MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lutusp | 2025-04-28 02:58:00+00:00
Legitimate content aside, this article is a perfect example of modern public relations writing, of flash over substance. Each paragraph is larded with PR buzzwords like "breakthrough," "cutting-edge," "groundbreaking," etc. to the degree that the topic is nearly lost in the lexical shrubbery.

And it's clear the article's author doesn't understand scientific writing. Each participant is identified as having a PhD (when true), contrary to accepted academic practice. Imagine a scientific article by Albert Einstein, tagged with "PhD" -- except that in 1905, any relevance aside, Einstein didn't have one. My point is that the participants' academic degrees are irrelevant to the science. As Richard Feynman said, "Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion". Oh -- wait -- did I mention that Feynman had a PhD?

My favorite phrase from an article that tries to raise empty PR prose to an art form: "... Lehigh is the only university in the Lehigh Valley to have this designation ..." Noted. But this is like saying, "We're tops in our ZIP code!"
by YesBox | 2025-04-28 02:58:44+00:00
Semi related, here's a modern, young artist who composes music for pipe organs that use tunings from the Baroque era. [1]

The music is minimalistic at first ear, but the tension and release caused by the slightly out of tune notes [2] is really pleasant IMO.

[1] https://kalimalone.bandcamp.com/track/all-life-long-for-orga...

[2] Out of tune to equal temperament, which is what nearly all modern music western music uses.
by AmVess | 2025-04-28 02:59:50+00:00
They stop driving in places with stiff penalties for driving without a license. I used to live in a state that made driving with suspended or revoked license punishable by up to 3 months in jail. Repeat offenders would have their vehicle taken off of them. Taken off as in seized; it is no longer yours. It becomes a rather burdensome crime when the car they seized has a bank not attached to it. Having a car seized doesn't end your obligation to pay off the loan.

All the local police and state police have license plate scanners, and would also alert on DWLS/DWLR. No point in trying to get around it by driving someone else's car. That vehicle also subject to seizure.

All this sounds rather hardcore, but the payoffs were many. Low number of accidents and traffic deaths, low cost of car insurance. Really dangerous activities like reckless driving and DWI could have life changing consequences even from the first offense.
by jongjong | 2025-04-28 03:00:00+00:00
A non-tech co-founder can bring value in two ways; their social networks and deep market domain knowledge.

Finding a good niche and refining a concept to find market fit isn't easy. As a tech guy, it's often not clear where the business value is.

I recently implemented a feature for which I didn't see the full value initially. Once it was done, my co-founder said something like "This feature will make our target audience's eyes pop out of their heads." I can actually see it now but it wasn't clear to me before, yet it was always crystal clear to him as he himself fits within the target market.

Anyway we'll see where this goes, there are a lot of factors at play but in any case, it's nice to have that degree of certainty that yes, we're addressing a genuine need.

If your co-founder isn't within the target market then you're basically just guessing what users want and that's a bad approach.

Sometimes it's more complicated than that though, and that's when you need social networks. For exampls, I've built solutions in pure tech (dev tools) but it's very different. Dev tools is a weird market because it's heavily monopolized by big tech and the target audience (developers) have little say over what tools they get to use on the job. So the fact that I'm in the target market doesn't actually add much value there. Even if the target audience loves something, it doesn't necessarily translate to sales. You have to have experience with developer tools from both a corporate and non-corporate perspective to understand that.
by dredmorbius | 2025-04-28 03:00:53+00:00
Obits are among my idea-stirring hacks. Some thoughts on why they work, and some similar ones.

Obits are written long in advance. I noticed following Jorge Bergoglio's death that NPR's obit was written (and voiced, in the newscast / headlines) by Silvia Poggioli, though she'd retired from the network in 2023 (here: <https://www.npr.org/2025/04/21/1013050313/pope-francis-dead>). This means that they're both well-researched and polished writing, unlike most breaking news coverage. They also compress a lifetime into a few paragraphs (~75 in the case of Poggioli's article), which tends to bring out highlights.

