MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rgoulter | 2025-04-24 12:40:34+00:00
In terms of navigating around a document, the only difference between "motion-action" and "action-motion" is that with "motion-action", the cursor is a selection which highlights the last motion. -- I don't really find that to be a significant difference in terms of navigating around.

Instead, I'd say the biggest difference between "action-motion" and "motion-action" is that the latter lets you iteratively/incrementally manipulate the selected text. -- Vim supports this with its Visual mode. -- I think the main case for this is along the lines of "it's easier to use EEE in helix, than count out & input 3E in vim".

I'd agree for basic/small edits, "action-motion" is more efficient.

I think of helix's multi-cursor functionality as a rocket-powered chainsaw, though. :o)
by diggan | 2025-04-24 12:41:23+00:00
> The first thing that came to attention, the paper that the text was printed on wasn’t an A4, it was smaller and not a size I was familiar with. I measured it and found that it’s a US letter size paper at about 21.5cm x 27.9cm. I completely forgot that the US, Canada, and a few other countries don’t follow the standard international paper sizes, even though I had written about it earlier.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the US and some other countries decided to do things differently... As a European, I don't think I've ever seen something not A4 or A3/A4 in a professional context in my life, ever. Are US letter sizes what people use instead of A4 in a workplace for documents and such (seems confusing if so), and do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when printing? Or just happens to be something FSF only seem to be doing?
by FinnLobsien | 2025-04-24 12:41:49+00:00
Exactly. If people weren't liking it, it wouldn't be successful. The point of these apps has become to be the thing you do when you're slightly bored and want to experience that's not the line at the deli counter, subway ride to work or sitting on the toilet.

It almost doesn't matter what the content is as long as it's more engaging than that actual moment of life.

I have neither TikTok nor Instagram nor Facebook (anymore), but I know from when I had Twitter that the endless videos are engaging. I'm not above having my attention captured by them, so I know not to engage with the networks themselves.

It's precisely what you say: I would like to say I just find that stuff horrible. But no, if I had those apps, I'd be using them as distraction too.
by mvieira38 | 2025-04-24 12:42:53+00:00
Almost two decades of Google market dominance with Android, and Google's simultaneous ownership of the entire ecosystem, including the browser, search engine, cloud integration and the internal app store (which is integrated so far up the OS's ass you can't do much without it). You just can't enforce a monopoly like Google does and simply claim "why wouldn't the competitors and consumers just kneecap themselves to leave??"
by chongli | 2025-04-24 12:43:04+00:00
Yes, though that characterization is time-relative. I think vi would’ve been called “New Jersey Style” back at the time it was created, owing to its legacy as a minimal extension to ed for full screen interactive editing on a video terminal.

Today, the editing landscape is dominated by IDEs which have very basic (nearly minimum viable) editing functionality in support of getting the product out the door ASAP and letting plugins handle the fine details. This stands in marked contrast to a legacy tool like vim which gets editing right out of the box, allowing people to be productive even with a stock configuration (no plugins needed, though of course many are available).

We might call this an analogue of the Overton Window: the TRT vs WIB Window has shifted so far towards Worse is Better that we now consider UNIX an elegant tool. The old team at MIT must be really disappointed now!
by keepamovin | 2025-04-24 12:43:11+00:00
I guess I was thinking more like: you pay for a contract for bundle of resources now, to insure you against capacity overruns, and to sell it back at a future date. You can probably arbitrage the difference due to on-demand/reserved-capacity pricing ratio.

But also i don't really understand what you mean by infinitely perishable? Can you explain more?
by scarface_74 | 2025-04-24 12:43:40+00:00
I started “coding” in 1986 in assembly on an Apple //e and by the time I graduated from college, I had experience with 4 different processor families - 65C02, 68K, PPC and x86. I spent the first 15 years of my career programming in C and C++ along with other languages.

Coding is just a means to an end - creating enough business value to convince the company I’m working for to give me money that I can exchange for food and shelter.

