MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kevmo314 | 2025-05-11 22:01:04+00:00
> The reason why we don't have Bell Labs is because we're unwilling to do what it takes to create Bell Labs — giving smart people radical freedom and autonomy.

My observation has been that smart people don't want this anymore, at least not within the context of an organization. If you give your employees this freedom, many will take advantage of it and do nothing.

Those that are productive, the smartest who thrive in radical freedom and autonomy, instead choose to work independently. After all, why wouldn't they? If they're putting in the innovation the equity is worth way more than a paycheck.

Unfortunately, that means innovation that requires a Bell Labs isn't as common. Fortunately, one person now can accomplish way more than a 1960's engineer could and the frontier of innovation is much broader than it used to be.

I used to agree with the article's thesis but it's been nearly impossible to hire anyone who wants that freedom and autonomy (if you disagree, <username>@gmail.com). I think it's because those people have outgrown the need for an organization.
by musicale | 2025-05-11 22:01:05+00:00
> The freedom to waste time. The freedom to waste resources. And the autonomy to decide how.

As the article notes, several companies (Apple, Google, etc.) could (currently) afford to fund such a lab, but there is no way their management and shareholders would approve.

There's a reason for this: research labs seem to benefit competitors as much as (or more than) the companies that fund them. This wasn't an issue for AT&T when it was a monopoly, but it is now. Personally I don't see it as a problem (since one home run innovation could pay for the entire lab) but company managers and shareholders do.

On the other hand, Apple does seem to have a de facto AI lab with a good deal of resource waste, so maybe that's good.
by rasz | 2025-05-11 22:01:21+00:00
> When submitting the vulnerability report through ASUS’s Security Advisory form, Amazon CloudFront flagged the attached PoC as a malicious request and blocked the submission.

Reminds me of the time I reported SQL disclosure vuln to Vivaldi and their WAF banned my account for - wait for it - 'SQL injection attempt' so hard their admin was unable to unlock it :)
by evantbyrne | 2025-05-11 22:01:25+00:00
Listen, if you're losing track of the date in your date picker as implied previously, then I don't know what to tell you man. Not a problem I've ever seen with progressive enhancement, and I've worked on more complex user interfaces than most. I have witnessed people struggle to solve state-related issues in SPAs for even relatively simple problems though, where the solution would be trivial in vanilla js. If it's not for the performance, and it's not cutting down development time, then what is the endless framework churn really accomplishing? Because that js date picker from twenty years ago still works.
by fsckboy | 2025-05-11 22:01:50+00:00
>FTA: Switzerland, population nearly 9 million, has more bunkers per capita than anywhere else in the world — enough to guarantee shelter space to every single resident in the event of a crisis. (Sweden and Finland are a close second, covering all major cities.)

well, using the 1-based index as they have chosen above, and as a good C programmer preferring 0-based indexes, I'll have to put Israel as number 0 on the above list. In the Israeli building codes, every home (i.e. every apartment too) has to have a bomb shelter, and as a result, they all do.

quibble: they are not necessarily "underground" depending on your definition of bunker, bomb shelter, etc; so for example they are contained within apartments, a bit like a "panic room", or really exactly like one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkhav_Mugan#Types

----

quibble 2, entirely different subject but while I'm here, what "everybody" calls a "sand trap" in golf is not called a "sand trap", it's called "a bunker" in golf.
by ak217 | 2025-05-11 22:02:12+00:00
Mazda also managed to squander a huge brand and structural advantage by falling into lockstep behind other Japanese automakers in underinvesting in EV manufacturing infrastructure. Now they have to rely on their JV partner Changan to lead the way in producing EVs, giving up the core structural strengths that Mazda previously had in designing and building their own components - including software and controls, which in the Changan-led models have no continuity at all with Mazda's domestic models. They just superficially copy the Mazda exterior design language while wholly dependent on Chinese supply chains (and some Android Auto for the software, it seems) for manufacturing the actual EV.
by holowoodman | 2025-05-11 22:02:43+00:00
No. Licensed professionals are the engineering checklist people. "Not my fault, wasn't on the checklist, I've used the official approved one".

Licensed professionals checked a dam built by licensed professionals. Dam broke, killed people. Everyone claims to be innocent and the other party didn't read the right reports or didn't report the right problems: https://www.ecchr.eu/fileadmin/Fallbeschreibungen/Case_Repor... It is all just another method of shifting blame.

