MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by cjpearson | 2025-04-12 18:18:33+00:00
I wouldn't say that's the opposite conclusion. Plenty of people have switched from mechanical or quartz watches to Apple watches for their daily wear. But a decade from now the watches in the jewelry drawer will have retained their value more than the watch that's on her wrist today.

Of course there's nothing wrong with wearing a smart watch. For practical purposes they are better in every way. They just have a different lifetime. It's a similar situation with cars. Some like the constant maintenance that a 60 year old car requires, others want a Toyota that will reliably get them to work, and others want a sports car with engine that can go three times as fast as they'll ever drive.

Also, I think the cheap product winning is pretty typical. CDs replaced vinyl records and were then replaced by music streaming. Few people buy cameras now that smartphones exist. And these mechanical watches were already replaced for the most part decades ago by quartz watches.

Despite the existence of more practical alternatives, there are people who still like to buy grandfather clocks, vinyl records and mechanical watches. They are certainly in the minority and you won't find a grandfather clock or record player in every home, but there is a market there.

(I kind of hate to be that guy, but if there were batteries inside, those weren't Swiss mechanical movements)
by w10-1 | 2025-04-12 18:18:51+00:00
Mutual sacrifice is the glue that takes time to set.

Mutual interest propels activity, but reliable sacrifice is the basis of trust and reliance.

But if you are perceived as welching on this, you will induce real and lasting anger, justifiably in my mind because you’ve just made it harder for people to trust for the rest of their lives.

And this is not limited to close friends.

A girlfriend’s mom’s advice: trust your man only after he’s crawled over a mile of broken glass, and your boss when he’s done it underwater.
by mindslight | 2025-04-12 18:18:57+00:00
Those topics weren't in the scope of the original discussion and I'm not really interested in litigating partisan entertainment propaganda based around taking shreds of truth (at best) and blowing them out of proportion.

The large scale facts are that under the previous administration we had working relationships with our allies, mostly functional executive agencies (aka law enforcement), and the US (ie USD) was seen as a source of stability. Meanwhile the current administration's actions are indistinguishable from a foreign power doing its best to destroy our country - we are now isolated from our allies (and even seen as hostile!), the ideal of rule of law has been replaced by brazenly corrupt rule by law, and we're staring down dedollarization.

Smarten up, quick.
by joshdavham | 2025-04-12 18:18:58+00:00
My hesitancy to adopt Gemini, despite being a heavy GCP and workspace user, is I kinda lost trust when trying to use their earlier models (I don't even remember those models' names). I just remember the models were just so consistently bad and obviously hallucinated more than 50% of the time.

Maybe Gemini is finally better, but I'm not exactly excited to give it a try.
by EA-3167 | 2025-04-12 18:18:59+00:00
This is true, but from the perspective of the time, automobiles were far from "2 tons of metal" and quite a bit slower. They were also a rich man's conveyance, even more so than a nice carriage, and I doubt people understood early on just how widely adopted the automobile would become.

A lack of foresight is also very human.
by fallingknife | 2025-04-12 18:19:03+00:00
First of all, my comment has nothing to do with Trump, so let's leave him out of it.

I would doubt Gates's number because I have never been in a company that had 15% or less waste. e.g I don't think you could find a tech company out there that couldn't reduce its AWS bill by 15% without any service degradation, but it's just not a priority.

But the meaning of "waste" is highly subjective so some people wouldn't count that type of inefficiency as "waste". It may take a lot of resources to follow the process that the government mandates or use the ancient technology that it uses, and if the government efficiently follows the process with the existing tech, then it's not "wasteful." But I would call the process itself and the failure to upgrade the tech waste.

As for corruption vs bureaucratic inefficiency, why should I favor one over the other except by cost comparison? If the government pays $100 million to build a road that really costs $50 million because the contractor is owned by the governors cousin, that's a lot better for me than paying $200 million for the same road because the bureaucratic process to keep the governors cousin from unfairly getting the contract costs $150 million. And that's not even getting into the fact that the bureaucratic path also costs more in terms of time.