If AI can help me do that faster, I’m going to use it. Neither do I want to spend months procuring hardware and managing building out a server room (been there done that) when I can just submit some yaml/HCL and have it done for me in a few minutes.
by diggan | 2025-04-24 12:43:50+00:00
> But I guess younger people and particularly those in tech may genuinely never need a reason

I don't think it's just a age/generation thing though. I'm one year older than my wife, but I grew up in Sweden in the 90s, she grew up in Peru. Somehow, sending/receiving letters was something I've done multiple times growing up, but she never did, and wasn't until we were living together in Spain in the 2010s that she for the first time in her life sent a letter via the street mailboxes. She's not in tech either, if that matters, while I am.
by Jensson | 2025-04-24 12:44:22+00:00
> Capitalism means all the wealth goes to those with the most capital, while free markets means the wealth flows freely in all directions

I don't understand this distinction, why wouldn't capital accumulate under free markets? The freer the market the more capital accumulates.

In a freer market that today you would have to pay a massive toll every time you went to the grocery store, because the road owner has monopoly on that route, that would lead to much more wealth accumulation.
by bayindirh | 2025-04-24 12:44:44+00:00
> do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when printing? Or just happens to be something FSF only seem to be doing?

Yes, the default printing paper for US is US Letter. I prefer to use my computers with US English language, and macOS defaults to US Letter as print and page size when you use US English as the default language.

Moreover, I had a ream of US Letter paper in the past, given me by our neighbor (I live in a A4 country, so it's that "odd" size).
by ForHackernews | 2025-04-24 12:44:47+00:00
A few years back (2015ish?) I read a big magazine profile of Michael Jordan in his post-basketball life and I was really surprised by how unhappy he seemed - extraordinarily competitive at everything, even casual games of golf, running up huge gambling debts, etc.

This is a guy who was the most dominant athlete of his generation, arguably the greatest the ever play the game, and yet he can't turn it off, he can't relax and rest on his laurels. The same personality quirks that drove him to win at basketball mean he can't tolerate losing in any arena.
by wingertge | 2025-04-24 12:45:27+00:00
We don't yet support newer types like fp8 and fp4, that's actually my next project. I'm the only contributor with the hardware to actually use the new types, so it's a bit bottlenecked on a single person right now. But yes, the example is rather simplistic, should probably work on that some time once I'm done updating the feature set to Blackwell.
by hudo | 2025-04-24 12:46:10+00:00
I read the book.

After the part where she was giving a birth to her child, while still writing emails and doing work stuff, I take everything she said with a grain of salt. As a father, the way she prioritised work to family through out many years of her work at FB, I find it very repelling and disgusting.

I believe that Zuck&team are slimy greedy spoiled brats, but I could also say few things about her. Which make me wonder what is actual truth, book is very biased.
by FinnLobsien | 2025-04-24 12:46:16+00:00
I actually think he's correct and the gov's case doesn't really correspond to reality.

It's actually true that social media as it was in the 2010s (when the Instagram and WA acq's happened) is basically over.

They're no longer social, they're mostly just media: apps designed to be portals into consuming as much content as possible, by whomever (so you watch more ads).

I'm not saying Meta is a great company or Zuck is a great person, but the idea that Instagram & Facebook compete with TikTok and YouTube is 100% true.
by phaedrus441 | 2025-04-24 12:46:34+00:00
I think you'll see this kind of thing in many professions. Some doctors, who are highly specialized and highly trained in their field, act like they should automatically be great at skills they barely have experience with, and then get frustrated when they don't immediately excel or when people with less impressive credentials end up being better at something.

My family member who taught flying to hobbyist pilots always said physicians were the most dangerous students because of their "know-it-all" attitude.
by oofManBang | 2025-04-24 12:46:47+00:00
Again, the claim is not against people drinking beer or water, it is against doing so out of some general fear of drinking water.

Perhaps I was too strident in my criticism of your substantial comments; I apologize.

