MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: BloomNote – Cursor for Learning
by ethantrang | 2025-04-09 03:00:46+00:00
Inspired by NotebookLM but felt it was missing features I wanted: multi model support, a better text editor, more reliable source uploads, more options to review and study (flashcards, quizzes)

Built this for myself as a uni student and use this everyday for classes but also to learn things for my startup (podcasts, growth, etc)
by noduerme | 2025-04-09 03:01:05+00:00
I must've looked at this years ago, but for whatever reason, hitched my wagon to Chart.js and haven't really needed anything it couldn't do. And that's for weird one-off custom stuff. For business analytics I just self-host a Metabase server. I wish there were more visualization options with Metabase, but it's such a cinch to set up models and queries. But I don't often get a visualization request that justifies the time to create a custom chart.
by bryant | 2025-04-09 03:01:48+00:00
In your sources, "strategic" (or surgical[0]) tariffs are mentioned, which is perhaps the only accepted practice for applying tariffs compared to blanket tariffs.

As it happens, you've now twice doubled down on claiming both administrations would've imposed tariffs, and the manner in which you conveyed your point ("Tariffs? Inevitable regardless of the office holder. Prepared for by both sides, for a long time now. In a complex economy that few to no people in public discussions understand.") implies that both policies would've been equal when in fact it's quite clear even from your links that the two approaches would've been different - Biden/Harris' surgical application vs Trump's current blanket tariffs.

The repeated implication that the two policies would be equivocal is at best a failure to understand the debate and, at worst, in bad faith.

[0] https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2024/trumps-pr... - "This isn’t normally the way presidents act when it comes to tariffs. Additional tariffs are generally imposed very selectively, under trade remedy statutes crafted by Congress. They are actions taken pursuant to a finding that a particular product is involved in a specified unfair trade act, or it may be that the new tariff is a surgical retaliatory measure to open a market for a specified American product."

---

Went ahead and chucked the thread into archive.is so it's not lost to the sands of time. I guess now I'll bow out in a manner that's not valid :)
by taeric | 2025-04-09 03:03:14+00:00
This is one I find less than surprising. At least, less surprising than the lead in implies.

Would be like asking who wants news on the cutting edge of sports, versus who wants to know how their preferred team is doing.

Now, we like to think people used to be more aligned on the idea of the nation. Or general well being of the world. I am not too shocked to see that people have aligned with cohorts based on perceived identities. Even if I find it disheartening.
by didericis | 2025-04-09 03:04:01+00:00
Yes, this is a real perspective. Again, I’m not endorsing the approach they’re taking, I’m simply explaining it.

I also don’t think even a moderate introduction of tariffs would have been viewed favorably. Reindustrialization is I think necessary/I agree with the desire to ramp up domestic production and secure supply chains in both America and Europe, but we haven’t done it yet because it’s going to be painful to reverse the current trajectory.

This could very well be a part of a kind of shock deal to get allies to know we’re serious as we negotiate down.

I’m not saying I agree with that tactic, either, and the complaints about the damage in trust are extremely valid.
by gkanai | 2025-04-09 03:04:04+00:00
What is sadly ironic is that every manufacturing industry this administration wants back in the US- the US spent decades getting rid of those exact industries in order to focus on higher wage, higher skill roles in services, etc.

That said, the US should never have gotten rid of industries that are critical for defense such as semiconductor manufacturing and ship building among others. That those industries left the US to go to Japan and then Korea and then now China- those were terrible mistakes that were made.
by canucker2016 | 2025-04-09 03:05:18+00:00
The 1987 King's Cross fire at a London Tube station caused 31 deaths due to a lit match on a wooden escalator, which then spread due to trench effect.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzM6O0mV5DA
by duskwuff | 2025-04-09 03:05:24+00:00
Reality check: GTK 2.0 was released in 2002. At that time, most computers had under 1 GB of RAM, many were running 256-color displays at ~1024x768, and anti-aliasing was an exotic, showy feature which was rarely used on desktop systems. Hardware graphics acceleration was only used for 3D games, and support for it on Linux was extremely limited. Cross-platform compatibility for GTK wasn't even a consideration yet; it was targeted exclusively at X11 systems.

