MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dredmorbius | 2025-05-04 17:39:10+00:00
Island birds may become flightless, which lifts constraint on maximum mass.

Though that occurs in other contexts as well: Antarctica (hardly small) with penguins, Africa (dittos) and ostriches, Australia (again) with emus, and South America (again) with the rhea.

There are also flightless island birds, such as the Guam Rail, Henderson crake, Inaccessible Island rail, and across multiple islands, the cassowary.
by Kye | 2025-05-04 17:39:20+00:00
Relay: works like a CDN

PDS: like a database

AppView: your Blueskies and deers dot social

This proof of concept is an AppView using a relay run by Blacksky instead of Bluesky. Most of the users are on PDSes run by Bluesky, but the quoted post comes from a self-hosted PDS. Self-hosted PDSes already far outnumber Bluesky-run and the only thing holding a lot of people back is the tooling to move back in the event of problems isn't there yet.

My favorite part of this is it's built on components built independently by different people building tools for their own needs and communities while the Bluesky folks were busy working on the core tooling to make it easier for others to do the same. Nobody had to ask anyone for permission.
by Der_Einzige | 2025-05-04 17:39:52+00:00
No, it's done to turn an uncreative model into a creative model. This idea that sampling isn't that important or is some violation of the bitter lesson is exactly why I had to call out the whole academic field as having a giant blindspot for this kind of research in our oral presentation at ICLR!

Top n sigma has been around since mid 2024, min_p around since 2023 and we are still waiting for these innovations to be integrated outside of open source stuff (i.e. outside of HF/vllm). It's being done slowly on purpose by API providers because they don't want to deal with the risk of models being "too creative" (also high temp likely breaks their watermarking)

One other thing - making models aware of their own sampling settings is super easy if you just feed it back to the model every token or generation (say, using structured generation). Models can control their own sampling settings and thus "have access to its internal states" with just a tiny bit of extra programming (the model can write that code for you now lol)
by glp1guide | 2025-05-04 17:40:03+00:00
This is certainly a problem, but there just isn't much that many can do about the laws as they are written (and the whole incentives of the pharmaceutical industry as we know it).

That said, there is some hope on the horizon, some patent expirations have already happened (i.e. liraglutide which is less effective) and some are coming:

https://glp1.guide/content/patent-expirations-for-glp1-recep...
by cultofmetatron | 2025-05-04 17:40:59+00:00
> Right now that love goes to clojure!

having used both, elixir feels a lot like clojure semantics with a ruby like syntax. the big advantage of elixir is the erlang vm. if you want a vm that heavily prioritizes parallelism and network programming, give elixir a try. otherise, clojure is perfectly adequate.
by Der_Einzige | 2025-05-04 17:41:44+00:00
Most other penalties don't require much overhead (min_p is basically free).

Most techniques are not made available by API providers because they enable alignment breaking. It's the only explanation for why we are still stuck with only top_p, top_k, and temp of 0-2.

If you want proper sampler settings to be available, your options are oobabooga, sillytavern (dependent on your backend, so vllm backend for example doesn't have top-n sigma yet), or directly running huggingface code. There might be some marginal options here too but in general, sampling innovation is firmly in the hands of open source coomers right now and not in the hands of academics.
by Anthony-G | 2025-05-04 17:42:11+00:00
My previous manual organisation of digital photos into directories on my home server was quite time consuming. I got an iPhone a few years ago and started using Apple Photos. Like you, I put no effort into organising the photos – other than adding some descriptive metadata to a few photos. Apple’s organisation and their user interface allow me to quickly find any photo that I remember taking. However, I’m curious about what you mean by “didn’t use the software effectively”.

Off Topic: one other thing I really like about Apple Photos is that I get to see my photos on the Apple TV when screensaver kicks in.
by qq99 | 2025-05-04 17:42:37+00:00
That's a really good point.

I haven't done a lot of optimistic updates with LiveView yet. I'm not sure how sanely you could really achieve it (because it seems you'd lose the primary benefit: server-side rendering / source of truth).

However, there are a few mechanisms you can use to note that the page is loading / processing a LV event that can assist the user in understanding the latency. e.g., at the very least, make a button spindicate. I've experienced (in my own apps) the "huh is the app dead?" factor with latency, which suggests I need to simulate latency more. If the socket is unstable or cannot connect, the app is just entirely dead, though the fallback to longpolling is satisfactory.

I think it would really shine for internal apps due to the sheer velocity and simplicity of developing and deploying it.

In the worst case, you could fall back to using regular controllers or APIs controllers, so I still see it being a "better version of Ruby" overall. However, if we're going back to this, I would rather use SolidStart and do it all in TypeScript anyway.

