MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bongodongobob | 2025-05-23 23:35:01+00:00
??? I got a job as a teenager because I wanted to buy a guitar. It had nothing to do with tracks. It's the same for most teens, they want to make a few extra bucks. Let's not forgot the majority of people on this forum were on a track of sorts that differs very much from the rest of the population. Being a bright nerdy kid is not the norm. Teens got jobs and mowed lawns to buy a car, weed, a guitar, etc, not to pad their highschool resume. That is not the norm unless you're at an expensive private school or already in the upper middle class or something.
by loeber | 2025-05-23 23:35:04+00:00
Agreed! I'm randomly Google Street View-ing through town, and it looks... modest but actually quite nice?

Check out these pleasant-looking houses in the summer: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Massena,+NY+13662/@44.9264...

Edit: I've spent a few more minutes on Street View. This is not at all the podunk backwater that the author makes it out to be. They've got plenty of commercial streets, and big blocks of houses with nicely trimmed lawns.

I suppose this actually makes the author's point more strongly -- even if you have very little money, you can live pretty nicely in Massena!
by mrandish | 2025-05-23 23:36:03+00:00
> You didn't have to draw a pixel at a time.

Back in the day I was fortunate to work with some of the best pixel artists in the industry like Jim Sachs (https://spillhistorie.no/2024/09/13/legends-of-the-games-ind...) and they definitely did draw the vast majority of their pixels one at a time in the best paint programs available like Electronic Arts Deluxe Paint. In the linked article Sach's is quoted "I put dots on the screen. One at a time at first. Green dots for grass, blue dots for sky, gray dots for castle blocks. Hour after hour. I was happy if I got one square inch of the screen done in a day."

To create top notch pixel art in those limited resolutions and palettes forces the artist into creating the illusion of colors and detail which aren't actually there in any one pixel. They do this by modifying the colors of individual adjacent pixels to imply shading and highlights. Jim would modify one pixel, zoom out to assess the overall effect on that area of the image, then zoom back in and modify the next pixel. I encourage you to zoom in and pixel peep some of Jim's images. Most of those pixel patterns aren't uniform enough to be from an 80s paint program and not randomly Bayer-ish enough to be a digitized image.

Jim has discussed his workflow in detail in interviews. The value of Deluxe Paint to an artist like Jim wasn't laying down swathes of pixels, it was mostly fast zooming and panning as well as detailed palette control. Of course, those artists would use whatever capabilities their tools enabled when they could but it wasn't nearly as much or as often as you're assuming.
by raattgift | 2025-05-23 23:36:23+00:00
Why quarks? There are untold bazillions of those inside each proton, and there's no quark conservation law (rather than conservation of (for example) isospin and strangeness, but only under electromagnetism not under weak interactions, so quark counts get furiously complex in bigger nuclei).

https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/largehadron...

For a single proton, though, one always measures (with available measurement technology) a small excess of quarks: two excess up quarks and one excess down quark. That the valence quark model of hadrons works is weird. Who ordered that?

The excess quarks are not "the same" quarks every time you probe your carefully selected and isolated and cold sample proton. Indeed, today's valence quarks in your pet proton are not guaranteed to exist tomorrow, even if the proton stays trapped -- particle creation and annihilation are furious inside, and there are all sorts of other disturbances of quarks that go on in there.

Why atoms? While much calmer, there's still plenty of crazy stuff happening in atoms -- even a neutral hydrogen atom has a bunch of photons and positrons and excess electrons floating around "inside", with an energy fraction proportional to the fine structure constant and with no guarantees that they were there yesterday. Is it the "same" atom at that level? Also, for most of the hydrogen in an exhalation, it probably will be in and out of various electron-swapping configurations over the years. Water gets pretty crazy with its ions, for example.
by AStonesThrow | 2025-05-23 23:36:47+00:00
Don't ever accept a provider's bill or invoice at face value. Did you communicate with your insurance carrier? Their major function is to negotiate those billed charges down to something reasonable.

