MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by fidotron | 2025-05-17 13:51:03+00:00
Yeah, that whole era of things like the Jimmy Carr gameshows were honestly a sort of mass nastiness as entertainment.

This business where we're all supposed to be surprised by what Russell Brand was up to despite him being incredibly open about it at the time is the same thing: society wants to blame the highly visible individuals of that era but in truth it was the audience that wanted this stuff that were the problem.
by dcre | 2025-05-17 13:52:08+00:00
I took a version of this away from Sandi Metz’s 99 Bottles of OOP. It’s not really my style overall, but the point about moving logic forks up the call stack was very well taken when I was working on a codebase where we had added a ton of flags that got passed down through many layers.

https://sandimetz.com/99bottles
by eterm | 2025-05-17 13:54:12+00:00
Well there's blazor, which does that rather well, but it's treated with the same suspicion that most MS frameworks are. The fear that it'll be killed for poor adoption, leading to poor adoption.

The blazor adoption probably isn't even that bad, but it's hard for MS to shake this stigma since so many people got burned on Silverlight and don't ever want to make the same mistake.
by noosphr | 2025-05-17 13:54:19+00:00
This is a problem with Ubuntu and not VirtualBox. I spend a few hours today fighting with 24.04.02 in libvirt only to realize that they are using some fancy new GUI library for the installer which crashes on all VMs: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000123893/manual-no...

Mandatory Ubuntu considered harmful.

If only NVidia considered Debian a first class distribution so I never had to use Ubuntu again.
by mrb | 2025-05-17 13:54:34+00:00
"what makes Japan's transit card system (IC cards) so unique compared to the West"

Actually other western transit system cards are similar to Japan's. For example in Paris the transit passes (Navigo cards) are stored-value systems and hold a record of the last few scans (three I think). You can also read them with any NFC smartphone and see what's stored inside. The tap at the entrance of a transit vehicle is near instant as the reader doesn't need to interact with a backend since everything is stored on the card itself.
by AshamedCaptain | 2025-05-17 13:54:39+00:00
> Transit gates have the big advantage of providing you with instant feedback on whether your ticket or mode of payment is valid or not.

So do the validators that are put in waiting areas, inside the trains, etc. in cities with no gates. That you can literally use at the time you want to use them (waiting for the train, inside the train, etc. ) , rather than forcing a bottleneck to everyone.

> As others have already said, Japanese gates are open by default

And this by itself already makes more of a latency difference than the entire IC card system does. Imagine what removing the gates altogether does.
by lxgr | 2025-05-17 13:54:59+00:00
The speed difference isn't in not phone vs. credit card, it's credit card vs. stored value card.

Stored value cards are optimized for speed and cost, and as a result have shared symmetric keys available in both card and reader. That enables extremely fast transactions.

EMV cards are (also) optimized (at least in the offline case, which transit gates use – the latency to talk to the bank backend would be too high) for security. The security model doesn't trust readers to keep keys secret, which means you need asymmetric cryptography for card authentication. The specs are old, which means RSA – which is very slow to run in cheap ICs embedded in these cards produced at scale.
by bartread | 2025-05-17 13:55:34+00:00
> I've not really been the outer control loop of the vehicle. An automated system tells me what to do.

That’s not really true, is it? Who tells the GPS where you’d like to go? You, I imagine. You don’t just follow GPS instructions unless you’ve first told it where you’d like to go. And, indeed, unless you tell it, it won’t give you any instructions (though it might suggest common destinations for you to choose from).

You are still the outer control loop of the vehicle: you’re just thinking at the wrong level of abstraction, or thinking of the wrong loop as the outer loop.
by masklinn | 2025-05-17 13:55:37+00:00
> Unsure if this is inspired from C++ RAII.

Not really. Both are ways to perform deterministic resource management, but RAII is a branch of deterministic resource management which most GC'd languages can not use as they don't have deterministic object lifetimes.

