MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by steve_adams_86 | 2025-04-21 04:18:52+00:00
I agree and disagree. Some things make sense to centralize. Some things maybe less.

I’m glad Canada is talking about centralizing how trade is managed, for example. I think it’ll be good for us in the long run. Yet I don’t think food security is best accomplished through centralized farming practices. Distribution of these systems may be slightly less efficient, but I think that’s a price worth paying in the longer term. Especially as we need to worry more about climate change which can have localized impacts.

It’s a complex matter. We shouldn’t hesitate to centralize when it makes sense. But we should be careful, too. Centralization comes with drawbacks, no matter what. They won’t always be easy to anticipate.
by GenerocUsername | 2025-04-21 04:20:21+00:00
I for one reject your social contract and despise the self-righteousness of people who think a social contract overrides personal liberty.

You want others to partake in your social contract, but you would probably be appalled if that contract demanded people not be overweight (affects others wherever healthcare is in limited supply), or maybe the contract demands people not be gay (lowers birth rates and therefore societies GDP… also increases disease transmission). Social contracts come and go with time and yours is as wrong tomorrow as my proposed one is today
by kelnos | 2025-04-21 04:20:24+00:00
Not sure of the GP's core message there, but I think this is kinda the point: even with all this onerous encryption on the cinema releases, high-quality pirated copies still very quickly make it out.

So basically they have this very secure scheme for getting movies to theaters, but everything else is full of holes. Makes you wonder if all the effort and cost to secure the theater distribution chain is worth it. If you're going to allow playback on devices in "adversarial" hands (streaming, home physical media playback), it's going to be incredibly difficult to restrict copying. Tightening up the one instance where the hardware and people operating it have less incentive to pirate (and more incentive to not pirate, given the risk to their theater business) seems like wasted effort.

Certainly this does make the case of a theater-only-first release nearly impossible to pirate. But there aren't quite as many of those anymore, and all this DRM must be expensive, both in the hardware/software, and in the logistics. I guess they've found it's worth it, but... oof.
by ipsento606 | 2025-04-21 04:20:26+00:00
> For every 100 people who use the pull out method perfectly, 4 will get pregnant.

Are those 4-in-100 distributed randomly?

Did the pregnancies result despite 100% adherence to the method, or was there occasional failure to adhere?

There's a big difference between a method being ineffective from the perspective of a health care provider, and a method being ineffective in absolute terms.

A provider has to care about what broad cross sections of people will actually do, rather than what they say they will do.

If you're an individual person who knows they can adhere to the method perfectly, the fact people on average cannot or will not adhere perfectly has no particular relevance to you.

I have no horse in this race, but the same difference in the meaning of "efficacy" arises in all sorts of aspects of health care, like advice on diet and exercise, or the prescription of specific exercises for physical therapy.
by k310 | 2025-04-21 04:21:50+00:00
The government’s defense and cyber-defense are highly focused on attacking immigration and DEI, firing senior and expert employees, practically begging for a crippling attack on the entire U.S. internet, water and power plants and top-level government communications. (Starlink and signalgate, anyone?)

Military defense is similarly compromised by purges and a focus on eradicating DEI.

This greatly increases the chance of a major disaster, which would have the consequence of a declaration of martial law, something that nobody wants. Except one.

I advocate refocusing cyber and military defense on real established threats instead of imaginary ones, and the same goes for the hallucination called “trade imbalance”
by djmips | 2025-04-21 04:22:14+00:00
When he mentions that a small piece of grit was fouling the gearbox and the pithy advice that small things can cause big problems reminded me of the toaster I fixed recently where I spent most of my time with the electrical aspects ruling out everything until I was left with the electromagnetic latch and after disassembly it turned out a very small toast crumb had found it's way inside and was in the way of a flush contact between the electromagnet and a steel plate. Just cleaning that out brought the toaster back to full function!
by y42 | 2025-04-21 04:25:00+00:00
> Most people don’t want computers to know everything.

