MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by somenameforme | 2025-04-29 04:32:23+00:00
A bit of a tangent, but I don't think this is it. There are plenty of species with plenty of shared norms, expectations, and trust - but no civilization. And, vice versa, many of the greatest societies have been riddled with completely incompatible worldviews yet created amazing civilizations. Consider that Sparta and Athens were separated by only 130 miles, yet couldn't possibly have been further apart!

The reason people work together is fundamentally the same reason you go to work - self interest. You're rarely there because you genuinely believe in the mission or product - mostly you just want to get paid and then go do your own thing. And that's basically the gears of society in a nutshell. But you need the intelligence to understand the bigger picture of things.

For instance Chimps have intricate little societies that at their peak have reached upwards of 200 chimps. They even wage war over them and in efforts to expand them or control their territory. This [1] war was something that revolutionized our understanding of primates behaviors, which had been excessively idealized beforehand. But they lack the intelligence to understand how to bring their little societies up in scale.

They understand full well how to kill the other tribe and "integrate" their females, but they never think to e.g. enslave the males, let alone higher order forms of expansion with vassalage, negotiated treaties, and so on. All of which over time trend towards where we are today, where it turns out giving somebody a little slice of your pie and letting him otherwise roam free is way more effective than just trying to dominate him.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
by johnnyanmac | 2025-04-29 04:34:12+00:00
> LAX -> SFO is 1.25 hours.

After a potential 30 minute commute (even if you live downtown already) and some 2 hours of checking, yes. Only 1.25 hours.

>there's going to be similar issues at the train station I suppose it will vary on popularity, but train parking lots tend to be relatively empty compared to navigating LAX and the lag time of the worst case scenario of "buying a new train pass" was 10 minutes, after maybe a 5 minute walk from parking lot to station.

Airlines are simply too politically charged to ever be more efficient than a potential high speed rail. Even if it takes an extra hour, it's a time save taking the train.
by throwanem | 2025-04-29 04:35:09+00:00
I no longer do HIIT of any type, but do frequently leave my couch and indeed my home. I wear a smartwatch that reads pretty close to my real heart rate and is, if not ideally accurate, then at least sufficiently precise. More than that these days would be wasted on me. But I appreciate your motivation in commenting, and confide many here might benefit by your good effort.
by simonw | 2025-04-29 04:39:16+00:00
As is now traditional for new LLM releases, I used Qwen 3 (32B, run via Ollama on a Mac) to summarize this Hacker News conversation about itself - run at the point when it hit 112 comments.

The results were kind of fascinating, because it appeared to confuse my system prompt telling it to summarize the conversation with the various questions asked in the post itself, which it tried to answer.

I don't think it did a great job of the task, but it's still interesting to see its "thinking" process here: https://gist.github.com/simonw/313cec720dc4690b1520e5be3c944...
by Dylan16807 | 2025-04-29 04:39:59+00:00
> I mean if you are restarting the grid and say you have a segment you think has 5MW of load that will come online, but you connect it and a minute or two later suddenly 2MW of grid tied solar detects the grid and starts exporting and you now have 3MW of load it is going to make it much more tricky to balance the restart.

I really thought that sentence was going to end with "it makes it a lot easier to handle that segment".

Yeah you have some big problems if it's a complete surprise, but your status quo monitoring would have to be very strangely broken for it to be a complete surprise. Instead it should be a mild complicating factor while also being something that reduces your load a lot and lets you get things running quicker.
by coderenegade | 2025-04-29 04:40:06+00:00
This is cool, and something I've thought about a lot, as I'm pretty unhappy with the state of CAD on Linux. The world definitely needs another open source CAD kernel, and I was toying with making my own before I decided to pursue something else.

I think the problem of finding edges can be solved by stepping back and redefining primitives. One idea I had was defining them as a 2D sketch and a transformation function along a path. A sphere would be a 2D hemisphere that rotates as it moves along a circular trajectory, with the flat side staying in place, for example. A cube would be a square That moves along a vertical or horizontal path the distance of the sides. You get the idea.

The advantage of this type of representation is that edges can only ever be edges in the 2D shape, or the path traveled by vertices. The hard part is that when you do boolean operations using primitives, you probably want to go back and turn it into a primitive representation (2D shape, transformation along a path).
by ppet | 2025-04-29 04:41:36+00:00
Hi HN,

I’ve spent the past few months building Lumora, a purely web-based watermarking tool aimed at photographers and publishers who need to protect large sets of images fast.

Why it exists

Proof galleries kept getting reposted without credit, and most “batch” tools were desktop-only, capped at a few dozen files, or required Photoshop actions.

I wanted something that works on any device, from a phone to a Chromebook, with zero install and a predictable pay-as-you-go model.

