MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by decremental | 2025-04-23 08:28:57+00:00
HN skews heavily towards users with very unusual setups. Using one of the least popular browsers on an OS almost no one in the grand scheme of things uses makes you a statistical outlier on its own. Who knows what other obscure configuration choices could be making the problem even worse for such a user?

But yeah, it's none of that just Cloudflare hates brown people or something.
by AlchemistCamp | 2025-04-23 08:29:42+00:00
My advice since you’re focused on simplified texts in the PRC is to make sure it doesn’t suck for vertically written traditional characters.

Having watched Chinese-learning apps for a long time, a common failure mode is treating traditional characters as an afterthought, when it’s actually a lot cleaner to use them as a base. simplified variants were made so that readers of traditional characters could easily make the switch, but the reverse is not true. If your db treats “face” and “noodle” or “wind” and “typhoon” as the same character from the beginning, it’s a lot harder to separate later.
by pickledoyster | 2025-04-23 08:31:53+00:00
Some great initiatives being funded, especially: >PeerTube for Institutions — Make PeerTube easier to manage and moderate at scale

I'd LOVE to see more institutions and NGOs move to PeerTube.

The only gripe I see is funding for Wiktionary, part of the well funded Wikimedia that spends over a quarter of its budget on "Building analytics and ML services" https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...
by lifestyleguru | 2025-04-23 08:32:44+00:00
Recently bought some Chinese stocks. Minute later received robocall from UK number to add them on WhatsApp. Call on the number saved at the broker. Parents are receiving calls in their native language from a native speaker regarding various investment accounts. This whole thing is fully automated with global outreach, with personal data leaking like liquids from 20 years old beater car. Meanwhile legit banks are sending emails and SMS with messages like "be careful with scammers contacting you over email and SMS". It's one big psychotic chaos.
by b112 | 2025-04-23 08:33:19+00:00
Microsoft's push to the cloud and subscriptions for core stuff... outlook, word, excel, is so bizarre and filled with hubris.

An org can now transition everything to Linux locally, and only be left with these fully functional blockers.

That's a good step. And a there are vendors supporting Linux.

You can be sure such vendors would firm that up with a government sized buy.

Linux support is flawless, as long as you select supported components. And a vendor can easily integrate and ship that.
by weird-eye-issue | 2025-04-23 08:33:59+00:00
In what way do we "outright ban non-conformant users"?

You are making a lot of assumptions with that statement

Our security level setting is low enough that almost nobody would actually get blocked from the site. Anybody could access the contact page and email us or use the live chat

We use Turnstile in a couple of places and we have gotten a couple isolated reports about users being unable to perform actions behind Turnstile but it was always that they had some sketchy extension installed. And the extra security and bot protection we are getting makes those very low false positive rates worth it (we have tens of thousands of users so a couple reports in the last couple years is fine...)
by pjd7 | 2025-04-23 08:34:06+00:00
Caught a steam train that operates on the mainline in NSW, Australia last year.

https://www.picnictrain.com.au/

We had to stop & wait at various points on our return day trip for other passenger services to pass us. Had to wait for some freight services to clear a block at a few places too.

There was an auxiliary diesel unit not actively used apart from for power AFAIK (and additional emergency mobility should things go kaboom/excess wheel slip).

Maybe that has some the extra safety systems on it though.
by mnky9800n | 2025-04-23 08:34:12+00:00
All of the ai climate models, such as the one by Microsoft mentioned, are trained on model outputs not data. They simply are learning the model that was already developed. The same is true for the Google model which is trained on era5 reanalysis which is a mix of modeled and real data. From my perspective the main benefits of these neural network replacements is that they can, once trained, run on desktop hardware and are much less onerous to implement and iterate with. Their power lies in their ability to be used easily and efficiently, not in that they are able to discern physics from raw data.
by TekMol | 2025-04-23 08:34:19+00:00
TFA's use-case for for/else does not convince me:

for server in servers: if server.check_availability(): primary_server = server break else: primary_server = backup_server deploy_application(primary_server)

As it is shorter to do this:

primary_server = backup_server for server in servers: if server.check_availability(): primary_server = server break deploy_application(primary_server)
by Sharlin | 2025-04-23 08:34:21+00:00
Pixel, used as a unit of horizontal or vertical resolution, typically implies the resolution of the other axis as well, at least up to common aspect ratios. We used to say 640x480 or 1280x1024 – now we might say 1080p or 2.5K but what we mean is 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, so "pixel" does appear to be a measure of area. Except of course it's not – it's a unit of a dimensionless quantity that measures the amount of something, like the mole. Still, a "quadratic count" is in some sense a quantity distinct from "linear count", just like angles and solid angles are distinct even though both are dimensionless quantities.

