MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by martinald | 2025-04-28 13:42:10+00:00
Interestingly it seems that the black start drill is considering a smaller zone of impact than what has happened here.

Also I suspect there is far more renewables on the grid now than in 2016.

This is potentially the first real black start of a grid with high renewable (solar/wind) penetration that I am aware of. Black starts with grids like this I imagine are much more technically challenging because you have generation coming on the grid (or not coming on) that you don't expect and you have to hope all the equipment is working correctly on "(semi)-distributed" generation assets which probably don't have the same level of technical oversight that a major gas/coal/nuclear/hydro plant does.

I put in another comment about the 2019 outage which was happened because a trip on a 400kV line caused a giant offshore wind farm to trip because its voltage regulator detected a problem it shouldn't have tripped the entire wind output over.

Eg: if you are doing a black start and then suddenly a bunch of smallish ~10MW solar farms start producing and feeding back in "automatically", you could then cause another trip because there isn't enough load for that. Same with rooftop solar.
by tikotus | 2025-04-28 13:42:25+00:00
I just put live a daily logic puzzle, Clues by Sam. I've been working on it for a while now, mainly on the level generator. It was tricky to generate levels that are solvable using logic (no guessing needed), and also fun to solve (no crazy long deduction chains, but also not just obvious things). I'm sure the implementation still has some quirks on some devices, so would love to hear if you encounter issues!

https://cluesbysam.com
by PaulHoule | 2025-04-28 13:43:06+00:00
One can argue that Mozilla has legitimacy problems in that it is (1) based in the Bay Area, and (2) funded by Google, and more things. These things hold back Mozilla's market share. (Not many people care, but the market for Mozilla is the market of people who have problems with Google.)

The right business model for an independent web browser is that the EU takes over or forks Mozilla and funds it out of tax revenue. It's the least they can do to atone for the crime of ruining the web with cookie banners -- and might do something for privacy.
by hsuduebc2 | 2025-04-28 13:43:12+00:00
I'm building an MVP for an "AI bedtime stories" app. The idea is that you just input the character names, a theme, and choose a voice (including the option to clone a parent's voice for narration). It generates a story and reads it out using TTS.

There are already a few services like this, but most don't support using a parent's voice, and very few can connect stories together into a continuous narrative based on previous ones. Also I would like to hold context for fairy tales kinda local. For example Polish folklore is different than British. Most common villains are different and it can be fun and educating problem to solve.

I'm mainly doing this as a learning project, but curious to see where it ends up.
by abakker | 2025-04-28 13:44:19+00:00
We don't even need this - we have a pretty good explanation for what's going on, it's just that people don't want to admit it. the reality is that "work grows to fill available space", but, up until a point. Slowing/declining populations, but high workforce productivity speak to the basic tenets of the population-led economic growth model starting to get a little suspect.

A very broad brush view might be that it took 60 years for automations in the workplace to finally match pace with demand, but increasing automation in knowledge work vs the potential for aggregate demand to fall means we'll have to come to terms with the "required" level of productivity, rather than assuming more growth is the objective.

If we can get this right, we might see the globe get more equal, more leisure time, and a shrinking of the investment sector since the pursuit of growth might get more nuanced. All of that would take a long time, though.
by giovannibajo1 | 2025-04-28 13:44:41+00:00
I don’t understand if this question is legal or morale/technical. I will answer to the latter, from the point of view of a prospective user of the library that wants to make their own mind around this.

Its quite easy to prove that libdragon was fully clean roomed. There are thousands of proofs like the git history showing incremental evolution and discovery, the various hardware testsuites being developed in parallel to it, the Ares emulator also improving its accuracy as things are being discovered over the past 4-5 years. At the same time, the n64brew wiki has also evolved to provide a source of independently verified, trustable hardware details.

Plus there are tens of thousands of Discord log messages where development has incrementally happened.

This is completely different from eg romhack-related efforts like Nintendo microcode evolutions where the authors explicitly acknowledge to have used the leaks to study and understand the original commented source code.

