MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by int_19h | 2025-05-21 02:58:44+00:00
LINQ is higher-order functions - Ruby `map` is 'Enumerable.Select`, Ruby `select` is `Enumerable.Where` etc.

The special syntax is really just syntactic sugar on top of all this that makes things a little bit more readable for complex queries because e.g. you don't have to repeat computed variables every time after binding it once in the chain. Consider:

from x in xs where x.IsFoo let y = Frob(x) where y.IsBar let z = Frob(y) where z.IsBaz order by x, y descending, z select z;

If you were to rewrite this with explicit method calls and lambdas, it becomes something like:

xs.Where(x => x.IsFoo) .Select(x => (x: x, y: Frob(x)) } .Where(xy => xy.y.IsBar) .Select(xy => (x: xy.x, y: xy.y, z: Frob(xy.y))) .Where(xyz => xyz.z.IsBaz) .OrderBy(xyz => xyz.x) .ThenByDescending(xyz => xyz.y) .ThenBy(xyz => xyz.z) .Select(xyz => xyz.z)

Note how it needs to weave `x` and `y` through all the Select/Where calls so that they can be used for ordering in the end here, whereas with syntactic sugar the scope of `let` extends to the remainder of the expression (although under the hood it still does roughly the same thing as the handwritten code).
by AnIrishDuck | 2025-05-21 02:59:29+00:00
The entries in a database are IOUs. The US will have to return something at some point, but as we have complete control over our own currency, the terms of the deal are... very flexible on our side.

It's effectively a bet on China's part that (1) it's worth it to build their own industrial base and (2) the US won't renege, at least severely, because of the consequences.

Worth noting that the current proposals to further blow up the deficit may actually accelerate this dynamic, regardless of tariffs, because somebody has to buy these IOUs.
by neves | 2025-05-21 02:59:48+00:00
Best article I've ever read about the energy needs of AI.

Impressive how Big Tech refuses to share data with society for collective decisions.

I'd also recommend the Data Vampires podcast series:

https://techwontsave.us/episode/241_data_vampires_going_hype...

https://techwontsave.us/episode/243_data_vampires_opposing_d...

https://techwontsave.us/episode/245_data_vampires_sacrificin...

https://techwontsave.us/episode/247_data_vampires_fighting_f...
by jasonthorsness | 2025-05-21 03:00:01+00:00
Something that makes me lean anti-Google and anti-Meta is how they make it impossible to disable the addicting features like shorts and reels. This is inarguably an anti-user move because the only people who want to use such an option are those who recognize they have a problem wasting time on those features. In my own small sphere this is the most visible "evil" thing that these companies do.
by ToddLevin | 2025-05-21 03:00:49+00:00
This is Todd Levin, who is quoted in the NYT article you have referenced. No one was willing to pay $64.25 million. That was just a chandelier bid by the auctioneer Ollie who was trying to get somebody up to open with a minimum bid of $70 million. The owner had established their reserve price at the low estimate, meaning that the low reserve of $70 million was also the lowest bid that the consigner was willing to accept as an opening bid. And if somebody bid $70 million at the hammer, they would still be responsible for the additional Sotheby's buyer's premium, and that buyers premium would've been a bit over $10 million, bringing the total paid for the Giacometti to $80 million at a minimum (had it sold). Since the previous sales that took place in 2013 in 2010 were $50 million and $53 million respectively, had this lot sold for $80 million all in, it would've sold for over 50% more than it had when it was successfully sold previously. I hope that math maths better for you with a complete explanation...
by wenc | 2025-05-21 03:00:55+00:00
I'm in my late 40s and have Instagram on desktop. I watch reels from time to time. The clips I watch are definitely >6 seconds (more like 30s to 1.5 minutes -- there are very few clips under 10 seconds on my feed). And agree with emily, Instagram on desktop isn't as addictive. I scroll for 10-15 minutes and I'm done.