The issue is muddied by the fact that what people mostly care about is either the linear pixel count or pixel pitch, the distance between two neighboring pixels (or perhaps rather its reciprocal, pixels per unit length). Further confounding is that technically, resolution is a measure of angular separation, and to convert pixel pitch to resolution you need to know the viewing distance.

Digital camera manufacturers at some point started using megapixels (around the point that sensor resolutions rose above 1 MP), presumably because big numbers are better marketing. Then there's the fact that camera screen and electronic viewfinder resolutions are given in subpixels, presumably again for marketing reasons.
by lelanthran | 2025-04-23 08:35:15+00:00
> I personally don't like that direction so looking forward to exploring new frameworks.

I have a proposal for a new approach to front-end components. Even used it at a big client in production.

Want to put it on arxiv[1] before showing it to the world, but it's largely impossible to find an endorser unless you're active in academics already.[2]

Academics in a nutshell: the largest number of papers are authored by recent graduates with little to no industry experience.

Now, remember just how clueless your recent MSc graduate was when they started their first job in your organisation? Yeah - those are the types of authors driving state-of-the-art in SE.

---------------------------------------

[1] I have my reasons. If you're an endorser for software engineering, DM me.

[2] Academic gate-keeping got stupid, then pushed past to ridiculous, and appears to be now accelerating over the madness event-horizon.
by whstl | 2025-04-23 08:35:36+00:00
That's not necessarily true.

In PostgREST, if userMessages is a table in itself, you do get an endpoint called /userMessages.

If the table is called messages and you want to get messages from a user, you can just request something like /messages?user_id=123. And if user_id must your own user_id, you can just skip passing the parameter, thanks to RLS.

If userMessages requires is a join between two tables and you don't want to let the frontend know about it, you can use a view and PostgREST will expose the view as an endpoint.

Once again, there is no "need" to formulate joins in the frontend to reap the benefits of this tool.

I don't do anything close to "formulating a join in the client" with PostgREST and I still use it to its full extent, and it does save time.

EDIT: If one wants to formulate more complex joins in the frontend, then they probably want something like Hasura instead. Once again: complex queries in the frontend is BY NO MEANS mandatory, you can still use flat GraphQL queries and db views for complex queries. PostgREST OTOH is about keeping it simple.
by tsm | 2025-04-23 08:35:45+00:00
Seems like a very backwards-looking article. Would've been interesting to hear more about his ideas for the future, such as what this should involve:

> if the new Scottish Languages Bill is to succeed in securing the Gaelic and Scots languages in the face of immense pressures, then the needs of the communities speaking those languages must be at the heart of it

Gaelic advances in the modern era include:

* the foundation of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, a Gaelic-medium university

* the rise of Gaelic-medium education as an option for primary and secondary school

* Gaelic-language radio and TV stations

* The launch, a few years ago, of SpeakGaelic (https://speakgaelic.scot/) with loads of learning materials (mentioned in the OP).

Problems include the continued dilution of Gaelic-speaking communities (native speakers either die or move somewhere with better job prospects; non-speakers buy up holiday homes or Airbnb investment vehicles in the area) and the perception that career prospects are much better for people educated in English (perhaps with a bit of French or similar on the side) than those educated in Gaelic.
by jve | 2025-04-23 08:35:46+00:00
> Nordic and Baltic countries, even beggars have credit-card terminals

Oh, haven't seen that here (Riga). Actually I was out in the capital few days ago and people play music on streets... I can't tip them because I have no coins and they have no terminal or QR code that would lead to a page that enables tipping.

Most places have cc terminals and buying stuff from hands also support sending money to bank account instantly using only sellers phone number, but some parts are still coins only. My wallet doesn't support coins unfortunately.
by wchswchs | 2025-04-23 08:36:24+00:00
The TPP protocol introduces the concept of “Anything is Action,” unifying both Agents and Tools under the Action abstraction—meaning a Tool is an Action, and an Agent is a collection of Actions. This concept enables TPP to be integrated into any terminal or software, including but not limited to robots, watches, glasses, switches, apps, and even TCP, making AI truly ubiquitous.

TPP is designed with a three-level driving model: Lifecycle + Operator + Action. In this model, the Lifecycle drives the Operator, and the Operator drives the Action, enabling full adaptability in multi-Agent environments. The key capabilities include:

When the external environment changes, TPP dynamically adjusts the collaboration between multiple Actions in real time, ensuring task adaptability without manual intervention.

If any Action encounters an exception, TPP proactively captures and recovers from it to avoid task interruption.

Memory is stored in a Memory Neural Network (MNN) instead of a traditional database.

Decentralized and stateless architecture.