Another format that often brings out interesting ideas, outside my own area of expertise: interviews. Especially with those not from the worlds of politics or mainstream business. All the better, historical interviews, from earlier times. These often give either perspectives on a different world, or a perspective on circumstances which presage the world we find ourselves in now.

Terry Gross's "Fresh Air" and the Studs Terkel archive are two particularly excellent examples. As I'm expanding my language comprehension, interviews and histories in foreign languages are another excellent option.

A third option: academic author interviews. The New Books Network has poor production values (bonus: well-produced audio is almost certainly a skippable ad) and a large number of duds, but where it hits the topics are almost always well outside the mainstream but at the same time the product of expertise. There's a huge back-catalogue:

<https://newbooksnetwork.com/>
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-04-28 03:02:20+00:00
> Is there any correlation between speeding tickets and the probability of getting into an accident at a given speed?

“There is a strong relationship between the number of tickets a person has in a two-year period (2015–16) and the likelihood of a crash outcome (2017–2019). However, the accumulation of tickets is not the best predictor of crash likelihood. A combination of the excess in speed and the accumulation of tickets increases the relative odds of a subsequent crash” [1].

So no, the person who regularly breaks the limit by 20 mph is the textbook person who should not drive their bleeding relative to the hospital but instead wait for an ambulance.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243752...
by TulliusCicero | 2025-04-28 03:04:40+00:00
This is like, "lock your doors? Nah bro, it's entirely possible to get through any lock, therefore locking is pointless."

Most of these people are just generally reckless, they're not really intent on Going Fast No Matter What.

Sure, people who actually modify their cars to race around will probably go around this kind of safety measure, but even most people speeding aren't that.
by throw16180339 | 2025-04-28 03:05:28+00:00
> Your comparison makes no sense. Bangladeshi Americans, as a group, are normal and healthy. They don't suffer from a medical condition that could be cured.

I was trying to give you a sense of why I interpret his comments as a threat. He's described all of us as if we're a burden when I've been supporting myself for decades.

Some autistics would want a cure, but others feel that their perspective is equally as valid as neurotypicals. They don't see themselves as sick and in need of a cure.

> But to use a better example, south asians have a significantly higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Almost everyone in my family has it. It would be great to cure that or figure out how to avoid that. I'd be fine with the government collecting data about that, so long as there was an opt-out.

My main impairments are face blindness and a severe difficulty with reading facial expressions - I'm in the bottom 5% of the population. I would happily take a cure for either of these if it was offered. If it's a more general personality change, then I'm not interested. I'm comfortable with who I am.

There isn't an opt-out for me and there's a long history of eugenics in this country, that's why I'm concerned about this.
by acedTrex | 2025-04-28 03:05:32+00:00
I could not agree more.

> AI also allows less experienced engineers to churn out code faster, so I have more and more code to review

This to me has been the absolute hardest part of dealing with the post LLM fallout in this industry. It's been so frustrating for me personally I took to writing my thoughts down in a small blog humerously titled

"Yes, I will judge you for using AI...",

in fact I say nearly this exact sentiment in it.

https://jaysthoughts.com/aithoughts1
by fleek | 2025-04-28 03:05:41+00:00
They really mean "I can't save enough money to meaningfully change my lifestyle or advance my status in an amount of time I feel is reasonable."

Basically they are lamenting that the American dream is dead, or a lie, and that they will always be working and never live the lifestyles portrayed by their favorite influencers.

