MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by andoando | 2025-05-07 17:41:57+00:00
That's a good point but consider that a lot of modern countries, were not seeing the same obesity epidemic. Its hard to believe the difference between say 5% obesity and 40% obesity is from metabolic disorders in populations.

>While what you are saying is technically correct the framing of it leads to poor conclusions and suboptimal strategy, it will meet the stated aim of weight loss but not meet the implied aim of a maintainable lifestyle. The source of the calories is incredibly important given the effect that has on the hormones, and the cadence of calories is also very important. Instead of counting calories a person would be better of eating one meal a day of heavy caloric foods with the occasional multi-day fast would be far more productive. Augmenting this with a GLP-1A would be even more productive.

I think you're right that there is an effect, if you have any data to back this up I'd love to this see. My assumption is the effects were talking about (in anyone who doesn't have a metabolic disorder), is a difference in 100-200 calories in metabolic rate. In my personal experience, which I admit is not the most convincing, simply counting calories regardless of source tracks very accurately with the expected weight gain/loss based on estimates.

NONETHELESS, I think my original point stands, that there is a ton of misinformation on how weight loss works.
by black3r | 2025-05-07 17:42:03+00:00
Maybe I'm biased because I'm from an eastern EU country where hating your job is the local culture and cost of living is lower than in the USA, or because I worked like this part-time during college experienced FOMO because of it, so I learned to prioritize social events, but I never had this issue.

In fact, I'm the exact opposite - I value this kind of job arrangement, because I can earn enough money to live comfortably (and save some money) just by working 100-120 hours monthly, which gives me much more free time than working a normal full time job + I have the flexibility to take a day off (or even a week or two of vacations) anytime I want, but I still can work some weekends if I want some extra money...
by whalesalad | 2025-05-07 17:42:49+00:00
engine braking is not braking - is what I am trying to imply

holding your speed or decellerating mildly is not the same as braking. if i gear down into a higher rpm and hold my speed, or perhaps decel ever so slightly - its not worth alerting the driver behind you. most people over-react to brake lights and will see your brakes as "I should apply brakes too" when in this particularly case, they should not.

I can't think of a single circumstance where compression braking should cause a brake light to illuminate. the rate of decelleration is so small compared to even a gentle tap of the brakes, that it will merely confuse drivers behind you.
by rdtsc | 2025-05-07 17:42:50+00:00
Like others mentioned, they describe the 'agonizing' problem, but don't explain how it works. The most charitable read is it's just plain old lazy journalism, the least charitable is they are hiding something and dancing around the issue.

What makes SF colleges susceptible to this? Are they implying it's incredibly easy for anyone to fill in a form online without any ID or verification and they get aid? Ok, why was that allowed? I am guessing it's to make it easier for people, to apply but also it looks good for enrollment -- "look at how many students we have". Being strict about verifying applications would mean also lower enrollment numbers. Some classes might not have enough students and would get cancelled. So someone there and possibly many someones looked the other way for many years.

Let's take a look:

https://www.ccsf.edu/apply-ccsf

> Starting February 2, 2024, CCCApply will be integrating identity verification through ID.me. ID.me will help protect student identities and prevent fraudulent students from taking seats in classes at CCSF. This is an optional feature for students.

> For students who cannot use ID.me, click on “Verify Later” to skip the ID.me verification process.

Ok, so still no need for any ID at all, it's all optional.

Yes, they want homeless or undocumented people from no valid identity documentation (from country of origin), minors? to have access. Ok, that's laudable, but shouldn't there be some kind of in person verification at least. I guess "verify later" is that part and it's skipped.

If you want to apply then you're funneled to either federal student aid, or California Dream act aid

https://www.ccsf.edu/paying-college/financial-aid-office/how...