What it does

Drag-drop bulk — toss in a folder of hundreds (or thousands) of JPG/PNG/WEBP files.

Text or logo watermarks — pick font/size/opacity or upload a transparent logo.

Preset styles — corner, edge banner, ghost-center, or full-frame grid.

Real-time preview — adjust once, see every change live.

Single ZIP download — original resolution or optional down-scale.

Business model

Free tier for small batches.

Paid plans unlock higher monthly image quotas and faster processing.

Credits reset each billing cycle; no surprise overages.

Looking for feedback on

Speed & UX – does the preview feel responsive on your machine?

Pricing fairness – do the free/paid limits make sense?

Edge cases – any file types or workflows you wish were supported?

Give it a spin (no login needed for up to 10 images): https://lumora.app

Thanks in advance for kicking the tires and letting me know where it falls short!

— Phillip
by Nition | 2025-04-29 04:42:27+00:00
I've noticed a current problem in Win 11 where if you start your PC with the monitor off, let it get to the login screen, then turn the monitor on, you get a terribly low-res version of your login window background. I suspect it's taking some fallback default resolution like 800x600 and serving up an "optimised" version of the background for that res, then not updating it.
by Lucasoato | 2025-04-29 04:42:58+00:00
I tried with the thinking option on and it gets into some networking errors, if you don’t turn on the thinking it guesses the answer correctly.

> Summary:

- Mirror shows: *Heads* → That's the *bottom face* of the coin. - So actual top face (visible when cup is removed): *Tails*

Final answer: *You will see tails.*
by m-schuetz | 2025-04-29 04:43:11+00:00
I find indices starting from zero much easier. Especially when index/pointer arithmetic is involved like converting between pixel or voxel indices and coordinates, or indexing in ring buffers. 1-based indexing is one of the reasons I eventuallz abandoned Mathematica, because it got way too cumbersome.

So the reason why you don't see many people fighting 0-indexing is because they actually prefer it.
by timewizard | 2025-04-29 04:43:53+00:00
Here's the text.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146...

I can't identify where EFFs concerns are coming from. There's a specific limitation of liability for online platforms and the entire process appears to be complaint driven and requires quite a bit of evidence from the complaintant.

What actually concerns me in this bill?

> (B) INVOLVING MINORS.—Except as provided in subparagraph (C), it shall be unlawful for any person, in interstate or foreign commerce, to use an interactive computer service to knowingly publish a digital forgery of an identifiable individual who is a minor with intent to—

> “(i) abuse, humiliate, harass, or degrade the minor; or

> “(ii) arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.

> “(C) EXCEPTIONS.—Subparagraphs (A) and (B) shall not apply to—

> “(i) a lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity of—

> “(I) a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State; or

> “(II) an intelligence agency of the United States;

Wut? Why do you need this? Are we the baddies?
by AStonesThrow | 2025-04-29 04:44:51+00:00
https://m.xkcd.com/2176/

When I signed up to tax preparation services on hrblock.com, their security process forced me to choose a username that was not my email address, didn't contain my name, etc. So I was compelled to use a quite unique one at that.

Also when setting up online banking, my credit union offered me the choice of any username, so I chose one that was atypical and looked more like a generic "someone at this place" login than something connected to me.

These days it can get a little crazy when you have a singular email address, and it's your account sign-in practically everywhere on the Web. Or you have a persistent persona or pseudonym that more or less is replicated everywhere you go.

I'm thankful for centralized identity services. By now I'm taking advantage of "Sign in With Google" and Facebook logins for most services. That makes the password manager's space much more manageable!
by im3w1l | 2025-04-29 04:45:19+00:00
You can state the argument formally as A has property B. Property B' implies property C. Hence A has property C. The fallacy is the sleight of hand where two almost but not quite identical properties B and B' are used, in this case two different defitions of theory, only one of which requires some ineffable mind consciousness.

It's important not to get caught up in a discussion about whether B or B' is the proper definition, but instead see that it's the inconsistency that is the issue.

LLM's build an internal representation that let's them efficiently and mostly successfully manipulate source code. Whether that internal representation is satisfies your criteria for a theory doesn't change that fact. What does matter to the highest degree however is where they succeed and where they fail, and how the representations and computing can improve the success rate and capabilities.
by m3047 | 2025-04-29 04:50:14+00:00
_The Pervert's (Lacanism) Guide to Computer Languages_: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZyvIHYn2zk or if you're old school or your father was a shrink you could use the Leary Wheel from his _Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality_.