There is some truth to the idea that many people will never own as much property or live as lavishly as their parents did however.
Show HN: Kairu – Track your focus time (free)
by eric_oaks | 2025-04-28 03:05:46+00:00
I built Kairu - a simple, minimalist app that helps you:

Run structured focus sessions (Pomodoro-style or custom)

Track your total focus time, streaks, and progress over days/weeks

Actually see how you're spending your time and staying consistent

It's completely free to use (just a quick sign-up). Would love any feedback if you give it a try
by dataflow | 2025-04-28 03:07:49+00:00
Your link is about Waymo. It doesn't imply the same is true for human drivers. When I search around whether driving too slowly is too dangerous, basically every source I see says it is. Random example:

https://www.allstate.com/resources/car-insurance/dangers-of-...

Anecdotally, I see people dangerously tailgate slow drivers too; it makes sense that everyone warns against slow driving.
by wai1234 | 2025-04-28 03:07:51+00:00
I think you should ask yourself two related but separate questions:

1. Will the CS degree increase your knowledge and problem-solving ability faster than you could without it?

2. Will the credential add substantially to your credibility for hiring managers?

The answer to 1 is mostly about your level of self-discipline and ability to learn independently. If you need the stimulus of a structured environment and a peer group to learn at your best, then any accredited program will be helpful, and your ability to pass coding interviews will increase (with a lot of hard work beyond the curriculum).

The answer to 2 is pretty straightforward: unless your degree is from a tier 2+ school, the raw credential is of little value, and even tier 2 is not certain. To count, an online degree must be presented by the school as competitive with an on-site degree. Georgia Tech offers such a degree program as a tier 1 school, for example.

An unaccredited program is of no value whatsoever in answer to 1 or 2. So, avoid them at any price. You are looking at a 3-5 year project, no matter what, and this is probably a good time to do that. The market will take that long to sort itself out and to realize that vibe coding is NOT the miracle it seems.
by dredmorbius | 2025-04-28 03:09:18+00:00
"The richest families in Florence in 1427 are still the richest families in Florence"

“The top earners among the current taxpayers were found to have already been at the top of the socioeconomic ladder six centuries ago,” Barone and Mocetti note on VoxEU. The study was able to exploit a unique data set—taxpayers data in 1427 was digitized and made available online—to show long-term trends of economic mobility.

<https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14...>

The question is how much ones starting position (that is, birth conditions) predict adult-period wealth and status. Yes, there's clearly movement within ranks, and more at the very top of the rankings than most. But familial wealth trends are empirically quite strongly rooted in status-at birth, from this and numerous other studies.
by theamk | 2025-04-28 03:09:32+00:00
For people who are thinking about getting into electronics: that project is very complex for what it does. Nothing wrong with it as long as your goal is to learn advanced fabrication techniques, but most people don't need any of this stuff for one-off, home projects with no strict low price / small size requirements.

The main culprit is that "custom ESP32-S3 board" - in this application, it is equivalent to a combination of a random off-the-shelf ESP32 board and a separate battery charger/protector. Half of the equipment on the list (hot air, hot plate, microscope, logic analyzer, etc...) is only needed for this board.

Weirdly enough, the rest of the device is a solid design, suitable for someone with "a few months" of electronic experience: lots of pre-made modules, and designing a carrier PCB for them. This means large and easy to solder 2.54mm hole spacing, regular soldering iron, no microscope, etc.. It's a really weird contrast for me....
by fuzzfactor | 2025-04-28 03:10:35+00:00
>"who has the least conflict of interest"

What about "what role needs to be done the most at the time?"

>sometimes I'm legitimately better at the strategy half too

Technical people should be eager for more business responsibilities than ever before starting a business.

If it's an "engineering company" ideally you would have two founders each having outstanding technical abilities, and far exceeding anything a non-technical alternative could bring to the table from a business or sales aspect. To begin with if you want to start a business, you need to be the kind of engineer that wants to build sales in some way or another. On the front lines and/or in the background.

And to be real one of you is going to have to go full-time into sales & marketing to pursue some type of cash flow until things get rolling in some way. At least.

Then you can more sensibly consider having the non-tech MBA type come in under the top engineer who has been successfully selling already. And that's the beginning of a chain-of-command where an "engineer" is never hired or fired by anything other than an "engineer". And there's always an engineer (sharp in business, not lacking anything needed) at the top of any non-tech hierarchy by design.

