MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by DeepSeaTortoise | 2025-04-04 12:10:27+00:00
It only has been a "norm" for a few thousand years during the agricultural era for the poorest of the poor, who could neither obtain hunting privileges, afford to keep their own animals, had no access to food, work or communal programs, which provided them with some meat, or there were significant famines which made the culling of livestock necessary.

Beyond that I'd argue we should strive to minimize class-based access restrictions to food rather than artificaly enforce them.
by johnwatson11218 | 2025-04-04 12:10:40+00:00
I was working with deepseek to distill my thoughts on this and the best quote was " This resembles a lossy compression of software, where the "loss" is non-essential complexity.".

"literate programming meets LLMs"—where the goal isn’t just fewer lines, but denser meaning. If you’re experimenting with it, start small: try distilling a single function with GPT-4 + human review, and see if the result feels correct but simpler. In other words LLM assisted code refactoring for compression and clarity is the way to resolve the argument between 'more' or 'less' code in general.
by sevensor | 2025-04-04 12:11:19+00:00
My teaching lab was for undergraduates who were etching oxide off of silicon wafers in a big old tub of hf. We’d have them wear a big thick apron and massive gloves; this is not an occasion requiring dexterity, and it’s one with a high potential for inadvertent splashes. We never had an exposure in the years I was there, although a grad student in a research lab got careless and took a cold, rusty shower.
by thih9 | 2025-04-04 12:11:53+00:00
> You know what I’m talking about, even though I’ve not mentioned it.

Many comments here assume the "it" means AI. Is that certain though? As in: is there a line that without doubt would point to AI?

In my view this text could just as well be about the iPhone (written 15 years ago and published today).

Perhaps this makes "it" even more boring; i.e. that when the process ends with one "it", it starts again with a new one.
by resource_waste | 2025-04-04 12:12:06+00:00
Things I've ran into on Windows 11. (Dont @ me that 'I don't have that problem', I do)

>The colors can conflict between dark mode and deafult OS to the point you cannot see text

>There are clickbait news stories that cannot be turned off

>Onedrive will fill up with data and bother you about being full

>For some reason, some programs will not display despite clicking on them. You must minimize the program infront of them

>There is no switch user button

>I was unable to figure out how to add a password to an account

>Ads are on by default

What I find amazing is that corporate professional computers have literal ads on them. I have a fortune 20 job and I have ads on my computer. These ads are for competitor products, for politics, and sports.

Anyway, LPT: For a personal OS, Fedora. Literally higher quality than Windows. Shockingly higher quality, I was a bit frustrated that I didn't know about fedora sooner. I don't consider Fedora 'Linux', because Linux has a bad reputation with things like Debian/Ubuntu/Mint that are 2+ years outdated out of the box. Fedora is different. I have a windows computer for legacy software like Adobe and CAD, but those are only used when doing work. Sometimes I have an old video game that needs windows.
by terhechte | 2025-04-04 12:12:35+00:00
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

-- Douglas Adams

Let me guess your age.
by eimrine | 2025-04-04 12:13:03+00:00
"AI" bs generator is not just the code, it is not reproducible without the training set.

Also the "AI" software is not something that is not possible to use on machine with 100% open-sourced environment: the newest CPU supporting open-source BIOS is 3rd generation of Intel and such an ancient hardware is not able to run it.

So, that kind of LGPB+/Climate Justice/with using artificial intelligence disservices being forced to people are very not open-source. Indeed they are very commercialized.
by ludston | 2025-04-04 12:13:59+00:00
I don't know how to explain that the feeling of solving a puzzle is a "rush of power". If it weren't, you'd be equally happy fiddling with a pile of puzzle pieces and making no attempt to solve it as you were to searching for a solution.

There isn't anything inherently unethical about enjoying power, but neither is it in any way virtuous.
by resource_waste | 2025-04-04 12:14:01+00:00
>Blocks have always been a popular toy with children.

Yes!!!

I've recommended to my adult friends to play minecraft for at least ~5-10 minutes before they die.

There is something amazing about being able to dig wherever, build whatever, etc... There is a sort of freedom that I never had with blocks.

