MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by LinuxBender | 2025-04-18 10:37:50+00:00
For desktop-only people like me the better option is to have a static IP address and have websites only allow authentication from that IP. I do this with several financial institutions. Most sites will hide this option to front-line customer support so it often requires opening a ticket. Bots can bang-away, bang-away, bang-away.

Another option is to disable internet access all together for accounts associated with brick-and-mortar businesses. I have done this with a few institutions as well that did not have options for a static IP requirement. These businesses know my face. I also joke with them that if someone pretends to be me they should call the Sheriff for a good show they will do it and it will be on camera.

I am biased against cell phones so I can't really add anything there. Having built out a cellular network in two states and testing hundreds of prototypes prior to smart phones and seeing how tightly integrated these companies are with governments and how proprietary the firmware and hardware is I just can not trust them. Perhaps my opinion will change in a few hundred years or so. If people trust their phones then an open source VPN that routes their traffic through their home static IP address would be an option.
by sensanaty | 2025-04-18 10:38:05+00:00
I'm in NL and had my wallet fall out of my pocket once at one of the bigger train stations. I realized within ~5 minutes, and basically as soon as I realized got a call from an anonymous number. It was the police, who had found my wallet with my ID in it and were calling me to inform me about it. Luckily I was still at the station and could just meet them and got my wallet back.

I couldn't help but feel extremely creeped out, and my girlfriend still to this day doesn't understand why I felt uneasy about it. "But you got your wallet back!", she says. "Of course the police know your number!". Having 0 privacy has been completely normalized, and I'm afraid we're far too late to do anything about it.
by glenstein | 2025-04-18 10:38:38+00:00
>but that doesn’t make it an exclusive biosignature. There are plausible abiotic pathways for DMS formation, such as in geochemistry we can’t know entirely about because we live on earth.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. You started by acknowledging that it is indeed exciting, that it is something we only understand to be produced by living organisms. I wholeheartedly agree with that. And so the plausibility of an abiotic alternative is the big question.

You suggest that there are plausible abiotic pathways, but I think that's where this all starts to go off the rails, because I don't think there are in fact plausible abiotic pathways. We absolutely should attempt to model such possibilities and should be extremely careful about assumptions before working that out. But the state of our knowledge thus far counts for something too and it would suggest that such a process is pretty rare or unique. And then it really goes off the rails because instead of an actual example, you suggest not any specific known pathway, but a kind of bizarre philosophical musing that maybe there's "geochemistry we can't entirely know about."

We most definitely are capable of modeling chemical processes even if they don't happen on Earth. And there sure as heck is no such thing as a principle that things beyond Earth's surface are things we "can't" know about. I truly can't stress enough how ridiculous an assumption like that is.

We know, for instance, that gas giants are capable of producing phosphine, even though that doesn't happen on Earth. We know that the moon likely has a molten core. We know all kinds of things about atmospheric chemistry of planets and stars, because even if the abiotic processes can't be witnessed directly on Earth, we know enough about the principles of chemistry to model them in new contexts with reasonably high confidence.

And that's before we get to the idea that such uncertainty about off-world chemistry can be treated as tantamount to evidence of known abiotic process. It's nothing of the sort, it's more like "who knows, maybe it's possible." We do indeed have to figure out if there are such things as an aviotic process, but just the idea that, hey, who knows, something offworld might be happening is nowhere near enough to count.
by Joker_vD | 2025-04-18 10:38:45+00:00
Don't know about the US, but over here the last couple of years it has been a big wave of "enable biometrics sign-in! Totes safe, your face is the best ID, just click this checkbox, please, we would really like you to use it, pretty please" in the bank apps. No idea why they pushed it so hard, and it seems to have largely subsided now.
by junon | 2025-04-18 10:38:46+00:00
15 years ago I'd have agreed with you. However we've managed to make almost everything about life, happen on the Internet. Not just the "fun" things, but identification (and verification thereof), communication, payment, bureaucracy, hell even medicine in many ways.