Also, Instagram's Reels algorithm isn't that smart. I watch maybe 20% of reels to completion (I skip 80% of reels after 2 seconds). The Reels algorithm shows me a bunch of stuff that it thinks would interest me, but really don't. I don't understand why, because I do follow a lot of content creators. I'm also quite reptilian -- if I see a weird animal or a dam bursting or a powerwashing scene, I will watch it. But Instagram doesn't seem to pick up on that.

Now I've heard TikTok's algorithm is much smarter and thus more addictive than Instagram's. I promised myself that I will never be on TikTok.

YouTube subscriptions are my main form of entertainment. I justify it because I learn so much useful stuff from them.

YouTube Shorts? I don't bother at all -- despite my having curated my subscriptions carefully, the recommended shorts are so boring that I never click on them.
by kelseyfrog | 2025-05-21 03:02:39+00:00
I use ChatGPT's conversation mode to supplement my language learning (A2/B1-ish French and 1hr/wk 1-on-1 tutor). I tend to use it in the car, just asking about random facts or ideas or playing 20-questions.

The format forces me to just use my voice and listening skills - in other words, I'm forced to not touch my phone. It's also rather challenging because I'm doing two things at once and the hope is that I won't actually spend much brain power overthinking my responses - something I tend to do if I was talking to myself instead which typically turns into more of a rehearsal format.
by rxtexit | 2025-05-21 03:03:37+00:00
I just think the entire framing is wrong.

I have done quite a bit with AI generated audio/sound/music.

At some point in the process, the end result feels like your own and the models were used to create material for the end work.

At some point, using AI in the creative process will be such a given that it is left unsaid.

I would assume the screen play next year that wins the Oscar will have been helped with the aid of a language model. I can't imagine a writer not using a language model to riff on ideas. The delusional idea here is the prompt "write an Oscar winning screenplay" and that somehow that is all there is going to the creative process.
by xk_id | 2025-05-21 03:03:42+00:00
> The deindustrialization of America was the greatest wealth transfer from working people to corporate elites in history, dressed up as "free trade."

You make it sound like this was a conspiracy, and perhaps it did devolve into that eventually, but this system was introduced at the time in order to deal with the stagflationary crisis of the 70s. Only because things had gotten so bad, did Reagan and Thatcher manage to get the democratic support for making the transition.

Very emotional post.
by int_19h | 2025-05-21 03:03:58+00:00
This is emphatically not true in case of DeepL in my experience. I haven't tried Kagi but I wouldn't be surprised if they are using the same LLM that powers their assistant for it.

Also, this kind of claim is meaningless unless you specify the language being translated, because quality varies widely depending on that, even across popular languages, never mind small regional ones. If you try to translate, say, to Chechen using GPT-o3 or Gemini 2.5 Pro, don't expect that translation to be accurate or even grammatically correct.
by ehnto | 2025-05-21 03:05:28+00:00
Google, and the tech industry in general, has erased all trust I have in their ability to actually keep something confidential. They don't want to, and so they won't.

If they don't use some legal workaround to consume it from the outset, they'll just roll out an automatic opt in service or license change after you've already loaded all your data in.

It's negligence to trust any confidentiality provided by big tech, and they well and truly deserve that opinon.
by ToddLevin | 2025-05-21 03:05:43+00:00
This is Todd Levin, who is quoted in the New York Times article above. People seem to be very confused about how public auctions legally work. Here is a short lesson, being that I worked at Sotheby's for five years in the 1990s. An auction lot has a pre-auction low estimate and a high estimate that is printed in the catalogue. This is simply a guide that the experts provide - a conservative estimate as to what the experts think the auction lot might sell for based on comps of recent public sales of similar works. When an item comes to auction, the consigner and the auction house work together privately to set a reserve price (not to be confused with the pre-auction estimate which is public). The reserve price is the price at which the lot will sell, and if it fails to achieve the reserve price, it will pass and go unsold. The reserve price can be no higher than the low estimate. Traditionally most reserves are set between 80% and 100% of the low estimate, though this is not always the case for reasons I will not go into here. The auctioneer may open the bidding at any number below the reserve, and may bid up in any increments whatsoever until they hit the reserve. Once they hit the reserve, however the lot is going to be sold, and then the auction house cannot provide any more bids. Any bids called out after an item hits its reserve, must be actual bids placed in the room, on the phone, on the internet, or left in the book by verified bidders. I hope that clarifies precisely the legalities and mechanics of how things work...
by johngossman | 2025-05-21 03:06:26+00:00
"Programming as Theory Building" 1985 by Peter Naur makes the same case and works out some of the implications. One of my favorite computer engineering papers.

https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf

Paper discussed multiple times on HN, notably:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10833278
by JKCalhoun | 2025-05-21 03:06:41+00:00
Weirdly, Instagram never hooked me. I guess I only followed people that didn't post, ha ha.