This is inspired by similar constructs in Java, C#, and Python (and in fact lifted from C# with some adaptation to JS's capabilities), and insofar as those were related to RAII, they were a step away from it, at least when it comes to Python: CPython historically did its resource management using destructors which would mostly be reliably and deterministically called on refcount falling to zero.

However,

1. this was an issue for non-refcounted alternative implementations of Python

2. this was an issue for the possibility of an eventual (if unlikely) move away from refcounting in CPython

3. destructors interact in awkward ways with reference cycles

4. even in a reference-counted language, destructors share common finaliser issues like object resurrection

Thus Python ended up introducing context managers as a means of deterministic resource management, and issuing guidance to avoid relying on refcounting and RAII style management.
by constantcrying | 2025-05-17 13:55:59+00:00
Yes, I also quoted that part from the article. This does not address that the attention Matrix does not represent all learned parameters. Even supposing that the form of the attention matrix guarantees the correct functioning of the algorithm why was that not used as the metric to decide convergence?

"We detected that the model had converged by looking for 1024 training batches with perfect predictions, and that it could perfectly run 100 Life games for 100 steps." This would be superfluous (and even a pretty bizarre methodology) if the shape of the attention matrix was proof that the Network performed the actual game of life algorithm.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that the NN isn't converging to performing some computation that would also be seen in other algorithms. I am saying that the paper does not investigate whether the resulting NN actually performs the game of life algorithm. The convolution part is certainly evidence, but I think it would have been worthwhile to look at the actual resulting Net and figure out if the trained weights together actually formed an algorithm. This is also the only way to determine the truth of the initial claim, that this isn't just a statistical model, but rather an actual algorithm.
by mayas_ | 2025-05-17 13:56:04+00:00
for better or for worse gen ai has is fundamentally changing how ideas are expressed and shared

afaic it's a net positive. i've always been lazy on writing down/expressing my thoughts and gen ai feels exactly like the missing piece.

i'm able to "vibe write" my ideas into reality. the process is still messy but exciting.

i've never been this excited about the future since my childhood
by layer8 | 2025-05-17 13:56:10+00:00
I was half-joking, and primarily meant to point out that the pixelated versions aren’t how those icons looked like to users back in the day either.

But also, for faithful CRT rendering you want to take the actual screen pixels into account, possibly even the subpixel layout, very much like for text rendering. Therefore there’s something to be said for that to be a browser-level feature.
by dns_snek | 2025-05-17 13:56:39+00:00
> Or are you proposing that the guy who make $10 MM should pay more, but get their benefit capped? Because if that's what you are proposing, I don't see how that is just or fair.

You get to live in a stable society, in relative order, safety, and peace. Your life is (financially) richer than 99.99999% of people in the world. All of this in exchange for a small portion of your wealth, and yet you STILL want to complain about the unfairness of this arrangement?

Push it too far, and the only alternative you're going to get is having to look over your shoulder everywhere you go, living in constant fear that someone will pillage your property and threaten your personal safety.
by daxfohl | 2025-05-17 13:56:58+00:00
IME this is frequently a local optimum though. "Local" meaning, until some requirement changes or edge case is discovered, where some branching needs to happen outside of the loop. Then, if you've got branching both inside and outside the loop, it gets harder to reason about.

It can be case-dependent. Are you reasonably sure that the condition will only ever effect stuff inside the loop? Then sure, go ahead and put it there. If it's not hard to imagine requirements that would also branch outside of the loop, then it may be better to preemptively design it that way. The code may be more verbose, but frequently easier to follow, and hopefully less likely to turn into spaghetti later on.

(This is why I quit writing Haskell; it tends to make you feel like you want to write the most concise, "locally optimum" logic. But that doesn't express the intent behind the logic so much as the logic itself, and can lead to horrible unrolling of stuff when minor requirements change. At least, that was my experience.)
by diggan | 2025-05-17 13:57:05+00:00
> no they didn't, no one said that

You're right, probably hallucinated memory of much more senior people telling me exactly that.

