MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hnthrow90348765 | 2025-05-12 00:12:27+00:00
>Is financing your lunch a sign of societal decay? Maybe, maybe not.

I'd have no problems with BNPL if wages kept up with necessities like housing, tuition, and healthcare, or if those services were provided to citizens for free in exchange for higher taxes. Or even if minimum wage would move, like, at all.

What I think this is a better sign of is this: a very lopsided finance industry against workers and borrowers due to the fact that paychecks only arrive on a two-week schedule but burrito debt is freely available at any time. And when they stack fees on top of a burst of interest, it is really, really looking like they are becoming an enemy.

I hope they fuck up the implementation and end up losing money to hackers.
by bcoates | 2025-05-12 00:14:58+00:00
Calling it a tax is about as enlightening as calling government insurance programs "ponzi schemes".

A tax is a deadweight loss in one sector that (hopefully) funds something else in a (hopefully) net-worthwhile way.

Calling a facilitating cost like marketing or finance or customer support a "tax" is like calling the need to pay to clean the bathrooms at your business a "tax", if you squint and look at it from far away it's kind of similar but it’s also totally uninformative.

In some abstract way, the social obligation for small businesses owners to send their kids to pricey afterschool classes is a "tax" paid by their customers, but that's probably not a useful way of analyzing a complex system
by dummydummy1234 | 2025-05-12 00:15:55+00:00
The idea is to redistribute wealth from areas of the country with wealth to areas are poorer.

California tax payers support West Virginia infrastructure.

Inevitably some states are wealthier than others, the federal government acts as a balancer of this. This can improve outcomes in poorer states (education, building up new industries, local economies etc).

Ideally, it also provides a counter balance for changing economies, where there are inevitably winners and losers. Many industries are geographic centered, and having the ability to adjust for acute downsides in one area benefits the whole country overall in the long-term.

That being said, the specifics of individual programs are up to debate in Congress (it's their job).
by DonsDiscountGas | 2025-05-12 00:16:05+00:00
Most people pay off a credit card in full every month so it's really just about the convenience. BNPL is similar in fact, most purchases are paid off in installments over 30 days with no interest or late fees charged. As the article covers the merchant pays a slightly higher fee in exchange for slightly better terms than a CC, and customers buy slightly more then they would have otherwise.
by majormajor | 2025-05-12 00:16:17+00:00
Meh. Base Maverick is a <5' bed, no AWD, and towing of 2000lb but I haven't seen one doing any towing in the wild. But the owners seem to love them.

Not everyone wants to spend 40-80k on a bloated luxury-truck-ized F150 when they only need to carry something oversized maybe once a year.
by lucb1e | 2025-05-12 00:16:22+00:00
There is no automation, I use `tail -f access.log`

I just look at what's happening on my server every now and then. Sometimes not for months, but then when I set up a project like that caching proxy, I'm currently keeping a more regular eye to see that crawlers aren't bothering the upstream via me. Most respect the robots policy, most of the ones that don't set a user agent string that include the word 'bot' and so I know not to refresh the cache based on that request. So far it has mostly been Huawei who pretend to be a regular user but request millions of pages (from 12 separate IP ranges so far, some of them bigger than /16, some of them a handful of /24s).

> Could you say more about how to identify these bad-bots?

Many requests per day to random pages from either the same IP address (range), or ranges owned by the same corporation
by gjm11 | 2025-05-12 00:16:33+00:00
I checked: the result is in Concrete Mathematics, as exercise 5.36, but there is no attribution to Kummer there.

Incidentally, I found the name of the theorem (and the Wikipedia page about it) using a new kind of tool called a "search engine". It's a bit like asking ChatGPT except that it hardly ever hallucinates. You should try it! :-)
by hirvi74 | 2025-05-12 00:16:51+00:00
I am in complete agreement with you, and I wish the environmental aspect would be considered more.

However, based on what I understand of the human race, I think nothing will be done to prevent the issue. I guess the closest thing I can think of off the top of my head would be tsunami damage. Though that is probably not a good comparison still. I am curious what environmental changes can be observed in pre/post tsunami ecosystems. I suppose I will have to look into this when I have more free time...