Which is a lot of words to say: software changes. The Linux desktop is a moving target; expecting a user interface library to hold still for 20+ years is a tall order.
by shmerl | 2025-04-09 03:07:12+00:00
Yes. But I noticed a trend of people asking stuff like "why doesn't this work" in various community forums, which ends up being them sourcing the method from the likes of ChatGPT / Gemini, etc. Lesson - don't do that, especially when you are going to be wasting others' time on explaining why things didn't work. Search things properly. Read documentation. Even if you use AI, never trust its results.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-04-09 03:07:17+00:00
It's funny because the US right wing (and a huge part of it's so-called left, too) keeps trying to portray US global military power as the opposite. As charity for us ungrateful Canadians and Europeans

It's completely backwards from how people usually perceive empires. And from what it is. Which is a projection of power to ensure the supremacy of American capital interests.

Which is why US GDP per capita etc is incredibly high compared to the rest of the G7. It's not because they're smarter or better than the rest of us. It's because they've built the world order around themselves. By, as you say, exporting that military protection.

The US exports military dominance, and it gets paid in having its currency, regulatory needs / environment, etc. dominate almost everywhere.

(Whether this actually benefits the regular American worker vs its own wealthy business class is a whole other discussion, and may explain why this has become such a fertile ground for rage and frustration among Americans)
by WorldPeas | 2025-04-09 03:09:04+00:00
Given you have the privelage to work for a big tech company, I would assume they have the resources to shield you, and you some of your own. From afar it may seem crazier than it is. Do not let the loudest people tell you what to do. Of course consider the risks, prime among them being that if you did not feel particularly attached to the company, or they to you, then you would have to uproot and leave the country on the order of days, but I am assuming you are young, and this is the time for you to take risks.
by mmooss | 2025-04-09 03:09:21+00:00
> we just need to become a lot more productive than we are now.

To nitpick about terminology:

productivity = output / input

The US would (and maybe will) become less productive; the US is not as efficient at producing many things as non-U.S. competitors, including ship-building. The US is more productive at other things, such as software. (And in 2025, you certainly would trade ship-building productivity for software productivity. Including in warfare.)

If we insist on building ships in the US, we spend more money on the same ships, and - unavoidably - we must shift more productive resources to these less productive tasks. If your neighbor is a great carpenter and you are a great farmer, wouldn't it be smart to trade your vegetables for carpentry, instead of you trying to do carpentry and the carpenter trying to grow vegetables? If you are a Linux maintainer end and the business down the hall back end, do you try to do back end and they try to design OSes? Why?

(Of course, you probably trade your skills indirectly through the wonderful fungibility of money.)
by Spooky23 | 2025-04-09 03:09:45+00:00
With respect to the US:

- We’re the richest nation on the planet and have been until recently been adept in response to many types of disasters. - Unemployment has been <5% for a few years. - The US military reigns supreme. Our 5 air forces are the top 5 in terms of airframes. - We actively pursue fiscal policy to promote inequitable wealth distribution

The idiocy of conflict with China is just that. We’re better and richer together.
by nattaylor | 2025-04-09 03:10:45+00:00
I wish there were some explain plans in either post, since I don't get what's going on.

If the query uses the index, then the on the fly tsvector rechecks are only on the matches and the benchmark queries have LIMIT 10, so few rechecks right?

Edit: yes but the query predicates have conditions on 2 gin indexes, so I guess the planner chooses to recheck all the matches for one index first even though it could avoid lots of work by rechecking row-wise
by robomartin | 2025-04-09 03:10:47+00:00
> I keep seeing people advocating that the idea that we should build everything, and every piece or everything, here is a good one. Why? Is this just an isolationist dream?

