MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bryanrasmussen | 2025-04-19 19:10:48+00:00
so I guess the way to game this is to figure out what the changes need to be, maybe have two versions of the repo make changes in version one determine is good, take out branch, copy paste and then you have short time to diff. Of course you still have to argue why you had so few tickets taken, but that could be due to meeting time.

just going off the idea that any new metric instead becomes the target, and not actually the improvement the metric is supposed to measure.
by Liftyee | 2025-04-19 19:10:59+00:00
It's impressive that the cost of usable LIDAR tech is well within the reach of personal projects now. The sensors used on the first self-driving cars (from companies like SICK, etc.) likely perform much better but the price point of multiple k$ is not really viable for experimentation at home.

Not to make everything political, but I wonder how the US tariffs will affect electronics-adjacent hobbies. Anecdotally, the flashlight community on Reddit has been panicking a little about this.
by cycomanic | 2025-04-19 19:11:39+00:00
> Another commenter pointed out the anarchist's cookbook, which is another great book to read.

Again why is it a good example, it's not banned in any meaningful sense of the word. I can get onto Amazon and buy it right now.

Calling it a good book to read is quite a stretch as well. It's a poorly written assembly of instructions for bomb and drug making (written by a 19 year old). Many of the instructions being outright dangerous, so much so that it has been suggested that the book was actually a plant by the CIA, FBI... (not that this is a very credible conspiracy theory). If you want to learn about bomb making better just pick up a chemistry textbook.
by dredmorbius | 2025-04-19 19:12:33+00:00
I've been thinking through approaches though I haven't yet attempted incorporating eInk Mode yet.

My basic document model is:

<header> <main (flex layout)> <nav> <.headlines-nav (column layout)> <.sections> <section> <article> <article> ... <section> <article> <article> ... ... </main> <footer>

The headlines-nav is effectively a table of contents, and should be preserved as part of the main document. The header and footer can be treated as preliminary and terminal content. I think it makes sense to think of the <sections> as chapters or sections of the document, probably with page breaks. After that, a media query for positioning the articles within each section should make sense.

I've been talking to someone who'd prefer a printed-out version of the page (motor-neural limitations), and this might be one path toward that.

FWIW, I've considered adding images to the output, though in general I find these don't add much, and in fact frequently detract from, actual content. I've done some manual edits to add in images on a few instances. Automating that process of selection and incorporation is another challenge of course.
by BrandoElFollito | 2025-04-19 19:12:40+00:00
I hope they will never see E. Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People).

Marianne has TWO naked breasts with BOTH nipples visible. And she is not shaved.

When I was a teenager in the 80's in France, we had on Sunday morning on TV a fitness show (exercises to follow at home). The end featured the two leading ladies taking a shower in full view. We were all very much into fitness then.
by soulofmischief | 2025-04-19 19:13:02+00:00
And now my state has this bad boy: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/28/what-is-louisianas-...

"Louisiana is the first US state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in schools. The law stipulates the following:

- Public schools are required to display a poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments in every classroom, school library and cafeteria.

- They must be displayed on a poster of minimum 11×14-inch (28×35.5cm) size and be written in an easily readable, large font."

Separation of Church and State, my ass.
by dventimi | 2025-04-19 19:15:30+00:00
"We have concrete evidence that either a) a new type of matter and energy exists, or b) our theories need to be modified in some way."

a new type of matter is a modification to our theories

"Until we either detect dark matter/energy, or develop a theory that accurately predicts the behaviour we're attributing to dark matter we cannot say one way or the other which is the correct approach."

"We" the general public isn't in the business of saying one way or the other is the correct approach, and scientists aren't, either. Scientists conduct experiments and propose theories in whatever lines of inquiry interest them, subject to the constraints of getting somebody to pay for it. Many scientists have been interested in refining the theory of Dark Matter and subjecting those refinements to experimental tests, partly because the theory has withstood and only grown stronger by those refinements and tests. That's a success by any measure, and that success is partly why public funding agencies have been willing to pay for it. Like anybody else, they try to pick winners.