That may well be true. But how many of those people are specifically against AI companies scraping the web? That’s not really an argument—it’s an assumption based on personal perception.

> Ask the average person if they want more or less of their lives recorded and stored.

What exactly is the "average person"? Also, I’ll admit my earlier claim was a bit exaggerated. But let’s be clear: this isn’t about recording personal data—it’s about collecting and structuring knowledge.

And beyond that: companies have been scraping the web for years. They still are. And they’re gathering far more personal data for online marketing, tracking, profiling—whatever the reason—and the so-called "average person" hasn’t raised much of a finger. People remain glued to platforms, willingly sharing their personal lives. And what do they get in return? Doomscrolling and five-second video clips.
by noduerme | 2025-04-21 04:25:01+00:00
Got 18/20. I chalk that up to spending years as a graphic designer. I'd like to see a similar study about which text was perfectly kerned, or by how many pixels an element was off-center or misaligned. I can spot that on billboards a block away, and my life is therefore a constantly grating experience.

Marginally related. I paint oils as a hobby, and my studio gets northern light, usually overcast and cloudy, during the day. Differentiating tiny color variations under those conditions is very easy, and in general your objective "pitch perfect" impression of color is also pretty accurate. However, I've painted in the same room at night under a "warm" LED bulb, and been absolutely shocked at how wrong and blue everything turned out when seen in the light of day. Not just that, but the hues I intended to be close to one another are much farther apart than they appeared under LED lighting.

So if lighting conditions can shift not just your perception of a color, but also its relationship to the ones around it, then I think how much more does your screen gamma and range alter that? A fair test would be printed on the exact same Heidelberg in 4 colors.
by WalterBright | 2025-04-21 04:25:34+00:00
The partial evaluation/specialization is accomplished in D using a template. The example from the link:

fn f(comptime x: u32, y: u32) u32 { if (x == 0) return y + 1; if (x == 1) return y * 2; return y; }

and in D:

uint f(uint x)(uint y) { if (x == 0) return y + 1; if (x == 1) return y * 2; return y; }

The two parameter lists make it a function template, the first set of parameters are the template parameters, which are compile time. The second set are the runtime parameters. The compile time parameters can also be types, and aliased symbols.
by poobear22 | 2025-04-21 04:26:10+00:00
We help the homeless in a mid-sized city on the west coast. The county's efforts for the homeless have been pretty impressive, and when we help with the weekly clothing giveaway, some of the people are in such dire shape. I think these people I see are really in need of food, clothes, socks, blankets and towels, etc. For the most part, they are incredibly thankful. Some have obvious drug issues. I like the little houses in the article, I'd be happy in one. I think in our community there are about 35 of the little houses and costs including security and leasing the space, approaches just north of $600K per year, which to me seems a little expensive. The nearby tent city looks way too much like a garbage dump, and a body was found last year in an ice chest in the tent city. That clearly is not a safe environment. I'm still thinking many of the homeless could be put to work in some manner. I would love to see graffiti removal and litter pickup on a regular basis for the county as a whole. If free food and housing is provided, it seems a lot of people could be put to work in a positive manner. I'm not sure if any communities are doing this.
by kelnos | 2025-04-21 04:26:18+00:00
I suppose this would help keep pirated copies from getting out before the theatrical release date (presumably theaters are given these digital releases at least days before their first projection date).

But it seems that more and more releases are straight-to-streaming, and/or sometimes simultaneous with the theatrical release. High-quality pirated copies often show up within a day of a streaming release. Sure, many are still theater-only for a week or more after initial release.

I get that a big part of their business model for some titles relies on theater ticket sales within the first days or at most weeks after release, but all this DRM just feels like an exhausting, expensive, ultimately-losing game for them. Especially when we consider how theater-going has declined over time, especially recently.
by throwaway290 | 2025-04-21 04:26:39+00:00
> What in the life of an average Ukrainian will change if he is ruled by a bureaucrat from Moscow instead of a bureaucrat from Washington

"ruled by" shows you are a russian troll. A democratic government serves the citizens. You're "ruled by" if you're in a country like russia. Ukrainians had their chosen government.

