MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jmward01 | 2025-04-12 20:40:09+00:00
The argument I am making is that you can only say something was cheaper if it provided the same level of service or better for less money. In the case of the bus transition it provided worse service as indicated by utilization dropping. I am also making the argument that evaluating the value of transit shouldn't rest entirely on the cost of that service and ridership but on the value as a whole it brings to a city. I mentioned NYC because the evidence there (and in other cities that have implemented congestion pricing) is that as ridership goes up the economic, environment, and social health of a city also goes up. Point being, the bus transition had a very negative value impact. I will also add a final argument, as your ridership drops things like busses may appear less costly per ride simply because you are loosing volume and low volume routes are likely easier to service by bus so, again, cheaper but not an apples to apples comparison.
by impossiblefork | 2025-04-12 20:40:25+00:00
What if the cars were made really light?

Four bicycle wheels, as many batteries as you can safely put on something supported by four bicycle wheels, an aerodynamic CFRP bubble for the driver etc?

I think such a vehicle can be better than one thinks, with acceptable range, acceptable particle emissions, acceptable noise levels; and I think they could easily get to 80 km/h safely.
by sauercrowd | 2025-04-12 20:41:35+00:00
Prot - the author - is a pretty incredible guy. He maintains a bunch of nice Emacs packages and themes.

But maybe even more remarkable: he got kicked out of his flat in Greece, couldn't afford a new place, bought a small plot of land in the mountains and started building a hut from materials he was able to afford or from things neighbours gave him. Really the bare minimum (he often sat in his hut with a jacket in winter cause it wasn't well isolated/heated)

Absolutely inspiration, all documented on his YouTube channel https://youtube.com/@protesilaos?si=MnjV7MhKtsT5RDSM
by beloch | 2025-04-12 20:42:39+00:00
I suspect this is less about creating utility for users and more about leveraging existing user bases to train AI.

e.g. Most users don't want Copilot, but it's being installed by default. Unless you dig into privacy preferences and flip a lot of check-boxes, you're going to be providing data to help MS train AI by default. MS doesn't care if you find Copilot useful or even use it. Your data is still useful to their efforts to train their AI.
by andyolivers | 2025-04-12 20:42:49+00:00
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by trod1234 | 2025-04-12 20:42:51+00:00
Existential dread is not unwarranted but you do need to choose the arguments that are most likely to happen, and focus your energies on those rather than be sidetracked by spurious outcomes that may never come to pass.

There are many false narratives meant to distract, and you'll have to discern which ones are true and it can be exhausting if you let it. This is how 5th-Generation-Warfare (5GW) is.

I'll tell you right now, its highly unlikely that AGI will occur, because the properties required for computation make it nigh impossible.

It doesn't need to do this to be an existential threat. All it needs to do is disrupt the economic cycle sufficiently to stall economic activity, and it does so quite easily.

An economic cycle stalling leads to chaotic socio-economic collapse and a loss of order. Current population levels are only made possible by dependencies which have been made brittle over time, relying on continued order for survival just to produce enough food. I'm sure you've heard of the Malthusian Trap, you may not have revisited later works touching on Malthus by Catton in the 90s.

The economic cycle is a circular cycle between workers and producers. We exist today because of an equitable distribution of labor which is compensated.

There is also the issue of money printing, which is too long to discuss here. Needless to say there are two requirements that must be met to continue the cycle sustainably (avoiding chaotic whipsaw and stalling). Producers must make a profit in purchasing power, People must make a profit supporting a wife and three children sufficient so that one makes it to have children themselves, also in purchasing power.

Money printing eventually causes money to lose its store of value (property), and when that happens medium of exchange is lost as well. Stalling of the economy, and same issue.

There are at least 6 other avenues by which this same outcome occurs, and they are in systems we can no longer change, its runaway. Solutions like UBI fail for other equally impossible problems, albeit they are more indirect but still end in chaotic whipsaws, distortions (artificial supply constraint), etc.