I am not telling these people to kill the ender dragon, but rather, play.
by BjoernKW | 2025-04-04 12:14:16+00:00
> That's quite opinionated.

That's just a perspective from reality, where people are doing business rather than contriving impractical regulations out of thin air .

> GDPR is not that bad. It has downsides but it is not overly complex.

It might seem simple to consumers or politicians who claim they could implement it in a day, but it is highly complex once you have to implement it as a small or medium-sized business.

> Companies (including cloud services) have to comply if they want to have business in Europe

Large corporations - i.e. the supposed target of that regulation - scoff at GDPR. They have legal departments and the funds necessary to deal with GDPR however they see fit, while small and medium-sized business bear the brunt.
by crabbone | 2025-04-04 12:15:09+00:00
I treat this expression as Ayenbite of Inwit. When I use it (because I'm super pretentious) I don't mean the book itself or the saner English version of the title "Remorse of Conscience". I mean it as a parody of the later. Like, when someone comes up with a contrived blame for wrongdoing that either didn't happen or was so minor that it doesn't warrant the discussion.

I don't think author means "best minds" literally. I think they mean it ironically, more like "those who are most eager to perform the task assigned to them".

But maybe I'm saying the obvious. Irony is admittedly hard to translate into writing.
by DrScientist | 2025-04-04 12:15:21+00:00
About 1/8 of global deaths are due to some sort of bacterial infection, pretty close behind cancer ( 1/6 ).

However for children the number that die of infection in the UK is double that of cancer deaths - ( ~15% versus ~7% ) - and that's in an advanced economy.

Infection is a big problem.

In terms of barriers to making treatments - yes in part there is a problem with the right financial incentives - but it's not the only problem - finding molecules that simultaneously kill bacteria, won't be rapidly evolved around, and are safe to take isn't that easy. Then you have the problem of selectivity between bacteria - how many different sorts will it work with - 'good' verus 'bad' bacteria etc. Then you have the problem of being able to make the molecule at scale etc.

The good news is there is a constant bacteria on bacteria, fungus on bacteria chemical war going on - hence the paper.
by yorwba | 2025-04-04 12:17:20+00:00
NIST says "in general NIST’s measurements are accurate to within 2% to 5% for nutrient elements (such as sodium, calcium and potassium), macronutrients (fats, proteins and carbohydrates), amino acids and fatty acids. Its measurements are accurate to within 5% to 10% for water-soluble vitamins (such as vitamin C) and 10% to 15% for fat-soluble vitamins (such as vitamin D)." https://www.nist.gov/how-do-you-measure-it/how-do-you-know-y...

Maybe there's something where they're off by 30%, but how many people even track how much vitamin D they get from food?
by johnisgood | 2025-04-04 12:18:00+00:00
For debloating Windows 10 - 11:

https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools

Other than that, I do recommend Linux (mainstream ones are easy to install), for sure. I have been using it ever since I was 13 years old if not younger.
by lm28469 | 2025-04-04 12:18:30+00:00
> Someone said something cool once hence it's valid ad vitam aeternam and can be used as an argument in a discussion.

Mass automatised eugenics robots ? Well if you don't like it you must be a boomer.

Brain implants that are controlled by your employer and can literally kill you on the push of a button if you don't follow the rules ? What ? you don't like it ? You dumb luddite

Between that and the "TeChNoLoGy iS JuSt a ToOl, a HaMmEr Is NeItHeR gOoD nOr BaD" people...
by petercooper | 2025-04-04 12:18:34+00:00
Plus ça change. Any jump forward leads to a sentiment of neo-luddism among some group or another (I can't deny I felt a twinge of it around the NFT fever). If the latest group wants to actually effect change, maybe they need a movement and a Ned Ludd type character to get behind. As someone who is unashamedly pro-AI, I think it's healthy to have some to-and-fro and dissenting voices, because these are really big issues we're dealing with.
by FollowingTheDao | 2025-04-04 12:18:43+00:00
"This study was funded in part by the International Coalition of Headphone Manufactures."