Non-engineering companies where the non-tech-types dominate the hierarchy, can still have decent opportunities for the engineers they hire to work on projects under them. But there may not be as much room for upward movement or appreciation for outstanding skill up and down the line. Might also be more often found involved with financial irregularity, or more commonly non-fair dealing even with some of their own people sometimes.
by lutusp | 2025-04-28 03:11:02+00:00
> I'm not sure why these would be just getting release by National Archives now, perhaps as a distraction?

Maybe, or maybe they wanted to avoid giving the content unearned credibility through concealment. The easiest way to turn a mystery into a nothingburger is to release it to the public.

> ... there's a lot of discussion that these photos may have been a hoax.

Yes, or sightings by people constitutionally unable to distinguish Venus from a UFO.
by erxam | 2025-04-28 03:11:10+00:00
The old-guard rich people don't, that much is true. But the middle classes sure as hell are.

There's the fact that Chinese companies are basically hoovering up all the talent. In Latin America, Huawei alone eats up entire graduating classes of engineers. Pretty much every 'industry' event in any sector is nearly 100% Chinese. University staff are increasingly forming themselves via Chinese companies, and are thus transmitting that to their students. Chinese scholarships are popping up like mushrooms. Again, Huawei alone has provided more of them in the past year than the US Embassy has done in the past three decades.

People still dream about going to the US, sure. But MAGA is doing their damned best to whittle that lead away.
by platevoltage | 2025-04-28 03:11:27+00:00
Most relevant response yet. Thank you.

This is exactly the category that I'm in. A couple of years ago I applied to a large company, with a referral. 0-2 years experience and a non-specific bachelor's required. I got my rejection in 15 minutes, after business hours. My resume didn't even see human eyes. Did I mention I had a referral?
by VikingCoder | 2025-04-28 03:13:27+00:00
So if I bought the $58 one from the Wikipedia Store...

What exact solar products (panels, battery, converter?) would I need to buy, near Chicago, to run one of these 24/7, year round, and let's say it's gotta be up and running most of the time - say, 99% of the time. (That means it can be down over 3 days a year, and still be acceptable to me.)
by YZF | 2025-04-28 03:15:17+00:00
I started my professional career without a degree a long time ago. I did a few years of Comp.Sci. (and math) but didn't finish. I then finally got the extra credits to finish years later so I'm a proud bachelors of compute science (it did feel good the decades ago when I completed it).

Once I had real experience getting a job was not a problem. That said, getting some specific job at a specific company might be hindered by not having a degree (or even not having a CS degree).

I would say:

- A degree in Comp.Sci. is useful for what you learn not just for the paper.

- Sometimes the paper matters. Some companies will only hire people with a degree. Others you'd need to be a superstar to work around that requirement.

- Sometimes the degree can impact your pay. E.g. if you work for the government or a university.

- A degree can impact things like immigration. E.g. it's much easier for me as a Canadian to work in the US because my degree means I can get a TN. Some countries will give preference to immigrants with degress.

- You can meet interesting people and make connections during your studies.
by omgwtfbyobbq | 2025-04-28 03:15:31+00:00
I have a Model 3, and phantom drain is virtually non-existent.

Like anything used, or new, what you'll get is random. In general, Tesla seems to have their batteries sorted out compared to other manufacturers, but you can be unlucky.

