MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by BoorishBears | 2025-04-22 18:22:53+00:00
> so how many are paying

This is like if Google Spanner were open sourced tomorrow morning: realistically how many people are going to learn how to deploy a thing that was built by Google for Google to serve an ultra-specific persona?

Maybe you might get some Amazon-sized whale peeking at it for bits to improve their own product, but the entire value prop is that it's a managed service: you're probably going to continue paying for it to be managed for you.
by 9283409232 | 2025-04-22 18:22:53+00:00
It's not about your union stopping them from pulling you out of bed, it's about what happens after that. Rumeysa Ozturk, the student who was abducted in Massachusetts was a member of a union and her union immediately sprang into action. Part of the reason this was national news so quickly was because her union took to the streets.
by wrs | 2025-04-22 18:23:38+00:00
Yes, they are secret (otherwise it wouldn’t be a very good negotiation!). You will eventually see some form of the negotiated price for your insurance on the bill, but you won’t see the rebates and so forth that are in the broader contract, so that isn’t equivalent to a cash price. Also, you will probably not be able to see what the price is until it is actually submitted and covered.
by jjmarr | 2025-04-22 18:24:27+00:00
It's not sloppy notation. It's an unambiguous infinite series of the form sum_n=1^infinity 9/10^n that converges to 1.

It's the same reason that 0.333... = 1/3. It's an infinite series that converges on 1/3.

Students learn repeating decimals before they understand infinite series.
by PaulHoule | 2025-04-22 18:25:24+00:00
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev_polynomials

They're the kind of math which is non-obvious and a bit intricate but yet if you knew the basics of how they worked and you were bored you might sit down with pencil and paper and derive everything about them. Then you wouldn't be bored anymore.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-04-22 18:25:38+00:00
I think it's important to point out that MUDs were probably the first complicated interactive synchronous "Internet applications", even though they were (primarily) textually driven and not "serious" (they were to us). So things like Pike (née-LPC) & moo were on the forefront here on how to author those kind of dynamic systems.

Early web sites, gopher, etc were just request/response mostly static content (sometimes with a dash of a database). They weren't synchronous or "live" in any real way. Things like IRC were synchronous but did not do programmable/dynamic content.

I cut my teeth on moo, and was bored & annoyed to tears writing cgi scripts in Python & Perl and the web didn't catch up to produce really interactive stuff until well over 10 years later ("web 2.0")
by dunyakirkali | 2025-04-22 18:26:00+00:00
A Personal Improvement Plan (PIP) is a powerful tool for engineering managers to address performance issues while supporting team members' growth. By clearly outlining expectations, providing structured support, and maintaining thorough documentation, managers can create opportunities for struggling engineers to succeed. Whether the PIP leads to improvement, role adjustments, or termination, handling the process with empathy and professionalism ensures fairness, protects team morale, and upholds organizational standards.
by bityard | 2025-04-22 18:27:50+00:00
I think what fascinates me the most about all of this is how there are wide gaps in how much design and engineering documentation from that time period has survived to present day. For a long time, I just assumed that NASA owned and archived every design spec, revision, research paper, memo and napkin doodle related to their public-facing missions. I learned recently that even a lot of the original Gemini and Apollo program code (let alone source code) and docs are apparently gone forever.
by perrygeo | 2025-04-22 18:28:40+00:00
The difference is that in soil you have microbes and fungus which seek out and break down inorganic nutrients then exchange them with plants for sugar. Plant's access to nutrients is mediated by this underground ecosystem.

In hydroponics YOU provide the work to gather and process all the nutrients and provide them to the plant roots in an optimal form. In nature, that work is done by the soil ecosystem.

In the end, the plant does not seem to really care. As long as it has the right molecules available, it's happy. Possibly moreso since it doesn't need to sacrifice any of its sugars.
by mrguyorama | 2025-04-22 18:28:46+00:00
The algorithm isn't designed to give everyone exactly what THEY want.