AI doesn't need to be AGI. All it needs to do is disrupt and eliminate the majority of entry level positions of the career development pipeline.

Within a 10 year cycle, collapse will become unavoidable as a matter of math. The output of a pipeline depends upon the input of the pipeline, it is always less for all values above 0. 0 in 0 out.

Man ages out of careers and die eventually. No people to mentor, that knowledge dies with them.
by Xorakios | 2025-04-12 20:43:45+00:00
The Sahara has generally been contracting for the last few decades as the "greener" Sahel band expands north due to higher average rainfall (individual years vary, and the effect is stronger in the west than the east).

A Google search will likely list articles citing the 2018 study from UofMaryland that showed approximately a 10% increase in the Sahara's area from 1902-2012, ignoring the portions of that study that said that breaking down by decade showed a reversal in the 1980's. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/31/9/jcli-d-...

Google maps timeview has a fun animation if you search for Sahara Desert. https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/
by Aurornis | 2025-04-12 20:44:49+00:00
I think a large portion of HN commenters are unaware of the consumer demand for these features.

I remember that AI voice assistants (Amazon echo, etc) had some of the fastest adoption rates among older individuals. That’s unusual for tech, which is often adopted first by younger people. The speculation was that older people were less comfortable with existing interfaces and therefore welcomed the new mode of working.

The same situation plays out with AI and software people: I see a lot of people sneering at every AI tool as something that nobody wants, but really it’s just that they don’t personally want it and therefore think nobody else should either.
by zer00eyz | 2025-04-12 20:45:43+00:00
> AI is not a product, it’s a tool for building other products.

Its products like this (Wells Fargo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akmga7X9zyg

Great Wells Fargo has an "agent" ... and every one else is talking about how to make their products available for agent based AI.

People don't want 47 different agents to talk to, then want a single end point, they want a "personal assistant" in digital form, a virtual concierge...

And we can't have this, because the open web has been dead for more than a decade.
by ImPostingOnHN | 2025-04-12 20:45:44+00:00
> Israel or Jewish people in general?

as a person of jewish faith, I ask that you please not falsely conflate these two completely different concepts

someone who opposes jewish people in general is bad, but someone who opposes the ongoing genocide of palestinians is good

your usage of "or" here would indicate that the above good person is grouped together with the above bad person

> If anything some of those pro-Palestinian protests were more reminiscent of the 1933 “German Firm” boycotts

structuring your metaphor like this, strikes me as an example of DARVO [0], considering what is being done to innocent palestinians. how many israelis patronize businesses based in palestine? how many such businesses do you patronize?

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO
by jmaker | 2025-04-12 20:45:53+00:00
The pace differs though. A junior would need a week for a feature an LLM can produce in an hour. And you’re expected to validate that just as quickly. And LLMs are trained to appeal to the reader, unlike an average junior dev. Devs will only get lazy the more they rely on LLMs. It’s like you’re at the university and there’s no homework anymore, just lectures. You’re just passively ingesting data, not getting trained on real problems because you’ve got AI to do that for you. So you’re no longer challenged to grow anymore in your domain. What’s left are hard problems that the AI will mislead you on because it’s unfamiliar with them, and your opportunity to learn was lost to delegating to AI. In the end the pressure will grow at work, more features will be expected in shorter time frames. You’ll get even less time to learn and grow as a developer or engineer.
by pasabagi | 2025-04-12 20:47:34+00:00
So, I agree that good standards and (to a lesser extent) algorithms come out of practice.

However, the basic point about a standard is not that it's perfect: it's a coordination mechanism. Companies go bust all the time, technology changes all the time, but if you have standard components, large parts of complex systems can be maintained indefinitely. Like, I have a rolling press that was made in 1840, and I can still replace the bolts for it, because the standard thread gauge has not changed.