Instead, libdragon microcode has evolved from scratch, as clearly visible from the git history, discovering things a bit at a time, writing fuzzy tests to observe corner case behaviors, down to even creating a custom RSP programming language.

I believe all of this will be apparent to anybody approaching the codebase and studying it.
by fxtentacle | 2025-04-28 13:44:42+00:00
I'm trying to figure out how I can turn hobby products (that me and family and friends are using) into real products for a wider audience. So far, I've found 2 main failure cases:

1. While I can share source code and documentation with trustworthy people, that won't work at scale: the market would get flooded with Chinese clones that re-use my Open Source software but then I have no ongoing revenue to fund support / maintenance.

2. Especially for products with a physical component, shipping, taxes, refunds, CC chargebacks etc. add considerable overhead. Plus I need to add in Amazon fees and marketing spend. And suddenly I need to charge 8x the manufacturing price, which means I either need to massively cheapen out with quality, or it's going to be a very premium product.
by io84 | 2025-04-28 13:44:48+00:00
Thanks for the anon comments that came in via the feedback form! I'm guessing they came from here.

I've deployed two of the suggestions:

1. don’t show unavailable (now hidden behind a button at end of list)

2. be able to specify which tlds are included

These changes are now live. The other suggestions around advanced options will take a bit more time/consideration.
by juxtaposicion | 2025-04-28 13:45:01+00:00
I’m working on Popgot (https://popgot.com), a tool that tracks unit prices (cost per ounce, sheet, pound) across Costco, Walmart, Target, and Amazon. It normalizes confusing listings (“family size”, “mega pack”, etc.) to surface the actual cheapest option for daily essentials.

On top of that, it uses a lightweight AI model to read product descriptions and filter based on things like ingredients (e.g., flagging peanut butter with BPA by checking every photograph of the plastic or avoiding palm oil by reading the nutrition facts) or brand lists (e.g., only showing WSAVA-compliant dog foods). Still reviewing results manually to catch bad extractions.

Started this to replace a spreadsheet I was keeping for bulk purchases. Slowly adding more automation like alerting on price drops or restocking when under a threshold.
by stefs | 2025-04-28 13:45:08+00:00
but that's the unrealistic part. in the real world people don't understand each other all the time, but all those "sorry, what did you say?"s would be annoying on screen (like so many other things that are skipped in movies). actors don't talk naturally at all, it just seems to us that way because we're used to them talking like that on screen.
by vel0city | 2025-04-28 13:45:19+00:00
If almost everyone is going a speed other than the speed limit I'd agree something should be done. But it's quite a leap to suggest the thing that should always be done is to change the speed limit. Maybe the roads should be restructured and add traffic calming. Maybe through traffic should be encouraged to use an alternate route. It's not like speed limits are the only lever one can use.
by hwpythonner | 2025-04-28 13:45:25+00:00
Thank you! Right now I'm focusing on keeping the core simple, efficient, and purpose-driven — mainly to run Python well on hardware for embedded and real-time use cases.

As for the future, I’m keeping an open mind. It would be exciting if it grew into something bigger, but my main focus for now is making sure the foundation is as solid and clean as possible.
by mistrial9 | 2025-04-28 13:45:26+00:00
you are right, but the emphasis could use a tune-up. In California, home of world-leading tech.. there are sensors and information networks, extensive electrical power lines, heavy equipment and budgets, a lot of dry and dead tress, a history of fire. So you see that California in a way is a world-quality testing lab. and the way the information travels, and the way the information is applied, could also be world-quality .. or, world-theater for government imbecility..
by sgarland | 2025-04-28 13:45:41+00:00
As others have pointed out, the inspection standards are wildly different. Here’s [0] an amusing and eye-opening look at what is needed to restore an older vehicle to pass inspection. For example, removing surface rust on a spare tire mount. Even then, he still failed inspection [1], and goes into much more detail on the rigorous checks performed.

In contrast, there are U.S. states with zero inspections of any kind. No emissions, no safety, nothing.