Project link: https://github.com/universe-components/touchpoint, welcome to star.
by jonathanstrange | 2025-04-23 08:37:33+00:00
You're assuming that people want to switch but I'm talking about the incentives for end consumers to switch. There has to be some strong motivation for switching, and it's not only going to be GUI design. Something about a new OS must be really desirable, either the hardware it's running on or better applications.

I'm using Linux as my daily workhorse since 2008 so I'm not opposed to it in any way. But the fact is that due to lack of integration with the OS, every Linux application is slightly less good than its commercial MacOS and Windows counterpart. GIMP is slightly awkward to use in comparison to Photoshop, LibreOffice can replace Word but definitely isn't better, pro audio applications are virtually non-existent for Linux and work only as good if you don't need any pro plugins (very few of which are produced for Linux), Dia, Inkscape, and other vector drawing programs are far less good than e.g. Affinity Publisher, and so on and so forth. Linux doesn't even have good content indexing comparable to Spotlight. Applications don't even have consistent user interfaces.
by unnouinceput | 2025-04-23 08:37:49+00:00
I disagree. 12 V is not that much for an adult when you put it on your tongue, but with today's ubiquitous technology in everything, a toddler that puts everything in his mouth, will lead to a lot of distress and fears. I prefer the existing 5V. I suspect you are young and still not a parent.

Also, as a hobbyist, you can pretty much get a cheap PC power supply and transform it in a very professional "every volt and power under the sun" power supply for your hobbies. That's what I did.
by HPsquared | 2025-04-23 08:38:06+00:00
Digital photography then takes us on to subpixels, Bayer filters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_filter_array) and so on. You can also divide the luminance colour parts out. Most image and video compression puts more emphasis on the luminance profile, getting the colour more approximate. The subpixels on a digital camera (or a display for that matter) take advantage of this quirk of human vision.
by segmenta | 2025-04-23 08:38:25+00:00
Thanks for the pointer. We do agree that not all agentic systems should be multi-agent.

Having said that, from our experience we see that for complex workflows e.g. customer support for enterprises, both quality and maintainability stands to gain when the system is decomposed into smaller scoped agents. We see a parallel of this in humans as well. For instance, when we call into customer support we get routed to different human agents based on our query.

OpenAI says something similar in their recent guide on building agents [0]: "For many complex workflows, splitting up prompts and tools across multiple agents allows for improved performance and scalability. When your agents fail to follow complicated instructions or consistently select incorrect tools, you may need to further divide your system and introduce more distinct agents."

A relevant benchmark here might be the Instruction Following benchmark: https://scale.com/leaderboard/multichallenge. Even the best reasoning models top out at ~60% accuracy on this.

The options to improve accuracy then, are (a) either fine-tune a model on this task specific dataset, (b) or decompose the problem into smaller sub-problems (divide-and-conquer) - this is more practical and maintainable.

[0] https://cdn.openai.com/business-guides-and-resources/a-pract...
by rlonstein | 2025-04-23 08:38:28+00:00
> Bosch I presume? > I would bet on that too. I have an older 300 series that is not WiFi and app enabled. It works great. I was suggesting "dumb" device models to someone and it was damned difficult to find which SKUs had misfeatures and which didn't. Same model, possibly same SKU (there are #s for different retailers), but two years newer had "smart" features.
by 0xEF | 2025-04-23 08:38:34+00:00
I recommend making time to build at least one piece of furniture. I did not use hyperwood principles, but I built my own computer desk and workbench to my specifications and I cannot imagine ever buying a premade work surface again. It is rewarding, helps you think about a project from both a production and use-case perspective, and unlike my programming/tech troubleshooting efforts, the results are very tangible and something I can touch and see every day, lending to a lasting sense of accomplishment.
by Laremere | 2025-04-23 08:38:44+00:00
I'd say it's better to call it a unit of counting.

If I have a bin of apples, and I say it's 5 apples wide, and 4 apples tall, then you'd say I have 20 apples, not 20 apples squared.

It's common to specify a length by a count of items passed along that length. Eg, a city block is a ~square on the ground bounded by roads. Yet if you're traveling in a city, you might say "I walked 5 blocks." This is a linguistic shortcut, skipping implied information. If you're trying to talk about both in a unclear context, additional words to clarify are required to sufficiently convey the information, that's just how language words.
by andruby | 2025-04-23 08:38:45+00:00
Really nice! Thank you for including a youtube video. It's a little unfortunate that you do time cuts between your "prompt" and the response. I'm curious if you were waiting 0.5s or 10s to get the response. I think the usability/fun of this stands or falls with that latency.

