MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by cevi | 2025-05-03 05:00:02+00:00
The (actual) article has a fairly detailed literature review in the introduction, and makes it pretty clear that the main idea was sort-of known already if you squint - but it looks like nobody had put the whole theory together elegantly and advertised it properly. The fact that they couldn't find some natural slices of the hyper-Catalan numbers on OEIS supports that.

The proof they give that the hyper-Catalan series solves the Lagrange inversion problem is very good from a pedagogical point of view - I don't think I'll ever be able to forget it now that I've seen it. The only thing this paper is missing is a direct, self-contained combinatorial proof of the factorial-ratio formula they gave for the hyper-Catalan numbers - digging though the chain of equivalences proved in the references eventually got too annoying for me and I had to sit down and find a proof myself (there is a simple variation of the usual argument for counting Dyck paths [1] that does the trick).

Another thing to note is that the power series solution isn't just "a power series" - it's a hypergeometric series. There are lots of computation techniques that apply to hypergeometric series which don't apply to power series in general (see [2]).

[1] https://jlmartin.ku.edu/courses/math724-F13/count-dyck.pdf (for instance) [2] https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/AeqB.pdf
by nsrcodes | 2025-05-03 05:00:22+00:00
I am building my own journalling app.

I know there are several out there, but I have never liked any of them, and quite frankly never trusted any of them. So far I have only been writing my journals in google docs, but the one time I used the integrations to give the ai context of my writings, it sent a shiver through my spine.

I probably sound too paranoid and naive, and I know that things like obsidian exists, but this has been a passion project since long and I am glad I have finally started spending some consistent effort on building it.

no links or name to share yet, but yes that will hopefully come soon.
by pests | 2025-05-03 05:01:08+00:00
While many countries are successor states of the USSR, only Russia was declared the continuator.

> In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 1 April 1992, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev explained the situation: “Many people think that Russia became the legal successor of the USSR automatically, but this is far from being the case. We faced a very difficult political and diplomatic task. Russia is not a legal successor, but a continuing state of the USSR.

> There was no automaticity. It was an open question. The solution was suggested to us by Western countries, especially by the British, who had a huge experience in solving inheritance issues, they had an empire. The British dug somewhere in their archives and proposed a variant of a successor state. There is a monstrous confusion even among historians who write about it and political analysts. It is simply an unwillingness to understand. So, all of them are legal successors. All Union republics. The three Baltic republics refused to be successors. All the others, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan were legal successors and now remain legal successors. In relation to foreign debt, it was a deal. With respect to the UN Security Council, an international conference of all successors under international law had to be convened to resolve the issues. Therefore, a continuator was invented. A continuator is one of the inheritors, one of the legal successors, whom everybody recognises, but it doesn't require ratification. It is simply a declaration that it is recognised as a continuing state of the legal function that is written in the UN Charter for the USSR and now for Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession,_continuity_and_leg...
by pjmlp | 2025-05-03 05:02:35+00:00
No, as someone that did Android development in the past, and still follows Android development due to its Java linage, and being a managed OS for the most part, that isn't the case.

Google has become very aggressive, you need to keep updating the apps, to specific SDK versions, even if there are zero changes to your own application in terms of what APIs got changed.

Otherwise it gets removed from PlayStore.
by Ideogramtalent | 2025-05-03 05:04:24+00:00
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by mitthrowaway2 | 2025-05-03 05:05:05+00:00
I'm pretty sure Omron has been bringing a table tennis robot to trade shows for at least ten years, and it's pretty good at the game. They mention it in their paper:

> A key point of difference is that our agent learns the control policies and perception system, whereas the Forpheus agent uses a model-based approach. More specifically, Forpheus leverages rebound and aerodynamics models in order to identify the optimal configuration of the robot so as to return the ball to a target position. The Omron system represents a highly engineered system that cannot easily be customized to new players, environments, or paddles

But I think they're stretching a bit to claim that a model-based design can't be easily customized. Many of us would consider it much easier to plug in a new air viscosity or coefficient of restitution value into a model than to re-train a physical robot.
by guywithahat | 2025-05-03 05:05:42+00:00
I would not call them the authority on the english language lol, but what are you talking about? The idea of being transgender was invented in the 1970's by John Money, there were no 1300 nonbinary people.

The relevant section of your definition is this:

I.2.c Used with reference to a person whose sense of personal identity does not correspond to conventional sex and gender distinctions, and who has typically asked to be referred to as they (rather than as he or she).