It could also be that we are not accurately modelling EM/SR/GR effects at a large scale, such as how they are warped by the different stars orbiting the arms of the galaxies. Or that when we extend QED/QCD to accelerating reference frames (general relativity) that dark matter won't be needed, just like how QED was formulated by extending electromagnetism/QM to special relativity (non-accelerating reference frames).

It could be. Anything's possible.
by zoogeny | 2025-04-19 19:16:55+00:00
I haven't used Aider yet, but I see it show up on HN frequently recently (the last couple of days specifically).

I am hesitant because I am paying for Cursor now and I get a lot of model usage included within that monthly cost. I'm cheap, perhaps to a fault even when I could afford it, and I hate the idea of spending twice when spending once is usually enough. So while Aider is potentially cheaper than Claude Code, it is still more than what I am already paying.

I would appreciate any comments on people who have made the switch from Cursor to Aider. Are you paying more/less? If you are paying more, do you feel the added value is worth the additional cost? If you are paying less, do you feel you are getting less, the same or even more?
by wat10000 | 2025-04-19 19:16:58+00:00
You don’t hear about it because everybody understands that disabled people exist and the broad consensus is that we should accept them, and assist them to a reasonable degree. There’s little reason to discuss it. If people born with less than 4 limbs were subjected to the same treatment trans people get, you’d better believe we’d be out here talking about how not everybody has 4 limbs and we should accept that.
by 9x39 | 2025-04-19 19:17:16+00:00
I don't entirely agree with the writer on the cost of shooting and fishing hobbies being prohibitive per se. There are entry costs, but less than say, video gaming which is more popular among youg people. My personal theory is that the people who are into these hobbies are REALLY into these hobbies, to the point of cost-no-object spending which can encourage some tremendously expensive products and services. What I have no way of testing is whether we're more into fewer, heavily invested hobbies than a wider spread of shallower ones.

Anecdotally, I can shoot trap with an inexpensive shotgun ($300 or so) and fish for salmon with a similar rod and reel. I'm spending far more in ongoing costs in trips on fuel, food, and a thousand little comforts with my buddies than the initial investment. At the same time, I routinely see $5000+ (and sometimes twice that) in fine trap guns at the range, rifles that cost that alone with an equally expensive optic, and see how much money is in the guided hunt/fish business. There are whales that distort the top end of the market, but the low end has objectively never been of higher quality for the same dollars.

At the same time, I was thinking: what if the spenders in these markets just have more money?

Here's a quick report that suggests the 35-65 group where the money is is popular : https://asafishing.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2024_ASA_E...

Rec shooting says something similar, with the 100k+ income bracket the largest: https://fishwildlife.org/mscgp/application/files/2316/8691/8...

Casually, and without a good source of historical data, what if we just have the money to play? To what degree this article becomes merely about inflation than gentrification is debatable, imo.
by _blk | 2025-04-19 19:17:43+00:00
Short term there's some suffering but while hobbyists are definitely more price sensitive, they are also the most flexible ones. In production you don't just need one piece, you need a steady supply and any change of components affects the whole product.

How China/US interact will determine the longer term future of that economic relationship but many companies are already adjusting because he future is currently uncertain. With the free trade agreement with the EU and more producers moving to the US I think that it's been a good disruption even if I'm now also scrambling to find alternative PCB manufacturers.
by godelski | 2025-04-19 19:18:41+00:00
This is really cool

One thing I'd suggest, for any hardware product, is that when doing your bill of materials to provide links and show estimated costs. Sure, these will change but having a rough idea of the costs is really helpful, especially when perusing on from things like HN. It can be a big difference for someone to decide if they want to try it on their own or not. It is the ballpark figures that matter, not the specifics.