> i know that because i was around then and everyone was doing the same thing

Damn, we worked together in the same company at that time? Nice to meet you again after all these years. Still thinking of picking up farming once you get out of prison?
by spacedcowboy | 2025-05-17 13:57:11+00:00
No-one is forcing you to.

Not everyone who has the knowledge of how to put together a radio telescope is also awesome at creating a website. It seems everyone is a critic, these days…

And if you don’t think that having an appealing website is at least as important as the content within when doing outreach, I may have a bridge to sell you.
by bsenftner | 2025-05-17 13:57:25+00:00
I believe the author is awash in a sea they do not understand, and that is the cause of their discomfort. When they describe their ideas being fully realized by LLMs, are they really, or just appearing as such because the words and terms arrive in a similar and expected manner as their prompt?

Performing any type of intellectual philosophic or exploratory work with LLMs is extremely subtle, largely because you nor they know what you are seeking, and the discovery process with LLMs is not writing prompts and varying one's prompts in trial manners to hopefully get "something else, something better" <- that is pure incomprehension of how they work, and how to work with them.

Very few seem to be realizing the mirror aspects embodied within LLMs: they will mirror you back, and if you are unaware of this, you may not be getting the replies you really seek, you're receiving "comfort replies" and replies mirroring your metadata (style, nuance) more than the factual logic of your requests, if any factual requests are made.

There is an entire body of work, multiple careers worth of human effort, to document the new subtle logical keys to working with LLMs. These are new logical constructs that have never existed before, not even fictionally, not realized as they are now, with all the implications and details bare, in our faces, yet completely misunderstood as people attempt old imperative methods that will not work with with this new entity with completely different characteristics than anything reality has any experience.

A major issue with getting developers to effectively use LLMs is the fact that many developers are weak to terrible communicators themselves. LLMs are fantastic communicators, who will mirror their audience in an attempt to be better understood, but when that audience is a weak communicator the entire process disintegrates. That is, what I suspect is happening with the blog post author. An inability to be discriminate in their language to the degree they parcel out the easy immediate sophomore level replies, and then arrive at a context within the LLM's capacity that is the integrity of context they seek, but that requires them to meet that intellectually and linguistically or that LLM context is destroyed. So subtle.
by exiguus | 2025-05-17 13:57:33+00:00
I find the author's journey through various Linux distributions intriguing. The conclusion, “I don't want to care” about updates, setup, etc., resonates with me, especially reflecting on my younger self's quest for the “right” Linux distribution. My growing need for a stable and productive working environment aligns with this sentiment.

However, alongside the desire to “not care,” there's a strong curiosity to explore new operating systems, architectures, or philosophies. Recently, my inner child prevailed, leading me to purchase a second-hand notebook. I installed FreeBSD and configured Sway on it. Now, it sits among my other notebooks, at least one of which is set up by my inner adult for daily work.
by overu589 | 2025-05-17 14:00:16+00:00
I would like to point out that through practice the whole apparatus of thought and brain activity may be reconfigured (including the dominant areas, and there are more options than hemisphere.)

It is not surprising that psychedelics may trigger or reboot these internal features.

If we dug deeper, it might be that left hemisphere thinkers are more rigid in their thoughts, and right hemisphere are more psycho-emotive/intuitive.

Scientists have been known to credit their leaps to psychedelics.
by its-summertime | 2025-05-17 14:00:42+00:00
this could have been written at any time in the prior 15+ years.

Introversion software tried to do the give-back-to-the-community-by-hiring-heavily and almost went bankrupt. You can look at the correct wage for a good specialized software developer, artist, or writer, and look at the profit from your average indie, and see that the correct amount of people to hire is almost always near zero.

