MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by spwa4 | 2025-05-10 15:50:27+00:00
I guess the question is how close European scientist wages are to "some salary amount", where you no longer have money troubles. I would say that in Europe that's something like 80k euros per year.

How much does, say, a starting research assistant get in France? 28,600. To add insult to injury, you get excluded from both of the major social benefits in France: you don't build up pension, you don't get medical coverage (or "you stay on your parents insurance" if you prefer. I'm not sure, but that isn't free for your parents). You are still classified as a student, until you get a professorship (maybe 3% eventually get a professorship). Also, you're excluded from other social services: if you try to claim unemployment or "existence minimum" support, the state will demand you quit research. A lot of "independent" (read: Catholic) universities support researchers from their own money, with free housing or the like, because they have to. Frankly, the Catholic church is STILL a big reason there is serious scientific research in Europe, frankly bigger than state support.

To put it bluntly, university wages in Europe need to more than triple (MORE than a 300% raise) before we start talking about "a salary hit" compared to the US. Research in Europe is a job you take to bridge the gap between finishing university and finding a job then abandon when you get a job (like Yann Lecun did. And no he didn't abandon his PhD for his current job, but for a beginner job at Bell Labs). Staying in research when you find an industry job is financial lunacy. Only the job of professor is somewhat decently paid, but perhaps you should visit Silicon Valley: there's plenty of people who quit a postdoc (midway through) to join US industry (for example, Yann Lecun), or even a professorship, like Jürgen Schmidhuber (he's back to professor, he has a reputation for being very hard to work with)

What people are saying here is that the investment the EU is making is barely 1% of what is required to fix the situation of scientists in the EU. I think, with this investment (with 10x this investment too btw) the EU brain drain TOWARDS the US will continue, Trump or no Trump. It won't even slow.

This is a joke, and these politicians should be ridiculed for making this absurd "gesture".

And yes, I'm frustrated about this. A career in research, like so many have in the US, is absolutely impossible unless you're born rich in Europe.
by r0m4n0 | 2025-05-10 15:50:37+00:00
As others have pointed out, YC is definitely trying to get some of that Google money. Another important aspect that benefits YC is a turn of events that would improve the talent pool. Google retains tens of thousands of software engineers, I’d argue maybe the biggest reserve in existence. It’s the largest population of experienced engineers that won’t leave because the money and circumstances are too good. Startups would benefit if these circumstances changed
by tzs | 2025-05-10 15:50:51+00:00
I have no idea. Support is probably important to a lot of companies, but IBM sells support for OpenJDK. A quick search says that IBM's support can be bought per virtual core or per user so unless the per user or per core price is completely ridiculous should have a lot of money for big companies over Oracle's new per employee model.

My guess is we'll find out if there is really a good reason to stick with Java, because surely there were be a few big customers who will try to switch to someone else for support like IBM or will try to switch to some community supported OpenJDK based Java.
by ayewo | 2025-05-10 15:50:57+00:00
> There are many other search engine options, why should Google be punished for hiring the best people over decades to make the best one?

I’m guessing this whole court case wouldn’t have been a thing if Google wasn’t bribing Apple, to the tune of $20 billion a year [1], to remain the default search engine on iOS.

1: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/apple-may-add-ai-search-...
by mock-possum | 2025-05-10 15:51:02+00:00
> One obvious example where it falls laughably short is in interpersonal relationships. Trying to logic your way out of an emotional conflict just does not work

This is awfully glib for something that rings so wrong for me - logic not useful in emotional conflict?? Emotional conflict itself stems from emotion! How could taking a step back and trying to look at things logically not be productive?

In my experience, one of the only things that can safely navigate conflict, whether emotional or otherwise, is logic - your challenge is to actually be disciplined enough to apply it in stressful situations - and/or to be willing to leave the matter unsettled until you’ve had time to cool down and can afford the luxury of looking at things more practically.