However, I am still unconvinced that people in the past viewed beer as a replacement for potable water rather than a food-like complement to it. If water was generally regarded as less safe than beer, why were so many people brutally executed for messing with it? Why do we have so many sources noting with far more sensitivity than most have today to where you can find and drink water without boiling? Surely it is not a coincidence that springs whose water you didn't need to boil later grew towns and cities? Why do we have so much evidence of what amounts to seasonal boil advisories? Why was disease so strongly associated with the presence of armies if people weren't consuming the water that forms the natural vector for transmission?

I have no doubt the confidence to which we can say water was safe could be exaggerate in order to dispel the myth that people didn't generally drink water at all, but even today people drink from water sources that would make you or I sick without becoming ill themselves. Perhaps there is room for degree of safety that might explain how water can both be safe and unsafe.

My concern is not with doubt in the consumption of beer (or wine, or later liquor) but with the widespread impression that people in the past simply didn't drink water. Such a poor understanding of what you clearly understand is a complicated topic harms our ability to empathize with our ancestors.
by remram | 2025-04-24 12:47:01+00:00
Yes all paper is usually letter. It's close to A4, so you don't usually need to reformat documents to print on one or the other. Most printers take A4 and US letter and adapt automatically.

A4 is readily available in the US but not commonly used.

The main problem is that if you cut it in half, you get a really silly sizes (too narrow) instead of A5.
by bluGill | 2025-04-24 12:47:09+00:00
The article makes the clear claim that while there was beer on board there was no Scurvy.

Is the article wrong? Does beer have vitamin C? Does beer have something else that also cures Scurvy? Does beer running out also coincide with someone else running out that cures scurvy? Does beer running out also coincide with the body's natural ability to coast on no vitamin C? Is there something else in play that I can't think of?

I'm not qualified to answer that. I do know enough history to believe that the article was written be an expert in the age of sail and so I am inclined to believe claims that I didn't already know are facts.

You comment reads like someone took the simplified 4th grade history and repeating a fact out of context - and so I'm inclined to believe you are wrong in some way, but that is only my guess. If you (or someone else) can cite better evidence I will change my mind, for now I'm sticking with my comment as correct.
Show HN: I built a visual topic explorer for SEOs and content creators
by sekra24 | 2025-04-24 12:47:11+00:00
Hey HN! I'm a solopreneur building TopicLoops – a tool that turns any topic into a hierarchical mindmap using web data. It’s built for SEOs, founders, and content creators who want to deeply understand a topic and its subtopics before writing.

Instead of grinding through Ahrefs or Semrush (which I did for years), TopicLoops gives you a visual sunburst diagram of a topic’s structure—automatically. You can even dig deeper into each topic to find more specific angles and related subtopics.

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Best from Würzburg, Germany

Sebastian
by marxisttemp | 2025-04-24 12:47:23+00:00
People with bulky keychains often just throw them in their bag or purse and it can be annoying to fish them out.

I personally put a very high value on having a minimal keychain and wallet since I rarely carry a bag with me. The goal is to someday live in a state with Apple Wallet drivers’ license support, in a house with NFC smart locks, driving a car with Apple Car Key, at which point I could finally completely jettison my keys and my MagSafe wallet. I don’t want to carry physical keys when I’m already constantly carrying a device with a Secure Enclave and biometrics.
by CharlieDigital | 2025-04-24 12:48:31+00:00
It's a tough trade off. On the one hand, having a child in your 20's is how our biology is wired. On the other hand, in the modern age, those are also prime years for work and professional growth; I get it.

Last year, I (in my 40's) did a trip to Terceira[0] and after a few days of hiking, had shooting pain in my knee. I immediately wondered if I had torn something! It would be quite the pickle since I had traveled with a backpack. Luckily, it was ITBS (Iliotibial band syndrome) and went away with some Acetaminophen and rest.

But it made me regret that in my 20's I spent more time playing computer games than doing things like this hike that would be even challenging if I were to wait until I retired.