The problem is complicated, but IMO it boils down to lack of widespread public transit, and low salaries. Unless you live in a metro that has reliable and inexpensive public transit, you generally need a car to get to work. You also need to pay for fuel and insurance, so things like preventative maintenance are often put off for lack of funds. When repairs are finally needed, chances are you’ll opt for the cheapest part available, even if it won’t last nearly as long. Same with tires: good tires are far more expensive than bad ones. My wife’s Mazda CX-9 has Michelin CrossClimate2 tires. They’re $307/ea right now on TireRack. There are also off-brands available for literally half that. I (and probably most people on this site) am lucky enough to have a job that allows me to buy the best tires, but that is definitely not true for most Americans. $1200 (plus mounting and balancing costs) for a set of tires is completely out of the realm of possibility. So now you have a car with parts of dubious reliability on tires that don’t grip as well, and remember, in some states there are no checks that your tires even have tread depth left, let alone their stopping ability.

If every U.S. state (or the federal government, but that’ll never happen) were to require the level of safety checks that Germany does, I guarantee you that a solid 1/4 – 1/2 of cars I see on the road would fail. It would be a devastating blow to the U.S. economy, purely from the sudden drop in worker availability.

Finally, re: speed limits, it’s unclear to me how you think Newton’s 2nd Law doesn’t apply.

[0]: https://www.jalopnik.com/heres-everything-i-fixed-to-prep-my...

[1]: https://www.jalopnik.com/i-took-a-250-000-mile-minivan-throu...
by piva00 | 2025-04-28 13:45:44+00:00
I assume that a major electric provider has the capacity to build a simple status update system where they post. It's much simpler than any "blog platform" case study used to assess junior engineers. You are assuming that it's their IT systems which crashed the electrical network and there's no sign of that at all at this moment, you are misleading in there to try to score a point, stop.

It's far easier to use Twitter but it doesn't mean it should be used, it fences out people like the OP and me, who do not have Twitter nor want to have Twitter, I don't want to be forced into using a private corporation service to get status updates from the electrical network where I live in. It's quite a simple proposition and very reasonable, not sure why you are so incensed by a quite reasonable expectation.

> Also, why do you assume that website wouldn't crash under the sudden 10000x load? It is an utterly useless solution, that wastes time and solves nothing.

Because it can be cached very easily, it's 2025 where setting up this kind of cache is extremely easy compared to 2005.

> Like does your engineering skills suddenly magically evaporate the moment Elon's name is mentioned?

Please, stop, you are too irrational to understand a very simple and reasonable thing, no need to start throwing Elon into this bullshit, just stop here with the rabid lunacy. I was against major corporations only posting updates on Twitter waaaay before Elon bought it, I still stand by it.
by falcor84 | 2025-04-28 13:46:02+00:00
Yeah, that's a good point. I absolutely agree that it needs access to effective long-term memory, but it's unclear to me that we need some "special insight". Research is relatively early on this, but we already see significant sparks of theory-building using basic memory retention, when Claude and Gemini are asked to play Pokemon [0][1]. It's clearly not at the level of a human player yet, but it (particularly Gemini) is doing significantly better than I expected at this stage.

[0] https://www.twitch.tv/claudeplayspokemon

[1] https://www.twitch.tv/gemini_plays_pokemon
Show HN: I built TreeSnap – turn your code into a prompt ready bundle
by apineda | 2025-04-28 13:46:05+00:00
I built over 3-4 weeks to solve my own pain point, picking up rust along the way. It has a browser version that works online/offline and cross platform desktop as well. It was a pretty intense sprint.

About TreeSnap, well it simplifies this preparation of sharing code with Chat LLMs. In my use case, making o3 via ChatGPT a lot more cost-effective to use for these tasks compared to Cursor:

How it works:

Select files/folders → generates a single text bundle + ASCII tree

Instantly shows per-file and total token counts (list & treemap views)

Quickly trim unnecessary files or folders to match context limits

Fully offline and private (Tauri desktop app)

Also available as a free browser app—offline and private

Built in ~3 weeks, I use it daily to aid my workflow and reduce my expenses by minimizing the need to rely on Cursor's pricier model usage. I still rely on Cursor with grok 3 or gemini pro 2.5 pro mostly without getting crazy with usage fees. Feedback welcome—especially UX, performance, and pricing.
by merksittich | 2025-04-28 13:46:36+00:00
Somehow, LLMs always seem to be "more likely to get this right" for fields other than one's own (I suppose, this being HN). The term "Andy Grove Fallacy" coined by Derek Lowe (whose articles are frequently posted here, the term being referenced in a recent piece[1]) comes to mind...