The algorithim is optimized for "engagement", and therefore optimized specifically to trigger addiction as quickly and effectively as possible. The lower level softcore porn and rage bait and brainrot memes are what triggers addiction in people prone to it.

It's exactly the same situation as slot machines. They are made by the same companies in many cases that made some of the best and most fun arcade and video games. But if you aren't prone to gambling addiction, they aren't fun, because they aren't optimized for fun, they are optimized for addiction. The same triggers and stimuli that are most effective at triggering addiction behaviors are LESS effective at being "fun" to non-addictive people.

"The algorithm" is literally not meant to feed people what they want. "The algorithm" serves only the interests of the company, which is to efficiently keep eyeballs looking at a feed in order to sell ads. Giving most people what they want is genuinely counter to that.
by em-bee | 2025-04-22 18:30:00+00:00
i have been working on my own tool to track books and tv shows. i started as a way to learn lisp. it was fun for a while, but i eventually abandoned it because the commandline interface entering one field at a time was just to clunky.

i went back to editing a plain text file.

some day i want to get back to having a terminal tool, but the key features it needs to have are:

a way to edit fields all at once either using some nice TUI library where i can use tab and cursors to jump from field to field, or what git does, throw me into an editor to add the line.

it also needs to allow me to look at past entries somehow, to make it easy to add episodes/chapters/sequels without having to repeat all the data that is shared.

currently i do that by simply copying an old entry and editing that.
by immibis | 2025-04-22 18:30:08+00:00
Neither of which is anything new, and neither of which helps you actually get the content. You have to have the whole system or you don't have a system.

IPFS's DHT is extremely slow by the way - on the order of 1-10 minutes to look up a new item. That's one of those things about it that the people who insist it's the solution to all problems won't tell you. I assume there's some such problem with nostr too (probably not the same one). Every system has them.

Has nostr experienced a takedown, crash, corporate takeover, or overload of one or several major relays yet, and if so, how did that go? Did enough users find out about the problem through out-of-band channels, then manually enter new relay URLs, to keep the network mostly connected? Has anyone important had their private key stolen?
by Magma7404 | 2025-04-22 18:30:40+00:00
Cars are reliable and when they break down we can fix them ourselves. I can do that too with any compiler or tool. AI is still and will always be a black box that could hallucinate any moment.

You could say the same with software embedded in new cars, but I would reply that it's the kind of cars that I wouldn't want to drive. Also the car makers have a legal responsibility to make sure it behaves well on the road. AI companies have no responsibilities and put a lot of hidden stuff (like censorship) in their products which makes them unacceptable to me. LLMs are unreliable tools by definition which is not a good thing compared to what I use all the time.
by asnyder | 2025-04-22 18:31:10+00:00
That's always been the justification to skip this phase :). Tools have just changed. One-person to small-team wonders that could code and build directly made the same arguments.

My point isn't to stitch things to Figma, that's abhorrent to me as well. My point is to not get bogged down on the implementation details, in this case an actually working DB, those tables, etc, but rather less fidelity actual full flow concepts that can be generated and iterated.

Then that can be fed into a magic genie GPT that generates the front-end, back-end, and all that good jazz.
by mithr | 2025-04-22 18:31:20+00:00
I'll respond to the content, because I think there are some genuine questions amongst the condescension and jumping to conclusions.

> telling kids the truth before they're ready and without typical parental censorship

Does AI today reliably respond with "the truth"? There are countless documented incidents of even full-grown, extremely well-educated adults (e.g. lawyers) believing well-phased hallucinations. Kids, and particularly small kids who haven't yet had much education about critical thinking and what to believe, have no chance. Conversational AI today isn't an uncensured search engine into a set of well-reasoned facts, it's an algorithm constructing a response based on what it's learned people on the internet want to hear, with no real concept of what's right or wrong, or a foundational set of knowledge about the world to contrast with and validate against.