What really helps more than prescriptive regulation is liability. As soon as there is a strict liability for software companies, things will get better. What could also help is mandatory insurance for software producers. Then the insurance companies will either charge them big bucks or demand proof of safety and security.
by rchaud | 2025-05-11 22:02:58+00:00
She wasn't a "superstar" in any way whatsoever. She dropped out after 1 year of undergrad, with zero papers published where she was a principal author, or anything that would even hint that she knew what she was doing. She was rich and connected so was able to get funding on the basis of not much more than a powerpoint and a couple of supportive professors.
by doakes | 2025-05-11 22:03:42+00:00
I work in this space of measuring (mostly coastal) water levels and it's pretty amazing how many different vertical datums there are. When people say something has a height of X, you don't always consider what it's relative to. Is it sea level? High tide or low tide? Maybe it's relative to one of the many geodetic ellipsoids. Maybe a nearby physical benchmark put into the ground by a surveyor. Many cases (like this article) just care about the relative changes locally, but even for that you have to be careful of places like Southeast Alaska where glacial melt causes the land to rise and give the appearance of sea levels dropping.
by ghaff | 2025-05-11 22:04:03+00:00
I don't disagree. In the US, a least, there's a lot of capability to make changes over time. Obviously, the more specialized and longer the training, the harder/costlier it gets. But so many people I went to school with never really just went to work in a stereotypical job related to their major (including myself). Which is just fine.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-05-11 22:04:21+00:00
> why have these cities not started working on erecting (say) 50ft tall “future-proof” sea walls?

Because we don’t need to yet? Also, a sea wall doesn’t block, it deflects. Protecting Manhattan means deflecting those surges to e.g. Long Island and New Jersey. That’s a difficult conversation much easier had after a hurricane washes away some of the opposition (and/or generates urgency in the core).

> LA and NYC politicians and voters, being so much more educated than all those dumb red state hicks would be in favor of that, wouldn’t they?

Yes, but they’ll do what those states do with their own climate risks: wait for a catastrophic failure that ultimately costs more but unlocks federal funding and so costs less locally.
by flax | 2025-05-11 22:04:42+00:00
My 2017 Mazda cx5 refuses to not play the radio. There is no "off" for the audio, you have to choose a source. I use my phone, via bluetooth. But sometimes, for unknown reasons, the car does not connect with the phone. It then falls back to the last source chosen before BT, which is radio. Okay, so I created a flash drive with an mp3 of 30 seconds of silence, played that, then went back to bluetooth. This failback strategy worked one time, then it also failed to recognize the flash drive, and failed back to radio, again.

I will never want to listen to the radio. I would love to remove radio as an option. I would love to have no fallback as an option. But no, the car just f-n loves the radio and will not stop trying to force it on me.

Oh yeah, and the radio is buggy and could get stuck if I tune into the wrong station. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60333765.

This car definitely tries too hard to be smarter than it is. There's all sorts of exceptions that keep the doors from auto-locking when I walk away, and I would turn all of them off, but I can't. Walk away too fast? doesn't lock. Open the rear? won't auto lock. Car just doesn't feel like it? doesn't auto-lock.

And god forbid you hit the unlock button when the passenger has already unlocked it. Anxious beeps from the car for several solid seconds. That is not an error condition!

Performance and reliability have been great though. They just need to stop trying to be smart. They're not.
by schneems | 2025-05-11 22:04:46+00:00
Thanks! I’m less soliciting for people to use this specific solution and almost sharing aloud hoping someone will say “duh use crate X”

Thanks for the concern over votes. I think your comment turned the tides, I’m at +1 now.

Overall Rust has the best doc eco system of any lang I’ve used. I wish more communities stole from rust. The most useful part of any doc is an example and rustdoc makes it really easy to write one and keep it from doc-rotting. My particular pain is for an author who aims to go above and beyond.

Specifically I was thinking of the winnow tutorial when writing this crate. The return type example is straight from what I would like to be able to toggle on/off in their docs.

I also have a more mature library for easing maintenance burdens for tutorial writing but it’s not rust https://github.com/zombocom/rundoc
by Johanx64 | 2025-05-11 22:05:00+00:00
It's just the way it should be.

Other language doesn't fundamentally change anything if you want to use win32 API, if anything it would make things more confusing.

People often fall prey to C++isms, and they would have made the whole thing an even more confusing mess (to people not familiar with win32 API).

This is a very cute thing to do and some familiarity with win32 APIs is a nice basic competency thing, regardless of what other people think.
by vlovich123 | 2025-05-11 22:05:27+00:00
By comparison I was making $75k in the Bay Area as an entry level software engineer with no overtime and only because I was afraid of negotiating higher (I think 85-90 was on the table).