IMO the process is just as much graft as the nepotism. All those lawyers and consultants and government employees that consume the $150 million are just as much the recipients of ill gotten gains as the governor's cousin. I recognize that this can't be eliminated, so I simply would choose whichever one was cheaper. And in the US I think we are in a situation where the bureaucracy consumes much more than would be taken by corruption. China is quite corrupt and yet their government gets a lot more done for a lot less money, and in a lot less time than ours does.
by hinkley | 2025-04-12 18:19:08+00:00
Video I bookmarked when I was stuck in backend land because I knew I’d want to learn it some day:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=wc8ovZZ78SY

I discovered this shortly after introducing The Secret of Kells to a child and had terrible, beautiful ideas about overly ornate websites that I have since thought better of. Mostly.
Ask HN: What's the most reliable website change monitoring tool in 2025?
by kamilms21 | 2025-04-12 18:19:11+00:00
I’ve been testing various website monitoring tools, some work okay, but I’ve found issues with reliability, especially on pages that rely heavily on JavaScript. Others miss changes or send noisy alerts.

So I’m wondering: What tool are you currently using that actually works well enough to justify a subscription?

I’m looking for something that: - Accurately detects real changes (not just layout shifts or noise), - Can handle JS-heavy or dynamic sites, - Supports element-level tracking, - Ideally has a usable free tier, but I’m fine paying if it’s worth it.

Curious what’s been working for others. Bonus points if it’s actively maintained and has solid alerting (email/webhooks/etc).

Thanks
by 8jef | 2025-04-12 18:19:40+00:00
What a load of crap, for nothing. US population 340M vs. France population 68M. You get an exactly 5 to 1 ratio. Revise your numbers according to this ratio, there you have it.

Not even looking at the numbers you throw out, I can tell you France wins, of course, for being #1 tourist spot of the whole world. Why? Partly because of Americans.

But worry do not! By the time current US administration ends up its charade, only emigration should concern you, not the prospect of tourism. And believe me, there are places far more welcoming to emigrate to than France!
by SoftTalker | 2025-04-12 18:19:45+00:00
Sort of the same. I’ve lost touch with or been sabotaged by the people I used to be close to. Now I have acquaintances, people I know and am fine hanging out with, but I don’t have anyone close that I’d really trust or open up to. And I’m fine with that, the effort it takes and the risks of being very open with someone are not worth it to me. And if someone tries to open up to me, I’m immediately suspicious and will start to distance myself. At this point in my life I’m not interested in taking on someone else’s emotional baggage.
by anon84873628 | 2025-04-12 18:21:06+00:00
Many recent HN articles about how middle managers are already becoming addicted and forcing it on their peons. One was about the game dev industry in particular.

In my work I see semi-technical people (like basic python ability) wiring together some workflows and doing fairly interesting analytical things that do solve real problems. They are things that could have been done with regular code already but weren't worth the engineering investment.

In the "real world" I see people generating crummy movies and textbooks now. There is a certain type of person it definitely appeals to.
by invisible | 2025-04-12 18:21:46+00:00
They showed a bit of this with a high production video of “how we did it” on Tuesday. The outpainting was amazing, details looked crisp, physics sim was pretty good, and the continuity for actors was good. The amount of tech they had to create and manage for the project is remarkable on its own.

There were some perspective and lighting issues, and a few small glitchy artifact moments. They probably showed about 5 minutes of footage from various parts of the movie.
by YZF | 2025-04-12 18:24:31+00:00
Bad things happen in wars. And yes there are questionable videos of Israeli soldiers on TikTok. I'm not sure how this supports your view point. It's is entirely possible for Israel to be the good guy, for the BBC to have a strong anti-Israeli bias, and for there to be questionable actions by certain Israeli soldiers (including on TikTok). There are also questionable actions by Ukrainian soldiers and there have been questionable actions by American, British, and Australian soldiers in their war on ISIS and Al Qaeda and there have been questionable action by the allies in WW-II. Israeli soldiers are young adults fighting an enemy that has complete disregard to human life (theirs or others) or pretty much anything else. That enemy has been attacking them for decades. Many of them may have friends and family that have been impacted by this enemy's brutality. So yes- there are going to be questionable incidents. This is human nature.