Honestly, I am rather jaded when it comes to climate change. Humans are very reactive and less... proactive. I would argue that much of these environmental concerns could and should have been addressed decades ago. Thus, by the time cities are swallowed by the sea, I believe it will be too late for us to do anything. As in, whatever ecosystem that could be affected will probably already be affected by other downstream issues, if not completely destroyed already.

Though, I once had an environmental science professor that had a tongue in cheek saying, "Dilution is the solution to pollution." While unlikely as it may be, I am going to have my fingers crossed that hopefully any ramifications will be diluted enough. (I know they probably won't be.)
by op00to | 2025-05-12 00:16:57+00:00
Sure, Omaha doesn’t have surfing or mountains, but camping, hiking and other outdoor activities are cheaper, less crowded, and way more accessible. You’re not fighting for a campsite or dropping $50 just to sleep outside, and most hiking is free or near-free. No $25 parking fees or permit lotteries just to walk a trail. And saying $70k goes far in the Bay Area if you don’t pay rent is kind of ridiculous. Almost no one lives rent-free. Every well-paid software engineer I know out there is trying to get out. They’re all burned out by housing costs, crowds, and the grind. Amenities don’t mean much if you can’t afford to enjoy them.
by linguae | 2025-05-12 00:17:06+00:00
Interestingly enough, even non-monopoly large corporations once had labs where researchers had a good deal of freedom and where the projects were not required to be directly tied to business objectives. Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu, Sony, NEC, Toshiba, and Hitachi, just to name a few, had labs back in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. As late as the early 2010s, a PhD graduate in computer science had options in industry to do research that wasn’t tied to short-term business priorities.

Unfortunately these opportunities have dried up as companies either got rid of their research labs or shifted the focus of their research labs to be more tied to immediate business needs. Many of my former classmates and colleagues who were industrial researchers are now software engineers, and not due to intentionally changing careers. Academia has become the last bastion of research with fewer commercialization pressures, but academia has its “publish or perish” and fundraising pressures, and now academia is under attack in America right now.

I once worked as a researcher in an industrial lab, but the focus shifted toward more immediate productization rather than exploration. I ended up changing careers; I now teach freshman- and sophomore-level CS courses at a community college. It’s a lot of work during the school year, but I have roughly four months of the year when I could do whatever I want. Looking forward to starting my summer research project once the semester ends in a few weeks!
by mjevans | 2025-05-12 00:17:14+00:00
UBI isn't going to get us there. Give everyone more cash and the rent-seeking _WILL_ suck harder. Same problem with blindly raising the minimum wage and not instead addressing the root issue.

Basic econ 101: inelastic demand means supply can be as expensive as the limited number who are lucky enough to get it are able to afford.

Bell Labs, generally think tanks, they work by paying _enough_ to raise someone to the capitalist society equivalent of a Noble.

Want to fix the problem for everyone in society, not just an 'intellectual elite'? Gotta regulate the market, put enough supply into it that the price is forced to drop and the average __PURCHASE POWER__ raises even without otherwise raising wages.
by whalesalad | 2025-05-12 00:17:25+00:00
This is the most Java-y Clojure I’ve probably ever read. Just use Java? It’s so verbose and complex for what it is doing. Breaking this down into smaller functions and using core.async would make it even more succinct.

Just want to emphasize this because clojure is indeed a small, lesser known language that has a hard enough time attracting users. This is not what anyone would consider an idiomatic example of using clojure.
by recursive | 2025-05-12 00:17:48+00:00
A lot of people use a credit card like a debit card with fraud protection. You can pay off the balance every month and still get a benefit. The UX of paying is so smooth. Maybe that's possible with BNPL too (learned a new acronym today) but I haven't heard of it.

If there was a thing that worked like a credit card, but without the credit part, I'd probably be using that instead.
by masternight | 2025-05-12 00:17:49+00:00
Those functions explicitly? I can't find any definitive explanation on why they exist.

