MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by saghm | 2025-04-05 10:01:50+00:00
Yeah, I don't disagree with you that topic is super important, and in my experience at least, gender doesn't really seem to have any impact on the average amount of talking I notice people doing. I'm mostly just surprised that people seemed shocked that the parent commenter only expects that their median number of words per day is 50, especially when they also mentioned their _average_ is much higher than that. To me, that seems like someone who occasionally says quite a lot (maybe when meeting up with friends or family, or going to some sort of social event) but happens to live alone and doesn't feel the need to make small talk when they go out to run an errand or something (which also might not be very frequent, given how much can be ordered online these days).
by kalleboo | 2025-04-05 10:02:14+00:00
The question now is, what kind of tariff negotiations will be acceptable to Trump?

Is it the numbers he used to justify the tariffs? The article we're commenting on shows Trump has always seen that any trade deficit at all is unacceptable.

Even zero tariffs in Vietnam is not going to zero out the US's deficit with them, Vietnamese people can't afford to buy that many goods from the US , and the US can't manufacture that many clothes or shoes for their own market.

Even Australia, which has a trade surplus with the US, got tariffs. What negotiations will work for them?

Or will he take tiny, pointless wins just to sound strong like in the early negotiations with Canada/Mexico? Are the talking points just bluster?
by andai | 2025-04-05 10:03:23+00:00
Ah yes, "blissful" Zen. That's the best kind!

---

It reminds me of Yunmen, a monk who lived in China. He was born around 860 A.D. and he lived ninety years. His enlightenment story is a classic:

One day, Yunmen went to visit Mujo. When Mujo heard Yunmen coming, he closed the door to his room. Yunmen knocked on the door. Mujo said, “Who is it?”

Yunmen said, “It’s me.”

Mujo said, “What do you want?”

Yunmen said, “I’m not clear about my life. I’d like the master to give me some instruction.”

Mujo then opened the door, took one look at Yunmen and closed it again.

Yunmen knocked on the door like this for three days in a row. On the third day, when Mujo opened the door, Yunmen stuck his foot in the door. Mujo grabbed Yunmen and yelled, “Speak! Speak!” When Yunmen began to speak, Mujo gave him a shove and said, “Too late.” Mujo slammed the door. Yunmen’s foot was still there, and the slamming door broke Yunmen’s foot. And at that moment, Yunmen was greatly enlightened.

https://emptysqua.re/blog/the-day-yunmen-broke-his-foot/
by ZeroTalent | 2025-04-05 10:04:45+00:00
The criteria for defining extreme poverty are not being adjusted properly.

For example, Grab/Uber rickshaw/tuk-tuk drivers in India may technically earn over $10 a day, but many of them remain homeless because the price of food and rent has risen, and they often support a lot of their family members who have no jobs.

They often sleep on their rickshaws and work more than 20 hours a day, seven days a week, relying on excessive amounts of caffeine and other substances to keep going.

Many of them sleep on their motorcycles or near them on the sidewalk.
by rcrsvpreordnmnt | 2025-04-05 10:05:14+00:00
the danger is in us with AI and without. people have developed strangely fascist or at the very least, into fascist fanboys and fangirls. even refugees from africa or the middle east, self-proclaimed lefties and conservative or, young, educated progressive journalists and teachers and even your average festival goers and crews. it's everywhere.

we are our greatest enemies; at least in this regard, AI will never make a difference except if it or it's commanders want to unite us against another enemy ... ... ...
by Rish01 | 2025-04-05 10:05:33+00:00
I just published a blog post where I dig into how Variational Autoencoders use Maximum Likelihood Estimation. After writing about MLE, I wanted to explore its role in generative models like VAEs and Diffusion models.

In this post, I derive the VAE loss function, trying not to skip over the math that many explanations gloss over. I also explain how VAEs enable backpropagation through the sampling step using the re-parametrization trick.