We can fix this by forcing Hamas to release the hostages, surrender, and end this war. Could have happened a long time ago if the pressure was on the right side.

You can't get a picture of reality through anecdotes. In every war you can cherry pick any narrative. For what its worth I've spoken to soldiers who fought in Gaza and they maintain they hold high standards and the incidents you hear of are outliers.
by Tade0 | 2025-04-12 18:24:40+00:00
One of the early examples of the Poisson distribution was the rate at which soldiers in the Prussian army would be fatally kicked by horses.

Translates to a little over 30 deaths per year per million, so not a lot, though I suspect the number would have been much greater adjusted for distance travelled and even without that it's more than some countries achieve with their traffic.
by nine_k | 2025-04-12 18:24:46+00:00
I would say that the real killer invention of humans, compared to other apes, is the way to overcome the Dunbar number and organize very large coordinated groups.

The rise of agriculture in Mesopotamia enabled by it predates writing systems, and the first cuneiform records are purely numerical, for asset tracking. Huge armies, like these of Alexander or Genghis Khan, consisted of mostly illiterate warriors.

I'd argue that the invention of the virtual hierarchies, when a peasant submits to a king who he never saw in person, eventually led to the invention of gods, and later a supreme "creator of the universe" figure. That allowed for even more complex cooperative social structures, still across mostly illiterate populations, even though holy scriptures play a central role in such religions.
by fallingknife | 2025-04-12 18:24:48+00:00
Not really. Trump has cut the budget of NASA which is the part of the government that is the biggest customer of Spacex. They have also want to get rid of EV tax credits which are a huge source of income for Musk. Financially he would be much better off under a Harris administration.

I think these are both extremely stupid policies, but its just not correct to say that the Trump administration is increasing spending to benefit Musk.
by jpc0 | 2025-04-12 18:24:57+00:00
Auto as it is now has been in C++ since C++11, thats more than a decade ago...

If your argument was C then sure thats a C23 feature (well the type inference type of auto ) and is reasonably new.

This is much more a reflection on youe professor than the language. C++11 was a fundamental change to the language, anyone teaching or using C++ in 2025 should have an understanding of how to to program well in a 14 year old version of said language...
by re-thc | 2025-04-12 18:26:23+00:00
> 1) These are trained on such enormous amounts of data that is sourced unreliably, how are these companies going to negotiate with all of the rights holders?

i.e. the business was impossible? Then don't do it. That's like saying I can't do the exam reliably sir, so I cheated and you should accept.

> 2) How do you deal with the fact the original artists who previously sold rights to companies will now have their future work replaced

Charge differently / appropriately. This has already been done, e.g. there are different prices / licenses for once-off individual use, vs business vs unlimited use vs SaaS etc.

> 3) You then create a world where only giant megacorps who can afford to

Isn't this currently the case? Who can afford the GPUs? What difference does that make? These AI companies are already getting sky high valuations with the excuse of cost...

> I think making models inherently public domain solves far more of them.

How is that even enforceable? Companies just don't have to even announce there is a new model or the model they used and life progresses.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-04-12 18:26:40+00:00
> no one feels a pressure to use a modern term that might have less perceived value-- to say "functions" or "features" instead of "complications

Methods in OOP. Every term in functional programming. Rolex does a little bit of the Apple game, renaming jargon. But the watch industry mostly uses the term the first person to use it deployed. (“Complications” makes more sense than “features” when working multilingual across French, German and Italian.)

I’d also argue that “features” is a bit misleading. Complications aren’t about utility. They’re about art. It’s intentionally overcomplicating something.
by const_cast | 2025-04-12 18:26:45+00:00
> The right’s “Atlas Shrugged” vision is to have a very lean government, as in, weak and powerless as possible.