At the end of the day, I'm very torn between the resilience/ease/speed of Elixir and the much better type system in TS. The ability to just async something and know it will work is kind of crazy for improving performance of apps (check out assign_async)

> the majority of results are 300ms+

Another thing to consider is that a lot of apps (SPA powered by API) take 300~1000ms to even give you a JSON response these days. So if you can get by with making a button spin while you await the liveview response (or are content with topbar.js) I think you can get roughly close to the same experience.

> deployed 'at the edge'

The nice part of Elixir is you could probably make a global cluster quite easily. I've never done it though. You could have app nodes close to users. I think you'd have to think of a way to accelerate your DB connection however (which probably lives in 1 zone).
Show HN: Driverless print server for legacy printers, profit goes to open-source
by ValdikSS | 2025-05-04 17:43:00+00:00
This is a device, to which you connect your older USB printer, and use it from any PC or smartphone without installing drivers (AirPrint/Mopria), wirelessly. As easy as that!

* Supports all OS: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android. No drivers needed. Windows-on-ARM and Apple M1/2/3/4 also supported. * Supports the majority of printers released before ≈2018 * Profit from sold devices is shared between CUPS, SANE, AirSane open-source printing and scanning projects * Surplus and donations are accumulated to improve current open-source drivers and develop new ones

The printer driver is run inside the device. It comes with lots of open-source and official proprietary drivers. x86-only drivers are running under box86 emulation, with little visible performance impact, ensuring wide compatibility with many printers and MFPs.

All of this is bundled in a retail-like device, with simple web interface[1][2]. No tinkering and no DIY required, it's safe to plug off the power cord every time, and you can do factory reset.

The print server is secure by default: it conforms to most of the IoT Device Security Specification 1.0[3] best practices, has built-in firewall to ensure LAN-only operation, and does not include anti-consumer features.

All devices come with technical support, where I act as a middleman between all the involved projects and printer drivers. If there's a bug, I first try to debug the issue remotely, and if it's not possible, end up buying the same printer and debug it until the issue is resolved. All the fixes made during the development are contributed back to the origin projects, and there were many bugs fixed: almost every package has additional patches compared to original Debian 12 disto state.

[1]: https://printserver.ink/webface-main.png

[2]: https://printserver.ink/webface-other.png

[3]: https://csa-iot.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/23-80986-013-...

P.S. Brother printer lovers, the latest Brother L2800dw (2024) laser comes with the chipped cartridge, which you can't refill and reset forever anymore. The printer allows to continue printing with an "empty" cartridge with a special menu item, but it does so only to fixed amount of pages, and then stops. It doesn't allow to use cartridges without chips.
by yladiz | 2025-05-04 17:43:55+00:00
> “There is no way to sugarcoat it. At startups, you work extremely hard,” CEO Kenneth Chong told Forbes. Chong, 30, compared the all-consuming role to that of being an athlete, who trains intensely and dedicates time and energy to the sport beyond normal business hours. “Not everyone wants to be an athlete. And if you do, then you chose that life.”

Hahaha. I’m sorry, but comparing being an athlete with working 7 days a week is completely bonkers. I can maybe, maybe get an endurance argument, but in general unlike being an athlete where you are actually improving you and your craft, and your body, (to a point, of course) working at a company mostly only improves the company, and working 7 days improves the company to the detriment of the employee.

The real reason they would make this argument is because athletes are held in high regard and they want to make it seem that working at a startup is like being one of those “highly regarded” people, and the way you achieve that high regard is to work to the bone. It may fool some people, I guess.
by TheRoccoB | 2025-05-04 17:45:13+00:00
They don't need enterprise quotas for new firebase projects. Set them low, let us turn them up when quotas are hit.

For instance I was seeing 35GB/s (GigaBYTES, not Gigabits) per second of cloud egress. I believe 25GB/s is the default for each region where you have a bucket.

Who knows what other insane quota landmines there are out there.
by keyringlight | 2025-05-04 17:45:33+00:00
Assuming you're talking about winget, that seems to operate either as an alternative CLI interface to the MS store with a separate database developers would need to add their manifests to, or to download and run normal installers in silent mode. For example if you do winget show "adobe acrobat reader (64-bit) you can see what it will grab. It's a far cry from how most linux package managers operate
by rlpb | 2025-05-04 17:46:25+00:00
> The distribution also will not be persuaded, because it’s the “stable” branch for the next 3 years.

