:33:52+00:00
I was getting 2-3 customers every week via reddit subs - but found myself excommunicated on some of the key boards for over-promoting .. product is in a good place now - you can see it here snappyleads.co.uk - I like your idea of getting others to refer their audience to my software .. it's not something I've ever tried before - I suppose they would be looking for some 'kick-back'?
by stevekemp | 2025-04-18 09:34:22+00:00
Years ago I wrote/maintained a modal console-based email client. It was written with some UI primitives in C++ and the UI actually maintained and controlled by lua.

Viewing a list of folders? Lua. Viewing a list of messages? lua. Viewing a single message? Lua. Those were the three main modes and UI options.

All the keybindings, layout, colour setup, and similar was dynamic. It actually worked out really well. For comparison I just ran "wc -l" against he codebase: 60k lines. Combination of C++ and Lua, but mostly Lua.

Having good scope and good tests made such a thing fine to support. Mostly the pain was broken MIME messages and handling dealing with the external world - e.g. invoking gpg to handle decryption and encryption.

I'd work with big-lua again if I had the need, it's a fun language and very flexible.
by seanwilson | 2025-04-18 09:35:30+00:00
> we don’t necessarily recommend self-hosting to everyone. In addition to existing hidden costs, as Sentry evolves, our self-hosted version will become more complex, demanding additional types of infrastructure.

Any insights on why Sentry is so complex and needs so much resources? Is collecting, storing, and organizing errors messages and stack traces at scale difficult? Or it's the other features on top of this?
by KaiserPro | 2025-04-18 09:35:45+00:00
Depends on what the data is.

Because of the replication factor here, I assume that this filesystem is optimised for read throughput rather than capacity. Either way, there is a concept of "nearline" storage. Its a storage tier that is designed to be only really accesed by a backupagent. The general idea is that it stores a snapshot of the main file system every n hours.

After that you have as many snapshots as you can afford.
by xg15 | 2025-04-18 09:35:58+00:00
No, this is wrong. As the others have said, "Brückentag" is a general term for non-holidays, and it doesn't even apply here as Friday is the holiday and not Thursday.

Good Friday is also still very significant in its religious purpose here, so calling it "bridge day", even if it applied, would be disrespectful.

(Which doesn't keep the racing/modding community from having their own "Car Freitag" on that day...)
by freezingDaniel | 2025-04-18 09:36:21+00:00
I wish they had first included/added a usage meter then the limit. If they had first given users a way to see their usage, users of the assisstent could know how much they have to worry about the change. As it stands I use up to 2m tokens per month but have no clue how much this amount of tokens (over various models) cost. And 5% hitting the limit and not having a way to just pay for usage past the limit (yet) is kind of dauntingI wish they had first added a usage meter before implementing the limit. If they had first given users a way to monitor their usage, users of the assistant could know how much they have to worry about the change.

As it stands, I use up to 2M tokens per month but have no clue how much this amount of tokens (across various models) costs.

And 5% hitting the limit and not having a way to pay for usage past the limit (yet) is kind of scary. Especially as I feel like I use AI more than my peers.
by eitland | 2025-04-18 09:36:35+00:00
I think it is interesting that you think everything Google does is kind of more ok just because you think it is limited to cookies while simultaneously being extremely skeptical towards Kagi, not giving them the slightest benefit of doubt.

> You can't know what source code that is running on the server which you send your queries to.

Based on my (admittedly cursory) reading of the ideas behind it, the idea of the IETF standard they implemented is that one does not have to trust the server.
by tstrimple | 2025-04-18 09:36:42+00:00
I just stumbled across cooked.wiki recently. It allows you to convert any bullshit online recipe to a no-frills ingredient list and instructions. I've only tested it a couple times and I know I'll rarely remember to use the shortcut (https://cooked.wiki/<recipe-url>). But setting it up as a redirect rule from search results might be the thing that pushes usability over the top.
by mjburgess | 2025-04-18 09:37:28+00:00
Well, 1) the temporary allocator strategy; and 2) `defer` kinda go against the spirit of this observation.