[0] https://youtu.be/DlFKc4OfbpM Terceira is a spectacular destination, by the way, and easy to access from JFK.
by jccalhoun | 2025-04-24 12:48:40+00:00
Yes, in the USA letter size is the standard. A3,4 don't exist. It isn't confusing because I would guess that more than half of all people in the USA don't even know that letter size isn't the standard everywhere. I was probably in my late 20s before I found out that Europe doesn't use the same size paper as we in the USA do. I can remember exactly once that I encountered it in the wild (I was at a conference and someone from Europe had some handouts).
by sgarland | 2025-04-24 12:48:59+00:00
Oh no, it’s worse.

8.5 x 11” is US Letter, or 215.9 x 279.4 mm. We also have US Legal, which as the name implies, is frequently used by legal professions. I have no idea why. It is 8.5 x 14”, or 215.9 x 355.6 mm. Finally, we have US Tabloid (I guess used for small newspapers?), which is 11 x 17”, or 279.4 x 431.8 mm.

And yes, our printers default to US Letter. The line from the movie Office Space: “PC Load Letter? WTF does that mean?” is the printer’s cryptic way of saying “Load Letter-sized paper into the Paper Cassette.”

EDIT: there are are apparently more US-specific sizes I was unaware of, which you can view and compare with others on this site: https://papersizes.io/us/
by krapp | 2025-04-24 12:49:10+00:00
>I don't understand this distinction, why wouldn't capital accumulate under free markets?

It would, which is why businesses support deregulation - not because they believe in vigorous competition for the sake of consumers, but because they want as little friction and consequence standing between themselves and oligarchy as possible.

A market in which the wealth "flows freely in all directions" is socialist, not capitalist. "Fair" markets are regulated, and by definition not free.
by jeroenhd | 2025-04-24 12:49:14+00:00
The "fix" would be to make games perform like shit on Windows and disable HDR and other proprietary features, or to abolish the open Linux drivers. You can't have both, unless you do what Nvidia does and move all of the proprietary stuff to the GPU firmware and write a minimal driver to control that massive firmware blob. Which, obviously, would require reengineering the GPU hardware, which is expensive and of questionable value.

They can't open source their proprietary drivers even if they wanted to because they don't own all of the IP and their code is full of NDA'd trade secrets. AMD isn't paying two different teams to do the same work because they like wasting money.
by cyberjerkXX | 2025-04-24 12:50:00+00:00
I can explain why I doubt him.

The evidence supporting his claim is a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet with several columns excluded. It appears to have been exported from the DeviceProcessEvents table within the advanced threat hunting schema. However, he failed to provide the threat hunting dashboard view, which would include critical context such as the process tree, MD5 hash, account SID, account domain, and process creation time. Given that he clearly has access to Microsoft Defender XDR or Defender for Endpoint, he has the capability to conduct a thorough investigation. Yet, he did not do so, nor did he include that information in his legal submission. As a result, I find his claims unconvincing.

As for the forked repo deletion - I have no clue. It seems like the repo was already well known. I'm not a dev so I'd defer to a dev's opinion here. The system owner could be function testing, fuzzing, performance testing, ect. Why didn’t he show the process tree, the system name, and netflow to prove that system running code was interacting with prod? – He clearly has access to Azure tools that would allow him to do that.
by sanderjd | 2025-04-24 12:50:06+00:00
I don't understand your "delusional, self serving, narcissistic and ineffective" / "egotistical" point. All of this would apply to people trying to change things from the outside too.

Who the hell do you think you are in the great machine of hundreds of millions of US citizens, or billions of people globally, to think you can effect political and regulatory change?

And yet, this is how things change, by people working to change them, from either the inside or the outside. Maybe your point is right that anyone trying to be a change agent is self serving and egotistical. But don't fool yourself that there is some big difference here between internal and external activists.
by sekra24 | 2025-04-24 12:50:18+00:00
Hey everyone, I'm the solo dev behind TopicLoops.