[1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/end-disease
by PedroBatista | 2025-04-28 13:47:15+00:00
Indeed, and that’s the main problem: you can’t remember or know anything.

It’s is a known fact that in general the US power grid is orders of magnitude less reliable than in Europe. And the excuse of “the weather is more extreme” is just that: a lame excuse.

Just count the number of American households that have generators and/or batteries vs the Europeans if you really have an honest desire to know anything about anything.
by 9rx | 2025-04-28 13:48:14+00:00
Aside from maybe a handful of projects that got lucky squatting on the right name (e.g. left-pad), are there any popular open source projects that have become popular on "that would be fun to implement" rather than "that's what is good for business" (understanding the user, answering issues, implementing requested features, etc.)? The chances of your fun overlapping the exact market need seems rather slim.

Even among unpopular open source projects, I expect most of them are published as a way to demonstrate ability to employers rather than "that would be fun". The latter projects do exist, but it is surprising if they make up most open source projects.
by shibel | 2025-04-28 13:48:29+00:00
A custom Python/Django based mini-app (mini — at least for now) that will allow me to import transactions sanely and safely to my local GnuCash install.

I’ve been doing tedious manual entry for a bit over two years now and after having missed three consecutive months, the only other option was to bail.

As a start it should help with 3 main things:

- Translation, categorization: my source documents aren’t in English but my GnuCash entries are. This is one of the reasons I don’t use the built-in imports. (This should shave off at least 90% of time spent entering data)

- Human-error prevention: there were at least 5 times where it took me over 15 minutes to reconcile a discrepancy because I entered some number or some account wrong somewhere.
by miltonlost | 2025-04-28 13:48:48+00:00
> Speed is just one of many factors, and perhaps the least significant, in the frequency and probability of traffic accidents. Speed is absolutely a factor in the severity of an accident, but not the probability of one after accounting for all other variables.

That's because you are afflicted with Car Brain and are only thinking about speeding affecting other cars and not speeding affecting acidents involving cars and pedestrians or cyclists. Municipalities going to "war on speed" are protecting human lives of people outside of the car.
by SketchySeaBeast | 2025-04-28 13:48:52+00:00
This is one of the many places where computer people simplify other professions.

Legally yes, the rad is the one interpreting it, but it's a very active process by the technologist. The ultrasound tech is actively interpreting the scans as they do them, and then using the wand to chase down what they notice to get better shots of things. If they don't see something the rad won't either, so you need that expertise there to identify things that don't look right, it's very real time and you can't do it post hoc.
by abound | 2025-04-28 13:49:23+00:00
Depending on how long you're planning on sabbatical-ing, you might consider applying to the Recurse Center [1]. It's basically a (free) 6- or 12-week self-directed learning program that you do with others.

I had done a half batch last year and really enjoyed the experience.

[1] https://recurse.com
by hwpythonner | 2025-04-28 13:49:42+00:00
That's a great question! I actually thought a lot about that early on.

In theory, you could build a CPU that directly interprets Python bytecode — but Python bytecode is quite high-level and irregular compared to typical CPU instructions. It would add a lot of complexity and make pipelining much harder, which would hurt performance, especially for real-time or embedded use.

By compiling the Python bytecode ahead of time into a simpler, stack-based ISA (what I call PySM), the CPU can stay clean, highly pipelined, and efficient. It also opens the door in the future to potentially supporting other languages that could target the same ISA!
by bieganski | 2025-04-28 13:49:43+00:00
it would be nice to have some peripheral drivers implemented (UART, eMMC etc).

having this, the next tempting step is to make `print` function work, then the filesystem wrapper etc.

btw - what i'm missing is a clear information of limitations. it's definitely not true that i can take any Python snippet and run it using PyXL (for example threads i suppose?)
by vyasaveda | 2025-04-28 13:50:00+00:00
I think you need some business development individual, with non-technical background.