It looks like nowdays ZeroMemory() and RtlZeroMemory() are just macros for memset().

Here's an article on some of the RECT helper functions. Relevant for the 8088 CPU but probably not so much today: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20200224-00/?p=10...
by Swizec | 2025-05-12 00:18:11+00:00
> Doesn't this just change into /../

Yes and no!

TypeScript helps a lot – you get quick traceability of where things are used and squiggly lines, if you break a contract. Yes a statically typed MVC framework would get you this, but in my experience the apps that get into this mess also don't use types "because types add too much complexity" (likely true for that company stage).

Componentization brings the other piece – self-contained components that declare their own data dependencies (load their own data), bring their own isolated styling, and generally handle all their internal behavior. This takes some skill/experience to get right and yes you can totally pull it off with every toolstack if you're good enough. The benefit is having a stack that encourages you to think about interfaces and contracts between components and hiding the messy internals from the outside world.

So for example in Flask I'm encouraging this pattern of tiny composable views: https://swizec.com/blog/a-pattern-for-composable-ui-in-flask... Once you have these, you can then move them in and out of the page with some JavaScript and an Ajax call. HTMX does this afaik and it's also how we used to build PHP+Ajax apps for a brief moment 20 years ago before client-side rendering took over for various reasons (smaller payloads mattered back then as did sharing an API between web and mobile)

edit: Point is that an approach based on composability guarantees that components won't break each other, can be moved around, and can live side-by-side without worry. The more your stack can guarantee this (as opposed to manual vigilance) the better.
by const_cast | 2025-05-12 00:18:30+00:00
> There's a lot less complexity in Rust than C++.

Eh, I don't know, I don't think so absolutely. I think in the general "application" paths yes there's less complexity but as a language overall, no.

The thing is Rust has all the same capabilities of C++, that is to say, everything. With that same strong emphasis on free abstractions - meaning, abstractions that do not cost anything more than if you wrote the implementation yourself.

Templates and stuff are a rabbit hole but if you go down the path of procedural macros and generics in Rust it's more of the same. It gets crazy, wild, and super complex. But most people don't have to worry about that, because these sort of "squeeze every last bit of juice" features are most useful for library authors.
by zelphirkalt | 2025-05-12 00:19:09+00:00
That's assuming quite a few things though about the user's browser. Like cache not being cleared on shutdown. And on the project side, that there are not so many changes, that need to be received by the user agent now, instead of whenever the cache expires. That updates can be applied later on the user side. Of course when updates only happen every few weeks, then it might work... but only if that cache is not deleted, which is a big if.
by spicyusername | 2025-05-12 00:19:41+00:00
One reason is that someone’s or a company’s income doesn’t always align perfectly with when they want to buy things.

When we're talking about financing the construction of a new downtown office tower, a new apartment complex, or the unexpected maintenance of your business's whole auto fleet, I can absolutely see the argument that credit is a mechanism of greasing the wheels of the economy and allowing things to happen that otherwise would not be able to happen if everyone had to wait until they were table to save all of the cash and pay upfront.

This logic doesn’t change just because the thing being financed is a burrito.

When we're talking about food, the absolute most basic human need, I start to question whether or not this is actually a good thing and is instead just a temporary band-aid over a much more serious economic problem that would be better off getting solved more permanently with a different economic or political tool.
by s1artibartfast | 2025-05-12 00:20:25+00:00
I beginning to think we should have separate legal systems for different people. One where people have more agency and responsibility for the consequences, and one where they are treated like children, but taken care of.

There is actually a fantastic sci-fi novel I highly recommend written by a professor of enlightenment philosophy that uses the as part of the premise. too like the lightning by Ada palmer. [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Palmer
by jankcorn | 2025-05-12 00:21:16+00:00
Legacy corporations have a very hard time incorporating fundamental technology shifts (moving from ICE engine/drivetrain dominant designs to software dominance). They walk into the future looking backward, unable to identify/vet the team skills needed going forward, leading to silly hacks like: 1) hire from "big s/w companies", 2) pay high salaries to poorly vetted people, 3) adopt all the new fashionable buzzwords like "software defined vehicle", 4) force new teams every inch of the way to justify design choices to mediocre legacy management.