That would change the dynamic. Some might object: "psychohistory!" What are we doing here anyway? And, what are we meant to be doing? Where is the "philosophy of computer science"?
by asciimov | 2025-04-29 04:50:16+00:00
2004 Lincoln Towncar. Recently replaced the intake manifold myself. Next is J-modding the transmission. Would like to replace gears with a different ratio for more power, but that will require taking it somewhere, not something I can do in my driveway.

Started my first garden this spring. Have several peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and a few herbs.

Looking into internships and new opportunities. Been out of the profession for along while and need find my way back in.
by bobthepanda | 2025-04-29 04:50:50+00:00
IIRC the last stretch in LA is actually planned to be new build with Palmdale to Los Angeles taking about twenty minutes.

Engineering is about optimizing and updating where you can. There aren't really high speed rail lines anywhere that go into the center of their major cities at full speed. In Europe and Japan the city-center sections are slower; China solved this problem mostly by having high speed trains skirt around built up areas.
by jasonjmcghee | 2025-04-29 04:52:07+00:00
I've been testing the unsloth quantization: Qwen3-235B-A22B-Q2_K_L

It is by far the best local model I've ever used. Very impressed so far.

Llama 4 was a massive disappointment, so I'm having a blast.

Claude Sonnet 3.7 is still better though.

---

Also very impressed with qwen3-30b-a3b - so fast for how smart it is (i am using the 0.6b for speculative decoding). very fun to use.

---

I'm finding that the models want to give over-simplified solutions, and I was initially disappointed, but I added some stuff about how technical solutions should be written in the system prompt and they are being faithful to it.
by lovich | 2025-04-29 04:52:07+00:00
I have interacted with you before and want to believe you but then I see comments in the same post like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43823412

> We got complaints about your use of the word "rabid" and I think they have a point. That crosses into name-calling in the sense that the HN guidelines ask you not to do.

> If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

This is in response to someone who is violating the rules on extremist/flame bait/trolling with a right wing bent. It appears that you were pointed out this comment based on the inclusion of the word “rabid”.

Now instead of coming in as a mod enforcing impartial rules, you’ve added words that give the tone that you are only admonishing this person because they got snitched on.

If I believed you were impartial then even if you were pointed out this instance of rule breaking by an impartial observer, I would still expect you to treat it in a neutral manner.

I understand after reading your links that I am probably falling to some sort of bias when I called you out on this particular, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone these days
by somenameforme | 2025-04-29 04:53:17+00:00
I'd never heard of this act [1], and the article frames it in a way that is not especially informative, though they have an excellent page on it here. [2] The law is being passed with complete unanimity in all houses (409-2 in the House, unanimous in the Senate), which is a rarity in modern times. Quoting the EFF as well as why they are opposed to it:

- "The takedown provision applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the bill. The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored."

So sexual or intimate themed memes which use realistic looking imagery may end up being able to be taken down. I also find myself disagreeing with the EFF here in spite of generally being a tremendous supporter of their work. In particular their main argument is that there are existing laws which work for this issue, without introducing new potentially abusable legislation:

- "If a deepfake is used for criminal purposes, then criminal laws will apply. If a deepfake is used to pressure someone to pay money to have it suppressed or destroyed, extortion laws would apply. For any situations in which deepfakes were used to harass, harassment laws apply. There is no need to make new, specific laws about deepfakes in either of these situations."

But I think on this issue one should not need to suffer some form of measurable loss or suffering to want intimate/sexual images removed from a site, let alone then having to go through the legal system and file a lawsuit to achieve such.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAKE_IT_DOWN_Act

[2] - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/congress-passes-take-i...
by skissane | 2025-04-29 04:55:56+00:00
Possibly depends on how big a firm it is and what kinds of customers it has - the bigger the firm, and the more sensitive the customers (big banks, government, military), the greater the odds of at least a pre-hire criminal record check

Also standard for any job working with vulnerable people (originally just minors, increasingly the elderly and disabled as well)-sometimes those checks are only for specified types of crimes, but the “types of crimes” included are broader than you think-e.g. assault is included (even if non-sexual and against another adult)
by nothrabannosir | 2025-04-29 04:56:09+00:00
<3

(Would it be pedantic of me to say that I receive my fair share of bug reports on nix code I maintain, and when someone sends me their entire nixosConfig the very first thing I do is punt it back with a "can you please create a minimal reproducible configuration"? :D but your point stands. I think. I like to think.)
by shpongled | 2025-04-29 04:57:14+00:00
I just googled "car fatalities [alcohol/distracted]" etc, and found either NHTSA or California statistics. All of them could be prevented using modern tech, but considering that we can't even get speed cameras socially/legally accepted I don't see it happening. We just don't have a culture of caring about this stuff in the US, despite >40,000 people dying each year due to traffic fatalities.