I suspect we’re using the same words to mean different things because I can’t imagine not being able to logic your way out of emotional conflict, I can’t imagine any other route being viable apart from logic - I think the root cause of emotional conflict is getting overwhelmed by feelings and neglecting to think.
by mzajc | 2025-05-10 15:51:39+00:00
From their FAQ

> Can I visit the archive?

> The archive is for everyone, and we welcome all inquiries. However, we prioritize requests that support gaming culture, gaming history, and the games industry. /../ While the archive is not open to the public, we hope /../

The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public... Yikes.

I'd much rather support initiatives that actually make the games and software required to run them open to the public, like GOG.com and Internet Archive. This feels like a one-way transaction - society puts games in, society gets nothing back.
by qwertox | 2025-05-10 15:52:07+00:00
Surprising to see that you don't know who made this page. When I saw it I wanted to know who was behind this, so I found "© 2025 Lightricks. All rights reserved." at the end of the page, where Google led me to lightricks.com. I had my bets on a Chinese company, but I was wrong.

I am surprised that it can run on consumer hardware.
by GuB-42 | 2025-05-10 15:52:49+00:00
An audio CD is a very inefficient way of storing information.

I think a more apt comparison would be that of a LLM of that size. qwen:0.5b is about 400MB, its abilities are laughable compared to the likes of ChatGPT, but it can write coherently about general topics. For instance.

>>> why would people be altruistic People are likely to be altruistic because they believe that helping others is better for everyone involved. People may also believe in the power of compassion and empathy towards others, which can contribute to greater altruism. Overall, people are likely to be altruistic because they believe that helping others is better for everyone involved.

It is not a statement about LLMs, more about what you can achieve with "just" 400MB for storage. The other similarity is that LLMs are also "messy", if you want to see the results of finely crafted work in a really small amount of space, look at what sizecoders can do with a few kB of code or less.
by ajmurmann | 2025-05-10 15:53:18+00:00
It's also that you might have a better idea of events that couldn't have been foreseen at the time. Maybe working hard didn't pay off because you lost much of the savings in a bad investment or a bad divorce anyways. Maybe you could have done with fewer savings because of a larger than expected instance or stock reward. Or maybe the fruits of some efforts never materialized anyways. With the information available at the time the decisions might still have been the correct ones.
by mtillman | 2025-05-10 15:53:42+00:00
According to Kernighan in UNIX: A History and a Memoir, the Unix team was constrained with regards to hardware capital at the time of Unix's creation. The Multics team got to use a fancy GE-645 (36-bits!) while the Unix team had to beg for "cheaper" systems like the PDP-7 and eventually an 11. Thompson has a great quote about how ultimately he was thankful they didn't have as much money to play with as the Multics team did but at the time he was annoyed he had to beg for a PDP-11. Fun book!
by mfcmatheus | 2025-05-10 15:53:51+00:00
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by emptysongglass | 2025-05-10 15:54:33+00:00
I was a user. They're not baseless accusations, they're statements of technical fact and a statement of ethical belief. I don't believe it's right to deny users (including non-business users like myself) a capability that costs peanuts to run as a strong-arming tactic to get them to pay. I know exactly what I'm critiquing and why.

I'm not going to source-build and force a community of folks to source-build an APK to access an essential technical capability of a messaging app. Zulip is essentially rendered as useless in such a case. That is wrong and unethical.
by ViktorRay | 2025-05-10 15:55:35+00:00
But when AT&T had a monopoly it funded Bell Labs which was responsible for much innovation.

Then AT&T was shut down and Bell Labs went away.

If we take your argument seriously then AT&T shouldn’t have been dismantled. But it was a good thing AT&T was dismantled. It helped lead to the modern internet.

By your logic all Rockefeller had to do in the early 20th century was set up a lab to do basic research and then Standard Oil wouldn’t have been broken up.