The only formula I know that works is "hire good people and listen to them". From experience, the only way legacy companies can do this is acquire and/or seriously partner with companies that have established a track record in what you need (even if it is only a couple of years, as long as they are _delivering product_).

As software effectiveness/innovation speed/productivity continue to increasingly crush legacy industries, it is extraordinarily frustrating to see how hard it is to make (seemingly simple!) changes.

p.s.: nice to see you Jilles! :-)
by typewithrhythm | 2025-05-12 00:21:32+00:00
Someone like Ford for example will have several software platforms, some for low cost vehicles, some high, some that are adaptable between trim levels.

So as you go up in features on some model "the BigTruk" you might be going through variations of one sw platform, or jumping between platforms.

Some have several platforms for high and low cost based on centralised vs distributed, so for example an s class will not have much software or hardware shared with an a class.
by riehwvfbk | 2025-05-12 00:21:33+00:00
What is the idea of the article? It's all over the place. Zuck is bad, Trump is bad, a degree in basket weaving can be obtained by a chatbot, it's who you know, the Fed held rates, Uber drivers are somehow related to friction, we need change but we also need things to go back to how they were.
by ldoughty | 2025-05-12 00:21:38+00:00
That's effectively any membership service where you get a discount... e.g. Amazon prime, arguably... or Membership grocery stores.

Pay up front for benefits that are realized later, upon further action.

I have a membership with my local craft brewery that I love to frequent that similarly could be considered a PNBL like financial thing.

Arguably, it's also gift cards, though yeah, without any benefit, no one really buys gift cards for themselves.
by roenxi | 2025-05-12 00:22:33+00:00
Would it be 200 lines of Java? It'd be 200 lines of just for the boilerplate. It isn't really a selling point of Clojure because it is subjective, but low-syntax high-terseness look of the code is in itself a reward for using the language.

And there isn't anything especially wrong with sticking to Java primitives if someone is comfortable with them. They work fine for Java programmers. The dude doesn't need to learn a new async library to write an LSP client if he doesn't feel like it. Code works, its easy to read, easy to understand and modify.
by mindslight | 2025-05-12 00:22:33+00:00
Usually when cognitive decline causes someone to become this kind of a wild liability, their kids reluctantly have "the conversation" and take away their car keys. But no, someone gave this demented maniac a soap box instead, and his ramblings were able to rile up enough like-minded entitled and indignant followers for him to get given even greater authority. Now his decline is our decline.
by bradly | 2025-05-12 00:22:57+00:00
I sell urns online and my website just has an email link. No shopping cart. A brick-and-mortor urn shop would never have a shopping cart, so why would a virtual one?

I've purchased specialized woodworking tools online that simply involved filling out a form. I later received the parts with an invoice to send payment. You can simply not pay if you choose not to.

There are so many way to do commerce both on and offline and if you squint and look closely you'll find interesting people doing interesting things all around you.
by rtpg | 2025-05-12 00:23:30+00:00
If you think that objectively spending money on leisure is bad, my claim is that you are in a minority with that thought process.

My implication here is not that being in a minority changes whether something is objectively true or not (it doesn't!). But I will outright say that I do not believe this, and I think that most people do not believe this.

Claiming to believe that leisure is bad objectively is, in my opinion, also a claim that you are "smarter" than the vast majority of people. After all, you have unlocked some reasoning to reach this, that other people seem to have missed. Do you believe to have unlocked some deeper truths through thought? Perhaps! I tend to assume I am far from the smartest person in the room.

Objectivity is the load bearing thing here, of course. If you merely think spending money on leisure is bad, then that's what you think. That can be one of your axioms in your belief system. Stating it as some objective fact is a much stronger claim, that I don't think really holds up to much scrutiny.

This is even before getting into the idea of "objective badness", which is a can of worms.