> By refusing to accept this

By posing like somebody from the west you are trying to get them to internalize as if they have no choice, but they do have a choice as per my other comment. Putler has a choice every day whether to continue or not, and west has a choice whether to stop him. It's Ukrainians who don't have a choice but to stop him.

I don't think I need to engage further, it's pretty obvious and you are not saying anything I haven't heard before.
Cartoonist R. Crumb's Biography: Two reviews
by pmags | 2025-04-21 04:29:18+00:00
There's a new biography out on the comic book artist Robert Crumb, entitled "Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life".

Here are two recent reviews of this biography and reflections on Crumb's work.

• The Atlantic -- https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/r-crumb-dan-nadel-cartoonists-life-review/682118/

• NY Times -- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/books/review/crumb-a-cartoonists-life-dan-nadel.html
by sidrag22 | 2025-04-21 04:29:36+00:00
you are going straight down from researchers building the LLMs to prompt engineers.. and there is a massive gap in the middle which is what i was speaking about. When i refer to tools that utilize LLMs, im not referring to tools built USING an llm to create it. im referring to tools which will serve a product which itself utilizes the LLM.

to use the same past example as simply as possible, computers utilize electricity. in this case LLMs would be the electricity. (this isnt me saying LLMs are as revolutionary as electricity, just trying to make a very clear example)
by esperent | 2025-04-21 04:30:34+00:00
> Similarly I wouldn't be "Generally Intelligent" by this definition if you sat me at a Cyrillic or Chinese keyboard

Would you be able to be taught to use those keyboards? Then you're generally intelligent. If you could not learn, then maybe you're not generally intelligent?

Regarding disabled people, this is an interesting point. Assuming that we're talking about physical disabilities only, disabled people are capable of learning how to use any standard human inputs. It's just the physical controls that are problematic.

For an AI, the physical input is not the problem. We can just put servo motors on the car controls (steering wheel, brakes, gas) and give it a camera feed from the car. Given those inputs, can the AI learn to control the car as a generally intelligent person could, given the ability to use the same controls?
by throwaway290 | 2025-04-21 04:32:49+00:00
> the Ukrainian "free press" disagreed with the party line, would they still receive money?

Absolutely. And they would receive Russian money too. But some things are more important than money

> The loser always pays the price

Exactly. That's why who started the war must be ensured to be the loser. It was the case with Hitler (except sadly his Russian friends got off easily), it is the case with Putler. He must pay.

> If the war continues for a few more years, and the Ukraine loses more land and people, will this be better for them

Absolutely not. So Russia has to lose this war fast, for the sake of free world and Ukrainians whom you worry about so much. And we all know how to do it.
by Aurornis | 2025-04-21 04:32:50+00:00
The title said “Industry” but the article reads like someone has an axe to grind with a couple specific companies.

It opens with a pre-rebuttal to critics who pointed out that they got some facts wrong the first time they published it, arguing that it doesn’t change a thing. Not encouraging for all of the rest of the bold claims in the article.

I couldn’t even finish the article through the smug editorialization.

This feels like another case of hobby drama where a smaller player wants to take pot shots at bigger players going through tough times. Kick them while they’re down and get some clicks out of it.
by netsharc | 2025-04-21 04:37:11+00:00
I disable auto-updates for apps on my phone. The Play Store sometimes notifies me about updates, and I ignore them. Today I hit "Update all". The app for my Sony headphones has now been changed, and has an EULA and opt-ins. Skimming through them, I think Sony now wants to upload titles and artist of music and videos that my phone plays... Oh how fucking wonderful.

My WH-1000XM4 is buggy as shit too, I had to disable power-saving (turn off if nothing is playing) because it would randomly switch off in the middle of music playback. And there's a touch gesture to enable "mute when speech is detected", which, when enabled, means when I say something in a Zoom call I can't hear anyone else anymore.. And I can't disable this single gesture, just all gestures in general.
by kelnos | 2025-04-21 04:37:27+00:00
> For 15 years you let paid options progress. [...] then suddenly you don’t find piracy anywhere.