Monopolies should be broken up. This is true regardless of any basic research that they fund.
by bionhoward | 2025-05-10 15:56:00+00:00
Isn’t Microsoft also a trillion dollar corporation? If we add their 39% market share in foundation models (likely due to enterprise use of Azure OpenAI Service) to OpenAI’s 9% market share, the result is around 48% market share, compared to Google’s 15%, which is less than half of the MSFT/OAI pair…not to mention a cursory comparison of Gemini vs ChatGPT apps.

Just because OpenAI isn’t in “extraction mode” yet doesn’t mean it’s not a scary monopoly.

Source, figure 2 in: [1] https://iot-analytics.com/leading-generative-ai-companies/
by ricardobeat | 2025-05-10 15:56:27+00:00
What is "it" though? It's hard to figure out from any of the About page, Design, or the README [1, 2, 3].

Only when getting to the Architecture [4] section much later in the docs, it starts mentioning ActivityPub, but still no useful description of the project - "an unusual piece of software" is the only provided bit. Is it a framework, a new protocol, a network? Looks like the former - an application to write ActivityPub based software, but I'm only 50% sure.

[1] https://bonfirenetworks.org/about/

[2] https://bonfirenetworks.org/design/

[3] https://docs.bonfirenetworks.org/readme.html

[4] https://docs.bonfirenetworks.org/architecture.html
by WalterBright | 2025-05-10 15:56:29+00:00
As I get older, I know that I have less time. I don't do things that have a payoff time that is past my expected passing.

For example, going to college for 4 years to get a physics degree doesn't make much sense at my age, because there's not much time left for the payoff.

Starting an investment program that won't pay off for decades doesn't make sense at my age, either.

When you're a kid, the returns on investing and education have much bigger payoffs over the many more decades to make use of them.
by nick__m | 2025-05-10 15:57:41+00:00
That BufferedReader constructors is not supposed to throw, unless the reader is null or you're out of memory. If your out of memory you should probably abort the program execution because the difficulty of correctly recovering from an OOM exception is between hard and impossible.

Edit: Disregard the above, it was too naive.

It cannot leak because of a stronger warranty. In the JLS, it is specified that the try-with-resources track successfull initialisation of AutoClosable resources, not successful assignation. So one try with resources can desugar into the logical equivalent of multiple nested try-catch-finally !
by dllthomas | 2025-05-10 15:58:43+00:00
Perhaps Devil's advocate, but my rebuttal would be that we're not necessarily comparing similar gains to correctness as to optimisation, and that perhaps the correctness gains can be better attained another way where the optimisation gains cannot.

(Personally I find a type checker tremendously valuable for communicating with myself - and my team, I suppose - about assumptions being made in other parts of the program, which can probably be accounted "correctness".)
by Demiurge | 2025-05-10 15:58:50+00:00
I've always wondered, how do some smart companies, or smart film directors, or smart musicians can fail so hard? I understand that, sometimes, it's a matter of someone abusing a project for personal gain. Some CEOs, workers just want to pitch, pocket the money, and move on, but the level of absurdity of some of the decisions made are counter-productive the 'get rich quick' scheme too. I think there are self perpetuating echo chamber self dellusions. Perhaps this is why an outside perspective can see the painfully obvious. This is probably why having some churn with the outside world, and also understanding what is the periphery of the outside, unbiased opinion is, is very important.
by trehalose | 2025-05-10 15:59:25+00:00
> The total number of lines of code is relevant, sure, but for most practical purposes, compile times and binary sizes are more important.

Perhaps for most practical purposes, but not for security, which the article's author seems more concerned with:

> Out of curiosity I ran toeki a tool for counting lines of code, and found a staggering 3.6 million lines of rust... How could I ever audit all of that code?

Tree-shaking can't help with that.
by OtherShrezzing | 2025-05-10 15:59:38+00:00
Is this not a bit "tail wagging the dog" thinking? There wasn't much innovation in telecommunications once Bell's monopoly was entrenched. Once it dissipated, innovation was everywhere in the space. Similarly, computers had less innovation while IBM was a monopoly than they've had since its monopoly dissipated.