You did all that research, write it down. If for no one but yourself! Providing links is highly helpful because names can be funky and helps people (including your future self) know if this is the same thing or not. It's always noisy, but these things reduce noise. Importantly, they take no time while you're doing the project (you literally bought the parts, so you have the link and the price). It saves yourself a lot of hassle, not just for others. Document because no one remembers anything after a few days or weeks. It takes 10 seconds to write it down and 30 minutes to do the thing all over again, so be lazy and document. I think this is one of the biggest lessons I learned when I started as an engineer. You save yourself so much time. You just got to fight that dumb part in your head that is trying to convince you that it doesn't save time. (Same with documenting code[0])

Here. I did a quick "15 minute" look. May not be accurate

Lidar: One of: LD06: $80 https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803352905216.html LD19: $70 https://www.amazon.com/DTOF-D300-Distance-Obstacle-Education/dp/B0B1V8D36H STL27L: $160 https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2726.html Camera and Lens: $60 https://www.amazon.com/Arducam-Raspberry-Camera-Distortion-Compatible/dp/B0B1MN721K Raspberry Pi 4: $50 NEMA17 42-23 stepper: $10 https://www.amazon.com/SIMAX3D-Nema17-Stepper-Motor/dp/B0CQLFNSMJ

That gives us $200-$280 before counting the power supply and buck converter.

[0] When I wrote the code only me and god understood what was going on. But as time marched on, now only god knows.
by jjmarr | 2025-04-19 19:19:20+00:00
I don't think about controlling cost because I price my time at US$40/h and virtually all models are cheaper than that (with the exception of o1 or Gemini 2.5 pro).

If I spend $2 instead of $0.50 on a session but I had to spend 6 minutes thinking about context, I haven't gained any money.
by mikelevins | 2025-04-19 19:20:13+00:00
Of course the dialects are not so densely distributed in North America, and English has only been evolving in the Americas for a few hundred years, but there are a bunch of dialects, and I find them super interesting.

My paternal grandparents were honest-to-goodness Ozark hillbillies who spoke Ozark Midlands (also called South Midlands), which is very close to, and sometimes conflated with, Appalachian English.

I'm in the Ozarks now and at least in the region where I live, this dialect seems to be disappearing. I still hear traces of it, but I don't think I've heard anyone really speaking it in years.

That's too bad. I love that dialect--perhaps because it was the language that my grandparents spoke.

If you're curious about it, you could listen to some of Terry Gross' interview with Ralph Stanley. He spoke Appalachian English, but it's indistinguishable to my ear from the language my grandparents spoke.

Here's the interview at NPR:

https://www.npr.org/2016/06/24/483428938/bluegrass-legend-ra...
by pogue | 2025-04-19 19:22:05+00:00
I'm sure most electronic hobby projects are going to be financially out of reach for many people for awhile at least. Many people who run businesses that are running small homebrew projects are struggling, too [1]. But it can be extremely hard to tell what might happen with a POTUS who seems to change his mind on what tariffs should be implemented on a whim with zero thought process put into it, no prior notice when they're going to be implemented or removed and then implemented again times 500% or whatever.

I know the Hong Kong post also recently blocked outbound packages entirely sent to the US [2], so I don't know how that's impacting shipments of tech like this & etc byt would be curious to know.

[1] Arduboy creator says his tiny Game Boy won’t survive Trump’s tariffs https://www.theverge.com/news/645555/arduboy-victim-trump-ta...

[2] Hong Kong suspends package postal service to the US after Trump’s tariff hikes https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/15/business/hong-kong-suspends-p...
by aweiher | 2025-04-19 19:22:07+00:00
I once tried OpenSearch serverless, as it is advertised as "you only pay for the resources consumed by the workload".

After one month of not using it I was surprised by a 300+$ bill as there is a minimum of 2 OCU billed. Yes it is explained on the billing page later in more technical terms but was still surprising for me as I have a different understanding of "only pay what was consumed".
by soulofmischief | 2025-04-19 19:22:28+00:00
My argument is about restriction, not compulsion.

But on the subject of compulsion: there is definitely a line where utility is not worth the trauma, but as a child I was shown images of the Holocaust, of emaciated and abused Jews, and that has influenced me to now be against Israel and their continued holocaust against the Palestinian people, so I'm quite thankful for that.