We cannot lull ourselves into this idea of "technopia" where everyone - 100% of everyone - is acutely aware of privacy risks and proper security and safety posture on the internet. That will never happen, and only puts disadvantaged individuals at risk - especially since we've effectively forced them to use a system they're not capable of operating safely.
by Zambyte | 2025-04-18 10:39:25+00:00
For redirects I like to create a rule to direct versioned sites (like documentation) to either "latest" or the version relevant to me. I also like to redirect sites to a more user friendly version when applicable (like reddit.com => old.reddit.com).

If a site leaves me disgruntled when I visit it, I block it. If I find it too useful to block entirely (reddit) I lower it. I apply the inverse to sites I enjoy.

I find there are certain sites that have built-in search that sucks. One such example is Dockerhub. In that case, when I want to search for a container on Dockerhub, it may be tempting to use the built-in !dh, but that is no good. Instead I favor the "snap" search: @dh, which will just add "site:hub.docker.com" to you query. This will give much better results than !dh. This can also be combined with the "I'm feeling lucky" bang (!), so you can search for something like "nats @dh !" and end up on the Dockerhub page for NATS - without ever even seeing Kagi if you do it from your URL bar. I do this pattern all the time, usually with Dockerhub and GitHub.

You'll find with the above pattern that you'll start to want to apply this to sites that aren't natively supported as bangs. One such site for me has been Ollama. I added a !ollama to be able to search for models directly. It's also nice because just searching "!ollama" will bring me right to the homepage too, which is useful when I want to check to see if I'm on the latest version.

You'll also find there are subjects where you tend to prefer a small set of sources. Maybe it's some software or tool, or some hobby or something, where you prefer official documentation, maybe some known personal sites you trust, a reddit community, something like that. That's where custom lenses comes in. I personally have a lens for the operating system I use (GNU Guix) (as well as a !p bang to search for packages) which includes official documentation, mailing list archives, IRC archives, things like that. I'm sure there are probably similar subjects in your world that you would enjoy having a more focused search for :)

As for the Kagi Assistant, I pretty much have just wired up an Assistant to use my Guix lens as a search source. That is pretty nice, because I can just ask it general questions like "how do I install nginx?" and get focused and relevant answers, instead of having it go off on how to install it on irrelevant distros.
by jsk2600 | 2025-04-18 10:41:12+00:00
>I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level

As someone living in a country where it can take five or more years to get approval to build a new house and 10+ for commercial buildings due to the government bureaucracy, I'm scared by the idea of getting the government more involved. The key issue is that the government makes it very hard to build -> less housing -> expensive housing.
by diggan | 2025-04-18 10:42:41+00:00
> That's just going to come with hassle.

Well, it is the public internet, people are free to discuss whatever they come across. Just like you're free to ignore all of them, and release your software Bellard-style (just dump the release at your website, see https://bellard.org/) without any bug tracker or place for people to send patches to.
by globular-toast | 2025-04-18 10:43:10+00:00
> If houses ever return to good affordability I'm screwed.

Uhh, why? Unless you were planning on selling up and spending it all on a cruise or something house prices are immaterial to home owners.

> I have to refinance every 5 years, because that's the game in the UK, so if rates spike I'm also screwed.

This is the real problem. It's partly our fault, of course, for agreeing to a mortgage which we couldn't afford if the interest rates doubled. You know exactly what you're signing up to, but you still do it.

The trouble is there's no choice. The finance industry has us by the balls. I don't even think of it as a housing crisis, I think of it as finance crisis. The real problem is banks control far too much of our lives. The entire money supply is essentially just mortgages. This abstraction we call money has been taken way too far.
by strogonoff | 2025-04-18 10:44:01+00:00
Perhaps you are exaggerating. At least, my original comment was “not talking about politics is a political position”, not “everything is HIGHLY political”.