This is exactly what users want, though. Eg. if they want to receive updates more frequently on Ubuntu then they can use the six monthly releases, but most Ubuntu users deliberately choose the LTS over that option because they don't want everything updated.
by gjsman-1000 | 2025-05-04 17:48:18+00:00
But if you’re a developer, that doesn’t change that many users do not understand, will not understand, and will open bug reports regularly.

When that happens, guess what you do? You trademark your software’s name and use the law to force distributions to not package unless concessions are granted. We’re beginning to see this with OBS, but Firefox also did this for a while.

As Fedora quickly found, when trademark law gets involved, any hope of forcing developers to allow packaging through a policy or opinion vote becomes hilariously, comically ineffectual.

The other alternative is to just not support Linux. Almost all major software has been happily taking that path, and the whole packaging mess gives no incentive to change.
by spacedcowboy | 2025-05-04 17:48:21+00:00
Misleading headlines again....

First line of the text: "A majority of Britons may now consider themselves neurodivergent"

"may" carrying a lot of water there... As a Brit, I don't know a single person who considers themselves neurodivergent. Yeah, yeah, anecdote vs data, but if literally 1 in 2 people are supposed to be so, you'd have thought (out of my few hundred colleagues, friends and family) I'd know one.
by shthed | 2025-05-04 17:48:25+00:00
No this is separate data that seems to be for the "Reference Chat History" feature.

Chat history allows ChatGPT to reference past conversations when responding, even if the information hasn’t been saved as a memory. Since it doesn’t retain every detail, use saved memories for anything you want ChatGPT to keep top-of-mind.

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8983136-what-is-memory
by andersco | 2025-05-04 17:48:30+00:00
I recently had an experience where I was trying out the AWS Bedrock service using their knowledge base quickStart. I followed their flow for creating a knowledge base and then played with it a bit but decided it wasn’t for me. That was in April. On May 1, I received a bill from AWS for several hundred dollars. It turns out this index I created was costing me about $16/day. I had set up a budget alarm for $20 but it was never triggered. I contacted AWS support and they were very apologetic but would not offer any kind of refund. On the one hand, sure I should have deleted those indexes after trying them out, but there was no info or any indication provided that they’d incur a daily expense even when not in use. In fact, even after I received the bill I was not able to find the source of the expense because it was described as coming from OpenSearch, which I had not used. It was only after contacting AWS support that I was able to determine that the source of the expense was Bedrock.
by treetalker | 2025-05-04 17:49:11+00:00
> The oath of office, which Trump has now taken twice, is “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

It seems like we need an amendment to provide an ability floor: even at his best he would be incapable. The Founders were too optimistic in thinking that the electorate would sufficiently police the gateway to the office and that, if the electorate failed nevertheless, the Congress would always provide a sufficient safety net.

> He doesn’t remember the oath of office.

Not necessarily. What's sure is that he is incapable of understanding it and never has.
by jamesblonde | 2025-05-04 17:49:45+00:00
Loud-quiet-loud was the signature sounds of Nirvana - borrowed from Frank Black who pioneered it with the Pixies. Kurt was a way better singer and better looking than Frank Black. Along with good songs, that was a recipe for success. I am a big Nirvana fan. But a bigger Pixies fan. A chunk of Pixies sound/energy was inspired from the guitar middle/outro in B52's "Rock Lobster".
by jeroenhd | 2025-05-04 17:49:53+00:00
Linux has supported online replacement for a while now, and can be compiled to dozens of megabytes in size. Whatever cruft Nvidia adds in their binary drivers will push the OS beyond 400MiB, but building a Linux equivalent isn't exactly impossible.

The problem with it is that it's a lot of work (just getting secure boot to work is a massive pain in itself) and there are a lot of drivers you need to manually disable or settings to manually toggle to get a Switch equivalent system. The Switch includes only code paths necessary for the Switch, so anything that looks like a USB webcam should be completely useless. Bluetooth/WiFi chipset drivers are necessary, but of course you only need the BLOBs for the specific hardware you're using.

Part of Nintendo's security strategy is the inability to get binary code onto the system that wasn't signed by Nintendo. You can replicate this relatively easily (basic GPG/etc. signature checks + marking externally accessible mount points as non-executable + only allowing execution of those mounts/copies from those mounts after full signature verification). Also add some kind of fTPM-based encryption mechanism to make sure your device storage can't be altered. You then need to figure out some method of signing all the software any user of your OS could possibly need to execute, but if you're an OEM that shouldn't be impossible.

Once you've locked down the system enough, you can start enforcing whatever sandboxing you need on top of whatever UI you prefer so your games can't be hacked. Flatpak/Snap/Docker all provide APIs for this already.