No. There needs to be balance. We are way past the balance point, by far. When I say "we" I mean the US and Europe. We have the same problems, and I believe Europe is in far greater danger to be absolutely decimated in the next two to five decades.

Example: We are currently working on a robotics project. Just-about the only thing we can buy in the US (or Europe, for that matter) is the aluminum and steel, and only if we are ready to do the fabrication --machining-- ourselves (which we can do). If we have to rely on third parties to manufacture the parts we are sunk. Making anything in the US (and Europe) has become impossible. Wires, cables, circuit boards, motors, encoders, chips, displays, cast iron or aluminum parts, gears, belts, injection molded parts, filters, lubricants, etc. The list is massively long. Again, US and Europe, same problem.

The massive imbalance in tariffs and trade restrictions has collapsed entire industries. Try to print books or manuals in the US or Europe at scale. Good luck. Try to make packaging materials. Same problem.

I've been manufacturing for about four decades. It has never been worse. It's horrible. And we need to fix it or we'll be left with nothing. You cannot have an economy that is purely based on providing services and writing software.

A couple of decades ago, I used to buy a specially-treated antireflective type of glass from the last company making it in the US. The Chinese started to dump and created pricing pressure. Five years later they were out of business. I then bought the same type of glass from the sole remaining western factory in Germany. A couple of years later they discontinued the product. I then had to buy from China. A couple of years later they increased their prices --nearly doubled.

That's what we've been dealing with (US and Europe). A predatory and destructive "machine". This isn't about making everything. It's about making enough to have a viable economy in the long run. I find that people who are not in manufacturing cannot grasp this. It isn't about hating China either. They are doing exactly right by their people. I admire their dedication and focus. We (US and Europe) are the idiots.
by kspacewalk2 | 2025-04-09 03:12:09+00:00
The flat fee is a small part of what that transfer costs. The real transaction fee is embedded in the exchange rate. 2% markup is not an unheard of amount, which I guess would make your total cost $515 and not $15.

There's a reason Wise is a huge business and people in Canada resort to "Norbert's gambit" to exchange currency with minimal transaction costs.
by kazinator | 2025-04-09 03:12:47+00:00
Quasiquoting allows us to specify a mostly fixed template of code where we would like to indicate variable parts that are to be substituted (note: not evaluated).

The stuff here sure looks like quasiquoting to me:

https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Macro+Facility+for+Tcl

mac mloop {idx cnt cmd} { return "for {set $idx 0} {\$[set $idx] < $cnt} {incr $idx} {$cmd}" }

The "..." with embedded $... reference is is a kind of quasiquote.
by fracus | 2025-04-09 03:12:47+00:00
Even before the clown show I was hesitant to move there. People can walk around with guns in some states. People walk the streets with untreated diabetes. Half the population seem to be overt racist and uneducated to the point of illiteracy. America is unpredictable and dangerous. I need to live in a country with strong social programs so if someone I love becomes vulnerable I know they won't have to resort to living on the streets.
by mmooss | 2025-04-09 03:13:55+00:00
> We’re not breaking society to create a nation of workshops.

That's what Mao tried in the Great Leap Forward: They tried to shift steel production to a cottage industry in back yards. You can imagine the results.

And also relevant: Everyone learned to say whatever Mao wanted to hear, so they all reported high and increasing production. It turns out that disinformation isn't economically productive, even if it feels that way - you can't make cars out of it.
by ternaryoperator | 2025-04-09 03:14:27+00:00
Clay Johnson's 2012 book, The Information Diet, discusses this phenomenon in the context of CNN going from a prime place in the news firmament to an also-ran when TV stations started driving news based on primary on their audience's political preferences. For a while, CNN still enjoyed a place as a definitive source whenever big events happened (national elections, disasters, etc.). But even that role was later subsumed by the biased TV sources.

In addition to viewer's preferences for their political slant on the news, I think that when CNN gave up the 24-hour Headline News, that probably diminished their role as well.
by ilrwbwrkhv | 2025-04-09 03:15:50+00:00
One very irritating problem I am seeing in a bunch of companies that I have invested in and my money is at stake is that they have taken up larger investments from normal VCs who are usually dumb as rocks but have a larger share is that they are pushing heavily for AI in the day to day processes of the company.