But seriously, "Music as a social surrogate"? How is this good? What we need is to fix the social structure, not find out ways to compensate for the miserable state we are in.

From https://www.utica.edu/college-community/utica-stories/fillin...

"In terms of social needs, we have a social fuel tank. This tank helps us understand if we are able to get to our destination—the destination being positive mental health outcomes, like feeling satisfied with our lives, having positive self-image, and feeling accepted by others. The problem is that past measures used in psychology research only tell us how much fuel is in the tank—not what types of fuel are in the tank, or how much of each type of fuel is in there.

In this study, the measure that I created helps researchers understand what types of fuel are in the tank, and how much of each type of fuel is in the tank, that is leading to those outcomes. It gives us a better idea of what is going on to help people get those positive outcomes."
by zdragnar | 2025-04-04 12:18:54+00:00
To use a counter example, consider Catholic priests who do not marry or raise children. It would be quite the argument indeed to suggest their lives are without meaning or purpose.

Aha, you might say, but they hold leadership roles! They have positions of authority! Of course they have meaning, as they wield spiritual responsibility to their community as a fine substitute for the family life they will not have.

To that, I suggest looking deeper, at the nuns and monks. To a cynical non-believer, they surely are wanting for a point to their existence, but to them, what they do is a step beyond Maslow's self actualization, for they live in communion with God and the saints. Their medications and good works in the community are all expressions of that purpose, not the other way around. In short, though their "graph of contextual meaning" doesn't spread as far, it is very densely packed indeed.

Two final thoughts:

1) I am both aware of and deeply amused by the use of priests and nuns and monks to defend the arguments of a nihilist's search for meaning.

2) I didn't bring this up so much to take the conversation off topic, so much as to hone in on the very heart of what troubled the person I originally responded to. The question of purpose, the point of existence, in the face of superhuman AI is in fact unchanged. The sense of meaning and purpose one finds in life is found not in the eyes of an unfeeling observer, whether the observers are robots or humans. It must come from within.
by lolinder | 2025-04-04 12:19:17+00:00
> empathy isn't useful to society ... Having empathy will actively hurt your own life

Even if I accepted the second statement (which to be clear, I absolutely do not), it doesn't follow that empathy isn't useful to society. Society is not benefited by everyone running about chasing their own personal success to the exclusion of all others: that kind of world isn't even called a society. We have other names for that and they're less positive.
by martindbp | 2025-04-04 12:19:25+00:00
I've noticed something about people's reaction to AI. People who view themselves mainly as engineers or craftsmen are threatened by AI, understandably. People who just want to make cool stuff, solve real problems or just have fun are not threatened, but love it.

And I get it, an expert furniture craftsman will not have respect for IKEA furniture, and that's fine. But it means I can affordably furnish a new apartment for $2k instead of $20k. Of course it's even more threatening because there is the risk that the AI will actually do a better job in the future. But people still play Chess and have fun with that, and people enjoy watching Magnus Carlsen play even though he can't beat the AI on a phone.

In the end, we will all have to adapt, and for your own sake I don't think it helps putting your head in the sand and being bitter. Instead of being bitter, try thinking about all the cool stuff you can make now as a one person team.
by netsharc | 2025-04-04 12:20:05+00:00
Recently I went on a trip with a group. Lots of videos and drone footage. Gigabytes of data. The group leader got a 100GB Google Drive space. But if I upload my stuff into it, my stuff doesn't take his 100 GB, but counts against my quota, unless I modify the files to say that $GROUP_LEADER now owns those files.

Well, whatever. I try to download his videos from the web UI. Select all files in directory, wait about 20 seconds, download zip, wait another 20 seconds, finally the file download dialog shows up. It gives me a 2.3GB zip file. I open it, it's just a few files and not the complete directory. It doesn't give me the contents of the whole directory, just files until it reaches 2.3GB, and then silently fails.

Great jaaab, Google!
by mschuster91 | 2025-04-04 12:20:12+00:00
> It seems like what you are looking for is a discussion about whether or not it it is ethical for bureaucrats and elected officials ought to circumvent or ignore their countries democratic processes and laws.