I'm still learning, so there might be mistakes — would really appreciate if you point them out or share thoughts on how to improve it. I Would love to hear your thoughts!
by type0 | 2025-04-05 10:07:40+00:00
A few years ago I saw a pre-WWII book on radio electronics in a thrift store, too bad I didn't buy it. I was amazed how approachable it was to general public and how good it was written. It seems to me that the quality of technical writing to the layman isn't as it used to be, I have never seen as good explanations for basic concepts in any modern books.
by soulofmischief | 2025-04-05 10:08:04+00:00
> What is the basis for deciding?

For one, whether or not they supported abolition.

I also will not engage in a debate with a poisoned premise: To be clear, supporting Israel today means supporting genocide. That is the beginning and end of it. You can denounce Israel and still denounce Hamas. You can support an individual Jewish person's right to life and liberty without making the mistake of supporting their genocidal government.

Given that my own government, the United States, is also genocidal and has a history of bloody colonialism, I appreciate when people can make this distinction. I condemn my own government and still support my fellow countrymen.

None of this needs pointing out. Any attempt to paint an anti-Israel stance as an antisemitic stance is deliberately deceitful and wholly reprehensible. Israel the government is illegitimate and Netanyahu is wanted in the International Criminal Court for genocidal crimes.
Show HN: One line to make multiple notes on your talks with people (Knei)
by eye_dle | 2025-04-05 10:09:15+00:00
Hello! I implemented a feature which makes note-taking on interpersonal talks a lot quicker. You can type in the story of who you've met during the day/week, and the app will parse it into separate talk notes for related people.

I think this is a step towards making relationship management more convenient and natural.

The feature is a part of the Knei app, a tool to build relationships thoughtfully.

Disclaimer: the link contains the demo login-free page. To actually create contacts and notes, you will have to sign up.
by drellybochelly | 2025-04-05 10:10:21+00:00
> I’ve spent pretty much every night in recent memory burning through video games, and I finally, inevitably, hit the wall with that approach.

I feel like I can only play games that are about 20-50 hours and have a definitive end or game that you can chip away at an hour at a time (e.g. EAFC). Even playing for just a couple hours a night feels like time that could be going towards a side project but time to unwind is important.
by stefs | 2025-04-05 10:10:32+00:00
the two are not unrelated. if it were purely about the money, they EU wouldn't enact any animal welfare and environmental regulations - but they do. of course they have to protect their markets now, but the question is whether the U.S. model is sustainable. china, for example, is outsourcing its pork production to the U.S. because it's deemed too toxic.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-is-c...
by taberiand | 2025-04-05 10:11:07+00:00
I'm talking about highway driving. At traffic lights the behaviour I see is people stacking up in one lane when there's a zipper merge across the intersection - I don't get this either, but it's good for me because there's plenty of room to skip past that line and merge in while the stack dawdles across the road, the inchworm-style traffic movement leaving plenty of space between each car
by rapjr9 | 2025-04-05 10:11:23+00:00
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silica_gel

"Silica gel is irritating to the respiratory tract and may cause irritation of the digestive tract. Dust from the beads may cause irritation to the skin and eyes, so precautions should be taken."

Also from the same page:

"Silica gel, also referred to as silicon dioxide or synthetic amorphous silica (SAS), is listed by the FDA in the United States as generally recognized as safe (GRAS), meaning it can be added to food products without needing approval. Silica is allowed to be added to food in the US at up to 2% as permitted under 21 CFR 172.480. In the EU, it can be in up to 5% concentrations. In 2018, a re-evaluation by the EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food found no indications of toxicity even at the highest estimates of exposure level."

"Listed uses include: anticaking agent, defoaming agent, stabilizer, adsorbent, carrier, conditioning agent, chill proofing agent, filter aid, emulsifying agent, viscosity control agent, and anti-settling agent. Silica can be found commonly in foods including baked goods, spices and herbs, dairy products, cocoa products, and more."