This was a recent addition. It did not exist in any older dictionary, or more moderate new dictionaries. I showed you this in an earlier comment, this revisionist history claiming they was always used in a singular fashion to avoid gendering people is insane, it literally couldn't have existed before the 70's because the concept hadn't been invented yet.
by huem0n | 2025-05-03 05:06:35+00:00
I don't find this particularly impressive for DeepMind, mostly because it seems like a ballistics/physics problem rather than a machine learning problem.

Edit: yep here's a better performing robot from 6 years ago based on ballistics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u3L8vGMDYD8&pp=0gcJCYQJAYcqIYz...

If DeepMind wanted to emphasize the learning aspect of it (and they should) then it should be in the title. E.g. "Novel learning algorithm leads to competitive robotic table tennis"
by einpoklum | 2025-05-03 05:06:38+00:00
Nitpick:

> * it was the beginnings of social media in the early 2010s*

- IRC + NNTP newsgroups were already popular by 1989.

- Myspace was quite popular by 2004.

- Facebook was popular by... 2006 I guess?

and that's just a few platforms I can mention.
by evaneykelen | 2025-05-03 05:07:26+00:00
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by pjmlp | 2025-05-03 05:09:35+00:00
We do, game consoles, video players, blue ray players, before phones, PDAs were already like that.

Also during the 8 and 16 bit days, all home computers were vertical integrated, outside external expansion ports the only way to upgrade either the software or hardware was to buy a new computer. Sounds familiar?

An improved experience required a whole new package.

The only exception was the PC clones market, that only happened, because IBM failed to prevent it, and they did try to regain control with the MCA design that naturally failed after the pandora box got opened.

Ironically with desktops now being a niche market, we are getting back to those days.
by skissane | 2025-05-03 05:11:12+00:00
> I know businesses that literally have an old railroad branch line right up to their door, but they can't actually order anything meaningful via rail.

A century ago they would have found it at lot easier: if you wanted to send just a few cars to the back of a factory, many rail operators would have found a way to make it happen, and at a reasonable price too - now they’ll tell you the service is uneconomic to provide, unless you charter an entire locomotive for $$$$
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-05-03 05:12:05+00:00
I’m not seeing much rail that is under utilized out here int he west, if anything it is over subscribed. The energy savings in having one or two diesel electrics pull a long chain of cars is substantial, I get the feeling that if you just put trucks on rails you’d lose a lot of that.

You also need to be more conservative with elevation changes, right of ways, and turning radiuses, so lots of tunneling and viaducting ala the Chinese HSR network. You are still probably going to have a lot of roads since rubber works better for going up and down, twisty turns, and can deal last mile stuff flexibly. Not everyplace is going to be as simple as the island of sodor.
by wging | 2025-05-03 05:12:12+00:00
String compression was one. tl;dr: the JVM supports Unicode for strings, but uses 1-byte chars for strings where possible (previously it was UTF-16), even though it's not actually doing UTF-8.

Depending on what sort of document you're looking for, you might like either the JEP: https://openjdk.org/jeps/254

or Shipilev's slides (pdf warning): https://shipilev.net/talks/jfokus-Feb2016-lord-of-the-string...

Shipilev's website (https://shipilev.net/#lord-of-the-strings), and links from the JEP above to other JEPS, are both good places to find further reading.

(I think I saw a feature article about the implementation of the string compression feature, but I'm not sure who wrote it or where it was, or if I'm thinking about something else. Actually I think it might've been https://shipilev.net/blog/2015/black-magic-method-dispatch/, despite the title.)
by timewizard | 2025-05-03 05:14:08+00:00
I think most mining sites I've been on there isn't mixed large truck and passenger vehicle traffic on any road way. Those trucks simply cannot see you and so it's strictly forbidden, driverless or not.

They usually map out the site and show you which roads you can take in your vehicle and they are completely separate from the operations roads. There are only intersections and it's always the responsibility of passenger cars to come to a complete stop and wait for any cross traffic to pass before proceeding.

I remember this well because we had a job servicing specific equipment on a particular mining companies sites in northern Minnesota. One time we drove on the wrong road. A security vehicle saw us and drove up on us at an extremely high rate of speed to clear us off the truck road and onto the proper passenger road. He spent a good few minutes yelling at us once we were clear. People have been killed this way.
by amrocha | 2025-05-03 05:19:31+00:00
This goes back to my original point. You’re living in fantasy land.