My provider billed $411 for the same CPT. My insurance slashed it by 50%. My copay was $40. No deductible applied, due to the plan's provision for a PCP visit.

You'll need to ensure that your insurance did their job and issued an EOB. Once the insurance has ruled on it, then you can proceed to negotiate with your provider. If the provider directly sent you a balance bill and you've not heard from your insurance carrier, then you need to reach out to insurance, not your creditors.

The creditor will also have avenues you may pursue, such as financial assistance or self-pay plans. Some may not be available due to your insurance coverage. Some people fly without a parachute and rely on the self-pay. You'd be surprised how zero-sum that can be.

Most notices demanding payment are subtly deceptive, even from legitimate creditors. I always rely on the online billing portal, or a human being who can pull up my account over the phone. Always get the latest statement. Compare all the paperwork, because timing and wording always matter a lot, especially when they're wrong!
by imiric | 2025-05-23 23:36:50+00:00
The frustration is quite valid. The overhype is not only misleading, but it's used to artificially inflate valuations. The entire industry is driven by hype to attract investors with the hope everyone will cash out one day. No AI company has turned a profit yet.

This isn't to say that the technology can't be useful, but that the hype around it is exhausting. This bubble is much bigger than the dot-com one, and the effects when it bursts will be far worse.
by sudahtigabulan | 2025-05-23 23:37:58+00:00
I feel exactly the same, but a sibling comment reminded me how I got there.

I didn't need a replacement for Windows Explorer, until I tried Linux (bash, really) out of boredom/curiosity, and now I can't imagine going back.

Could be that there's another step up. And we can't see it from where we are standing.
by xp84 | 2025-05-23 23:39:11+00:00
I feel like the way you present "trends" like on here: https://getstack.dev/category/language

...is less than useful, because (roughly) no one deletes old repos and code, so everything will always be trending "up."

I'd be more interested in a stat that perhaps considered "number of active repos that have this language, or, this language's share of representation among repos with activeness in the last month. With some reasonable definition of "active," of course.
by nothrabannosir | 2025-05-23 23:39:24+00:00
One difference (I assume?): it’s programmable. It’s a directory editor written in the same VM in which the editor (Emacs) is written. This makes it compostable with your existing IDE toolset of macros, plugins, hotkeys, etc.

For example: I never thought of using total commander to augment some custom hotkey in vim. But in Emacs it’s just another set of functions available right there.
by joshdavham | 2025-05-23 23:39:37+00:00
With respect to private schools, I’m not necessarily against them, but I hate the idea of living in a society where public schools are seen as the ‘bad’ option for the lower class while private schools are for the middle and upper class.

I’ve heard that it’s kinda like that in the US currently but I’m not actually sure. I went to public school in Canada and it was completely fine.
by fc417fc802 | 2025-05-23 23:40:09+00:00
> escape hatch to be "download the source and change it yourself"

In theory I agree. In practice building a modern browser is neither easy nor is it feasible to do so on an average computer.

Given that a nag message would suffice to coerce all mainstream operators (thus accomplishing the goals I've seen stated) I'm left unconvinced. That said, I'm not particularly bothered since the trivial workaround is a self signed certificate and the user adding an exception. It's admittedly a case of principle rather than practice.
by shagmin | 2025-05-23 23:40:58+00:00
Guess it comes down to the individual's attitude either way and what they're willing to tolerate but I wouldn't underestimate the aggressive ignorance you can find out there. Vermont is a short drive from the so-called lesbian capital of the world, one of the few parts of the country where democrats consistently win a majority of rural voters, and is in the most secular corner of the country. It's almost the complete opposite of the rest of rural America.
by throwanem | 2025-05-23 23:42:08+00:00
I assume you could use it to produce generated images featuring yourself, which seems fine to me.

But we make laws for the citizenry, not for you and me in particular. What news since diffusion models reached consumers suggests the citizenry can be trusted with tools this powerful? You can't buy a howitzer at Home Depot, either. These things are dangerous. I believe I recall hearing that people have died. Making the tools require some effort and skill to find seems warranted.