What was the saying, three felonies a day? Society doesn't work out when people behave like role models all day long, the economy would grind to a standstill. That's why you get stuff like "shadow IT" and whatnot. Processes tend to grow ("scope creep") and no one is interested in cutting the crap.
by stevenAthompson | 2025-04-04 12:20:26+00:00
What's wrong with the names? Personally, I love Microsoft 365. It just rolls off the tongue and is clearly more meaningful than a silly name like "Office." Who ever heard of an office? Why mess around with a single, familiar name when it can be long, ill-fitting, AND irrelevant all at once? I'm excited to try their next product Microsoft Copilot Professional 365 Enterprise For Workgroups (which I presume will be the name for notepad.exe in future releases).

I mean, some people say One Note is a silly name, but I like that you can look it up in the dictionary and it will tell you exactly what it is: Monotonous.
by placardloop | 2025-04-04 12:21:29+00:00
AI is really bringing out the worst in capitalist corporatism. I think even the most pessimistic AI doomer will agree that the technology is fascinating and can do some cool things, but our corporate overlords have made it such an all-encompassing topic that it’s hard not to be disillusioned by it.

Yes, it’s an interesting technology - but seeing other interesting technologies and projects get disinvested in because it’s not new shiny AI - or watching leaders insist on creating yet another chatbot just so they can pat themselves on the back - or replacing an already-working system with a half-broken AI one just so we can say we use AI, and then forcing everyone at the company to use it just so we can release a press release saying ‘all of our developers use AI’. Watching our overall quality of work decrease, but leaders celebrate it because “mediocre but done with AI” is gold standard now…

All of it feels like a sham. Feels like we’re trying too hard to prop up AI as amazing, rather than letting it succeed on its own merits.
by djtango | 2025-04-04 12:22:05+00:00
As someone who was gaming since the 90s I didn't understand streaming or long plays in the beginning but now I really appreciate long plays as they allow me to scratch an itch without getting too engrossed in a game. I find it a lot easier to pick up and put down a long play of a RPG than invest 30+ hours of time and thought into playing it.

For mechanistically intensive games it can be enjoying to watch masters play at a high level. Watching people win 1vs3 in Elden Ring or people do high level play in Monster Hunter or Devil May Cry is satisfying for someone who knows enough to appreciate the skill without having the time/desire in mastering frame specific inputs (I prefer directing that degree of focus to learning an instrument out of personal preference)

I initially discovered game streams because I find them perfect for falling asleep to lol
by lou1306 | 2025-04-04 12:22:09+00:00
> Was Gates especially proficient with code?

Well the article is obviously a biased source, but surely developing a) an ALTAIR emulator for PDP-10s (Allen) and b) a pretty much full-fledged BASIC interpreter that was exclusively tested on top of said emulator (Gates) in two months, in the 70s was not the kind of stuff an average coder would have done.
by lolinder | 2025-04-04 12:22:45+00:00
This reminds me of Bret Devereaux's series on Alexander III of Macedon and the meaning of "greatness" [0]:

> Only once we’ve stripped away the mythology and found the man can we then ask that key question: was Alexander truly great and if so, what does that say not about Alexander, but about our own conceptions of greatness?

"Great" and "best" are both just words, words whose definition is defined by us who use them.

[0] https://acoup.blog/2024/05/17/collections-on-the-reign-of-al...
by rishabh16 | 2025-04-04 12:23:04+00:00
Location: India

Remote: Yes, full-remote (5+ years)

Willing to relocate: No, but I can visit

Technologies: Product Management (marketplace, fintech), Growth Marketing (ecommerce)

Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1920g_elqcSAYFKSHnS3-vkw4...

Email: rishunk16@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishabh16/

Open to full-time, part-time & contract opportunities. Please reach out to rishabh@roasexpert.com
by arghwhat | 2025-04-04 12:23:09+00:00
The point of the app is to figure out the calories of a meal automatically by taking a photo.

Without knowing the amount of sugar, butter, oil, etc. is used in a dish, one cannot know if a dish is worth 250 kilocalories or 750 kilocalories.