A lot of work to try and claim objectivity on your side, when the much easier "my belief system is like this, and from that I conclude this other thing" is a perfectly respectable argument when discussing policy preferences.

Added bonus of being honest about what part of your argument is just a belief system is you can then more quickly identify why you disagree with someone else.
by andoando | 2025-05-12 00:25:16+00:00
If you use a bunch of libraries for routing, UI, authentication, the only thing thats left is the rendering.

And quite frankly I don't see why Id want to reinvent the wheel there.

{#each notes as note} {note.content} {/each

is exactly what Id want to implement for example if I were writing JS functionality to render a collection.

And Svelte for example doesnt restrict you from using vanilla JS whenever you want either
by hn_throwaway_99 | 2025-05-12 00:25:20+00:00
It is not impossible to build a car that both has modern crumple zones and is still repairable.

This article talks in detail about why a minor fender bender of a Rivian cost $42,000 to repair. That cost is a bit of an exaggeration (e.g. it includes the ceramic coating on the vehicle), but the article talks in detail about the design choices that made that truck so expensive to repair.
by rtpg | 2025-05-12 00:26:41+00:00
To be clear I think the BNPL thing laid out here is Bad(TM), I just got there through my belief system about how society should be organized.

I do not believe that life is measured in how many burritos I can or cannot get access to, so the idea that not using BNPL means I'll get more burritos next month falls a bit flat on me.
by dansiemens | 2025-05-12 00:27:23+00:00
Precisely, such a change represents substantial risk in an incredibly risk-averse industry. People at orgs in such industries are in constant CYA mode, looking to point responsibility (and therefore blame) to anyone else.

The time to go and implement such a change probably pales in comparison to the amount of time spent in meetings getting people to agree to make the change.
by bsder | 2025-05-12 00:27:40+00:00
> I allow for the possibility that SWD is far more complex than I imagine, but this approach works pretty well for figuring out whats going on with SPI or I2C or BLE.

SWD is pretty well documented. I won't claim its simple, but, in my opinion, it's decent at what it does. The RISC-V folks haven't seemed to be able to do better (and, IMO, did quite a bit worse in a few places, actually).

The SWD description at the packet/command level: https://arm-software.github.io/CMSIS-DAP/latest/index.html

There is open source code directly from ARM for it: https://github.com/ARMmbed/DAPLink/tree/main/source/daplink/...

The documentation of the actual wire protocol is also extensive, but a little more scattered: https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ihi0031/a?lang=en https://community.nxp.com/pwmxy87654/attachments/pwmxy87654/...

The big problem with the SWD wire protocol ARM documentation (and everybody who copies it) is that they don't point out the fact that when you go from Write-to-Read the active edge of the clock changes. In SPI-speak, you switch from CPHA=1 to CPHA=0. This makes sense if you stop to think about it for a moment because during debug there is no clock. Consequently, SWD must provide the clock and you switch from "put something on DATA a half phase early->pulse clock to make chip do something with it" to "pulse clock which makes chip put something on Data->read it a half phase later". However, if it has never been pointed out to you before, it's likely to trip you up.

Sigrok (or similar) which can decode SWD properly and a digital signal analyzer (even a cheap $10 one) are your friends.

The only diagrams which seem to resemble scope traces that point this out are on obscure Chinese engineering blogs.
by pabs3 | 2025-05-12 00:28:09+00:00
Apparently there are folks working on converting ICE vehicles to EV, using open source and reverse engineering to integrate discarded proprietary EV components (battery, motor, inverter etc).

https://openinverter.org/ https://youtube.com/@evbmw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43898280
by s1artibartfast | 2025-05-12 00:28:18+00:00
>The same thing happens with actual mortgages. If you lived in a world where nobody lent money for a house, a house would cost a lot less.

I'm more skeptical. I think housing would be radically different in such a world. More people would be renters, more housing would be hereditary, and more would be corporate owned. Houses that were owned would be much smaller and more affordable.

Keep in mind there is a vast amount of areas where new housing can be built controlling the prices.