The tooling is all there, but there's no incentive for anyone to actually make it work. Some hardware OEMs do a pretty good job (Samsung's Tizen, for instance) but anything with a freely accessible debug interface or development interface is often quickly hacked. Most of the Linux user base want to use the same OS on their laptop and desktop and have all of their components work, and would also like the ability to run their own programs. To accomplish that, you have to give up a lot of security layers.

I doubt Nintendo's kernel is that secure, but without access to the source code and without a way to attack it, exploiting it is much harder. Add to that the tendency of Nintendo to sue, harass, and intimidate people trying to get code execution on their devices, and they end up with hardware that looks pretty secure from the outside.

Android and ChromeOS are also pretty solid operating systems in terms of general security, but their dependence on supporting a range of (vendor) drivers makes them vulnerable. Still, escalating from webkit to root on Android is quite the challenge, you'll need a few extra exploits for that, and those will probably only work on specific phones running specific software.

For what it's worth, you can get a pretty solid system by installing an immutable OS (Silverblue style) without root privileges. That still has some security mechansism disabled for usability purposes, but it's a solid basis for an easily updateable, low-security-risk OS when installed correctly.
by bryanlarsen | 2025-05-04 17:50:40+00:00
I wouldn't assume all or even most renewables. I would assume you'd continue to use existing hydro and nuclear. The nuclear would help a little, but the hydro helps a lot. It's capacity can be saved for times when wind and solar are low.

In that scenario 90% is very easy to hit. A couple of hours worth of storage, maybe.

> But "some" wind or sun is not enough to support the whole grid.

The less there is, the more you have to over build to compensate. Doesn't make it impossible.
by tbalsam | 2025-05-04 17:50:40+00:00
As someone who has worked in computer vision ML for nearly a decade, this sounds like a terrible idea.

You don't need RL remotely for this usecase. Image resolution pyramids are pretty normal tho and handling them well/efficiently is the big thing. Using RL for this would be like trying to use graphene to make a computer screen because it's new and flashy and everyone's talking about it. RL is inherently very sample inefficient, and is there to approximate when you don't have certain defined informative components, which we do have in computer vision in spades. Crossentropy losses (and the like) are (generally, IME/IMO) what RL losses try to approximate, only on a much larger (and more poorly-defined) scale.

Please mark speculation as such -- I've seen people see confident statements like this and spend a lot of time/manhours on it (because it seems plausible). It is not a bad idea from a creativity standpoint, but practically is most certainly not the way to go about it.

(That being said, you can try for dynamic sparsity stuff, it has some painful tradeoffs that generally don't scale but no way in Illinois do you need RL for that)
by aspenmayer | 2025-05-04 17:51:21+00:00
> Greg: And oh! There it is! That final middle patch—she’s going matte, folks. This wall is becoming a canvas of completion, a poetic stillness in a chaotic world. I feel like I just watched Cinderella get her slipper and a Roth IRA.

> Marsha (tearfully): This… is why I do this job. For moments like this. For the shimmerless silence. For the slow, glorious commitment to finality.

> Greg: And so we leave you, dear viewers, staring into a flat, fully-dry future. The room has changed… and so have we.

I’m getting major Broomshakalaka vibes in the best possible way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt2uIhAvQZ8
by stefnotch | 2025-05-04 17:51:36+00:00
I noticed that this tool doesn't preserve links within PDFs. ( https://github.com/Hopding/pdf-lib/issues/341 ) That's one of the main things I always try out with PDF editors, and it saddens me to see that this one also runs into that issue.

Fixes would be either using a different PDF library, or manually implementing that feature with the building blocks that pdf-lib provides.
by ethbr1 | 2025-05-04 17:52:19+00:00
Spare me the whatabout- and no-true-scotsman- isms.

People in this position had a choice: they chose a terrible option.

There weren't economies of scale. There weren't labor cost concerns. There weren't quotas.

At minimum, someone could have researched how slaughterhouses stun prior the euthanasia.
by dyogenez | 2025-05-04 17:52:48+00:00
> You can do this with Next.js SSR

Yep! It'd be possible with Next.js. The difference is how it's organized. In Next.js with RSCs, we were fetching data for each part of the page where it's used (trending books, Live events, blog posts, favorite books). Each of those could be their own cache hit to Redis.

One advantage of Rails is the controller. We can fetch all data in s single cache lookup. Of course it'd be possible to put everything needed in a single lookup in Next.js too, but then we wouldn't be leveraging RSCs.

I tried self-hosting Next.js on Digital ocean, but it crashed due to memory leaks without a clear way to understand where the leak was. Google Cloud Run and Vercel worked because it would restart each endpoint. We have more (and cheaper) hosting options with Rails.