In general, because school introduced me to it, I read quite a lot of Holocaust-related literature in my free time, both fiction and nonfiction, and that led me to learning about ongoing genocides and neoliberal violence-backed economic power struggles, and identifying with other oppressed people across the globe, greatly influencing my politics and turning me into the exact kind of person that my current state considers radical and would love to imprison and extract slave labor from.
by michaelt | 2025-04-19 19:22:34+00:00
> An 8TB 3.5-inch HDD from Synology's Plus line, the HAT3310, costs $210 on Synology's web store. One of the original drives the HAT3310 is reportedly sourced from, the Toshiba N300, can be found for $173 at more than one vendor.

That's $37 of pure profit, per drive - and you'll usually have at least 2 drives. Synology's NASes start about $260 without drives. I'd wager they'll make more profit on the drives than they do on the NAS.
We created AI that detects urgent emails and alerts you via Telegram
by hagan | 2025-04-19 19:23:25+00:00
Hey Guys,

My friend and I built AI tool that detects urgent emails and sends you notification via Telegram with suggestions on how to reply. The idea came from a real problem: we get so many emails every day that important ones can easily get buried or overlooked. This tool helps by filtering out the clutter and highlighting what really matters.

What makes it different from other tools is that it understands industry-specific terms and filters out spam, newsletters, and low-priority stuff—so you only see what really matters.

A bit of background: I used to work in international logistics and would get 250–300 emails a day. Missing even one critical message could cause serious issues. So I asked a friend to help me build something to make life easier—and this is what we came up with. We’re now looking for early users. It’s completely free and super quick to set up.

If you’re interested, drop me a comment or send me an email (hagan@jetinbox.co)— I’ll help you set it up in 5 minutes.

Our ProductHunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/jetinbox
by atmosx | 2025-04-19 19:23:34+00:00
> People like free and the “greedy corporations” found a way to give them what they want.

It’s like saying, “People want Fentanyl, so drug dealers just give them what they want.”

Social media causes addiction and depression.

Have you ever tried browsing the web for a couple of months without a Gmail, Facebook, or similar account — and without JavaScript enabled or using only non-standard browsers? The experience is terrible.
by tetha | 2025-04-19 19:23:52+00:00
Mh. Like, I'm deeply impressed what these AI assistants can do by now. But, the list in the parent comment there is very similar to my mental check-list of pair-programming / pair-admin'ing with less experienced people.

I guess "context length" in AIs is what I intuitively tracked with people already. It can be a struggle to connect the Zabbix alert, the ticket and the situation on the system already, even if you don't track down all the zabbix code and scripts. And then we throw in Ansible configuring the thing, and then the business requriements by more, or less controlled dev-teams. And then you realize dev is controlled by impossible sales-terms.

These are scope -- or I guess context -- expansions that cause people to struggle.
by dventimi | 2025-04-19 19:24:07+00:00
"If people understood that the last 200 years of science has shown that we are still utterly ignorant about the underpinnings of the universe"

That's a bit of an exaggeration, don't you think?

"But we are not very well educated so yeah, they will doubt it for no good reason other than "it doesn't feel right"

That's also an exaggeration. Laypersons are under no more obligation to understand the details of the scientific professions than scientists are to understand the details of, say, the legal profession. A healthy skepticism within the general public is harmless and even helpful if it maintains an interest in science. I would just gently urge people not to veer from skepticism into dogmatism.
by minimalist | 2025-04-19 19:24:21+00:00
> Not to make everything political... [proceeds to make a political statement]

For what it's worth, this type of Lidar scanner was possible to make well over a decade ago with ROS1, a Phidgets IMU, a webcam, and a lidar pulled out of a Neato vacuum (the cheapest option at the time). This would be around the difficulty of a course project for an undergraduate robotics class and could be done with less than 200 USD of salvaged parts (not including the computer). Hugin was also around over a decade ago.