Look at Blizzard Activision or Rockstar Games amount of ongoing profit and investment, that is what is required to hire an actual team: Loyal customers, who will pay subscriptions, and being able to conceptualize and make multiple series of games all at the same time.
by pjmlp | 2025-05-17 14:02:14+00:00
For me it is yet another trend that I will gladly pass on.

At work it is all about Windows and macOS, with a mix of legacy server VMs, Kubernetes or serverless on the server, we increasingly rely less on classical UNIX or Windows server workloads.

At home, it is all about Windows and Android.

So unless it is unavoidable, I don't need it anywhere, it is another Gentoo, at least for me.
by PaulRobinson | 2025-05-17 14:02:57+00:00
They still produce a huge amount of content in conjuction with the Open University, and most of that educational content you're referring to was OU content as well. The quality of it is much better than it was (trust me).

The "non-neutral-seeming news" you refer to suggests you've bought into the narrative proposed by those who don't feel served by it - both the far right and the far left, which suggests it must be doing something right - and famously the BBC has some of the most stringent and well-thought through editorial guidelines on earth. If somebody is telling you the BBC is biased, they're also probably suggesting some other news source (their own? GB News? Fox? An anti-vaxx group on FB?), is not.

The BBC could be doing a lot more to monetise through BBC Worldwide (their commercial arm), a massive, and massively popular, back catalogue to a point where the license fee could be reduced or even eliminated. The idea it becomes a generic streaming platform or relies on commercials regularly gets floated, but it's worth pointing out that the biggest supporters of that plan are owners of commercial media companies that feel they would win out and their narratives and perspectives would get to dominate.

It is a ~£13 subscription, sure, but compare it to what you get compared to say Sky TV, which also has adverts, and think about whether clipping it back to an offering similar to C4 (also public sector owned, but ad funded), would be something that actually makes you happier, and whether that editorial integrity could be maintained and all that local radio and journalism could still get paid for - they're arguably the only organisation still doing local journalism in the UK given the dog's dinner Reach is making of local papers.

I sense the future is going to a Reith-ian reset, and you'll see less investment in lower-rating, higher-cost programming (bye bye Eastenders or other soaps), sustained investment in audience favourites like Strictly, and perhaps a dial-up in drama to take on the commercial sector that they can then monetise through BBC Worldwide (including getting streamers to pay for access to it).

As to the other broadcasters, the picture is a little less confusing: the studios and production companies are doing fine, even if they're now selling to Amazon, Netflix, Apple and Disney. The channels themselves will just use their brand to shift people into those channels. Unfortunately, they're miles behind on the tech (just go and try ITV X - it's awful from a UX perspective), but they'll figure it out.
by gregpr07 | 2025-05-17 14:03:02+00:00
I think it's awesome (we are close friends with Erik from Pig so slightly biased) - one extreme is Browser Use, which is just an agent that does everything for the first time, the other extreme is Workflow Use, which is almost deterministic. I think the winner product lies somewhere in the middle - Browser Use + Cache is easier to do for browser trajectories than for pure images! We will definitely try this direction!
by radanskoric | 2025-05-17 14:03:04+00:00
Yes, exactly, Ruby has the human readability expressiveness.

If you say that expressivity is the ability to implement a program in less lines of code then Ruby is more expressive than most but less than for example Clojure. Well written Clojure can be incredibly expressive. However, you can argue that for most people it's going to be less readable than a comparable Ruby program.

It's hard to talk about these qualities as there's a fair amount of subjectivity involved.
by constantcrying | 2025-05-17 14:03:07+00:00
>However, I think the ceiling is higher when a non-tech person is leading the group. When a tech person is leading the group the ceiling is (roughly) their technical ability. The non-tech person can be more open to new ideas, alternative approaches, flexibility, change, etc. because they don’t have the same built-in biases and preconceived notions as a tech person.

Wrong. The person fundamentally does not understand what the employees are doing and can not make informed decisions. You are correct that the decisions will include more "out of the box" thinking, but this will make the entire department a torture chamber for the employees as they are suffering under decisions which are obviously nonsensical and counter productive. Prioritizing novelty over competency is a road straight to dysfunction.