For example, some companies are using AI to create tickets or to collate feedback from users.

I can clearly see that this is making them think far less through the problem and a lot of this sixth sense understanding of the problem space happens through working through these ticket creation or product creation documents which are now being done by AI.

That is causing the quality of the work to become this weird drone like NPC like state where they aren't really solving real issues yet they're getting a lot of stuff done.

It's still very early so I do not know how best to talk to them about it. But it's very clear that any sort of creative work, problem solving, etc has huge negative implications when AI is used even a little bit.

I have also started to think that a great angel investment question is to ask companies if they are a non AI zone and investing in them will bring better returns in the future.
by twixfel | 2025-04-09 03:16:22+00:00
Doesn't make any sense. Why tariff literally the whole world? Is the UK really a conduit for Chinese products into the US? If it is then the tariffs on the UK should be 104% like with China. If not then it should be 10%. If China is a threat (and I think it is) then the US shouldn't be declaring war on its own allies.

I think there's no more pathetic creature than those who try to sanewash and apply 4d chess theory to the mental retardation of Donald Trump. Trump Derangement Syndrome exists, but it's his supporters who have had it all along, not his opponents.
by altncatchfire | 2025-04-09 03:16:40+00:00
Awesome project!

I've been playing through the archives, and they are challenging but fun. My criticism is that sometimes the answer is very ambiguous.

For instance, (spoilers ahead), in this case

> there[something golfers' apparently [scold, with "at"]]

I know the answer is "therefore". But the inner bracket could be shout/scream/yell.

It's quite frustrating when I get docked for this, hopefully the clues can be better constructed/beta tested in the future?

Thanks again for the fun game :)
by Spooky23 | 2025-04-09 03:16:48+00:00
Computer components, medical equipment, vehicles, aircraft, chemicals, etc.

Steel is something where value matters. US steel is usually higher grade or recycled with more value. Korea churns out tons and tons of low value low margin rebar.

You bring back manufacturing by investing in clustered industries. New York has a bunch of semiconductors. There’s a ton of chemical industries around Philly and Houston.

The iPhone is made in China because they have the best manufacturing for precision products. If you want that here, you have to invest.
by Reubend | 2025-04-09 03:17:44+00:00
> We train LLMs through Iterated Distillation and Amplification - an alignment strategy which is not upper bounded by overseer intelligence. Concretely, each iteration involves the following steps: Step 1 (Amplification) - Creating higher intelligence capabilities via subroutines that usually involve more computation. Step 2 (Distillation) - Distilling the higher intelligence back to the model's parameters to internalize the amplified capability.

I agree with their assessment that achieving superintelligence likely isn't possible when using purely human training data, and that iterative self improvement will be a necessary part of the recipe as well.

However, their strategy leans quite heavily on "amplification" without laying out any concrete mechanism that would allow it to generate super human training data while maintaining generality. Because of that, this strikes me as simply an iterative improvement on LLM training rather than a breakthrough that could lead to AGI. If they can figure out that aspect, then they'll have something much more compelling on their hands.

Either way, having OSS models of this caliber is great. The fact that they work with HF, Ollama, and a few other APIs means you can evaluate if it's better for some purpose quite easily.
by theamk | 2025-04-09 03:17:54+00:00
Could never understand that obsession with summmarization. Sure, it may be be useful for long-form articles or for low-quality content farms, but most of the time you are not reading those.

And if you are reading technical docs, especially good ones, each word is there for a reason. LLM throw some that information away, but they don't have your context to know if the stuff they throw away is useful or not. The text the summary omitted may likely contain an important caveat or detail you really should have known before starting to use that API.
by mmooss | 2025-04-09 03:19:49+00:00
> The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so

Yes you can. People have a moral obligation to help others, including when they have to sacrifice, and they do it all the time. People make sacrifices all the time for the greater good.