And then they completely ruined it with fragmentation. When all I need to watch everything I wanted to watch was three subscriptions (Netflix, Hulu, and HBO), I was totally fine with the ~$40/mo and reasonably-ok-UX offered.

But now it's a mess. I need subscriptions to 7 or 8 different services (which now each cost twice what they used to for an ad-free experience), and the experience is crap. Netflix no longer plays on my Linux/Firefox setup (same thing happened with HBO years ago), and their anti-password-sharing mis-features constantly trigger for me even though I don't share my Netflix password. The Android apps for most of them are glitchy and buggy, and Chromecast has somehow gotten less reliable over time.

The irony is that usually I would say more competition is a good thing. I suppose if we had lots of streaming services, but studios were required to license all their content under RAND terms to anyone who asks, we'd have real competition, and streamers would compete on the quality of their platform, lack of ads, etc., and not just on what titles they were lucky enough to be able to license.

I do agree that pirating became less popular for a while, but that golden age is over. The piracy scene seems stronger than ever these days.
by cookiengineer | 2025-04-21 04:39:32+00:00
The irony behind this is that Upgrade as a word becomes scary once you've already lost ownership of said devices.

We have whole industries that have to rely on Windows 7 and self-built Windows 10 images because they can't upgrade into a shitty cloud-prioritizing OS. Microsoft just completely ignored them, essentially alienating whole industry branches.

Try justifying that a Candy Crush Saga download shut down a high oven, wasting millions of EUR in energy costs, for example. And yes, that happened at a steel factory here. They switched to open source afterwards and reimplemented everything from scratch.

Every industry around chemistry, energy, production, factories, debugging... heck, even the damn hospital ... They all switch away from Microsoft because it just doesn't work without internet. Honestly I don't know how a CEO can be so asleep and out of touch at the wheel. But I guess that's just collateral damage?
by Hojojo | 2025-04-21 04:39:43+00:00
I'm extremely confused by this article.

1) The board game community is largely agreed that Final Frontier is responsible for its own problems. This isn't a surprise to anybody.

2) Afaik and from what I could find, the 125% are baseline blanket tariffs on everything from China. And up to 245% depends on what kind of goods.
by gnabgib | 2025-04-21 04:39:43+00:00
Previously: (19 points, 4 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43705726

(31 points, 2 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43732469

Related: Palantir Admits to Helping ICE Deport Immigrants (49 points, 2020, 59 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24638267

Palantir forced out of job fair after outcry over ICE contracts (113 points, 2019, 169 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20809184

The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees (133 points, 2019, 205 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20769646
by pengaru | 2025-04-21 04:39:50+00:00
maybe I've been lied to by google translate?

https://translate.google.com/details?sl=auto&tl=en&text=hauj...

It appears to be the case, I don't know why google translate is saying this is hungarian for good morning in english. No hits in this hungarian dictionary: https://glosbe.com/hu/en/haujobb

apologies.
by imiric | 2025-04-21 04:40:39+00:00
Chilling. Governments weaponizing information they have on citizens is textbook dystopian. The lack of oversight on social media platforms that allows this to happen is incompetence at best, and complicity at worst.

As more governments slip into autocracies, similar scenarios are likely happening in other countries as well, and we just don't know about it. The fact that US social media platforms are operated by people supportive of an aspiring autocrat should be a red flag for anyone still using them. Especially for citizens of the US, where the line between the government and corporations gets thinner by the day.

These are truly bizarre and frightening times for anyone outside of this system.
by esperent | 2025-04-21 04:43:49+00:00
> Try justifying that a Candy Crush Saga download shut down a high oven, wasting millions of EUR in energy costs, for example. And yes, that happened at a steel factory here. They switched to open source afterwards and reimplemented everything from scratch

I'm searching for this but not getting any results. Could you share a link where I can read about it?
by jalapenos | 2025-04-21 04:44:05+00:00
Amen. And the surreal thing is to then hear the very same mentalities behind this uttered in this comment section.