The people who are the best at implementing new concepts are the rare cases of people who have both a deep technical foundation and great leadership skills. Those actually can come up with new Ideas which work.
by SOLAR_FIELDS | 2025-05-17 14:03:31+00:00
Even updating once per year is still a battle. It avoids the constant breakages from using unstable, but the problem is even the mainline “stable” nixpkgs will break because there really isn’t a good integration story for all of these components. Case in point: I just spent an hour this week pointlessly updating my home manager config because home manager just decided that a breaking api change would go in. The nix people have designed the ecosystem in such a way that everyone’s bespoke configuration can break at any given point and there is not an easy way to integration test even every common scenario.

In other words, the old adage still rings true. The beauty of Nix is that you can do anything. The ugliness of nix is that you can do anything
by harvey9 | 2025-05-17 14:03:35+00:00
Some remarkable doublethink from the BBC in that article: "The BBC said licence fee avoidance did not bring with it a criminal record. A spokesperson said: “Details of the offence are not held on the Police National Computer – so while there is a criminal conviction there is no criminal record.”"

So yeah, people, mainly women, go to prison but I guess it's not a big deal on paper.
by AshamedCaptain | 2025-05-17 14:03:37+00:00
Many cities already have this. Most street trams have already this. Even London has no gates for the non-central stations. I tap either when I'm waiting for the tram, or when I'm literally already inside it. Even with only one validator and at rush hour, there's no queue.

If you already live in an area where there are no gates, would you make the argument that "I need gates so that I don't forget to tap"? Put yourself in my shoes: you would laugh at the idea.

And it doesn't need mentioning that people who want to intentionally skip fare can do so, gates or not.
by aecsocket | 2025-05-17 14:04:02+00:00
Author here, this is my fault for not proof reading this part properly! The part about non-Japan SKUs is generally true for Android phone manufacturers, but Apple eats the cost and gives all phones Osaifi-Keitai. You do not need to root an iPhone to get this functionality, even on a non-Japan unit.

I will write a correction for this section to clear up the confusion.
by jcalvinowens | 2025-05-17 14:04:23+00:00
You can sort of get that behavior on Linux using clone(..., ~CLONE_THREAD|~CLONE_SIGHAND|CLONE_VM, ...), which creates otherwise distinct processes which share an address space.

You can do all sorts of weird things like create threads which don't share file descriptors, threads which chdir() independently... except that CLONE_THREAD|~CLONE_SIGHAND and CLONE_SIGHAND|~CLONE_VM are disallowed.
by whiddershins | 2025-05-17 14:04:47+00:00
I would like to take this moment to point out that in NY it is ~illegal for me to hire an unpaid intern and train them by for example saying: - this is codex, here is a bunch of tickets - enter each ticket into codex, then review each change and understand what it did. if you think what it did is good, open a PR - twice a day we will meet and i will review all the codex PRs with you and explain what is and isn't working

etc.

This would not save me time. It would be paying it forward. And I cannot do this.
by emursebrian | 2025-05-17 14:05:04+00:00
I just got back from Japan. I did not notice a difference in performance between tapping with a Blink credit card and tapping with an IC card. I only used the ICOCA card. There were never lines at the gates. There were only ever brief lines at the ticket counters and terminals. I was there during golden week, which is one of the busiest travel times of the year. My travel partner and I used almost exclusively public transportation to get around, usually riding a few trains per-day. We only experienced one two-minute delay in Tokyo on a Friday evening during rush hour.

Japan's transportation infrastructure is great!
by gadders | 2025-05-17 14:05:17+00:00
Yes. Their surname ends in .by so if there name was Jane Kirby they can have jane@kir.by. And also jane.kir.by as a web address.

Apologies if I got the name wrong. Belarus/Belorussia/Byelorussia - I wasn't aware there was a difference. Thanks for the info.