In reality, that’s not how it works. If to use Redis your company had to assign someone to do maintenance work then you just wouldn’t be allowed to use Redis. And yes, you would be using MS Redis, because none of the clones would be secure and supported enough for you to feel good using them.
by reify | 2025-05-03 05:22:31+00:00
"over identification" will always lead to depression

“The action of identifying oneself to an excessive degree with someone or something else, especially to the detriment of one's individuality or objectivity.”

Its a common theme in the tech world.

Therapists always work within boundaries of confidentiality when considering any and all client disclosure.

Even during supervision client names and contact details are not disclosed.
by IAmGraydon | 2025-05-03 05:22:42+00:00
I'm a musician and I've been pretty excited about AI music generation, which seems to stand in contrast to most musicians. So far though, the available AI music gens are just plain terrible, including Suno 4.5. Everything sounds exactly like what you would get if you bought a library of really bad loops and just layered some together. Boring rhythms. Boring harmonic progressions. Boring melody. Boring lyrics. It's just terrible. I just listened to around 100 song on Suno and I didn't find one that was even remotely interesting or even just fun to listen to. I'm not a music snob - I'll listen to everything from Sigur Ros to At the Drive-In to Insomnium to Ella Fitzgerald to Taylor Swift to Dua Lipa. I just want something that can grab my attention, show me something interesting, and generate a feeling.

Here's the thing about music - what makes a good song is a sense of unexpected familiarity. In other words, it's based on a set of broad, familiar rules (music theory), but surprises you by implementing those rules in a way that's extremely unique and novel. Because generative AI is kind of like an averaging machine, rounding off the outliers, what you get is an example of the rules in the most boring, typical way possible. It completely lacks the element of surprise, and I'm not sure it will ever be capable of that essential element of surprise because of how it fundamentally works. If you want to generate a bunch of background elevator music, however, this seems to be extremely useful for that.
by ggm | 2025-05-03 05:23:07+00:00
Not to whataboutery but meta had this kind of thing done by researchers, as in social experiments in the commons and it was pretty clear the community at large doesn't appreciate being manipulated.

I'm not sure how good ethics approval processes are if this got up. Doesn't pass the pub test to me.

A double blind where the subreddit is for this kind of thing but it's not clear who is real or not in a thread at least could be said to be consensual.

Rob Pike famously did a circle jerk in Usenet days with robot accounts posting flamage. This is distinct from Mark V Shaney.
by smegma2 | 2025-05-03 05:23:19+00:00
The paper addresses this. Part of the goal was to let the world model be learned rather than modeled explicitly by the programmer.

> To date, the Omron Forpheus robot [73], [62] has the closest capabilities to the agent presented in this work, demonstrating sustained rallies on a variety of stroke styles with skilled human players. A key point of difference is that our agent learns the control policies and perception system, whereas the Forpheus agent uses a model-based approach. More specifically, Forpheus leverages rebound and aerodynamics models in order to identify the optimal configuration of the robot so as to return the ball to a target position. The Omron system represents a highly engineered system that cannot easily be customized to new players, environments, or paddles.

> While there have been many demonstrations of robots playing table tennis against human players in the past, we believe this research is one of the first human-robot interaction studies to be conducted with full competitive matches against such a wide range of player skill levels.
by skissane | 2025-05-03 05:23:32+00:00
There’s this old proposal that Bermuda join Canada as a province. Related proposal exists for the Turks and Caicos Islands. In the early 20th century, the Bahamas even negotiated to join Canada, but the plan was derailed by racial anxieties and the negotiations were abandoned.

Maybe, some day, Canada could (peacefully and consensually) acquire itself some Caribbean provinces
by Balgair | 2025-05-03 05:25:17+00:00
You can download them all for free here:

https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120212

The Reading Guide at the bottom of the page is the best way to get into them, I think. It's a daily ~15/20 minute selection. Be aware, it's the book's page number that is referenced, not the .pdf's page number.
by anovikov | 2025-05-03 05:26:31+00:00
Well, the manufacturing capacity isn't difficult to build out having plenty of capital, land, and energy - which U.S. all had aplenty, and a Republican administration can rather easily cut corners in environmental reviews and other typical roadblocks. Questions is indeed, whether it's necessary at all.