It's like there's like a vehemence in people towards abuse. Reminds me of how Zweig said that people were in a state of jubilation in anticipation of WW1.

There's something dark in humans where they don't accept the absence of pain. They think to at least some extent, that hurting their kids is a good thing, perhaps under a twisted "toughen them up" mentality.

And the thing is, they get away with it. Maybe their kid gets a chip on their shoulder against them, or maybe even estranged from them. But they don't get hurt back.

In a moral world they absolutely would.
by t-writescode | 2025-04-21 04:44:36+00:00
My "proudest" use of decorators has been in adding metrics gathering for functions in python, so you'd get automated statsd (and later prometheus) metrics just by having @tracked (or whatever I had its name be - it's been like 7 years) on the function header.

In a sense, that was mutating a global variable by including and tracking the metrics gathering. I imagine this person's early professional exposures to it and need to create their own also came from a similar situation, so "mutating global state" and closures sorta clicked for them.

People learn things by coming to those things from many different entry points and for many different reasons. This is another one of those instances :)
by jjk166 | 2025-04-21 04:44:42+00:00
The effort is not the point. Communicating is the point. Up until very recently, there was no alternative way to send a letter without writing a letter. There was no need to prove work was done. Cultural changes are much slower than technological changes, and thus things continue to be culturally required despite no longer being useful.

The idea that someone should waste their time to "prove their work" to you is absurd. If I knew someone did, I would deliberately go out of my way to bury information in excessive AI slop for them.
by bhawks | 2025-04-21 04:44:44+00:00
Typed try/catch was tried in Java. The typing was not well liked and people voted with their feet to untyped exceptions. Euphoria turned to misery and golang emerged with returning errors explicitly. Overall I would say that the return value and error value shouldn't be split as in Golang. A result type that forces the user to account for the error when accessing the return is a much better approach. The compiler should make it fast.
by CommieBobDole | 2025-04-21 04:44:45+00:00
If you scroll down to the bottom it appears that the author is trying to sell a book about how to be successful in the board game industry, so that's the motivation, I guess.

Given that the whole article seems to be based on the premise "the ruinously-high tariffs don't apply if you just change the product category to this other number, and this file on some government website proves it" and all the replies are people who actually import stuff explaining that the file is out of date and the tariffs do actually apply, I think I'll give the book a pass.
by HdS84 | 2025-04-21 04:47:33+00:00
Yes, thar is the same feelingg I have. Giving it some json and describe how a website should look? Super fast results and amazing capabilities. Trying to get it to translate my unit tests from Xunit to Tunit, where the latter is new and does not have a ton of blog posts? Forget about it. The process is purely mechanical and it is easy after RTFM, but it falls flat on its face
by MarcelOlsz | 2025-04-21 04:47:36+00:00
It is an incredibly easy matter. Most people I know don't care for grinding because it doesn't earn more happiness. The few that do, are privileged software engineers making 300k+ so it makes sense for them to grind it out and be set for life and even they can quickly acknowledge that again, it doesn't bring more happiness. Most people I know are far more motivated to do things for common good, whether its limited to their friends circle or community and have no incentive to grind for a boss.

There is no logical or humane reason to keep working as much as we do. You want to be competitive join a sports league or something. If you want to question why would anyone do what I suggested you can just go to github.com and see millions of altruists doing it for free. A clear example of humanity trying to break free held down by a vast swathe of wretches of would-be millionaires and current billionaires.

It is impossible for me to entertain anything related to conserving any part of the status quo while I still have to work 40+ hours a week. It is a complete shit show and we've made no progress in the past 250 years except a couple apps and other bullshit "technology" with meaningful tech being an absolute drop in an infinite ocean of shit. How embarrassing for all of us.