> what exactly is the fear

Being fed reliable-sounding misinformation is one. Another is being used for emotional support (which kids do even with non-talking stuffed animals), when the AI has no real concept of how to emotionally support a kid and could just as easily do the opposite. I guess overall, the concern is having a kid spend a large amount of time talking to "someone" who sounds very convincing, has no real sense of morality or truth, and can potentially distort their world view in negative ways.

And yea, there's also exposing kids to subjects they're in no way equipped to handle yet, or encouraging them to do something that would result in harm to themselves or to others. Kids are very suggestible, and it takes a long while for them to develop a real understanding of the consequences of their actions.
by shadowgovt | 2025-04-22 18:31:54+00:00
I'm not even sure I'd go so far as to call them anti-zionist.

How long do people imagine Israel survives as a state with a brutally-oppressed population under its care?

It's a rational position to be pro-state-of-Israel and want them to find peace (and integration) with the Gazans because the consequences of perpetual animosity and aggression are the single biggest threat to the state's survival.
by Beijinger | 2025-04-22 18:32:59+00:00
"If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014 found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.”

I am pretty sure that Atlantis existed in one way or another. We found that the the Great Flood in the book of Genesis existed, we found that Troy existed, we know that The Song of the Nibelungs / Siegfried existed, why should Atlantis not have a real history in it?

And sometimes oral history might be older than we think: Seven Sisters, which corresponds to the Pleiades star cluster. https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronom...
by sofixa | 2025-04-22 18:33:55+00:00
Raw compute wise, you're almost right (almost because real cloud hosts aren't overprovisioned, you get the full CPU/memory/disk reserved for you).

But you actually need more than compute. You might need a database, cache, message broker, scheduler, to send emails, and a million other things you can always DIY with FOSS software, but take time. If you have more money than time, get off the shelf services that provide those with guarantees and maintenance; if not, the DIY route is also great for learning.
by InsideOutSanta | 2025-04-22 18:33:56+00:00
>If you are like most Americans, chances are, you probably believe that Atlantis or another civilization like it once existed. A survey conducted by Chapman University in October 2014 found that, at that time, roughly 63% of people in the United States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.”

This seems like a misleading question. Based on what we know about the Maya civilization, the Inca Empire, Ancient China, or Ancient Egypt, I would probably agree that ancient, advanced civilizations roughly similar to how we imagine Atlantis once existed, even though I know that Atlantis is a metaphor and not a real city.

These examples are not exactly like the Atlantis described by Plato, but they're not that far off. They're all wealthy, advanced civilizations with powerful* militaries and advanced architecture, engineering, and agricultural practices.

* Powerful in their local and temporal context.
by kgabis | 2025-04-22 18:34:02+00:00
I went over "Writing an Interpreter in Go" and "Writing a Compiler in Go" but instead of doing it in Go, I did it in C. In hindsight it was a very good decision, because it forced me to write the code myself, instead of mindlessly copying it. After finishing the books I've spent some time extending the compiler I've written and I've published it on github (https://github.com/kgabis/ape). I've read Bob Nystrom's previous book, so I'm sure Crafting Interpreters is great as well, but I really recommend Writing an Interpreter/Compiler in Go.
by whstl | 2025-04-22 18:34:03+00:00
> Now I need to send a confirmation e-mail to make sure the e-mail is valid, but at this point I can't protect the integrity of the database with RLS because the e-mail/receipt/confirm loop lives outside the database entirely

Congratulations: that's not basic CRUD anymore, so you ran into the 5% of cases not covered by an automatic CRUD API.

And I don't see what's the dilemma here. Just use a normal endpoint. Keep using PostgREST to save time.

You don't have to throw the baby away with the bathwater just because it doesn't cover 5% of cases the way you want.

It's a rite of passage to realize that "use the right tool for the job" means you can use two tools at the same time for the same project. There are nails and screws. You can use a hammer and a screwdriver at the same time.
by 1auralynn | 2025-04-22 18:34:06+00:00
The field of biology was created by people who love to classify/name things. This has resulted in what we have now: A subject where the prerequisite to understanding is the ability to read long passages of text littered with jargon and visualize what that might represent. Even if everyone's reading skills were where they should be, the second part is not a super common skillset.