I guess the nice thing about both algorithms and standards are they are the two places where the software world is not just burning people's lives on relentlessly reinventing the wheel. If you contribute even a fraction to the study of an algorithm, your work will be part of software in a thousand years. If you contribute to a standard, you are producing the conditions for a thousand other programs. Both of these things are basically common goods, and they help everyone. I think a culture of programming where it's less about founding the next over-capitalized unicorn, and more about creating a mutually supportive ecosystem, would produce very good software.
by Whoppertime | 2025-04-12 20:47:50+00:00
Per capita emissions is effected by population, and historical events that influence that capita being measured, like the Covid 19 outbreak. If you have 100,000 people living in a town emitting 100,000 tons of emissions and 10% of the population died due to happenstance, epidemiological or otherwise so you now have 90,000 people emitting 100,000 tons of emissions and the per capita rate went up despite no change in their production method or the amount of emissions they are producing.
by wan23 | 2025-04-12 20:47:57+00:00
The end user benefits are none of the things you mentioned. Mechanical watches are jewelry. They look nice, and hopefully they remind you of something. For many people it's a connection to something cool. Omega sells a lot of moon watches, and it's not because anyone buying them is going to use the chronograph to time a fuel burn with life or death stakes. You're probably not wearing your Daytona at the race track or using your Longines watch for anything Amelia Earhart or Howard Hughes did. But it's fun to think about how you have a tool with a historical connection - whether that is to history everyone knows, or something more personal to you.
by uejfiweun | 2025-04-12 20:50:59+00:00
I really don't think this is a likely outcome in the 'several quarters' timeframe. The world just spent 2.5 decades going onto Google. There are so many small business owners out there who hate technology... so many old people who took years just to learn how to Google... so many ingrained behaviors of just Googling things... outside of the vocal tech crowd I think it's exceedingly unlikely that users stop using Google en masse.
by crq-yml | 2025-04-12 20:51:16+00:00
I'd nominate Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni. As authoritarian "president for life" since 1986, he's demonstrated some savvy statecrafting amid Africa's resource wars and ethnic violence, making the country a point of stability and economic growth on the continent.

(Of course, he's got plenty of negatives on the record too. But I think in the game of "Great Man History", he's already left a big legacy.)
by madeofpalk | 2025-04-12 20:51:18+00:00
> I honestly don't know how they haven't faced FTC action for this

FTC Takes Action Against Adobe and Executives for Hiding Fees, Preventing Consumers from Easily Cancelling Software Subscriptions

June 17, 2024

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/06/...
by ahmedhawas123 | 2025-04-12 20:52:00+00:00
I do agree with a lot of what is said here. There are however a few things that I think will hinder Google on the long-run:

- The last time I checked (3-4 months ago) Gemini embedding models are probably the least reliable / contextually aware out there - A significant chunk of the market will want the ability to use locally hosted models / manage their own which Google currently has no play for - API documentation. Across the big managed models they are likely the least well documented model. - Allowing for more system vs. user prompts
by DannyBee | 2025-04-12 20:52:17+00:00
I agree with the vast majority of what you say.

I will poke at one part:

"Patient primary expectation is always to have a doctor they can trust. "

I don't believe this was the expectation here - trust was not even mentioned. Only credentials were.

I don't disagree it should be the expectation, but it's definitely not in the US and i don't think you'll get there without changing how people think.

Even when it is, trust here seems to be often equated to "how impressive/popular a doctor they are", rather than "how effective a doctor they are" or something sane. At least in the US, the doctors patients trust the most are the ones with the most credentials, awards, etc. It's a popularity contest instead of a baseline competency contest.

If you listen to lots of people in the US talk about choosing and trusting doctors, it's about what school they went to, or what awards they've won, or who else they've treated. Not always, but lots of times. This is not a new thing.

For example - my parents (in their 80's), all of their friends, and heck everyone i've ever met in their community is the same way, and have been for at least 50 years. They don't actually trust doctors who didn't go to harvard, etc.