[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving [2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding [3] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving
by atoav | 2025-04-29 04:57:31+00:00
I really like reveal.js, you can use all the modern web technologies in your slides and it provides you with all you need (including speaker notes).

Even if your presentation runs offline the browser is really good place for presentations to live at. E.g. I can include live circuit simulations on slides using circuit.js and if a student asks whst would happen to the output of a signal processing circuit if there was one more component I can just add it. If a question shows up that isn't in there I press ctrl + t and search for an image or a wikipedia article on the topic.

The only thing one has to think about is maybe to create a "clean" browser profile for presentations so your suggestions and personal things don't show up mid presentation.
by WatchDog | 2025-04-29 04:58:30+00:00
In the context of the original post, or in the context of talking about color depth in general?

In the context of the original post, it seems like Kate is just talking about 12 total colors, it's not 12 bit in any logical sense.

In the context of color depth sure, 12-bit color[0] would be 4 bits per channel.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth#12-bit_color
by alganet | 2025-04-29 04:58:31+00:00
We, from the future archeological department, noticed that what we previously thought as "news" was a muddy concept.

They were cultural pieces, barely informative. There was much debate amongst ourselves.

Many of us believed movies and songs were the true representations of what happened in the past, whilst others insisted that newspapers and news outlets were more appropriate.

It took some time to convince the most skeptical that some period pieces, like movies set on past events, were actually talking about moments prior to their launch, not the intended period depicted.

The literalists, who believed everything was shallow, eventually had to admit they barely knew what was going on. Even the most radical ones started to lean in favor of our more ample perspective that considered many points of view at once.

And we had success in the ample approach for a long time. Until the macro-coincidences started to happen.

Thanks to a few unprepared saboteurs, we noticed a highly statistical discrepancy of events that did not match a selection of trusted sources. Those saboteurs were pivotal in revealing that the volume of information is irrelevant, and humanity has acquired the tools for lying to the future. Those tools were thoroughly examined and from them we started to establish the trusted sources and properly reconstruct the history of our ancestors.

It was a hard, arduous job. But it payed off. We eventually got rid of all noise and established communications across time again, reclaiming much of the cultural heritage that was lost.

These "forensic fandoms" you mention were in our radar for a while. Their conception, dissemination and methods were cross examined many times. We considered them to be mostly neutral (in aggregate), and we were sad when they were gone.

There were many different categories of it, eventually all extinct and replaced by a statistics based reaction system of little value to us.
by dustincoates | 2025-04-29 04:58:47+00:00
I get that it's popular to slag on Duolingo, especially in language-learning communities, but Duolingo is great for getting people started.

I'm fluent in French and immigrated here about a decade ago, and I wouldn't have done that if not for Duolingo. It didn't get me anywhere close to fluent itself (Assimil was the single best resource, but no one resource can you get you to fluent), but it got me started and it got me committed. For that, I'm grateful.
by Seb-C | 2025-04-29 04:58:56+00:00
I'm working on a universal tool to create and print custom dust jackets.

I like collecting books and have lots of series, but editions and cover/spine designs changes all the time for no good reason. Especially for long series it's near-impossible to get a collection with consistent styles, which I find frustrating. And when buying rare or old second-hand books online, it's even worse.

The app will allow you to enter your book information (title, author, size, summary...), then choose the design/layout. You will then have the option to print it by yourself (for free - if you can find a big enough printer) or get it printed by a professional.
by shmerl | 2025-04-29 04:59:05+00:00
Rust is just an example in this case, not essential to the point. If someone will evolve LLM to work with Rust better, it will still be mediocre at something else, and using this as an excuse to avoid it is problematic in itself, that's what I'm saying.

Basically, learn Rust based on whether it's helping solve your issues better, not on whether some LLM is useless or not useless in this case.
by abhisek | 2025-04-29 04:59:14+00:00
Kudos to you for writing such a long ordeal in a humorous manner or at least that’s what I felt while reading it.

On topic, it’s probably another example of why scaling a system is so hard. Especially when it comes to tasks that require deep thinking. I can’t help but notice the government policy of sponsoring mass PhDs in the hope of raising a knowledge based society is itself changing the definition of knowledge here.
by holameraj | 2025-04-29 04:59:24+00:00
I’ve always found market research tedious not in theory, but in practice. Finding where users actually talk, what they’re asking for, and tracking competitors took hours of sifting through forums, social media, and niche communities. Tired of doing it manually, I built a tool that automates the process, digging deep into corners of the web I wouldn’t have thought to check. It tracks real user requests, identifies relevant communities, and even provides insights on competitors. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s already saving me a ton of time and easily replacing what would have cost $10k to hire someone to do manually. If you're struggling with this too, I set up a simple waitlist page here: https://tinyresearcher.space/