One of those probably make it easier to apply to with a bot and without a valid ID. It would be nice of the article did that research instead of relying on random people do to it for them.
by shantara | 2025-05-07 17:42:59+00:00
I was interested in zed as I was looking for a performant VSCode replacement, but its inability to fully remove AI integration and disable the prominent sign-in button made me lose any interest. Judging by the project’s response or lack of it on these topics, I am worried about adopting zed in my workflows.

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/12325

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/6756
by derefr | 2025-05-07 17:43:25+00:00
> Remember, you can get blood from humans in your own country, and prepare it there. So, why do you need it from the US?

Random hypothesis:

• equipment needs for uranium enrichment for Manhattan project in 1940s

=> US cornering the market on centrifuges (in both a "we buy them all" sense and a "we won't let companies sell them to other state actors in quantity" sense) for decades

=> US biomedical manufacturing of anything requiring centrifuging as a step, quickly outstripping that of all other countries

=> eventual global logistical dependence on US-based suppliers for such products
by RealityVoid | 2025-05-07 17:43:35+00:00
It seems to me apparent that there needs to be some way to arbiter the claims outside the insurer company itself. I'm... not sure that there is. But if there were and there exists some sort of sanction or incentive for the insurer to get it right the first time... I'm confident that AI insurance companies could streamline the process. But you need this incentive mechanism, else it's a recipe for dystopia. (Deeper thought goes that you would shift a lot of work to the arbiter, but I won't touch that for now.)
by techpineapple | 2025-05-07 17:43:52+00:00
A bit ago I remember it was popular in the economics podcasting space to say that globalization failed, but I wonder by what metric, like no the world is not perfect but maybe it’s better?

I think this is true when we I hear like “democracy failed” or “liberalism failed”. But it always feel like there’s also a not so subtle acknowledgement that the opposite is worse. “Sure there’s been no world wars in 70 years, but China grumbles some times so, everything is a failure”

Like utopia can’t be the yardstick.

We should strive for constant improvement. Maybe there are techniques like targeted tariffs to fix some of these problems, but complete de globalization doesn’t feel like the answer.
by flatline | 2025-05-07 17:44:35+00:00
I agree about the clickbait. As I come up on 50, however, I think there are a number of axes on which we can analyze aging.

Chronological age: there is no getting past getting older, you will age and it will be increasingly apparent with time.

Grooming and style: you can, nonetheless, choose to date yourself with your clothing and overall presentation, or not. This can be overdone and make you stand out “trying too hard” not to be old. But there’s a world of middle ground.

Physical: a mix of genetics, nutrition, exercise, access to medical care, self care, and luck. Some people slow down much more than others. Some people, like the author, simply choose to, having been relived of the expectation that younger folks be very busy.

Mentality: do you want to look at younger generations as an alien species, or do you want to deal with people as people and acknowledge that while we all have different backgrounds, new perspectives have their own value. I find I can still relate well to people of about any age. At some point mental decline may rob me of that, but I won’t stop while it’s in my control.

Interests: do you mostly enjoy media and activities particular to a time when you were younger, or do you have a penchant for novelty despite your age?
by otikik | 2025-05-07 17:45:07+00:00
This might sound silly but I did have a specific moment where I realized “oh I am a ‘mister’ now”. I was 25 and just walking on a city street. Nothing special was happening, I didn’t overhear anyone talking about age. I just noticed it. Legally I had been an adult for quite some time but I just noticed that I had internalized that.

I somewhat expected to have something similar for “old”. It will of course happen gradually, but I will realize it’s part of what I am suddenly.
by binarybitlist | 2025-05-07 17:45:40+00:00
Something interesting happend, while reading...

(Sry, none native English speaker, in German:) "Moment mal, sagst Du da gerade, mit aller höchster Wahrscheinlichkeit gibt es gar keine zufälligen Zahlen, die ein Computer generieren könne, da 'Bits' immer nur entweder den Wert '0' oder eben '1' annehmen können (und das auf inzwischen mehreren Layern, andere Geschichte...)?"

let me try to explain it a little...