Until freemium, you can get users, and make it viable product, but it depends upon your interaction and how you utilize the users. As per the information you'd provided, the idea seems validated. Can you share some insights? Like engagement rate? Level and communication topics, including feedback and response and suggestions from early users.
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-04-28 13:50:47+00:00
You're missing the point, man. Can you replace these configs with TOML, or JSON, or YAML? Sure. With enough key-values you could replace anything.

But what's the user experience like? Those generic formats are not designed for a great user experience, they're designed to be generic. So they end up being at best mildly irritating, and at worst wildly frustrating.

Here's an SSH config:

Include ~/.ssh/my-org/* Host *.co.uk ProxyCommand ssh bastion@my-uk-server.co.uk nc %h %p 2> /dev/null Host newServer HostName newServer.url User adminuser Port 2222 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.key Host anotherServer.tld HostName anotherServer.url User mary Port 2222

Now write that as TOML:

[global] include-files = ~/.ssh/my-org/* [host.match-co-uk] host-match = *.co.uk proxy-command = ssh bastion@my-uk-server.co.uk nc %h %p 2> /dev/null [host.match-new-server] hostname-match = newServer hostname = newServer.url user = adminuser port = 2222 identityfile = ~/.ssh/id_rsa.key [host.match-another-server] host-match = anotherServer.tld hostname = anotherServer.url user = mary port = 2222

The SSH config can be read easily, written easily, is easy to understand, and the functionality and format are tied together so you can do more complex things easier. On top of that, the SSH file can be changed around to load includes before or after other lines, to change how they match.

The TOML one not only takes longer to write, but it lacks the kind of functionality that the SSH config has to both declare a new block, define its internal name, and specify a config glob, all with the same string. And you can't change how or when includes are loaded or what they overload without adding some kind of "priority" key-value, and then having to read each entry, do some math, change all the values to load different things at different places. (and looking back, I actually screwed up the TOML config, because it was so confusing!)

Don't choose a generic solution if it's going to give the user a pain in the ass. If you don't care about the user, then you're part of the enshittification of technology.
by JohnFen | 2025-04-28 13:50:51+00:00
> we “bring the best of enterprise” with the “agility” of not being an enterprise.

If I read "best of enterprise", I'd wonder what was meant by that.

Broadly speaking, one of the big differences between large and small companies is what they're good at. The old saying that "small companies make it possible, large companies make it inexpensive" holds as true as always.
by Gareth321 | 2025-04-28 13:50:57+00:00
I think you're logically correct. It's the feeling such a policy elicits which makes it untenable. I agree with your points conceptually, but the moment I would have to install a government speed limiter on my car is the moment I vote for someone else. It feels invasive, and I don't like feeling like the paternal hand of the government is all the way up my ass, controlling my gas pedal.
by ryao | 2025-04-28 13:50:59+00:00
The speed limits are set artificially low to try to reduce fleet fuel consumption, yet are well known to increase the probability of accidents since they violate the 85th percentile principle. Attempts to enforce the artificially low speed limits cause more collisions while claiming to be intended to prevent collisions. Given that, it makes perfect sense why he cannot understand it. It is unfit for its stated purpose.
by AliNaqvi786 | 2025-04-28 13:51:10+00:00
The SaaS landscape is undergoing a major recalibration. Rising costs, AI-fueled saturation, and declining user trust are real and immediate challenges, especially for indie founders and early-stage builders who historically thrived on lower friction.

That said, I believe we're not necessarily heading into a "SaaS winter," but rather into a new era of higher expectations. The bar for value delivery, transparency, and differentiation is being reset — not eliminated. Those who can monetize flexibly (without alienating users), differentiate meaningfully (beyond just features), and build lasting trust will still find strong opportunities ahead.

It's harder now — no doubt — but I’m cautiously optimistic. This next phase will reward creators who focus deeply on genuine customer value rather than rapid growth hacks.