Or did you think they cease to exist for no longer being so openly hosted? I'm sure such things are already traded in secret, and any traffic analyst with a sufficiently privileged perspective no doubt today knows much more about where and by whom.
by freetanga | 2025-05-23 23:42:54+00:00
Leaving outside the ethical part of it - which is huge, this kills innovation.

The problem I see is that when everything is iterative, and you kill sustainable incentives for new views, innovation disappears.

Is like the movies. We will get all budget towards remakes and reboots, and little new would show up.

Being an 80s guy, I remember many new movies coming out every year, and when they stretched beyond 2 or 3 films, people frowned.

Back to the future, Indy (the good years), Rambo (first 3), lethal weapon. Cool gems came up too (Last action hero?Terminator) even in loaded fields like simple action movies…. Star Wars, 3 films. Matrix. bond was the exception.

Now? mission impossible (8 films at over 2h), fast and mediocre franchise (20 movies), Marvel and DC movies (3 movies shot 30 different times), and everything else is a reboot. Almost impossible for new ideas to get through.

We are killing culture, innovation and human spark for some companies to make a billion more. We are feeding like factory pigs from generic slop, and as the factories grow they kill fertile ground for those who wanted to eat something cleaner.

The fact that is happening does not mean it’s right. It’s just we are accepting mediocrity as our guiding principle at 0.01 USD a pop…
by AStonesThrow | 2025-05-23 23:43:41+00:00
Yes, let's mention Roman Law in relation to British Common Law. The latter derived from the former, but there's a fair distance of about 1,000 years between our three points in time.

For all intents and purposes, every precedent and matter of jurisprudence can be resolved by referring only to Common Law. It would be rather exhausting and absurd to try and reach back past 1066 AD because things have changed, a lot.

Now in terms of forking Roman Law, there are other legal systems which are not directly related or derived from British Common Law. Especially the Napoleonic Code, which influenced Italy, which in turn influenced Catholic Canon Law. So here we have another lineage and a deeper "fork" from Roman Law where British Common Law doesn't really figure.

Also someone commented with a non sequitir about "antidisestablishmentarianism". I'd just like to point out that that word refers to revocation of things like the 1st Amendment and support for the Established Church laws, because it's "anti-dis" double negative.

If you want to talk about the United States' 1st Amendment, "disestablishmentarianism" is the term used to describe how the Founding Fathers set up the States without those meddling bishops.
by 999900000999 | 2025-05-23 23:43:53+00:00
It's less click bait-ish. The max SSI payment is 967$.

https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/amount

So you have a ton of people trying to make it off that.

The cold weather is really the red flag for me.

>Considering that the property has a well on-site, water is free, and as far as heat goes, well, one could either pay a little extra in electric for that — or they could have the Amish deliver their scrap wood from their sawmills to burn in a wood stove, very cheaply.

He glosses over heating, but for a full house that can easily be 200 or 300$ dollars.

Snow tends to cause problems. Now if he wrote this living in Florida or something it would be more practical. No risk of freezing. Walking or biking is possible year round.

I'd actually love to see a bike first city, but outside of a few college towns I don't think it exists in the states
by atombender | 2025-05-23 23:44:02+00:00
This is a fun project.

From what I can tell, this doesn't replace the lower level page heap storage, but instead actually provides new implementation of table and indexes through a plugin mechanism called table access methods and index access methods, respectively. This looks very similar to the virtual table mechanism in SQLite, for example, but the C API looks much nicer.

I've not paid much attention to the Postgres extension API, but I'm pleasantly surprised it's that flexible. I've been hearing for years about how Postgres pluggable engine interface isn't flexible enough to implement certain features, but it actually looks really rich. Maybe some of those improvements come from recent work by the OrioleDB people, and others like Citus who develop various alternative table engines?
by cerved | 2025-05-23 23:45:02+00:00
More streamlined UI. I find the graph viewer to display some things nicer, like coloring tables, bringing in related tables. Slightly better introspection and code formatting. Easier refactoring capabilities. Easier to get IdeaVim working then whatever Ecplise plugin is needed in DBeaver.