This is objectively not true of the right's actions. If you read Project 2025 or just look at the legislation/EOs passed, the right is currently trying to expand the power of the president to unprecedented levels. In addition, they're trying to undermine the checks and balances of the courts such that the government can make greater decisions faster.

This isn't a small government, it's teetering on fascism. The fascism analogs only grow greater when you here Trump speak of an enemy within, who must be eliminated. When he speaks as if he is the One True answer to every problem facing the US. Trump-ism is become more akin to a cult than a political platform, many people just following Trump because they view him a God. It's a bit spooky. It's very difficult to not draw parallels to fascist leaders of the past.

> Conclusion: The American left wing proposes to build a government bigger than any socialist country in the world.

Delusional, sorry. If you think the democrats, the ultra-capitalist right-leaning party, want to create a socialist country you are just delusional. I don't know how to help you there because it's just not in touch with reality.

There's, like, 2 representatives in all of the Democratic party who could maybe kind of be consider democratic-socialists. And there's a better chance of hell freezing over than those 2 convincing the other hundreds to go their way.

After a certain point, we have to come back down to Earth and acknowledge what is actually going on, instead of whatever we have allowed our minds to concoct.
by mopsi | 2025-04-12 18:27:19+00:00
The only likely candidate close to Zelenskyy in popularity is Zaluzhnyi, the former commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. That's not a person who sees surrender as an option.

All major political factions oppose holding elections now, because they expect Zelenskyy's popularity to fade after the war ends and believe their candidates will have better chances then.
by _bin_ | 2025-04-12 18:28:01+00:00
I thought most people supported moving away from that and towards a more socially liberal model. If we're no longer doing that I have a whole stack of socially conservative policies I guess I'll go back to pushing.

I don't think y'all really want to go down this road; it leads straight back to the nineties republicans holding senate hearings on what's acceptable content for a music album.
by dreamlayers | 2025-04-12 18:28:06+00:00
This is a good article, but I dislike how the start defines delusions as "fixed, false beliefs that cannot be changed by evidence". Many delusions seem wrong to others without any solid evidence that can conclusively prove that they're wrong. For example, if someone says they're the second coming of Jesus, or if someone believes the CIA has mind control satellites, that seems obviously ridiculous, but you cannot disprove that.
by thehappypm | 2025-04-12 18:29:24+00:00
“They weigh more” is something I kinda have a problem with. People act like EVs are these behemoths, but your typical EV is hardly an outlier. The Tesla Model 3, for example, weighs as much as a Honda CRV. Yes, that’s a different car class; but nobody looks at a CRV and complains about its weight and the environmental impact of that weight on air quality nearly the same way.
by appreciatorBus | 2025-04-12 18:30:20+00:00
> ICE cars are most efficient at around 50mph

... when driven continuously without stopping, like a on cross country limited access highway.

When driving in the places people live, with cross walks and stop signs and children playing outside requiring frequent slowing & stopping, there's no efficiency benefit from racing 0 to 50mph every block then slamming on the brakes, only to repeat for each block after.
by eitland | 2025-04-12 18:31:26+00:00
From someone who used to earn most of my money by showel and pitchfork from I started working for real as a 15 y.o. until I was around 18 in 1998:

Yes, the correct showel makes a whole lot of difference. You have to believe me on this.

Straight edge for flat surfaces. Pointy edge for digging. Pitchforks with various numbers of tines depending on if you are moving fresh grass or hay (typically 3 tines) or manure (5 or more).

I am somewhat amused at how extremely my life has changed over the last 27 years: I am now a consultant and a techlead but I can never forget my past and somehow I thing it helps to keep me grounded and in touch with reality.
by _bin_ | 2025-04-12 18:32:11+00:00
Disagree. Authority is given Congress to establish an IP regime for the purpose of "promot[ing] the progress of science and useful arts". You would have to justify how banning gen AI is a. feasible at all, particularly with open-weight models; and b. how it "promotes the progress of useful arts." You would lose in court because it's very difficult to argue that keeping art as a skilled craftsman's trade is worse for its progress than lowering the barriers to individuals expressing what they see.