Though both companies created novel & useful inventions, the biggest shifts in those industries during those monopoly eras were from outside those organisations by competitive startups. As an example, IBM should have produced Microsoft, but they didn't. They missed out on a multi-trillion dollar value creation opportunity as a result.
by jhbadger | 2025-05-10 15:59:42+00:00
The point is (as a US scientist who has lived and worked in another country, although not Denmark), the issue isn't just whether they can but whether they do. In my experience, while English is often the language of science itself in formal settings, people naturally chat among themselves in their native language and if you don't know it, you will be socially isolated, even if they switch to English when talking directly to you.
by cryptonector | 2025-05-10 15:59:48+00:00
> Big things you use off-the-shelf libraries for.

I should have added: "and for obvious reasons".

Didn't computer science hype up code reuse for decades before it finally started happening on a massive scale? For that to actually happen we needed programming languages with nice namespaces and packaging and distribution channels. C was never going to have the library ecosystem that Java, C++, and Rust have. Now that we're there suddenly we have a very worrisome supply chain issue, with major Reflections on Trusting Trust vibes. What to do? We can't all afford to open-code everything, so we won't, but I recommend that we open-code all the _small_ things, especially in big projects and big libraries. Well, or maybe the AI revolution will save us.
by bell-cot | 2025-05-10 16:00:13+00:00
+1 to "far-fetched" for claims that his sexuality is an interpretative key.

I'm ambivalent on his actual sexual interest in men. Wikipedia concludes that direct evidence is nonexistent. "In private correspondence" doesn't somehow force the baring of his true soul. And the article notes his propensity to burn manuscripts and letters - so his preserving so much evidence of an actual dire (by standards of the time) character flaw seem pretty dubious.

Yes, obviously his family wanted to prevent scandal. But that'd be true whether or not the scandal had any basis in fact.
by lolinder | 2025-05-10 16:00:16+00:00
> seems much less anti-competitive by nature

It seems much less, but I don't believe it is much less anticompetitive. We're talking about the search market specifically in this case, and the government has presented strong evidence that Google is:

* Using its position in other markets (browser, mobile) to ensure that others can't compete in search.

* Paying the major other vendors in those markets (browser, mobile) enormous sums of money to ensure that ~100% of the market share in both markets is used to prop up their lead in search.

Both of these things are pretty blatantly anticompetitive: they're competing not primarily based on the quality of their product offering but instead based on their pre-existing revenue streams and their leads in other markets.
by steveBK123 | 2025-05-10 16:00:25+00:00
This line of argument to defend monopolies is the same line of argument against progressive taxation of high incomes. Just because those with trends excess use some small fraction of that excess to do good does not justify the means.

I have been close enough to billionaires and how they spend their money to not be fully impressed by such arguments.

And certainly the robber barons of the 2000s spend far less on the public good than when tax rates were higher and they used to fund universities, libraries, hospitals and the like.
Show HN: MiniLMs – A website-repo for tiny language models and learning resource
by kuberwastaken | 2025-05-10 16:01:32+00:00
I've been tinkering with how small language models can be while still doing something interesting. This led me to create MiniLMs: a website and open-source repository where I'm experimenting with minimalist LLM architectures and sharing my learning process.

The current main focus is "SYNEVA," a small Markov chain chatbot I worked on – some with pattern matching to simple neural nets, always aiming for a tiny <3kb footprint. You can try it (and some older versions) on the site.

The project also includes: Study resources I'm gathering on NNs, LLMs, and AI history. the current models are HTML/JS. Definitely a learning-in-public kind of thing.