It's still a nice little project!
by monster_truck | 2025-04-19 19:25:20+00:00
This is neat :)

X3D processors seem happy with running cores*1.5 tabs as long as you can keep it cool, was locked at 90C overnight and it never throttled below 4.2. Can see they're all doing different jobs, wish the display was better about updating the shared state!

I've submitted ~400,000,000,000 verifications so far, highest ridge is 5641 (18th on the dashboard). I think I've submitted far more than this and it isn't being counted correctly due to multiple tabs

E: The whinging about power consumption and killing the planet faster is so silly, a modestly sized OLED TV uses more power than this
by mmooss | 2025-04-19 19:25:45+00:00
> Hydrogen vehicles have not proven to match or even beat EV's in a lot of key metrics that matter

Not yet. That is the nature of technological R&D - if we had the answers, we wouldn't be doing R&D.

AI before the last decade or so didn't beat other computer technologies in key metrics; should they have stopped developing it? Fusion power doesn't beat fission and other options in key metrics; solar didn't beat other sources in key metrics, including costs, ... - should humanity have stopped developing those things?
by soulofmischief | 2025-04-19 19:25:47+00:00
A public library is a third space where ideas can be accessed and exchanged, and a focal point where the community can civically engage. In the past, that has mostly meant books, which have been a great way of archiving things, but many public libraries also have rooms for listening to music, watching films, or at least renting them to take home.

Many public libraries also welcome and encourage open mics if they have space to host them without affecting others. In my case, it was a small library in a small town, so I hosted the open mic after hours with the grace of the librarians who worked there, who were more than happy to encourage literacy through poetry.
by arthurofbabylon | 2025-04-19 19:25:52+00:00
Espresso has moved beyond the Italian methods, despite its origins.

Yes, both a Moka pot and a full pressure larger machine handled by someone practiced can produce excellent coffee, but you cannot seriously expect espresso in an Italian city to compete with what is happening in Tokyo, Bangkok, Taipei, Vancouver, San Francisco, etc.

During coffee’s third wave the profession of barista emerged, and Italy took little part in this elevation of craft. There are people who have literally built a career out of what others (Italians included) dismiss as fuss.

Yes, Italy devised some of the original techniques, but that was about sixty years ago, with — I would argue — limited development since.

Drink fifty espressos each in Rome, Milan, (or the villages!), Tokyo, Bangkok, Vancouver then tell me where you think it is best.

(PS — Nice try, but no one says Italian mozzarella is bad; it is incredibly delicious by all accounts.)
by trod1234 | 2025-04-19 19:25:53+00:00
The problem is the policy is following exactly what Hitler did.

There was another article that showed up fairly recently here on HN that covers this. When Hitler rose to power in his efforts to clamp down he drove all the brilliant and foreign talent out and the schools never recovered. What took 200 years to build, was completely destroyed in several months.

https://undark.org/2017/02/01/math-lesson-hitlers-germany/
by Liftyee | 2025-04-19 19:25:59+00:00
I don't know if I should be surprised about what's described in this article, given the current state of the world. Certainly I didn't know about it before, and I agree with the article's conclusion.

Personally, I think the "network sharing" software bundled with apps should fall into the category of potentially unwanted applications along with adware and spyware. All of the above "tag along" with something the user DID want to install, and quietly misuse the user's resources. Proxies like this definitely have an impact for metered/slow connections - I'm tempted to start Wireshark'ing my devices now to look for suspicious activity.

There should be a public repository of apps known to have these shady behaviours. Having done some light web scraping for archival/automation before, it's a pity that it'll become collateral damage in the anti-AI-botfarm fight.
by GTP | 2025-04-19 19:27:38+00:00
Yes, and I think this is actually more likely than someone intentionally modifying the code and finding a counterexample. Related, I'm now wondering what would happen if someone sent in a fake result claiming to have found a counterexample: will the website report the conjecture as proven false? It wouldn't last more than a few hours on the website, but I can totally see someone doing it as a prank.