However, yes, some people would say that, for example, almost everything is political to some degree. I don’t know if I agree with them entirely. In case of Knuth, they would probably say that the choice of what to write about in the book (just like the choice of whether to be a computer scientist in the first place) cannot be divorced from his politics. Like the choice of someone to work in nuclear science or environmental science or “anything that pays good money” is informed by individual’s political positions. “Politics is water” is a great metaphor.
by andrewfromx | 2025-04-18 10:45:30+00:00
You should start with a Monte Carlo implementation using the Metropolis algorithm.

1. Create a grid with random up/down spins

2. Add random magnetic fields at each point

3. Pick points randomly on the grid

4. Calculate energy changes if you were to flip a spin

5. Decide whether to accept the flip based on temperature and energy differences

https://github.com/tjacovich/Ising_Model

https://github.com/prtkm/ising-monte-carlo/blob/master/ising...
by vouwfietsman | 2025-04-18 10:45:47+00:00
> The borrow checker is automatic and works across all variables.

Not that I'm such a Rust hater, but this is also a simplification of the reality. The term "fighting the borrow checker" is these days a pretty normal saying, and it implies that the borrow checker may be automatic, but 90% of its work is telling you: no, try again. That is hardly "without needing to do much extra at all".

That's what you're missing.
by iamacyborg | 2025-04-18 10:46:22+00:00
Even if they are built, the entire insurance system post-Grenfell is causing absolutely insane service charges for residents.

Mine are up >50% since 2018, that’s despite gaining no new services and work on the building being put on hold due to it not being essential. The fact that it’s a relatively new build (about 12 years old) is almost irrelevant as construction is shoddy.

Putting new buildings up is only part of the problem, the entire system is fucked.
by nicbou | 2025-04-18 10:47:44+00:00
I have developed a habit of disabling anything that calls for my attention when it's not warranted. This includes notifications, feeds and suggested content.

I also delay or debounce justified calls for my attention, because some things can be combined into a daily/weekly/monthly digest.

I maintain a post about it: https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence
by progbits | 2025-04-18 10:48:15+00:00
I'm sure many are going to hate on this, but a simple k8s setup (just container+deployment+ingress) is going to be good for preventing vendor lock in.

Too bad it's US only, devops is actually a good role for full remote setups. If you can't make it work asynchronously across timezones you are doing it wrong :)
by gryfft | 2025-04-18 10:48:47+00:00
In retrospect my comment was ambiguous. I was referring to the (common?) experience of reporting a clearly documented bug only to have a project maintainer refuse to engage with the issue further than closing #wontfix. The system is working as intended, those who have come to harm are not valued by those with the power to make change, and no amount of documentation will change that.
by red369 | 2025-04-18 10:49:48+00:00
I much prefer the system the US, where you know your rate for longer. Some other countries, I think the Netherlands is one, also let you fix for longer than 5 years. But why are you, and other people in your position, screwed if the prices return to affordability? High Loan-To-Value ratio so if the prices fall, the bank would force a sale?
by evv | 2025-04-18 10:50:01+00:00
They have gone with an interesting licensing solution here. I really appreciate that it is labeled as a source-available license instead of Open Source.

https://defold.com/license/

You can make proprietary changes to the engine without releasing them (unlike GPL). You can freely monetize games built with the engine, and they make some assurances that there won't be a bait-and-switch.

And finally, the reason why this is not Apache 2.0- you cannot monetize (forks of) the game engine itself.

This seems fair and carefully considered. Kudos to the team!
by that_guy_iain | 2025-04-18 10:50:59+00:00
1. Your old credit card solution needs a credit card. So you exclude out the poor, bad credit, etc.

2. Parents will help kids bypass checks like that.

3. It can be bypassed by a half-smart 13-year-old who can access an app on a phone that will give them the card details and be able to see transactions.

Any verification that doesn't actually verify you via proper means is easy to fake. Hell, we can fake passport/id photos easy enough so now we have to jump on calls with the passport and move it around.