Website & Demos: https://minilms.kuber.studio/ GitHub Repository (MIT License): https://github.com/Kuberwastaken/MiniLMs-PROJECT

Curious to hear your thoughts or any cool tiny AI projects you've seen or want to see.
by anthk | 2025-05-10 16:01:35+00:00
Yes, I agree that my answer was childish; but I was fed up, sorry. I'm tired of people taking myths as a source of events. Just imagine if we do the same with the Graeco-Roman myths, or the Egyptian ones. Everyone would talk about that as pure nonsense. And yet, with the Bible it's somehow dealt as if it were the Elements from Euclid but for the Ancient times, were in truth it belongs to the same cathegory as the Illiad or Beowulf.
by ajmurmann | 2025-05-10 16:02:00+00:00
These types of examples IMO show how good we have it now. The worst thing we can say about the job is that it feels meaningless. A subsistence farmer wouldn't have made the same argument about working the field. A 1900 miner wouldn't have made the same argument about getting dust lung in a mine.

We've reached a point that we can complain that our WORK doesn't provide meaning. It's an incredible luxury and we aren't when seeing that we have it.

Years ago I had a consulting gig where we ported a f2p game from iOS to Android. It was a rather tedious engagement and it was clear kids would spend their parents money on in-game crap to their parents surprise. We all felt bad about it. Meanwhile the office was kinda annoying because there was frequent fuseball and nerf battle noises. One day I looked around and realized that I was sitting in an ergonomic chair at an height-adjustable desk, drinking free water that was flown over the ocean from Italy so that I could consume it. At a similar age my grandpa fought in Stalingrad, spent time in a gulag and then became a poor subsistence farmer who worked odd jobs on the side. I was in heaven and didn't know it
by felineflock | 2025-05-10 16:02:11+00:00
YC should benefit most from an ecosystem where distribution channels (search, ads, etc) are not monopolized.

Startups ideally should compete on merit, not on whether they are eventually allowed access to Google’s platforms or get acquired. Startups can still exit via IPO, PE acquisition, cross-industry buyers or M&A.

From this POV, Google’s control over the adtech stack may be seen as gatekeeping digital advertising, which many YC companies rely on.
by kurikuri | 2025-05-10 16:02:21+00:00
> For example, going to college for 4 years to get a physics degree doesn’t make much sense at my age, because there’s not much time left for the payoff.

That is tragic! Learning more about things is fulfilling in and of itself. If your only concern is about growing the number, and you limit your choice to those which are within a time horizon that you can reap the result, then getting older becomes even more bleak than it is.
by morsecodist | 2025-05-10 16:02:22+00:00
It's always great to see someone post about something I think about a lot. Most people want to lead a happy life but that doesn't really help you navigate these time trade offs. Assuming your job makes you unhappy and you work super hard for 40 years and then retire and are having a great retirement and are loving life for 10 years you may say the hard work was worth it because current you is now only experiencing the benefits. But was it really worth it? Conversely, if you pursued a life of hedonism and in your later years are unhealthy and feeling a lack of meaning does that invalidate the happiness you felt earlier? I am not sure there is ever a clear answer to these questions. Most people accept some degree of short term sacrifice for longer term happiness but there is always some limit to what you are willing to go through today for a better life tomorrow.
by throwanem | 2025-05-10 16:02:32+00:00
"Invoking the power of the state?" Good heavens, they've only filed an amicus brief. "Begging the presently authorized tenant of a precisely defined and circumscribed aliquot of the delegated power of the state" would be a more accurate way to put it. I appreciate that's not as florid, nor as floridly serviceable to anyone else's interest in pursuing this conversation. As I said before, though...
by mock-possum | 2025-05-10 16:02:58+00:00
Reverse isms are just a more specific type of an ism - instead of being wielded by a privilege group against the historically marginalized, it’s the reverse.

I do agree that it’s unkind to treat those two isms differently, or to condone one while tolerating the other - but pretending that there’s not such thing as the ‘reverse’ case seems silly, when it’s so easy to define and easy to IRL.