I think that has to change as well.
by rapnie | 2025-04-12 20:52:33+00:00
> To my knowledge there is not a Vue/React-WASM-type framework out there yet or any framework for building web apps in WASM (without starting from a blank canvas).

Not sure if these qualify, but these Rust web frameworks use wasm:

https://dioxuslabs.com/

https://leptos.dev/

https://yew.rs/
by eyelidlessness | 2025-04-12 20:52:42+00:00
I’ve had no problem rendering far more complex graphics than a pie chart, with SVG, without sending a single byte of JS to clients (not just the SVGs, a variety of fairly interactive content!). I realize that’s fairly niche, and it’s a bit of a personal special interest. But I can say with certainty that it’s possible, because I have done it.

Sure, I have used JS (TS) for building these projects, but that’s immaterial because it never ships to clients.

As for pie chart “primitives”, I’m not asking you to take my word for it but I also can say with relatively high confidence that SVG as a technology is capable of the kinds of composition needed for that. It probably won’t match the ergonomics of a few CSS variables, but it could come close if you’re willing to overlook the verbosity of XML syntax.

Not that I’m saying you or anyone should do that! My original response wasn’t intended to persuade you or anyone that SVG is a better choice of technology for this purpose. Only to clarify that there is no inherent requirement to run client side JS to render SVG charts. That’s probably not super interesting in its own right, it’s only a clarifying statement of fact.
by UtopiaPunk | 2025-04-12 20:52:59+00:00
I don't want to come across as judgey, gate-keeping what is in good taste or what should make you "feel bad." The human element is just a very crucial part, at least for me. Art is a way of humans beings connectig with each other. That can be high-brow stuff, but that can also be, like, pulpy action movies or cheesy romance novels. Someone might be expressing deep beautiful ideas that change my life forever, or they might think that it was totally sick to have a car jump over a chasm and through a big loud explosion. In both cases, I'm engaging with another human being, at least at some level, at that means something.

But if I see something that I think is cool and interesting, and then I discover that it was mostly the result of a few AI prompts, then I just don't care about it anymore. I don't "feel bad" that I thought it interesting, rather, I just completely lose interest.

I do fear that it will be increasingly difficult to tell what is generated by AI and what is created by humans. Just examining myself, I think that would mean I would retreat from mainstream pop-culture stuff, and it would be with sadness. It's a bleak future to imagine. It seems reminiscent of the "versificator" in George Orwell's 1984.
by robocat | 2025-04-12 20:53:06+00:00
Greens seem to deceive in the same way as green-washing except with greener deceptions (whereas green-washing is capitalists pretending to be green).

Example: a report on the cost-benefit of using bicycles, that comes out with a fantastic positive number for introducing a cycle lane. Except the number depends on a monetary estimate of the benefits to society for health improvements. I'm sure the health improvements exist, and it wouldn't surprise me that the health benefits to society were well estimated. The problem is that by cherry-picking benefits you can simply ignore all monetary benefits of cars (no benefits for cars were mentioned as I recall).

I've seen it in other articles which talk sacharrinely about the benefit of some green tech. But ignoring real costs and certainly not being balanced. The ultra-idealistic greenies are not helping their cause when rubbish is repeated.
by byronvickers | 2025-04-12 20:53:49+00:00
If you've got it working then obviously it must be possible, but I'm a touch confused because the ErsatzTV documentation says "A Plex Pass is required for ErsatzTV to work with Plex." (https://ersatztv.org/docs/user-guide/configure-clients)

Is it possible that you had this working in the past but Plex has since removed the functionality from their free tier?
by RHSeeger | 2025-04-12 20:54:32+00:00
Sorry, I didn't ask my question well.

Your answer seems to speak to the idea of "we need this in order for our offices to be able to function, what's the most cost effective way acquire it. I can't imagine _any_ office that would need such a thing. It seems to be purely decorative in nature. And the (quality of the) monitor (which isn't part of that cost) is the majority of the decorative part.