Irritation is not toxicity? I guess not, but it seems like irritation should be also be considered when adding it to food. Long term irritation can be a health issue.
by chrome111 | 2025-04-05 10:12:20+00:00
Americans are taught at a very young age about Manifest Destiny, the notion when starting in the East that America has a right all the way to the West. While events like Trail of Tears are mentioned, they're downplayed during early school years and not brought up again later when kids may be able to form an opinion. Essentially, winning is ingrained into the American mindset and is the driving force behind almost everything - this helps when making companies big and even bigger, but also mutual growth hard to fathom. Current US policy does feel very American. Seems like a make-or-break moment for the American model itself, and if it breaks there'll need to be a change starting from the early age education/propaganda.
by zabzonk | 2025-04-05 10:16:07+00:00
I love books about writing/creating new software/hardware. One I can recommend, about Windows NT is: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Windows-Gene...

Does anyone here know about any book(s) on the VAX, or indeed on any of DEC's machines, or IBM's stuff (which were - probably still are - beautifully engineered) come to that? I'm aware of "Big Blue", but that is mostly about IBM business practices.
by sunshine-o | 2025-04-05 10:16:35+00:00
It is great to see people experimenting with this but I do not really see from the videos anything we can't do today. So no need to kill the shell or anybody.

Innovation in terminals and shells is hard and slow since what we have today is already very very good and flexible.

What we might need is:

- A common standard for graphics,

- A good, sane web browser (very hard),

- A sane way to automatically change text size depending on the context,

- Probably some specialized, local LLM to ease interactions,

- Some form of sane STT and TTS so we can interact with terminal hand free while driving for example.
by beloch | 2025-04-05 10:17:31+00:00
e.g. The U.S. has now violated CUSMA/USMCA/NAFTA 2.0 to an egregious degree, and this treaty is due to be renegotiated next year. As an unreliable partner, the U.S. is going to have to give up some serious concessions to Mexico and Canada to make the treaty happen. It's no different than applying for a loan with a low credit score. If you're a higher risk, the rates will be unfavourable.
by kev009 | 2025-04-05 10:17:35+00:00
Using samples doesn't mean not musician. A lot of progressive rock used the Mellotron which are clever tape loops. The biggest artists of the 80s used Fairlights and Emulators. Entire genres of music owe some lineage to Akai. If you are "producing" (in the arranging, mixing, mastering sense) today in a DAW you probably use sampling techniques all over the place even if you did a live take of real instruments. The sampler is a real instrument.
by orwin | 2025-04-05 10:17:54+00:00
The issue with this is that perception of outcomes is subjective, and if you sell yourself well (and bribe elderly voters), you will get away. The most indebted city in my country is led by a clan who managed to now own via trust multiple villa, gold ingot from nowhere, and whose 'leader' was arrested and convicted for corruption. They enriched themselves way more than a public servant salary could do (especially with their living standards) and repeat that their wealth is from an hidden inheritance. People from that city still vote for them.

I've been a temp at the equivalent of the IRS in my country. We had unbelievably inefficient processes. Some of it was because of very old software, but most of it was simply procedures, my main example is that the person approving a rebate/delay can't know or guess who's asked for it. I had to check if they were eligible, then anonymize them, then send the data to someone I don't know (to be exact, if it was the first year you asked for a delay i could automatically approve it without a seal of approval). Hopefully nowadays they have better software that helps them do that (explaining he situation without letting too much details slip was hard, but a good use of LLMs I would guess?)
by nehal3m | 2025-04-05 10:19:15+00:00
I flail between being in awe of the convenience and possibility modern tech brings and rueing the day the transistor was invented. There was an article posted here called Digital Echoes [0] a few days ago and it describes the sort of murky feeling of using a black box to interact with the modern world, and how it leaves ethereal traces everywhere that you have no control over. Sometimes I feel like getting rid of that weird sense of dread is worth giving up convenience for, other times my lazy lizard brain wins.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43509548
by matwood | 2025-04-05 10:24:36+00:00
I agree that the Rust Belt has had it rough, but it is not the entire US economy. I won't argue that people saw the future in the 70s, but those jobs were/are going away to automation regardless (and they are certainly not coming back). It's better to not be reliant on them now. In hindsight globalization was right move. And even if it wasn't, trying to blame the current US issues on globalization is 30 years too late.