The accuracy of range varies a bit, like most cars. If you have your foot in it, you'll do worse, and if you drive efficiently you'll do better.
by allenrb | 2025-04-28 03:15:49+00:00
Speed limiters built into cars. Anti-infringement technology built into general-purpose computers. And yet, guns and ammo freely available and unrestricted outside of automatic weapons and the like? Yeah. Can’t wait to move off-grid someday. (Yes, obviously American)

I’ve got enough sense to keep it slow and safe in populated areas, yet occasionally open it up elsewhere when conditions are right. Guess that’s another thing we’re going to lose in our brave new world.
by hayst4ck | 2025-04-28 03:15:55+00:00
As someone who has interviewed candidates for a FANG company in the distant past I can't say that degrees matter, but I can say that people I interviewed with degrees generally did better. There's a hidden bias in that this is only people who got through recruiters and recruiters are their own filter. Strong referrals usually guaranteed a phone screens. I think previous experience at a major competitor in the same tier or a degree from a top CS school were also meaningful, but I don't know how else they filtered.

There is a non trivial relationship between colleges and businesses, so you are likely to do many problems in college that are not terribly different from the interview questions. Additionally all of your peers have been interviewed/do interviews/do referrals and that does matter.

College students generally did not do incredibly well on practical problems, so I would expect a non college candidate to do really well on them.

Many of the best co-workers that I remember had physics degrees. In fact, it was so pronounced I personally consider a physics degree to be a top tier signal of programming ability, but that's my own personal prejudice.

If your degree isn't from a top 10-20 CS school it's probably not worth it if you have experience. If you can't make friends while doing the courses, then I don't think it's worth it. Going to a good college is much much much much more than a few lectures, some book reading, and some assignments. It is face to face time with world class experts, it's a culture, it's social, it's exploratory. You can potentially work on bleeding edge research or be introduced to things you never knew existed.

It sounds like your idea of what college is, is that it's a technical education rather than a liberal education. If that's true I think your perception of college is wrong.

There are some situations where a college degree really matters. If you want to apply for a work visa in a foreign country, a degree from a good college can potentially get your application a rubber stamp or lack of one could completely restrict you from it.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-04-28 03:15:55+00:00
The analysis of occupational licensing has concentrated largely on its labor market and consumer welfare effects. By contrast, relatively little is known about how occupational licensing laws originated or the key factors in their evolution. In this paper, we study the determinants of U.S. licensing requirements from 1870 to 2020. We begin by developing a model where licensing arises as an endogenous political outcome and use this framework to study how market characteristics and political incentives influence regulators’ choices. Our empirical analysis draws on a novel database tracking the initial enactment of licensing legislation for hundreds of unique occupations, as well as changes to the specific qualifications required to obtain a subset of licenses over time. We first show that, consistent with the predictions of our model, licensing requirements are more common and were adopted earlier for occupations whose tasks plausibly pose some risk to consumers. Second, large, urbanized states are significantly more likely to produce new policies. Third, among occupations regulated before 1940, licensing requirements appeared earlier in states with more practitioners and where incumbent workers likely experienced greater labor market competition. After 1980, state-level factors are more strongly associated with the timing of policy adoption. Finally, political organization, as measured by the establishment of a state professional association, significantly increases the probability of regulation. Together, our findings suggest that both public and private interests have contributed to the diffusion of licensing requirements across states and occupations.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33580/w335... | https://doi.org/10.3386/w33580
by forrestthewoods | 2025-04-28 03:16:08+00:00
This article is trashy trash trash. The only mention of AI in the actual paper is that they used ChatGPT for grammar correction. The article doesn't explain what or how AI was used beyond "three dimensional modeling".

A paper author did quote the use of AI. But without explaining precisely how AI was used and why it was valuable this article is basically clickbait trash. Was AI necessary for their key result? If so how and why? We don't know!

Everything about this screams "just say AI and we'll get more attention".
by BLKNSLVR | 2025-04-28 03:16:09+00:00
If country A threatens to annex country B, then I'd say it's entirely rational for a resident of country B to minimise anything that may financially support country A.

Even moreso when country A applies additional tariffs on goods from country B based on nothing / 0.01% of fentanyl smuggling / unfairness of trade agreement negotiated and signed under the authorisation of the person themselves.

Even moreso again when all of the above comes out of the blue after decades of good relations.