In my experience, DataGrip has been easier to get up and running out of the box and bringing the big IDE guns than DBeaver but DBeaver also does done this really well. For example I have never been able to setup DG with Access but DBeaver works pretty good out of the box with that garbage. Also it's free.

Both are solid
by dyauspitr | 2025-05-23 23:45:04+00:00
>they’d need to leave behind the idea that snow, overcast, wind, rain, and long winters are all that bad to contend with, because in all truth, they’re actually great.

You lost me here. Weather is probably the most important thing to me. Cold weather gets into my bones and leaves me low and uncomfortable. My body physiology is such that even if I wear appropriate clothing, I end up sweating under them and paradoxically get even colder. Winters for me just mean being cold, wet and uncomfortable and is not worth it for me.
by _mlbt | 2025-05-23 23:45:10+00:00
Depending upon the niche that your software company services, you might be able to stand out in the market by not adding any AI features. At least if the HN crowd is anything to go by.

I think there are situations where AI as it currently exists is absolutely a value add, but often it does seem like it's been shoehorned into an existing product just to ride the latest trend.
by akkartik | 2025-05-23 23:45:14+00:00
I don't know if this will address your question, but I had a long-standing question about boids that might overlap, which I coincidentally only resolved to my satisfaction a month ago. Here's the Lua code I ended up with:

function update_positions(boids, dt) local max_speed = 0.5 -- per frame local max_accel = 20 -- per second local max_turn_angle = math.pi/6 -- per second for _,boid in ipairs(boids) do boid.pos = vadd(boid.pos, boid.velocity) end for i,boid in ipairs(boids) do local accel = {x=0, y=0} accel = vadd(accel, vscale(avoid_others(boid, boids), 20*dt)) accel = vadd(accel, vscale(seek_others(boid, boids), 10*dt)) accel = vadd(accel, vscale(align_with_others(boid, boids), 10*dt)) accel = vadd(accel, vscale(remain_within_viewport(boid), 40*dt)) local curr_heading = vnorm(boid.velocity) -- could be nil accel = vclamp2(accel, max_accel*dt, curr_heading, max_turn_angle*dt) boid.velocity = vadd(boid.velocity, accel) boid.velocity = vclamp(boid.velocity, max_speed) end end

Here, avoid_others, seek_others and align_with_others are the 3 rules you can find on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids): separation, cohesion, alignment. Each of the functions returns a unit vector, which I then weight using vscale.

The key is the last 4 lines. My intuition here is that the way muscle mechanics work, there are limits on both how fast you can accelerate and also how much you can turn per unit time. That's what vclamp2 is doing. It separately clamps both magnitude and angle of acceleration.

My rough sense after this experience was:

* Boids is not a simple program the way the Game of Life or Mandelbrot set is. The original paper had tons of nuance that we gloss over in the internet era.

* Every implementation I've found is either extremely sensitive to weights or does weird stuff in the steering. Stuff like subtracting velocity from acceleration when the units are different, and so on. There may be a numeric basis for them, but it's never been explained to my satisfaction. Whereas my vclamp2 idea roughly hangs together for me. And the evidence it's on the right track is that a wide variety of weights (the 10s, 20s and 40s above) result in behavior that looks right to me.
by bpodgursky | 2025-05-23 23:45:37+00:00
I mean, the simple answer is that people in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and China are all poorer than the US and EU. Japan had decades to catch up and failed to do so. The laissez-faire approach gave people happy, low-stress, and materially rich lives.

Now, we're in a new era where national industrial capacity will at times take precedence over quality of life, and we have to make tradeoffs. But frankly it wasn't obvious that would happen again — China's policies over the past decade made it a reality.
by Marsymars | 2025-05-23 23:46:00+00:00
The reason the LPC keeps getting elected has a lot to do with the CPC pandering to quacks and pretty consistently picking pretty bad party leaders.