Statistically the US manufactures more than it ever has on a $ amount, and is the #2 manufacturer in the world. Until recently, the US economy was the envy of the world. The trade situation the US setup did and does work, and along with other policies, led to enormous prosperity that was just unevenly distributed.

Where the US failed, and mostly around GOP and now Trump policies, is not spreading the growing prosperity to more of its citizens. Given this enormous prosperity where is universal healthcare, free/low cost college, UBI, etc...?

Unfortunately, the people who really need these policies have mostly voted against them for decades. Their anger is legitimate, but it's misplaced. Being angry at "globalization" or "illegals" or pick a group is a misdirection fed by years of AM radio and Fox News. Now we are seeing the cycle continue, but this time the US economy may really be destroyed.
by eulgro | 2025-04-05 10:24:48+00:00
First, I live alone. Then, work mostly involves written communication especially when remote, and on the days I'm at the office communication is generally limited to saying hi and very small amount of small talk. Most agile meetings are useless to me so I don't say a word. Other that work interactions I basically greet and thank the cashier and bus driver.

And generally I just find it more polite to shut up and listen than talk about stuff people aren't interested in, which happens to be the majority of what I'm interested in.

Sure the median might be 50 but it's kind of anecdotally low. For example a typical week might be: 0, 10, 50, 50, 500, 2000, 5000. So the median might also be 500 under slightly different circumstances.
by code_biologist | 2025-04-05 10:25:27+00:00
The moment you let the low contrast gremlins out of the cage they start their mischief!

Flat design is the more sucky partner to neutral palettes in current design trends, IMO. I want color too but it's not a clear step towards usability. I think the return of gentle skeumorphism would be a good step for general usability.
by atemerev | 2025-04-05 10:25:51+00:00
Well, of course I check the output and correct it as needed. It is still much faster than writing it myself. And less boring.

As for the documentation part — I infer that you hadn't used state of the art models, had you? They do not write symbol docs mechanistically. They understand what the code is _doing_. Up to their context limits, which are now 128k for most models. Feed them 128k of code and more often than not it will understand what it is about. In seconds (compared to hours for humans).
by isaacremuant | 2025-04-05 10:26:06+00:00
Worse than enterprising humans are authoritarian humans who want to tell others how they should live, usually also exempting themselves from their rules.

They also prey on the weaknesses of humans and social appearances to do things for a "greater good".

There's a problem and we 'must do something' and if you're against doing the something I propose youre evil and I'll label you.

The real mindfuck is that sometimes, an unscrupulous entrepreneur only has to play your "societal harm fighting" game through politicians and they get their way and we lose.
The silent killer of early-stage SaaS
by TaniaBell_PD | 2025-04-05 10:26:51+00:00
I've been obsessing over a pattern that destroys promising SaaS ideas before they ever reach their potential.

You've probably experienced it: The nods of approval. The "that sounds awesome!" comments. The eager email signups.

And then...silence when it actually matters.

I recently watched a talented dev spend months building a solution everyone "loved" during conversations, only to launch to an empty room. The dev's devastation was palpable.

That conversation revealed something crucial: there's a specific type of danger lurking in the SaaS validation process that nobody talks about. It feels incredibly positive but leads directly to wasted time, depleted savings, and shelved dreams.

I've discovered a simple formula that explains this phenomenon:

*Encouraging Feedback + ??? = Startup Graveyard*

I'm working on something that will help you see through the fog of well-meaning enthusiasm to find the signal of genuine market demand.

Not just another "build an MVP" guide or "talk to customers" rehash.

This is about recognising a specific psychological pattern that tricks even the smartest builders into seeing validation where none exists.

Coming soon. For those who'd rather build what people actually need than what they politely claim to want.

Interested? Drop a comment.
by rednafi | 2025-04-05 10:28:13+00:00
I feel similarly about environment variables. Envvar issues are a pain to debug in cloud VMs and CI pipelines.

Oftentimes, changing the envvar value doesn’t propagate without a container restart anyway.