3 * (A = >0) adding... 1 * (A = 1) (..another topic yes...)

...but that what was wanted is "NONE" (of it...) or in other words 'maybe random'??

??

:confused:
by davidjfelix | 2025-05-07 17:45:53+00:00
My understanding was that the "enemy" was McKinsey, a firm that has a reputation to me as being an expensive consulting firm filled with MBA types who frequently are hired by companies.

My understanding of this reputation is: This often happens at the detriment of either product quality or employee satisfaction. It's debatable if they actually have a reputation of providing value. I think short term? Maybe, albeit expensive. Long term? I'd say no.
by criddell | 2025-05-07 17:46:29+00:00
I'm 55 this year.

Getting junk mail from the AARP made me feel old. Especially when I opened it, saw the free trunk organizer and discounts and thought that's a pretty good deal.

It's weird for me to think that I was born 25 years after WWII and today, 25 years ago was 2000. A year ain't what it used to be.
by jchw | 2025-05-07 17:46:33+00:00
There does not need to be an additional cost for this.

Most users will do this:

1. Check if there is a value

2. Get the value

There is nothing theoretically preventing the compiler from enforcing that step 1 happens before step 2, especially if the compiler is able to combine the control flow branch with the process of conditionally getting the value. The practical issue is that there's no way to express this in C++ at all. The best you can do is the visitor pattern, which has horrible ergonomics and you can only hope it doesn't cause worse code generation too.

Some users want to do this:

1. Grab the value without checking to see if it's valid. They are sure it will be valid and can't or don't want to eat the cost of checking.

There is nothing theoretically preventing this from existing as a separate method.

I'm not a rust fanboy (seriously, check my GitHub @jchv and look at how much Rust I write, it's approximately zero) but Rust has this solved six ways through Sunday. It can do both of these cases just fine. The only caveat is that you have to wrap the latter case in an unsafe, but either way, you're not eating any costs you don't want to.

C++ can do this too. C++ has an active proposal for a feature that can fix this problem and make much more ergonomic std::variant possible, too.

https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2024/p26...

Of course, this is one single microcosm in the storied history of C++ failing to adequately address the problem of undefined behavior proliferating the language, so I don't have high hopes.
by tmsh | 2025-05-07 17:46:53+00:00
Why not call it Ardukid (if it's resurrected)? I.e., evolve from Gameboy and not bring in gender from the very beginning where it's irrelevant (for the next generation). Imagine if you're a young girl interested in tech. It's those little paper cuts that lead to a world with gender imbalances for no very good reason.
by zoogeny | 2025-05-07 17:47:02+00:00
> I see the burden of proof has been reversed.

Isn't this just a pot calling the kettle black? I'm not sure why either side has the rightful position of "my opinion is right until you prove otherwise".

We're talking about predictions for the future, anyone claiming to be "right" is lacking humility. The only think going on is people justifying their opinions, no one can offer "proof".
by davidmurdoch | 2025-05-07 17:47:35+00:00
Well, yes, but also no. It really depends on your website. SPAs can benefit, especially ones that utilize server-side rendering, as they don't have multiple pages anyway. And not all MPAs need to optimize for multi-page navigation either; sometimes websites aren't intended to be heavily navigated, or if they are, common navigation can make use of preloads.

This technique is usually combined with preloads so the parser can identify assets that should be prefetched while the remaining packets are still being downloaded.

If your "Critical CSS" is small enough (i.e., it fit well within the client's CWND), it is very possible it doesn't increase the total number of roundtrips at all.