Conservatives should be more upset about Erin O’Toole losing to Trudeau than about Poilievre losing to Carney - that was more indicative of a bad party leader winning over a better one.
by sbuttgereit | 2025-05-23 23:46:16+00:00
I've been in that camp for much of my career, and yes, tooling matters.

As you suggest however, tooling for that workload is pretty rare. I want something that focuses on enhancing the database development experience: that understands that there are development workflows for database code which are well controlled and rigorous. So many database tools are focused on being system administrative aids first, or giving you features for directly interacting and <ack> altering the running state of the database and its server from the tool.

The best tool I found for what I do was targeted at Oracle: Allround Automation's PL/SQL Developer (https://www.allroundautomations.com/products/pl-sql-develope...). It's a development oriented tool that, at least last I used it, was focused on serious development work rather than administrative work. Now, I haven't used it in almost 20 years when last I did Oracle development... but I haven't found anything for PostgreSQL that has that thoughtfully implemented database developer centric feature set.

Today I muddle through with DataGrip. DataGrip has just enough of what I need that it's marginally better to work with than just a simple text editor... and also narrowly avoids some misfeatures as not to negate it's utility.
by apfsx | 2025-05-23 23:46:18+00:00
One thing that I notice nobody mention about VMWare on Windows is what about the issues with "Virtualization Based Security"? If you have this enabled VMWare uses "Windows Hypervisor Platform" which I think is also tied in with Hyper-V for running VMs through VMware making them noticeably worse and more unstable especially when dealing with USB devices. During the installer, you'll be warned of this too if memory serves correct. Cons are you cannot use WSL2 and reduced security. How much in reality does it reduce security I'm not exactly sure but I wish it wasn't like this or there was a better workaround for VMware on Windows. VBS feature is enabled by default on all Windows 11 and I think most later releases of Windows 10.
by phforms | 2025-05-23 23:47:15+00:00
I guess you already know the command `dired-find-file-other-window` (bound to `o` by default), which reuses the right split window, if already there and opens a new window if there is none. Horizontal splits do not seem to be reused though (they often don’t have enough vertical space for dired anyway, which is why I guess they designed it this way).
by johnsmith1840 | 2025-05-23 23:47:28+00:00
One interesting thought process i've had around these topics is how it's not just attention but all DL methods suffer similar problems.

I truly believe the last step to AGI is solving continual learning. Efficient will always inch up but the "jump" is honestly not in sight.

Maybe attention + (unknown thing) really is all we need.

The thought is interesting because if you extrapolate that all DL models suffer the same class of problems (CL) the solution is implying two possibilities.

1. In the future, AGI level models will be entire new categories sharing little to nothing with methods like attention. (Every part is different like the article suggests)

2. Or (maybe more likely) we will simply build on what we have. If that's true then next generation models in agi like realm will be the same models we have now with one unifying change to all of them.

I previously made a unique transformer model whose every single neuron acted like a decision gate. Every neuron would choose a "computation nueron" before going on. Back prop was modified so that only computation neurons contributed to back prop of the next layer.

It had some interesting properties, the largest being that every token loop through the model was essentially seeing a completely different model. I was/am under the belief that scaling dimensionality == solving CL.

I bring it up because technically this architecture was identical to the transformer. I could drop my special neuron into literally any DL model out there and train.

I believe this kind of advancement is what will be the next generations models. Not a change of the transformer or attention but to the fundamental building blocks of all DL models.

It honestly does feel like attention gets us part of thr AGI equation well enough. It seems to have solved or will soon solve most short term hard problems. Again this is why CL is key, it's the timr comonent no AI method across the board has ever solved.
by EE84M3i | 2025-05-23 23:47:58+00:00
>MCP is just RPC over a long-lived connection, most cases being a Websocket.

My impression was that MCP used SSE and that not using websockets was one of the main reasons it isn't enterprise ready - because it requires maintaining server side state which makes it difficult to deploy at scale. Did they change it to websockets?

https://raz.sh/blog/2025-05-02_a_critical_look_at_mcp