With (1) you get the benefits of GC with, in many cases, a single line of code. This handles a lot of use cases. Of those it doesn't, `defer` is that "other single line".

I think the issue being raised is the "convenience payoff for the syntax/semantics burden". The payoff for temp-alloc and defer is enormous: you make the memory management explicit so you can easily see-and-reason-about the code; and it's a trivial amount of code.

There feels something deeply wrong with RAII-style langauges.. you're having the burden to reason about implicit behaviour, all the while this behaviour saves you nothing. It's the worst of both worlds: hiddenness and burdensomeness.
by 9dev | 2025-04-18 09:38:22+00:00
That’s a very strange take on governments, treating them as a singular entity. A government that deserves that name is first and foremost and elected set of representatives of the constituents, and thus like citizens that vote for them again, act in their interests.

If the government is not working like that, you have an administrative problem, not a societal one. A state is its population.
by dmwilcox | 2025-04-18 09:38:41+00:00
Mmmm well my meatsuit can't easily make my own heart quiver the wrong way and kill me. Computers can treat data as code and code as data all pretty easily. It's core to several languages (like lisp). As such making illegal instructions or violating the straightjacket of a system such an "intelligence" would operate in is likely. If you could make an intelligent process, what would it think of an operating system kernel (the thing you have to ask for everything, io memory, etc)? Does the "intelligent" process fear for itself when it's going to get descheduled? What is the bitpattern for fear? Can you imagine an intelligent process in such a place, as static representation of data in ram? To get write something down you call out to a library and maybe the CPU switches out to a brk system call to map more virtual memory? It all sounds frankly ridiculous. I think AGI proponents fundamentally misunderstand how a computer works and are engaging in magical thinking and taking the market for a ride.

I think it's less about the randomness and more about that all the functionality of a computer is defined up front, in software, in training, in hardware. Sure you can add randomness and pick between two paths randomly but a computer couldn't spontaneously pick to go down a path that wasn't defined for it.
by sReinwald | 2025-04-18 09:38:41+00:00
This response is a textbook example of a manipulative false dichotomy that poisons legitimate discourse about child safety online.

Presenting the only options as either "scan your child's biometric data into opaque systems" or "let your child be groomed and/or get addicted to porn" is intellectually dishonest and deliberately inflammatory. It's a rhetorical trap designed to shame parents with valid privacy concerns into compliance.

Privacy rights and child protection are not mutually exclusive. Numerous approaches exist that don't require harvesting biometric data from minors, from improved content filtering and educational initiatives to parental controls and account verification methods that don't rely on facial scanning. Corporations are simply implementing the most convenient (for them) solution that technically satisfies regulatory requirements while creating new data streams they can potentially monetize.

What's actually happening here is deeply troubling: we're normalizing the idea that children must surrender their biometric data as the price of digital participation. This creates permanent digital identifiers that could follow them throughout their lives, with their data stored in systems with questionable security, unclear retention policies, and potential for future misuse.

Weaponizing the fear of child exploitation to silence legitimate concerns about corporate overreach isn't just manipulative - it's morally reprehensible. Framing opposition to biometric surveillance as being pro-exploitation deliberately poisons the well against anyone who questions these systems.

We can and must develop approaches that protect children without surrendering their fundamental privacy rights. Pretending these are our only two options isn't just wrong - it actively undermines the nuanced conversation we should be having about both child safety and digital rights.
by willgtaylor | 2025-04-18 09:39:04+00:00
Hi Josh, thank you for your feedback :)

1. You’re totally right to flag the potential overlap with Google’s Gemini and its integration into Workspace — it’s something we’ve thought a lot about. Google is definitely making strong moves here, but we see our opportunity not in replacing Gemini, but in building an AI layer that works across tools and ecosystems, not just within Google’s walled garden.