As a web developer, if you are optimizing for above-the-fold CSS, you are already optimizing in lots of other ways, and should be fully cognizant of the potential trades for the optimization solutions that are available to you.
by tom89999 | 2025-05-07 17:47:38+00:00
52 years old here. Getting that age is sometimes relieving. I am not that stupid as back then. Got wealthier too. So i bought a classic Vespa scooter lately, couldnt have afforded that thing back then. I love tape decks and record players again, that stuff was also very expensive, now i get it for around 50 € and repair and maintain it myself. Wisdom comes with age, no matter what profession or job you are working as long as you stay interested. Whats coming back as boomerang are the stupid decisions i made when i was younger, now i know better and would like to turn back time. But i think thats pretty normal in all walks of life.
by bandoti | 2025-05-07 17:48:06+00:00
Honestly this is why I use emacs. Editors like VS Code even, while have some conveniences built in, update every five minutes it seems.

My workflow is somewhat Byzantine—mostly just use shells and basic tools like find and grep do most of what IDEs do (sure somewhat worse).

That and I copy and and paste from my favorite AI chat and that’s it. Paste a code block, or an entire file for context.

Like taking notes with a pencil and paper—which helps information uptake—I believe it’s actually important to slow down and take a moment to think.
by refulgentis | 2025-05-07 17:48:07+00:00
Another release from Google!

Now I can use:

- Gemini 2.0 Flash Image Generation Preview (May) instead of Gemini 2.0 Flash Image Generation Preview (March)

- or when I need text, Gemini 2.5 Flash Thinking 04-17 Preview ("natively multimodal" w/o image generation)

- When I need to control thinking budgets, I can do that with Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview 04-17, with not-thinking at a 50% price increase over a month prior

- And when I need realtime, fallback to Gemini 2.0 Flash 001 Live Preview (announced as In Preview on April 9 2025 after the Multimodal Live API was announced as released on December 11 2024)

- I can't control Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental/Preview/Preview IO Edition's thinking budgets, but good news follows in the next bullet: they'll swap the model out underneath me with one that thinks ~10x less so at least its in the same cost ballpark as their competitors

- and we all got autoupgraded from Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (03/25 released 4/2) to Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (IO Edition) yesterday! Yay!
by hangonhn | 2025-05-07 17:48:09+00:00
I remember how shocked I was when my buddy got divorced and said, "There. This is a midlife crisis situation. All I need now is a red sports car."

And I said, "Midlife?"

And he replied, "Yeah dude. We're literally in the middle of our life expectancy."

That's when it dawned on me. I had gotten married just the year before. I also became a father at the same age my own father was when I left home for college. The interesting thing is that my timeline matches those in my social-economic cohort. It seems like in that cohort, we are hitting our life stages a lot later than previous generations so there is a discrepancy between our physical age and how it feels to some of us.
by ternaryoperator | 2025-05-07 17:48:18+00:00
Programming languages are high-cost, low-revenue beasts. When Kotlin was first released, JB was hoping it would replace Java in the enterprise. And as the sole providers of Kotlin tools, they'd have a greatly expanded market.

Kotlin did not replace Java, except on Android. So JB now has a beast they have to feed without an enterprise revenue stream. They do get secondary benefits: they use it internally, etc.

We examined Kotlin in detail for a CLI app and based on conversations with Kotlin developers concluded that it was not sufficient of a Java replacement for us to evaluate further. For those in a similar situation, the greatly increased cadence of Java releases has probably permanently foreclosed Kotlin-qua-enterprise language.
Ask HN: What engineering trivia earned you the most cred
by porkbrain | 2025-05-07 17:48:18+00:00
Is there a specific piece of engineering knowledge that powered you to substantially contribute?

A software engineering example: knowing that Postgres FK doesn't implicitly create an index. Three different projects I joined weren't aware of this and we managed to improve the performance with a negligible amount of effort.

Keen to hear your wins (and make them mine ^^
Ask HN: How does structured output from LLMs work under the hood?
by dcreater | 2025-05-07 17:48:25+00:00
OpenAI, Ollama, LiteLLM python packages allow you to set the response format to a Pydantic model. As I understand that this just, serializes the model into a JSON. Is the JSON then just passed as context to the LLM and the LLM asked to adhere to the provided JSON? Or is there something more technical/deterministic happening that constrains the output to the JSON format provided?
by pstuart | 2025-05-07 17:48:34+00:00
It would be nice if tariffs were structured to do that, but that might be a lucky after effect. The goal of these tariffs is to replace income taxes.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/22/trump-tariffs-replace-income...