I wish that instead of all these vaults and similar tools, cloud providers would let me pipe in a flat text file and read config from there.

Anything that requires a more complex setup should live with the code.

In many scenarios, the increased cognitive burden that comes with these hierarchical config files, DSLs, and rule engines is just not worth the yield. Redeploying isn’t hard unless we’re talking about a multi-region, globally distributed system.
by neilwilson | 2025-04-05 10:28:25+00:00
"someone owns the land"

In England, only the King owns the land, and Parliament can deploy any resources in the UK it wishes by simple Act of Parliament.

The only other thing there is is human labour, and that can similarly be deployed if we choose to.

As we discover every time we go to war.

So no there is no cabal of hoarders preventing anything, and no shortage of stuff or money. All that is preventing regeneration is the political will to do so.

In reality Gary is a member of the Outer Party, and he wants to take money off the Inner Party and give it to his mates so they can all play at looking after the Proles while value signalling to one another.
by hnarn | 2025-04-05 10:29:26+00:00
One of the things that made me interested in fonts was many years ago when I looked up the difference between Arial and Helvetica, and ever since I did that I react every time I see Arial used in print or signage because some of the letters are really awful in comparison. The most obvious difference is probably the capital R which to me looks terrible in Arial.

Here's an image showing some overlay examples: https://i.imgur.com/1sdXiNY.jpeg
by kevingadd | 2025-04-05 10:30:23+00:00
Business was good in those days if you had an audience and could distribute your game to your customers more or less direct. Retail was very expensive, but if you were selling shareware your distribution costs were really low and you weren't giving anybody 30-50% of your take. Titles may not have sold i.e. 10 million copies back then, but you could make good money off a single game, and it was cheaper & faster to develop a game. The 'if's I just listed are pretty significant, of course.

For one example, Ultima 1 was developed by a couple people, sold for ~$40 USD, and eventually sold over 1.5m copies according to https://www.newspapers.com/article/austin-american-statesman... and other sources. So that alone probably made everyone involved in the game's development millionaires, even if the publisher took a huge cut.
by Symbiote | 2025-04-05 10:30:23+00:00
Since around 2020, you've been able to pay Swedish VAT when you purchase from Ali Express etc. The resistors increase from $1 to $1.25, with the $0.25 going to the Swedish treasury.

Do you not have electronics shops in Sweden? Copenhagen has ElEkstra: https://www.elextra.dk/en-gb/components/modstande/smd-modsta...
by pfdietz | 2025-04-05 10:32:32+00:00
Observational bias is interesting. For example, if you judge by the stars visible to the naked eye, you get a very different sense of the distribution of stellar masses than if you use a telescope, because no class M main sequence stars will be included (the brightest has apparent magnitude 6.7). The intrinsically brightest stars, including many of the famously named ones, are visible to great distances and so are very overrepresented.

The most spectacular form of observational bias could be the presence of life. The planet we are on will always have life (because, we are here and we are life) regardless of how uncommon life actually is in the universe.
by submeta | 2025-04-05 10:33:23+00:00
You’re giving them too much credit for being clueless. Especially the Trump administration. Look at the people on that team: evangelicals hoping for the end of the world so their Savior can return, self-made billionaires pushing personal agendas, crypto grifters treating policy like a pump-and-dump scheme… This wasn’t just random chaos — they knew exactly what they were doing.

But I agree with you: The Covid pandemic seems to genuinely have overwhelmed governments worldwide.
by scarface_74 | 2025-04-05 10:34:52+00:00
If you want standardized professional places to stay while you travel, why not just stay in a hotel? When I go to a hotel (and we travel a lot), I know I’m getting a standard level of service and if not - especially with a chain hotel like one franchised by Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott etc - I can complain to someone at corporate and get a refund and book somewhere else, usually it doesn’t even tags that. Just talk to the front desk. They don’t care if you get a refund - it’s not their money.

Airbnb “hosts” treat it like their “home” and are emotionally invested in what should be a business transaction.

This isn’t to mention how many hosts are running an illegal AirBnb.