I was asking more from the individual perspective; why someone would spend $500 + subscription on something like this, when it should be relatively trivial to just run software that does something like it yourself. Given that it doesn't come with the display, picking a nice display and hooking it up seems like the majority of the work involved.
by jeffbee | 2025-04-12 20:55:15+00:00
The law only permits the bond proceeds to be spent on designated routes. To accommodate this, the French fantasy plan needed long spurs across the San Joaquin Valley. This would have required more guideways overall, more parcel acquisitions, more waterway crossings, and generally higher costs. It would also have tripled the travel time between Fresno and other major cities, which would have sunk popular support for the project since millions of people would have correctly perceived it as serving only SF and LA.
by wqaatwt | 2025-04-12 20:55:39+00:00
> It currently dwarfs the number incarcerated by the Soviet Union during the 1930s

That was certainly false if you look at the late 40s (not by much, only 2x or so though..)

However if you actually think (since you post nonsensical “statistics” that’s unlikely) about it the mortality rates in soviet concentration camps were massive, especially in the 1930s or during the war which significantly decreased the incarceration rate.

Can’t have a huge prison population if you just murder or starve everyone to death..
by const_cast | 2025-04-12 20:56:35+00:00
It's only hyperbole because you have a car-centric point of view. From an objective point of view, there are A LOT of problems with cars.

It's not hyperbolic to say that cars kill people on the scale of tobacco and alcohol. It's literally true. Again, the primary cause of death for a lot of demographics in the US is driving. You would, literally, have a lower mortality if you walked to work and smoked a Capri methanol on the way.

We just don't view driving in this way because, unlike tobacco, it is a necessary evil. As soon as you dismantle the assumption that it's necessary the rest falls into place.

There is a direct link between car-centric infrastructure and most things that are killing you and making your life worse. The fact you choose to ignore it does not mean it doesn't exist. And, to be fair, ignoring it is good practice. If I had to come to terms with my own mortality before every commute I'd probably kill myself. Ignorance is bliss.

If you simply look at the places world-wide associated with higher quality of life you'll notice a common denominator. More greenery, more walking, fresher food, more public transit, and less cars. It's not a coincidence, it's pretty obvious when you sit down and put the pieces together.
Ask HN: How do you monetize personal code if it's not an "app"?
by splimeproject | 2025-04-12 20:56:48+00:00
Hey HN,

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and wanted to ask — how do you monetize your personal code if it doesn’t really fit into a classic product or SaaS model?

For example:

* I have a trained ML model that solves a niche task really well — but turning it into a full-blown app seems like overkill.

* I’ve written a CLI tool that processes log files better than anything else I’ve found, but it’s too specialized to justify making a company out of it.

* I built a few small functions in different languages (Python, Go, Rust) that do neat things — data cleanup, API scraping, PDF generation — but none of them are “products” by themselves.

I’m exploring ways to package and expose this kind of work: maybe as paid APIs, small function services, or even “pocket FaaS” instances others can plug into.

Curious if anyone here has tried something similar — or if you’ve seen creative ways to turn technical tools or utilities into sustainable side income.

Thanks in advance for sharing ideas or examples!
by analog31 | 2025-04-12 20:58:02+00:00
I think the subject matter does evolve, its applications, and the ways that it's taught.

The earliest book on algebra, written by Al-Khwarizmi, was arguably unreadable by anybody but a philosopher. It contained no numerals, just a wall of text. Symbolic equations were invented later. The abstraction of algebra (groups, etc.) even later. Today, kids learn basic algebra in middle school.

The earliest calculus was greatly improved by newer notation. Also, a formal basis for calculus emerged later on.

The teaching of math is a matter of long running debate, since it is regarded as being a widespread failure. Every generation wants to try and crack this problem. Calculus might stay the same, but with varying emphasis on things like problems, proofs, etc.

I would argue that math -- including symbolic math -- is changing again thanks to widespread computation.

Just some scattered thoughts.