There's other non-domestic-rebuilding angles as well, but that is the driver.
by fsloth | 2025-05-07 17:48:49+00:00
”If the practitioners haven’t adopted what you’re offering for 50+ years, that thing can’t be good.”

I don’t think what features are popular in C++ is good indication of anything. The language is good only due to the insane amounts of investment to the ecosystem, not because of the language features due to design.

For an industrial language inventory of ”nice features to have” F# and C# are mostly my personal gold standard.

”Too theoretical” is IMO not the correct lens to use. I would propose as a better lens a) which patterns you often use b) how to implement them in language design itself.

A case in point is the gang-of-four book. It mostly gives names to things in C++ that are language features in better languages.
by giancarlostoro | 2025-05-07 17:49:12+00:00
One thing I wish JetBrains would explore is building a fully native NON-JRE text editor that is a direct competitor to Sublime Text, but has a rich plugin API. I would love to see their take on a Sublime like editor. Atom and VS Code were the only serious Sublime Text competitors for a while, but now VS Code has gotten insanely bloated over the years, and also Atom is defunct unfortunately.

I would love to see them build a fully native editor with their decades of knowledge.
by conartist6 | 2025-05-07 17:49:16+00:00
They certainly can be quite different things and in all current systems I know of the two are unrelated, but in my system they are one and the same.

That's possible because the source of truth for the IDE's state is an immutable concrete syntax tree. It can be immutable without ruining our costs because it has btree amortization built into it. So basically you can always construct a new tree with some changes by reusing most of the nodes from an old tree. A version history would simply be a stack of these tree references.
by cess11 | 2025-05-07 17:49:24+00:00
Looking at Bandcamp and the YouTube channel Black Metal Promotion and some similar outlets it seems to me that albums are still very much a thing.

For the big pop musicians singles have been very important long before the Internet. For the punk and hardcore scenes too, if you play fast and hard you'll easily cram ten songs onto a vinyl single and if you play a little slower but still hard you still put out a few tracks for cheap.

In the market for mass produced, mass advertised music, more entertainment than art, singles are surely where it's at. Earworms designed to be hits, quick to sell a lot and quickly replaced, that kind of thing. I'm not sure if this was the business Prince was in, but if he was, singles made sense. From your description it doesn't seem like he was mainly after the people that regularly put on a 30-60 minute work and listen closely without interruptions.

Back in 2002 or so transfering an album over the Internet was also a rather cumbersome affair. Pulling that much over a nervous 56k modem took a while, so sending one track and charging money for it likely made sense from a technical perspective as well. I never participated in something like that, though, I stole bandwidth and used it for piracy, and swapped home burnt CD:s.
by pmarreck | 2025-05-07 17:49:51+00:00
53 here. The other day I offhandedly mentioned to my S.O. that I have dirty-blonde hair. "Maybe 20 years ago," she said. "You're squarely in the grey today."

You don't just suddenly see yourself as an old fogie. You feel the same inside; maybe more responsible, more jaded, more self-assured, less neurotic or insecure, but you're still the same. But that mirror and this slowly aging body, man. It will outpace your change in perception of yourself. I tried growing my hair out during COVID and I realized I resembled Ron Jeremy, which horrified me. Having a kid just accelerated my aging and health plummet. It's rough.

But again, there's still, like, an immutable element of you inside.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE: It has been ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR as a technologist to witness the progression of tech over the last 50 years firsthand. And I have a soon-to-be 4 year old kid (and I could frankly be his grandparent) who I will be imparting the age-old wisdom of the 1980's (and a lifetime of tech wisdom) to. =)