In fact, many of the extreme self-interest capitalist crowd argues that others should make sacrifices for the greater good of 'the economy' (i.e., for the good of the extreme capitalist). Musk has argued that people need to sacrifice so the economy will be better in some unspecified future.

The new commonplace phrase that 'you can't blame them' is an embarassment. I don't blame you for using it because it's so common, but it's like a core, fundamental belief that humans should not and cannot care anything about anyone else, (or often, anyone but their family). Obviously false and entire, widespread moral beliefs are built on the opposite.
by Johanx64 | 2025-04-09 03:20:46+00:00
Instead of going "hmmm, they oppose green policies, which means pollution IS in their self-interests - ie. they are probably from a coal mining town, working in a fossil fuel petro chemical related industry or an area with industrial outputs wherein their livelihood solely depends on pollution to a large extent".

Or maybe they can't afford an expensive electric vehicle and an old dirty gas guzzling clunker is the only means of transportation they have.

Or that they move from a pollution free country-side to a polluted dirty city, not because they seek the pollution, but because the opportunities and jobs are more in their self-interests than... ODing on fenta in pristine clean air.

Naah, midwits don't do this. They presume they are smart and everyone else is stupid and need guidance from the expert (that would be me, the midwit of course), and everything else is derived from it.

When the "expert" gets rejected on basis of incompetence or not acting in their self-interests, that always upsets the midwit, because the midwit always self-identifies as an expert. And rejection of the "experts" equals rejection of the midwit.

Of course, the midwit never has demonstrated competence (nobody doubts demonstrated competence!), all they have is credentials and university degrees and papers. This frustrates the midwit to no end.

Demonstrated expertise and competence is always outside their abilities and reach - they are far from somebody like John Carmack, Michael Abrash, etc who has many shipped products, you can see his code. Nobody doubts their competency, etc. All they have instead is some sort of paper that says "believe me I'm an expert".

No matter what training, education or experience midwit has... he still is just a midwit at the end of the day.
by theamk | 2025-04-09 03:21:24+00:00
Wait, so if you go to python.org and the doc page says, "Added in version 3.11", you double-check this?

What do you even use for double-check? Some random low-quality content farm? A glitchy LLM? An dodgy mirror of official docs full of ads? Or do you actually dig the source code for this?

And do you keep double-checking with all other information on the page... "A TOMLDecodeError will be raised on an invalid TOML document." - are you going to start an interactive session and check which error will be raised?
by mmooss | 2025-04-09 03:23:25+00:00
That's picking a strawperson to debate with - extreme, absolutist free trade, which is obviously absurd and nobody has ever seriously advocated or tried to implement.

You forgot maximizing income on the list. The others are important too.

> security

Far more of an issue after the nationalists destroy the order that provided peace for generations, the most peaceful world in history.
by caruizdiaz | 2025-04-09 03:24:39+00:00
> it's not even used in other Mercosur countries.

You can pay with Pix in Paraguay since the largest privately owned payment processor implemented it and it's available within all payment terminals (POS) across the country.

The government of Paraguay also runs a similarly good system called SIPAP, that is replacing card payments because it's faster and free to use.
by yen223 | 2025-04-09 03:25:22+00:00
In the short term, there will be a direct revenue hit as the result of very uncertain policies causing investors to be more cautious.

In the long-term however, I think Australia is in a strong position to thrive, assuming the tariffs don't get rolled back (admittedly, a very big assumption). Australia isn't as reliant on exports to the US as other countries. Australia is one of the few countries in the world that recorded a trade surplus against the US.
by nine_k | 2025-04-09 03:26:19+00:00
The number of defenses is pretty impressive. The number of out-of-tree and commercial defenses is also impressive. The amount dedicated to specifics of C (UB, bounds checks, use-after-free) is relatively small.

It would be interesting to compare to, say, OpenBSD, with its apparently numerous security and defense-in-depth features.