While Gemini is powerful inside Workspace, we think many users — especially knowledge workers and power users — don’t live exclusively inside Google’s tools. They might draft in Google Docs, communicate in Proton Mail, manage tasks in Notion, and read articles in Firefox. That fragmented workflow is exactly where our extension shines: by giving them a consistent, context-aware AI assistant wherever they are, not just inside Google’s UI.

You also make a good point about extension portability. We’re definitely exploring alternative “wedges” and distribution channels — like targeting users who prefer privacy-first tools (e.g. Proton Mail, Firefox), or platforms where the incumbents have less AI integration.

So in short: yes, we’re aware of the risk — but we believe there’s still a meaningful opportunity in offering a more flexible, cross-platform assistant that complements rather than competes directly with the big players’ native solutions.

2. For auth, we're using Clerk (which is a bit less well supported in extensions than we'd like, but works well enough), and the Chrome 'Identity' API to allow you to OAuth with Gmail.

Complying with MV3 isn't too hard to achieve, and the Chrome store has a fairly robust review process. They have a 'slow queue' for reviewing apps that request higher permissions (like ours has to) which means shipping hotfixes isn't really possible! It's usually a 48 hr loop to get new code deployed.

Re. hot module replacement we're using https://wxt.dev/ which is built on top of Vite and has been really good. Seamless dev experience with all the affordances you expect in modern web dev tooling. Would definitely recommend.

Cheers
by commandersaki | 2025-04-18 09:39:07+00:00
I don't know how Rosetta 2 for Linux is implemented in Virtualization.Framework - but it exposes it via a mountpoint on the (ARM) Linux VM. The binfmt executable that is exposed essentially does what Rosetta 2 does but for a Linux binary.

I think the binfmt executable can be used outside of Virtualization.Framework and can even be used in an ARM VM in say Asahi but people don't because it's not easy to do but also honour system as it's not licensed for use outside of MacOS.
by johngai | 2025-04-18 09:41:23+00:00
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by gaiagraphia | 2025-04-18 09:41:50+00:00
Personally, I think it's a bit scummy to expect customers to trawl through T&Cs, when the company gets to sit back and chill, while profiting from using 'unlimited' front and centre.

There's a subtle difference between using something for 5 hours per day vs causing the heat death of the unvierse.

Metred use, with all parties being informed and honest with wording, is the fair and ethical solution. I absolutely abhor how companies are allowed to change meanings of words, then run behind 'muh conditions' when they lose out on their gamble.
by lnenad | 2025-04-18 09:42:08+00:00
> It's not about having another tool in your arsenal. This thing is meant to replace you - the developer (role).

You realize that it's what I am saying? Having the tool in our arsenal means being able to do another job (prompt engineering, knowing how to evaluate the AI etc...) in case we are made obsolete in the next couple of years. What happens after that is a mystery...
by shippage | 2025-04-18 09:43:11+00:00
It certainly feels strange. The two epochs almost feel like past life and current life, with an unexpected and ineffable bridge between the two. I remember thinking in words, but it feels like someone else was doing that, because I certainly wouldn't do it that way today. It definitely makes me constantly question exactly who "I" am.

> Sometimes I wonder if it's just lack of introspection...

Maybe? I know I didn't introspect deeper than my words when I was a child, but that doesn't necessarily mean an adult doesn't introspect about it.

I asked my husband about it because he told me he has a running stream of words most of the day except when he's relaxing. He is aware that he has a layer beneath the words, but still thinks of the words as "his thoughts" and the layer beneath as "just his subconscious," that bubbled up things like emotions or memories in service of his thoughts.

So at least N=1, an inner monologuer did consider that his words weren't all of his thoughts, but he still considered the non-verbal stuff less important than his words. It was as if all he valued was the crystalized thought, not the underlying processes.

> Good luck to you!

Thank you! And to you, as well.
Show HN: Pocketstore – Type-safe session/localStorage with expiry
by kritarth_air | 2025-04-18 09:43:38+00:00
Hey HN!

I built a small utility library called *Pocketstore*: a TypeScript wrapper around `sessionStorage` and `localStorage`.