The days of the wild west of the internet are long gone. It's time to realise that it's so important that it deserves the same level of verification we give to in person activities. Someone seeing you and/or your id. It's the only thing that has the best chances of not being bypassed with ease.
by mattdneal | 2025-04-18 10:51:56+00:00
Page 8 of the recent CMA study into housebuilding in the UK: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65d8badb6efa8...

A prior condition for building houses is having permission to build them. We have found that the planning system is exerting a significant downward pressure on the overall number of planning permissions being granted across Great Britain. Over the long-term, the number of permissions being given has been insufficient to support housebuilding at the level required to meet government targets and measures of assessed need.

In particular, we have seen evidence of three key concerns with the planning systems which we consider are limiting its ability to support the level of housebuilding that policymakers believe is needed: (a) Lack of predictability; (b) Length, cost, and complexity of the planning process; and (c) Insufficient clarity, consistency and strength of LPA targets, objectives, and incentives to meet housing need.

We have also seen evidence that problems in the planning systems may be having a disproportionate impact on SME housebuilders.
by SettembreNero | 2025-04-18 10:52:29+00:00
> It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why?

because we can't say that real estate is basically a cartel [1] and that big cities (where everyone is supposed to move because all the jobs are there + RTO) have staggering levels of empty houses (e.g. 19% in Paris [2]), and god forbid to apply any type of policy to adjust the situation.

[1]: e.g., Berlin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Wohnen_%26_Co._enteig...

[2]: https://www.ouest-france.fr/societe/logement/a-paris-pres-de...
by francasso | 2025-04-18 10:52:41+00:00
If your use case can be split into phases you can just allocate memory from an arena, copy out whatever needs to survive the phase at the end and free all the memory at once. That takes care of 90%+ of all allocations I ever need to do in my work.

For the rest you need more granular manual memory management, and defer is just a convenience in that case compared to C.

I can have graphs with pointers all over the place during the phase, I don't have to explain anything to a borrow checker, and it's safe as long as you are careful at the phase boundaries.

Note that I almost never have things that need to survive a phase boundary, so in practice the borrow checker is just a nuissance in my work.

There other use cases where this doesn't apply, so I'm not "anti borrow checker", but it's a tool, and I don't need it most of the time.
by LinuxBender | 2025-04-18 10:54:12+00:00
I have a strong suspicion that SpaceX has been deploying and testing the sensor platform for a while now.

That makes sense. Their first customer was the US Army. Civilians are great for stress-testing a new thing. Civilians were the first to test the internet but it was built for war even if the first iteration was a bit short sighted. Falcon-heavy seems like a great fit for putting heavy weapons in space whereas I think most here know how silly the whole mars discussion is.
by dustincoates | 2025-04-18 10:54:46+00:00
> Uhh, why? Unless you were planning on selling up and spending it all on a cruise or something house prices are immaterial to home owners.

I don't know how it is in the UK, but in Paris, I hear from a lot of people that their retirement plan is to sell their Parisian apartment and move to a lower cost area with what they've gained. Doesn't work out if your "investment" is underwater.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-04-18 10:55:07+00:00
Well, this is why I personally like open source since if something cool is found, it can't be taken away.

I think the openai team is putting some restrictions on the model because such reverse location could put a bad paint on their reputation. But if Openai was actually open source, they could've done nothing about it. But that's not the world we live in.
by serial_dev | 2025-04-18 10:55:11+00:00
I’d add fertility rate as another powerful metric: when people feel safe, supported, and optimistic, they have kids. So if housing, income stability, healthcare, and trust in the future are in place, you’ll usually see that reflected in birth rates.

All this only makes sense in the context of large groups; at the individual level, many factors determine whether someone has children.

What the puppet masters will tell you though that a country’s fertility rate are declining, because women want careers, the men are incels, and fertility drops due to climate change and microplastics.