It's one of the reasons why I work in visualization for life sciences education: I think we're missing out on people who might otherwise make massive contributions to the field because they failed to memorize what the "endoplasmic reticulum" does. Much of biology you don't have to actually remember what things are called in order to understand the processes (at least at a basic level like what a middle schooler might be taught). Once you're exposed to the fascinating complexity of life at that level, for many people it can be interesting enough to build the motivation for the memorization/etc.
by nawgz | 2025-04-22 18:34:14+00:00
> As engineer #2 it's a mess

As a long-time Hasura stan, I can't agree with this in any way.

> Your entire schema is exposed

In what sense? All queries to the DB go thru Hasura's API, there is no direct DB access. Roles are incredibly easy to set up and limit access on. Auth is easy to configure.

If you're really upset about this direct access, you can just hide the GQL endpoint and put REST endpoints that execute GQL queries in front of Hasura.

> Business logic gets pushed into your front end because where else do you run it unless you make an API wrapper

> Likewise you can't easily customize your API without building an API on top of your API. You're doing weird extra network hops

... How is an API that queries Hasura via GQL any different than an API that queries PG via SQL? Put your business logic in an API. Separating direct data access from API endpoints is a long-since solved problem.

Colocating Hasura and PG or Hasura and your API makes these network hops trivial.

Since Hasura also manages roles and access control, these "extra hops" are big value adds.

> You're pushed into fake open source where you can't always run the software independently

... Are you implying they will scrub the internet of their docker images? I always self-host Hasura. Have for years.

> I think the people who write this off as "backend engineers feel threatened" aren't taking the time to understand the arguments they're hearing

I think your arguments pretty much sum up why people think it's just about backend engineers feeling threatened - your sole point with any merit is that there's one extra network leg, but in a microservices world that's generally completely inconsequential.
by psb217 | 2025-04-22 18:34:26+00:00
Offhand, I don't know any specific examples for LLMs. In general though, if you google something like "automated curriculum design for reinforcement learning", you should find some relevant references.

Some straightforward scenarios are in, eg, robotics where one can design sequences of increasingly difficult instances of a task like moving objects from one storage bin to another. The basic idea is that the agent would have no reward or learning signal if it jumped straight into the full version of the task, so you let it develop competence on simpler variants and gradually increase difficulty until the agent can get useful learning signal on the full task.
by lenerdenator | 2025-04-22 18:35:57+00:00
"Taken together, these studies significantly alter our understanding of one of humanity's most familiar companions. Rather than silently trailing behind early farmers, slinking ever closer to human activity and community, cats likely moved into Europe in multiple waves post-domestication from North Africa, propelled by human cultural practices, trade networks, and religious reverence."

Being treated like a god will get you everywhere.
by dawnofdusk | 2025-04-22 18:37:05+00:00
I do quantitative biology now, although my background is in theoretical physics. Biology is fascinating, but ultimately there is a cultural divide between the scientific "language" used in biology and the scientific language of e.g., engineers, physicists (very famously described in "Can a biologist fix a radio?" https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1535-6108%2802%2900...)

I do find the author's point weird. "I thought high school biology was just memorizing facts, but I began to appreciate it when I read some pop science books and went scuba diving." So the only problem for the author was the topic of the classes, not the style. Why shouldn't one have the same problem with high school physics ("it's just about boring ramps and pulleys"), etc.? Personally I find the style to be a more important distinguishing factor, in that biology is much less quantitative than other science disciplines. Instead the author's problem is that biology should be even less quantitative and more literary or poetic...?