If I need to manually fill in details of ingredients and amounts to get to the calories to be have an error margin of less than 100%, then the app is not useful and is at best misleading.
by YokoZar | 2025-04-04 12:23:20+00:00
Hidden behind all these words, the guy installs an air conditioner and then starts using it frequently and then complains that his energy usage is higher than before when he didn't have an air conditioner.

Using a heat pump in cooling + heating mode is not a drop-in replacement for a furnace like the author seems to imply, it's also an AC that comes along for the ride!
by llm_nerd | 2025-04-04 12:23:21+00:00
Many American tech leaders helped usher in a Trump presidency in the belief that he could be their strongman protecting them from meddling foreign governments: No more EU levying fines or China making demands, they thought, or else Donald would target them with punitive tariffs! They had the mob boss on their side and this was their time to trample the world.

Zuckerberg explicitly stated this in his Rogan interview.

Pretty funny how that turned out. American tech is going to be on a carousel of ass kickings. The fines and punitive measures are going to be coming at a torrential clip, and of course the US economy is going to be in for an extremely rough few years, and tech is the first thing that sees budget cuts. Quite aside from the entire industry being gut punched by the stupidest tariff regime in human history.

Art of the Deal
by snowwrestler | 2025-04-04 12:24:05+00:00
American sovereignty is a matter of geography, firepower, culture, and law. It’s not easy to threaten.

And private trade deficits are not balanced by sovereign debt, they are balanced by private debt and foreign direct investment, which don’t threaten sovereignty.

The 1990s U.S. reaction to Japanese business success was primarily driven by popular xenophobia, not economic analysis. It was resolved by the dotcom bubble, an explosion of American innovation that changed the conversation. Not by government policy.
by GolfPopper | 2025-04-04 12:24:08+00:00
And a reason people are getting ticked at the AI companies is the hypocrisy. They're near-universally arguing that it's okay for them to treat copyright in a way that it is illegal for us to, apparently on the basis of, "we've got a billions in investment capital, and applying the law equally will make it hard for us to get a return on that investment".
by rishabh16 | 2025-04-04 12:25:21+00:00
SEEKING WORK | ASIA | GLOBAL REMOTE

Remote: Yes, full-remote (5+ years)

Willing to relocate: No, but I can visit

Technologies: Product Management (marketplace, fintech), Growth Marketing (e-commerce)

Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1920g_elqcSAYFKSHnS3-vkw4...

Email: rishunk16@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishabh16/

Open to full-time, part-time & contract opportunities. Please reach out to rishabh@roasexpert.com
by wheybags | 2025-04-04 12:25:34+00:00
One (admittedly obscure) reason is the way rdp handles smart cards. It cancels any locally connected devices and forwards the client's instead. Which is a problem if the whole point of the machine you're connecting to is that it has a USB token attached to it with your codesigning keys on it. That one took quite a lot of swearing to figure out :p

We now use this exact setup to get around that (tightvnc + tailscale)
by Artoooooor | 2025-04-04 12:26:02+00:00
I hate when I rely on others following the rules and they screw me over by breaking them. We had "focus hours" at work. They would have been amazing if not for some special individuals that decide it's OK to waste my 15 minutes to save their 10. Now we don't have focus hours. Or we should document everything on wiki. But why do it when better "documentation" is "ask A". And A is on vacation. That's why I despise rule breakers, they almost always make someone's life worse. And that someone else follows the rules. Rules should be for everybody or nobody.
by alabastervlog | 2025-04-04 12:26:44+00:00
Then you missed the $8,200 water heater. And that they needed a loan to buy all this stuff they didn’t need. And replacing a 2-year-old furnace.

I didn’t get to the part where (presumably, as they mention cooking with gas) they replace the stove, couldn’t take the poor financial choices and waste any more.
by lolinder | 2025-04-04 12:26:57+00:00
> building this mental model of an unempathetic society

No, it's not about mental models, it's that what you're describing is, at the limit, no longer a society at all. You need a different word for the kind of Randian endgame you're advocating for. Using "society" for it is just confusing things for everyone involved.