Most people I know around my age, either limit the number of children or delay having them because they don’t feel safe bringing a child into this world.
by pfisherman | 2025-04-18 10:55:12+00:00
Agreed on chord numbers and progression being the analysis that should have been done. For example, blues is mostly defined by a 1-4-5 progression and the ol 2-5-1 is pretty ubiquitous across time and genre.

Also, I think disappearance of 7th chords - major, minor, or dominant - is vastly overstated. Keep in mind that these are from guitar tabs so likely ignoring chord inversion / voicing / substitution taking placw to simplify notation. For example a B minor triad can be substituted for a Gmaj7.

Bm triad = B,D,F#

Gmaj7 = G,B,D,F#

Or if you want to be fancy a Bb/Gm can work as either Bbmaj7 or C7 depending on where you put it in a progression.
by ceoofballin | 2025-04-18 10:56:06+00:00
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by lurking_swe | 2025-04-18 10:56:38+00:00
yes, even if you clear your cookies:

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/02/google-now-al...

i quote: “With all these pieces of information, it’s possible to create a unique fingerprint by which websites can recognize you, even if you clear your cookies. They will even be able to make an informed guess if you visit the same site with a different browser.”

i urge you to consider how google makes money. it’s not at all surprising really.
by notsylver | 2025-04-18 10:58:52+00:00
I've been digitising family photos using this. I scanned the photo itself and the text on it, then passed that to an LLM for OCR and used tools to get the caption verbatim, the location mentioned and the date in a standard format. That was going to be the end of it, but the OpenAI docs https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/function-calling?lan... suggest letting the model guess coordinates instead of just grabbing names, so I did both and it was impressive. My favourite was taking a picture looking out to sea from a pier and pinpointing the exact pier.
by TinkersW | 2025-04-18 10:59:05+00:00
I have my doubts with Jai, the fact that Blow & co seems to have major misunderstandings with regards to RAII doesn't lend much confidence.

Also a 19,000 line C++ program(this is tiny) does not take 45 minutes unless something is seriously broken, it should be a few seconds at most for full rebuild even with a decent amount of template usage. This makes me suspect this author doesn't have much C++ experience, as this should have been obvious to them.

I do like the build script being in the same language, CMake can just die.

The metaprogramming looks more confusing than C++, why is "sin"/"cos" a string?

Based on this article I'm not sure what Jai's strength is, I would have assumed metaprogramming and SIMD prior, but these are hardly discussed, and the bit on metaprogramming didn't make much sense to me.
by perihelions | 2025-04-18 10:59:27+00:00
Is this related to the federal government's vendetta against Cornell? And is there a risk Cornell becomes unable to operate arXiv because of this?

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/g-s1-59090/trump-officials-ha... ("Trump officials halt $1 billion in funding for Cornell, $790 million for Northwestern")
by gonzo41 | 2025-04-18 11:00:10+00:00
And that's kind of the dream TBH. Every private dollar that goes into housing is a dollar taken away from people who could be building businesses themselves or investing. Having cheap, plentiful housing provides a base that people can build from. There's other benefits too, say your relationships explodes and you need a new place, the last thing you want to do is be living with your ex, or couch surfing with friends.
by tialaramex | 2025-04-18 11:00:24+00:00
Having a lot of eyes on it is only a problem if you either have a self-esteem problem and so the inevitable criticism will blow you up or, you've got an ego problem and so the inevitable criticism will hurt your poor fragile ego. I think we can be sure which of these will be a problem for Jonathan "Why didn't people pay $$$ for a remaster of my old game which no longer stands out as interesting?" Blow.
by jodrellblank | 2025-04-18 11:01:44+00:00
If they put 1M into a house, then sell it and buy a 500k bungalow at retirement age, that unlocks 500k living/care money.

If they put 1M into a house, prices fall, they sell it for 100k and buy a bungalow for 50k, that unlocks only 50k to live on.

They lose decades of saving/investment money even though they can still sidestep one house to another.