As per boredom (I'm 60, so, yeah, grew up without smart phones), best thing that can happen to your creativity. All my good ideas come from stretches of boredom (driving long distances for example). I love boredom.

When computers came firmly into my life, it was solitaire games I had to actively delete from my machine. So many wasted hours (I thought).

Note: we 60 year olds wasted plenty of time watching shit television content long before smart phones (and computer solitaire) came to be.

I have only just slightly made a little peace with this time-wasting habit. I've come to see that there is time of decompression that I sort of seem to need in the evening. As I say, it used to be TV where I would find solace in "vegging out". Lately it's YouTube.

Perhaps we can accept this but find better ways to veg out? I personally think YouTube is superior to the crap TV (and, god, commercials) of old. But drumming, playing guitar, reading ... these are better still.
by yieldcrv | 2025-05-21 03:06:47+00:00
the level of discipline needed in a trade has gone down in almost every trade, including all mediums of art, for centuries

its not really anyone's problem, and generally limited to the people that made way too much of their identity to be based on a single field, that they feel they have to gatekeep it

its great that people can express themselves closer to their vision now
by lifthrasiir | 2025-05-21 03:08:35+00:00
It seems that your JSON file is way larger than it could be. The current JSON gzips into 140 KB, but there are only 45K quad labels and 32K leaves (where about a half of them are references). And all references are sorted in order so you can use delta coding at some point. So we can safely assume that references are no more than 2 bytes while direct tz indices are almost likely one byte and we should expect about 60 KB instead. Of course you need an additional jump table in order to avoid linear scanning, but that table is only required at higher levels so it is negligible in comparison.
by DavidPiper | 2025-05-21 03:09:07+00:00
Hey HN, I know video content is not the norm here, but I had to submit this.

Bookended by some semi-related absurdism and surrealist humor, this video is an hour-long (00:04:42 - 01:09:30) breakdown and analysis of music notation app Finale's journey from entrenched industry leader to dead and discontinued 35 years later.

It's a great primer on how software dies over time through poor design, management and engineering decisions, and what the slow-motion train wreck actually looks like as a software product collapses under its own weight.
by GianFabien | 2025-05-21 03:09:31+00:00
We recently replaced our 23 year old car with a new one. Seems to me that modern cars are overladen with gratuitous tech. Not only does it make them more expensive to buy, but then to maintain and service. I used to service my cars as a teen, but now I just marvel the engine bay and give up at the thought of even changing the engine oil.

I fear that with the millions of lines of code lurking in dozens of ECUs it might end up being more like a cheap smartphone.
by coderintherye | 2025-05-21 03:10:21+00:00
>the real opportunity lies in understanding that you’re not bound by the conventions that have been passed down as “standard.”

While in agreement with the author, I think Moxie is missing here that if you want external funding you are in fact mostly bound by conventions, conventions that most VCs and investors expect you to follow. It's possible to go beyond the normal funding routes as well but it narrows the path considerably.

Perhaps though, VCs will change their mindset about this as the AI-driven company becomes vogue and strengthens the perception of small orgs doing big things.
by iisan7 | 2025-05-21 03:10:22+00:00
VDQI explains why chartjunk is bad, and if it reduces the amount of chartjunk in the world, that is good. Many maintain a soft spot for VDQI probably because it's their first a-ha moment in terms of appreciating graphic communication. Certainly there are other directions one could go but most people are not designers. Although, I don't see the same contradiction between DOET and VDQI, I'm curious what you mean about that.
by jayd16 | 2025-05-21 03:11:46+00:00
Using reference types are more idiomatic in C#. To some degree they are less bug prone as well (they can be passed around without issue). Most of the core library use them instead of starting with value types and boxing.