As for chips, 3 TSMC plants will cover most if not all US demand for high-performance chips. One of them already operates, another one is built out and it's just a matter of training staff now, 3rd one is in construction. No reason to worry much about it anymore.
by throwanem | 2025-05-03 05:26:41+00:00
> Apple would be the most capable financially of loss-leadering it into existence with their cash hoard, but they're so stingy that the idea of a loss leader offends them to the core.

Or they tried that, saw it's a tiny garbage market segment attended solely by photographer types who enjoy spending $10k to complain of being unsatisfied and a few others far less savory, and sensibly exited. Just like they explored FSD in concept and said no thanks, this will never work, let the morons throw their bad money after our good.

I don't know why it surprises people that a cash-rich, culturally insular company, with the world's premier brand in affordable luxury technology of genuine quality, should behave in accord with its own precepts rather than theirs. I've always found it more useful to learn about what I see in front of me, than distract my eyes with some fantasy of my own preference, and remain a fool. (For example, Apple is dogshit at wearables, always has been, always will be. You wear one because everyone wears one, although of course I have better, but they're awful!) But as I think I said nearby, I tried VR already and it sucks. I guess some folks need longer to catch on.
by int_19h | 2025-05-03 05:27:12+00:00
The problem is that this kind of thing can follow you around if you never push back.

I left Russia 20 years ago for very similar reasons. I didn't think I'd be facing the same choice in US, yet here we are.

There's a difference, though. In Russia, liberals are something like 10% of the population - the groupthink is really authoritarian overall, so there was no realistic hope of fighting back in any meaningful, non-symbolic sense. But I don't think that's the case for US. The majority of people here don't want to live in an authoritarian dictatorship. Their problem is that they don't (yet?) understand that the traditional arsenal of legitimate political tools available to citizens of established democracies - things like voting or peaceful protests - becomes ineffective once authoritarians become sufficiently entrenched, and so you have to move on to other means of resistance.
by losteric | 2025-05-03 05:27:21+00:00
We (Americans) have this culture of individualistic self-invention, consumer identity as a lifestyle (intellectual/artistic pursuits included), and the felt experience that worth/belonging/security is contingent on performance or achievement. Plus struggles with emotional intelligence and trauma (esp. among men), perpetuating that internalized conditionality.

I know so many people that got burned out and around their 30s, went off trying to do everything all at once (me too)… dancing around the hole.

The mixing of all of the above feels more uniquely American. Not that Japan (or others) don’t have some of the facets, like aspects of meritocracy (arguably balanced by other cultural values).
by dragonwriter | 2025-05-03 05:29:01+00:00
> Ask one of these famed Catholics how they feel about democracy

"Other nations need to reform certain unjust structures, and in particular their political institutions, in order to replace corrupt, dictatorial and authoritarian forms of government by democratic and participatory ones." Encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis, Pope St. John Paul II (1987)

"The Church values the democratic system inasmuch as it ensures the participation of citizens in making political choices, guarantees to the governed the possibility both of electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate. Thus she cannot encourage the formation of narrow ruling groups which usurp the power of the State for individual interests or for ideological ends." Encyclical Centesimus annus, Pope St. John Paul II (1991)

"People sometimes complain of the slowness with which an authentic democracy progresses, yet it continues, if used well, to be the most effective historical instrument for ensuring its own future in a way befitting to human beings. [...] Democracy will attain its full actualization only when every person and each people have access to the primary goods (life, food, water, health care, education, work and the certainty of their rights) through an ordering of internal and international relations that assures each person of the possibility of participating in them." Address to members of the "Centesimus Annus" Foundation, Pope Benedict XVI (2006)

"[...] we can think about the crisis of democracy as a wounded heart. That which limits participation is right before our eyes. If corruption and illegality reveal a 'heart attack', then different forms of social exclusion must also be a concern. Every time someone is marginalized, the whole social body suffers." Address at the pastoral visit to Trieste on the occasion of the 50th Social Week of Italian Catholics, Pope Francis (2024)
by throwaway5752 | 2025-05-03 05:29:27+00:00
In summary, they thought it was an evolutionary anachronism, a large egg left over from a larger body size because of assumed relationships with larger ratites like Moas. But subsequent genetic and fossil research challenged that.

The article mentions an emerging view it is about "precocity" - larger and better developed babies, and extra yolk being able to provide nutrition to the baby for longer.