Maybe it could be combined with fastvoiceagent.cerebrium.ai (discussed 10 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40805010) for lower latency
by wesselbindt | 2025-04-23 08:38:58+00:00
If you replace the assignment in the else clause with something side-effectful it does make sense. But even then it harms the readability of the code to such a ridiculous extent. I've never not regretted adding an else clause to a for loop. Any cognitive benefits from Python's approach to for loops closely mirroring natural language just go out the window.
by belorn | 2025-04-23 08:39:27+00:00
Looking again at Swedish number, the average house need around 200kwh per month for the period of December to April, and about half that for the rest of the year (https://hemsol.se/wp-content/uploads/Elforbrukning-villa-02....). If your maximum is 1000kwh your battery need for the winter will be around 125-150 kwh, not counting capacity for harsher winters or degrading panels.

Using the power walls examples above, you then need around 10 units.
by constantcrying | 2025-04-23 08:40:01+00:00
>An org can now transition everything to Linux locally, and only be left with these fully functional blockers.

No. There is no vendor for this. Such a vendor would need to offer and support everything that MS is offering and supporting.

>And a vendor can easily integrate and ship that.

Integration is hard. It needs to work together. We all know that Linux has some rough edges (and so does Windows) and the vendor has to take care of it all and actually needs to fix it. A company like that has to suddenly do maintenance on many major open source projects.
by defrost | 2025-04-23 08:40:44+00:00
There are many opinions about proselytism, eg:

The approach of some recently arrived evangelists has been slammed by some Aboriginal leaders, including Labor senator Pat Dodson. "They are a type of virus that has really got no credibility," he said. "If they really understood the gospel then the gospel is about liberation. "It's about an accommodation of the diversity and differences that we have in our belief systems." He believes the destruction of traditional culture is "an act of bastardry". "It's about the lowest act you could perform in trying to indicate to a fellow human being that you have total disdain for anything they represent."

compared to:

But the born-again Christian converts have defended their beliefs and practices, saying it is their decision to make, and finding God has brought them peace and happiness.

The Christian converts who are setting fire to sacred Aboriginal objects (2019)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-20/the-christian-convert...
by topspin | 2025-04-23 08:40:55+00:00
Define "tough." Politicians and top tier academics, for example, are often very ruthless people, bred among wealth and generational security. They've never worked a 12h shift in a mine, but if you want to observe utterly pitiless mentalities or people that take being "judgmental" to levels you may have never suspected might exist, spend time among them. If they'll have you.
by motoxpro | 2025-04-23 08:40:57+00:00
Now ask your 10 year old to have a realtime conversation with you in over 50 languages in a few seconds with a perfect accent. I don't think it's very useful to think of the thing that humans/AI is the worst at and index on that, it seems way more useful to index on what's useful. I truly have no use for an AI to generate me an analog clock at a specific time.
by jjav | 2025-04-23 08:42:22+00:00
This is unfortunately a pretty naive view of how politics and power works.

Yes there are some high-profile instances of Apple refusing to assist. Since you've heard about those, it is only because there is no gag order on them, which means they are cases the powers that be don't care if you hear about them.

Apple is a US corporation, so for anything the government actually wants to get without publicity, they'll get a rubber stamped NSL which forces both compliance and silence and of course Apple will quietly comply.

This is why the argument of "I trust XYZ company to do right" is illogical. It doesn't matter, because they will be forced to comply. The only way to keep your data safe is to never hand it over to these third parties in the first place.
by turtleyacht | 2025-04-23 08:42:24+00:00
Apps could simulate cities like massively-multiplayer online (MMO) games sharded player populations. You can "move" from one shard to another, but you leave your connections behind.

If we could stratify the app, we could observe whether different shards have their own "personality" or culture, or how "immigration" is affected by influencers (or not).

What was once a load-balancing scheme for performance becomes a way to observe common algorithms across different contexts.

You'd have to somehow segment links though. A link takes you back out to the Internet, so we may find homogenization or flattening as the same links are shared among shards.

One solution is only in-app links work, and only within the shard.

Basically, any features to enforce "physical separation" that enables cities to grow "on their own."
by asim | 2025-04-23 08:42:48+00:00
Something I came across yesterday was OpenCloud. I think with many of these small projects being funded it's not clear there's a cohesive vision of how to reclaim the internet. I mean the browser itself is owned by big tech. I don't know whether you have to start again at the protocol level.

https://opencloud.eu/en

Edit: if I was to dig a little deeper. What you do need is an operating system for the cloud. Something anyone can run and adapt. With a clear service to service protocol (not http or grpc) and a base set of services that make it useful. Things like proton are nice and we can support them and they run and manage the service. But if you wanted to run that stack yourself, you couldn't. I don't think it's entirely open source. I don't think that's their goal, but you also just couldn't run it yourself. We need this sort of default open model while having a cohesive strategy around how you build something. That is a true alternative to big tech and cloud providers. We are nowhere close to that.