I built this because I was constantly jumping between expensive SEO tools trying to piece together how a topic is structured—and none of them really showed me the bigger picture. So I decided to build a tool that does.

TopicLoops is part of a larger goal for me: I’m trying to escape the 9–5 grind and build something sustainable on my own terms. This is one of several small tools I'm working on as I try to make that leap.

Would love your thoughts, feedback, or even just to hear how you’d use something like this!
by rietta | 2025-04-24 12:50:22+00:00
It's the standard here in the USA. The other standard is the US Legal at 8.5 inches by 14 inches (216 mm by 356 mm). This is what is used in court settings (hence the name) but also things like paper mortgage statements will typically come printed on that. That is much similar to your A4 size.

I am familiar with A4, A5 and such. But I think that fewer and fewer people are. It's just not something used every day.

As a side note, most of the big important house bills and statements I still insist on receiving via US mail for protection reasons. There is a risk if I only had them emailed to me that my wife would not have access. If I were to suddenly die, I don't want my wife with our kids to miss a critical bill. By having them show up at the house in physical form provides a bit of defense in depth here.
by watwut | 2025-04-24 12:50:40+00:00
There is no loan necessary in the plane example. Future is an agreement that you will buy/sell a thing for set price in a set date. No one needs to borrow anything for it to work. To manage the repository, the plane company will have contract to by x barrels at 1 of March for some price. That is it, that is what future is - contractual obligation to with a set date.

Also, while origin stories are nice, most future trades are pure speculations on price. There is no reason to pretend these original stories are how securities are actually used.

Your story may make a bit more sense with options where one party can choose to exercises their right to sell or buy. Then you can use it to manage actual amounts of commodity. But futures do not carry any such option with it. It is strict agreement with no choices. The plane company can use futures to guarantee certain fuel price in the future, so that some short term market swing wont make fuel too expensive for them.
by jimktrains2 | 2025-04-24 12:51:13+00:00
> non-rigamarolish process of sharing a HomeKit home key

I have not used homekit, but from some searches it only seems to be a non-rigamarole process to add someone as a homekit user if the other person has an apple device? Also, is the Internet required to enroll someone?

> ones where the key holder is so incapacitated that they would be unable to share a physical key.

I don't need to be conscious or my phone have battery (or reception) to have someone take a key from my pocket.

> Also, every implementation of CarKit Car Keys I have seen is the same as HomeKit home keys: there is a backup. Either a physical key, PIN, fob, or card.

I was responding to gp who wanted none of this as it all defeats the security they desired. A 1-factor physical authentication token as a backup would be suitable for nearly all edge cases I can think of. As long as the person carries it, but then we are at worst where we are today, at best I could potentially authenticate or add someone from afar.

I'm not saying that smart locks aren't useful, just that they can't only be "smart", which I assume you would agree with since you brought up things currently having backup methods?
by FinnLobsien | 2025-04-24 12:51:16+00:00
I think you're right (though YT is crazy good and finding what you like imo).

> I would say that the rise of group chats instead is evidence of how social media is failing users. People do want to communicate with a closed group. It's like they say: any organization app has to compete with emailing yourself. Any social media has to compete with a group chat.

This is true, but the truth is that you spend maybe 1 hour (if that) in group chats, while many people spend 4-5 hours a day on Tiktok/IGReels. So the revealed preference is that yes, they want to be connected to their friends via group chats, but they want mindless entertainment a lot more.
by mattgreenrocks | 2025-04-24 12:51:22+00:00
Spent my 20s grinding away at getting great at building software. I enjoyed it mostly, but there are definite regrets, esp with tech never being able to shut up about how awesome AI is in killing off any notion of craft.

Re: travel: this is one of the big takeaways from the book Die With Zero: travel is much easier when you are younger even if it is more expensive (relative to your assets). Just got back from an Italy trip where I averaged 5mi a day walking. 10 years from now (50s) it’s a coin flip if it would be possible for me to sustain that much walking over 10 days. Probable? Yes. But not guaranteed.