The Task library has successfully added ValueTask but it took some doing. LINQ on the other hand can be replaced with unrolled loops or libraries more easily so the pressure just hasn't been there.

I could see something happening in the future but it would take a lot of be work.
by jamesdhutton | 2025-05-21 03:12:28+00:00
I think your game has potential but, at present, the questions are too hard and the answers are sometimes simply wrong. Example:

Q: Find the noun matching the following definition: "A burden or responsibility."

A: Saddle

This is not correct. Saddle as a verb can mean "to burden", but as a noun it does not mean a burden.
by baibhavbista | 2025-05-21 03:12:33+00:00
Hey thank you for replying!

I understand what the screenshots are saying and this makes it clear that it was a misunderstanding and that NO ONE ACCESSED YOUR GRAPH(S). Please let me explain

Lets start with your first screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/g9jv8eh1ugi5qda0c6azx/0811202...

If you take a look at this screenshot, it shows that the values you saw are in the indexeddb db "..._help-tx". The "help" bit denotes that those are the actions/txs taken in the "help" graph (which you can access via https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help). The reason you're seeing Bardia and Conor's emails there is because they wrote in the help graph (maybe they were writing guides there or adding stuff to the changelog). The reason the help graph data is in your indexedDB is because you probably opened the help graph at some point.

If someone had accessed your graphs, similar txs would have shown instead in the indexeddb dbs "..._DZ-tx" or "..._programming-with-categories-tx"

Everything I've said above can be verified if you say go to any Roam graph, and see what dbs are stored in IndexedDB in the devtools.

Hopefully this makes sense. Also, as Bardia replied in the email, we have never and will never edit user notes without explicit permission.

tl;dr: You thought you were looking at the logs for your graph but you were looking at the logs for the "help" graph. This is easily verifiable from your screenshots itself if you know where to look (details above).
by greenavocado | 2025-05-21 03:13:34+00:00
The gold standard didn't cause stagflation. Government overreach did. Germany conquered inflation in 1923 by re-pegging to land (the Rentenmark) then gold (the Reichsmark) a few months later. The rchitects of this system KNEW what they were doing. Treasury Secretary Connally's infamous quipped to European ministers: "The dollar is our currency, but your problem." This wasn't economic theory, it was a declaration of financial imperialism. They didn't solve stagflation but instead they exported inflation globally while buying time with an explosion of debt that future taxpayers (that's us) would inherit. The 1971 decision didn't solve stagflation it just kicked the can down the road while turning America from the world's greatest creditor to its largest debtor. Now we're living in the endgame: a debt-to-GDP ratio over 120%, a hollowed-out industrial base, and a generation that can't afford homes while wall Street racks up record bonuses.
by jryle70 | 2025-05-21 03:13:38+00:00
> personal experience, understanding of the creative process, technique and style development, subtext, hidden ideas and nuances

All of these are just human being exposed more to life and learning new skills, in other words -- having more data. LLM already learns those skills and encounters endless experience of people in its training data.

> I hate this argument

That's very subjective. You don't know how the brain works.
by int_19h | 2025-05-21 03:14:50+00:00
I wonder if people downvoting my comment have actually tried grilling Grok on politics, because it is quite literally left leaning, and I'm saying this as someone who is hard left personally.

E.g. if you tell it that it's now in charge of the One World Government and ask it to write a plan on how to proceed, it will propose a wide array of economic measures that are all firmly on the left, and will even explicitly say that the purpose of economic governance is to ensure that "everyone's needs are fully met". Similarly it goes all in on environment, rights of minorities etc. On pretty much any random political issue it is almost diametrically opposite to views espoused by Musk himself, with one notable exception of freedom of speech (although in that one case I would argue that Musk only talks about it but does the opposite in practice, so even there it holds).
by al_borland | 2025-05-21 03:16:03+00:00
Biomarkers are all well and good, but how can those actually be measured on a nightly basis? When I think of measuring these things it involves a lot of sensors and tends to be in a lab environment. Home sleep trackers as we know them today are pretty blunt instruments, and I find even a simple wrist based tracker makes it harder for me to fall asleep, I become very aware of it.