Ultimately science journalism/popularization is not the same thing as science. High school science classes (try to) teach the latter not the former.
by breadwinner | 2025-04-22 18:37:20+00:00
It inspired Win95. It inspired the original Netscape browser's UI (toolbar etc is very NeXTSTEP-inspired, not surprising because it was developed on a NeXT box). It inspired the Mac OS X and the iPhone, although both have degraded since then. As things exist today, NeXTSTEP from 40 years ago (!) looks much nicer - and way more usable - than today's flat UIs.
by Rzor | 2025-04-22 18:38:51+00:00
>The professional networking site LinkedIn has agreed to a $13 million out of court settlement in a class action lawsuit that claims reputations may have been damaged by multiple emails the company sent on behalf of users.

>The suit originated in California in 2013, when LinkedIn users sued the company claiming its “Add Connections” feature hurt their professional reputation by relentlessly messaging their email contacts with requests to connect on LinkedIn, Fortune reports. In the complaint, users described being embarrassed by the emails and complained that it was very difficult to stop LinkedIn from sending more emails once the barrage had begun. The settlement affects users who signed up for LinkedIn’s “Add Connections” feature between September 2011 and October 2014.

https://time.com/4062519/linkedn-spam-settlement/
by mbirth | 2025-04-22 18:39:22+00:00
To prove your point, looks like Insta360 started a big campaign today. This popped up in my YouTube stream:

* Best Motorcycle Camera Review - Insta360 X4 vs X5 (FortNine)

* I Tested the Next-Gen 360 Camera (Mrwhosetheboss)

* The IMPOSSIBLE Camera (CaseyNeistat)

And if even Casey Neistat graces us with a new video, you just know there was a good reason for him.
by immibis | 2025-04-22 18:39:27+00:00
We're in the destroying phase right now. Unless you live in China - I hear they're mostly doing well. Or middle of nowhere Africa, where there's nothing to destroy because there's nothing there.

But systems can rot from within too, or just decay naturally, and don't need to be destroyed. What if the core ideas that built our current civilization were ideas of the past, that we don't have any more, and we don't know what to do when The Machine Stops? Doesn't have to be a literal machine - it's a good metaphor for how democracy fell apart.
by FloorEgg | 2025-04-22 18:40:45+00:00
I could take this article more seriously if it were to credibly refute the possibility that the capital of Atlantis was the richat structure, and that the empire of Atlantis covered the saharah, with a port of entry just outside the straight of Gibraltar.

I think its accepted that ~13,000 years ago the Sahara was lush forests and grasslands, and around that time there was a significant meteor strike (or several) that hit North America and possibly the Atlantic Ocean.

Of course it would be fun to learn that Atlantis was real, so many people will be biased to want to believe it. It might not be true, but to argue it's conclusive either way I think is premature. The article states several times things like "all available evidence", which is both not true, (the article omits available evidence) and also doesn't acknowledge how little evidence is available.
by internet_rand0 | 2025-04-22 18:41:12+00:00
they might just remember it all once they're adults!

imagine that!? an historically informed populace???

you'd need more expensive lies and higher quality fakes... the government would be costlier to run.

ideally, in the long term this would make the national currency's value in the international money market rise up. but why wait for that when one can directly manipulate money through trade fraud and covert military ploys?
by dboreham | 2025-04-22 18:43:12+00:00
Although not mentioned in the article, I've heard that Egyptians developed a thing for orange cats (supposedly they look like the sun) and embarked on an intensive breeding program to make them for temple uses. Subsequently Vikings became intrigued by these orange cats on the basis they are easy to see on the deck of a ship (iron age hi-viz vests), and thereby spread them around everywhere (because Vikings).
by begueradj | 2025-04-22 18:43:38+00:00
That does not make the existence of Atlantis a mere fiction.

With the end of the Ice Age and its consequences, plenty of civilizations may have disappeared in deep waters. The Sumerians themselves claimed they received their knowledge from a man who visited them by the sea (fish-man like creature) on the aftermath of the great flood which may have buried plenty of Atlantis-like civilizations which could be the missing links to understand how, for instance, the Egyptians built the pyramids.