I think bad AI makes bad output and so a few people are worried it will replace good human art with bad AI art. Realistically, the stuff it's replacing now is bad human art: stock photos and clipart stuff that weren't really creative expression to start with. As it improves, we'll be increasingly able to go do a targeted inpaint to create images that more closely match our creative vision. There's a path here that lowers the barriers for someone getting his ideas into a visual form and that's an unambiguous good, unless you're one of the "craftsmen" who invested time to learn the old way.

It's almost exactly the same as AI development. As an experienced dev who knows the ins and outs really well I look at AI code and say, "wow, that's garbage." But people are using it to make unimportant webshit frontends, not do "serious work". Once it can do "serious work" that will decrease the number of jobs in the field but be good for software development as a whole.
by righthand | 2025-04-12 18:32:17+00:00
> Ok? And?

This is a thread about using your money for better things than paying an ad company. The comment that started this argument you want to have pointed out that it’s self sustaining. But I pointed out that wasn’t always true. Tfsh backed my claim.

So today maybe there isn’t a problem to which your money isn’t being spent with the ad org but it was that way for a very long time to which we can grant the OP some grace as it’s a rather recent change.

There is even still an argument to be made that while you may not be giving money to the ad org you are still giving money to Google thereby helping them deflect the damage they cause the world in their other orgs.
by marcusb | 2025-04-12 18:32:44+00:00
> SVG complexity is a good counterpoint to “why this instead of SVG”. But I don’t think we need to even address the claim that most tools for SVG generation use JS, if the concern is JS on the client.

If you want to address the generation of charts on the client, then, yes, JS is something that needs to be addressed, because SVG (or Canvas) are not in and of themselves systems for generating charts. There isn't a <PieChart> primitive within the SVG spec, to my knowledge.

The entire purpose of this library seems to be generating charts in pure markup without any scripting language dependencies. Trying to pretend that isn't relevant, or suggesting that "SVG" is, in and of itself, a viable substitute is just really weird.
by Saline9515 | 2025-04-12 18:33:35+00:00
You clearly have a non-existent knowledge of French political life. This referendum had a participation rate of 4%, and only 62% of the voters voted yes. So around 2% of the total voters.

By the way, the French metro's air is highly polluted, due to tire degradation and brake dust, making it unfit for children or pregnant women.

So yeah, it's manageable for young people. But when a baby arrives, it's hell. Same if you are old. Or disabled.
by kelseyfrog | 2025-04-12 18:33:43+00:00
Fears about AI misalignment look like a modern, secular Pascal's Wager. It's hedge against a low-probability, infinite-cost outcome. The Rationalist version builds a matrix where one cell is -inf, and from that, derives an imperative to act, regardless of how speculative the premise is.

However, once you admit infinite utilities and epistemic humility about probabilities, you can justify literally anything. The same construction could obligate you to worship simulation overlords, or to develop interstellar missile defense in case of hostile alien AIs. That's not a rational risk model, it's theological reasoning dressed up in Bayesian costume.

This stuff operates on the boundary of plausibility, the intelligent paranoid mind generates scenarios that can't be conclusively ruled out but also can't be grounded in anything falsifiable. That's not where productive engineering lives.

The escape hatch here is the same one we used for Pascal's Wager: you reject the premise. You don't hand the keys of your threat model over to speculative infinities. You work on problems you can see, measure, and influence. You don't respond to every "what if?" with a fire drill. Recognizing that this is a failure mode in human cognition is enough to avoid it.

Yes, there are real risks with AI: bias, misuse, surveillance capitalism, economic displacement. These are all tractable, all human-driven. But the misalignment discourse? It's less a bet against an existential outcome and more a projection of philosophical anxieties onto a technical domain. And once you frame it that way, it's clear: this isn't engineering. Folks doing this are playing metaphysics in front of a terminal emulator.