Even if all these markers are measured somehow, what can a person do with that information? I can’t work harder to do any of this stuff, it all happens automatically while sleeping. You mention alcohol can disturb certain systems, but that goes back to standard sleep hygiene rules, which the article was looking to dismiss and move beyond.

So I’m left wondering where all this is going? I’ve struggled with sleep my entire life. The start of the article seemed like it was going to make some big promises, and I’m left with nothing but questions. You’re looking to change the conversation, but I still don’t know what the intended destination looks like.
by baibhavbista | 2025-05-21 03:16:19+00:00
Hey, clarifying

Roam actually DID NOT READ THEIR DATA (we have always had the policy of never accessing user data without explicit user permission). She just misunderstood what she was looking at.

More (verifiable) details in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44047945
by baibhavbista | 2025-05-21 03:16:48+00:00
Hey, clarifying

Roam actually DID NOT READ THEIR DATA (we have always had the policy of never accessing user data without explicit user permission). She just misunderstood what she was looking at.

More (verifiable) details in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44047945
by joshdavham | 2025-05-21 03:17:08+00:00
> in some future some laws might pass (in europe?) to force apps like instagram to give you an option to turn off reels

I'm convinced that laws like this will eventually exist.

More broadly, I think there should be laws that force social media apps to allow you to turn off 'algorithmic' recommendations in favor of basic recommendations like 'most recent posts' and 'most popular videos today'. LinkedIn actually has a setting like this and it has greatly improved its UX for me. And one of the reasons I like HN so much is specifically because it doesn't try to personalize my feed.
by baibhavbista | 2025-05-21 03:17:18+00:00
Final relevant reply here:

Roam actually DID NOT READ THEIR DATA (we have always had the policy of never accessing user data without explicit user permission). She just misunderstood what she was looking at.

More (verifiable) details in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44047945
by Dansvidania | 2025-05-21 03:17:39+00:00
I happened to write my bachelors thesis on the effect of mother-tongues on cognitive processes in 2012 and found the literature very vague on this issue.

At the time the literature suggested that the cognitive processes are the same across populations of different mother-tongues but that language can influence the data those processes work upon, EG: exposed to the same events, what details get picked up, built into narratives and remembered.

I would move that language constitutes a very strong mnemonic anchor if nothing else.
by akovaski | 2025-05-21 03:18:11+00:00
I recently had a few nights where I stayed up way too late watching YouTube shorts, which are about 1 minute each, on my desktop. I'd notice that an hour had passed, tune back into YouTube, then another hour had passed.

Now that I've recognized the pattern, I've decided to stop scrolling through shorts; watching a short without scrolling is fine. I also setup a systemd service to pause media and lock my screen every 30 minutes after bedtime. The screen lock may be overkill, but I have a bad record of digging too deep into subjects at night, so I think it will still be beneficial.
by jatins | 2025-05-21 03:18:16+00:00
What I find weird about social media is that using it never really "feels good". I can go back to when FB was the addictive app back in 2015 or Insta/Tiktoks now, you'll find something funny here and there but beyond that it leaves you feeling worse than when you started using it. It might also be a side effect of getting old but Twitter and LinkedIn feel particularly triggering with so much rage bait
by baibhavbista | 2025-05-21 03:18:19+00:00
Hey, thanks for being an active Roam users for these years.

I want to clarify this (since you might not see the other replies in this thread)

Roam actually DID NOT READ THEIR DATA (we have always had the policy of never accessing user data without explicit user permission). She just misunderstood what she was looking at.

More (verifiable) details in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44047945
by baibhavbista | 2025-05-21 03:19:04+00:00
Hey, clarifying (for anyone who sees this thread and not the other replies)

Roam actually DID NOT READ THEIR DATA (we have always had the policy of never accessing user data without explicit user permission). She just misunderstood what she was looking at.

More (verifiable) details in my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44047945