It adds: - Optional encryption - TTL support (auto-expiring keys) - Namespaces - SSR fallback (memory store) - Fully typed API

I created it because most libraries are either outdated, overly complex, or don’t support basic things like expiry or server-side rendering.

Here’s the npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@m4dm4x/pocketstore And the source code: https://github.com/kritarth1107/pocketstore

Would love feedback and feature requests!

Cheers
by imtringued | 2025-04-18 09:44:00+00:00
I am thinking of designing machines to be used in a flexible manufacturing system and none of them will be humanoid robots. Humanoid robots suck for manufacturing. They're walking on a flat floor so what the heck do they need legs for? To fall over?

The entire point of the original assembly line was to keep humans standing in the same spot instead of wasting time walking.
by fxj | 2025-04-18 09:44:10+00:00
The equations that we already have are sufficient to describe the universe to 99.9999999% but they are a hodge podge of several different theories that all work very very well in their respective regime. QM + GR + Lambda CMD + ...

But this just doesnt look nice to eye and the mind. The laws of nature "must" be shorter, more symmetric. Thats why we invented Superstrings which solves everything, but can never be tested...

my 2 ct
Show HN: Install Postgres with Pip in Virtualenv
by fforflo | 2025-04-18 09:44:32+00:00
Hi HN,

I frequently work with Postgres & Python and toggle between multiple versions of each. In Postgres, I keep a separate installation for each project, but I don't like git submodules and don't want to ship "pg_build.sh" scripts with the source code.

So, I built pgvenv as a Python shell package that, when installed, triggers a from-source installation of Postgres and installs it at venv's prefix. Could become handy at times I think.

You can roughly use it like this.

python3.11 -m venv ./venv

source ./venv/bin/activate

PGVERSION=17.4 pip install pgvenv --force-reinstall --no-cache-dir

initdb ./pgdata

postgres -D ./pgdata

Many things can go wrong with this in production, so should probably use for development only.
by nonrandomstring | 2025-04-18 09:46:31+00:00
A punchy article that centres on the concept of trust. Yesterday I wrote this one [0] with similar themes.

The idea that the US administration is turning against the existing trust-based cybersecurity order is terrifying and almost unthinkable. But history shows rising authoritarian regimes usually scrub existing security apparatus before bringing in their own.

In this case they're attacking an international order, and that could lead to the US soon being on the outside of the network it (DARPA) built.

It's something I hope to talk to a resistance group "We The Builders" [1] about.

[0] https://www.cybershow.uk/blog/posts/usw/

[1] https://www.wethebuilders.org/posts/next-generation-of-emplo...
by suraci | 2025-04-18 09:47:35+00:00
> But what is the purpose of having a trade surplus? This goes back to Adam Smith, who famously said that the purpose of exporting is to be able to import. To be able to consume other things. That’s the big thing that’s missing in China. They don’t import enough, they don’t consume enough. China’s exports last year grew four times as fast as world trade, and imports didn’t grow as fast as world trade. Something’s wrong there. The philosophy behind China’s economic model is pure mercantilism. They make a virtue of export surpluses and accumulating foreign exchange reserves. That’s what’s wrong.

sayings like this always remind me this:

> In the 18th century, the European demand for Chinese luxury goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) created a trade imbalance between China and Britain. European silver flowed into China through the Canton System, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Guangzhou. To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in Bengal and allowed private British merchants to sell opium to Chinese smugglers for illegal sale in China. The influx of narcotics reversed the Chinese trade surplus and increased the numbers of opium addicts inside the country, outcomes that seriously worried Chinese officials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War

I'm waiting
by wil421 | 2025-04-18 09:48:02+00:00
AVE had tear downs years ago and I think there were a few places where dewalt edged out Milwaukee. There was also some black magic going on with dewalt impacts and a rebound effect. See Torque test channel[1].

For automotive Milwaukee is the clear winner.

[1]https://youtu.be/tPP6exJyILA?si=G1aKZL9yjYwkJ2aH