This isn’t to take anything away from your son’s achievements and congrats to him and you all should of course be proud of his accomplishments. I think though it’s useful to compare and contrast blue collar and white collar wages in terms of effort per dollar earned as well when discussing options to kids. There’s nothing wrong with working harder for that amount, especially when you love the work because then you get even more pride out of it, but some kids may want to work harder in the “short” term via a professional education for the long term easier path or have better job stability even in the face of physical ailments.
by lolinder | 2025-05-11 22:07:23+00:00
It's not an attempt to belittle it at all, but as far as I know a news site and a blog have the same feature requirements—the main difference that I'm aware of is that a news site has more traffic and more articles and so may need better caching.

If you're aware of requirements that a news site has that a blog doesn't (and I assume you would be, as the OP and creator of the above site), I'd love to hear it.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-05-11 22:07:35+00:00
Youtube can pay okay when you hit those 6 figure subs, but it's still not quite enough to pay for a traditional office setup. Not even a small one. Sadly, geting 10 vinnies on one channel doesn't get you 10x Vinny income, it's better to do a setup like Channel Awesome (minus the whole harassment and rebellion of the clients) and manage 10 Vinnies if you had the choice.
by Grimblewald | 2025-05-11 22:07:38+00:00
I've already pointed out why a scammer might make this mistake - adding credibility to the "im 16" angle. lets take the HN account, created 9 days ago. No "2008" or anything of the sort. Only in the prominantly displayed email. Only to help support the lie that helps gain attention. It reeks.

It reeks of the marketing tactic along the lines of "my brother is autistic, here's my subpar contribution of "their" work to a subreddit dedicated to artisinal skills" and watch the karma roll on in for them, only to check their comment history and it being a clear case of karma whoring via lies.

this smells the same.

now, if i am wrong and its just a vibe coding thing, then the "im 16" part plays no role, it would be impressive if the 16 year old did this in a responsible way, but anyone can vibe code their way to such a product woth zero real skill or effort, making the "im 16" point lose the context underwhich it would be pertinent information.

Llm's have changed our world in many ways, this being one of them. Imagine someone asks some agentic llm framework a research question, and a series of unrelated tangents later this agentic framework solves a nobel prize worthy problem. Should the human get that prize? Of course not, it would otherwise recognize skills/brightness in a human who doesnt actually posses it.

If this isnt just a scam, then this would be no different.

last example. If someone posted, "im 16, here is my art portfolio" and its all AI generated content, would you care? Would it demand the same response as if this was a gallery of high quality and beautiful work, painted by hand? Of course not.
by edmundsauto | 2025-05-11 22:08:29+00:00
Yes. It’s a mixed message to both be a low end provider or be an enterprise product. Maybe it makes sense but I think it might confuse any purchasing people I talk to.

Folks want to fit you into a neat bucket. If you don’t fit in, it causes emotional discomfort. This can be true even if strictly not the case in your pov - but customers perception and emotional response might explain some of your difficulties.

CloudFlare for example basically gives it all away, except to the people who make so much money that they want to pay a lot for a few niceties.
by perihelions | 2025-05-11 22:08:29+00:00
> "“The primary frequency allocation in P band is for huge SOTR [single-object-tracking radars] Americans use to detect incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles. That was, of course, a problem for us,” Scipal says. To get an exemption from the ban on space-based P-band radars, ESA had to agree to several limitations, the most painful of which was turning the Biomass radar off over North America and Europe to avoid interfering with SOTR coverage."

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/18/1115388/esa-airb...

I guess that's referring to things such as these?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAVE_PAWS ("...The radar operates in the UHF band between 420 - 450 MHz...")
by vlovich123 | 2025-05-11 22:09:26+00:00
And let’s consider the next age group up from that with some graduate students easily clearing 150-200k in total comp. Short term pain for long term prosperity - studies related to me was that on average university graduates end up making $1M more than non graduates in lifetime earnings (of course misleading data since university admission is already selecting for something that correlates with ambition AND the professional world tended to prefer university students with opportunities)

Of course people pursuing higher education are often doing it for personal growth reasons as well.
by Lerc | 2025-05-11 22:09:30+00:00
I think there are two layers of the 'why' in machine learning.

When you look at a model architecture it is described as a series of operations that produces the result.

There is a lower level why, which, while being far from easy to show, describes why it is that these algorithms produce the required result. You can show why it's a good idea to use cosine similarity, why cross entropy was chosen to express the measurement. In Transformers you can show that the the Q and K matrices transform the embeddings into spaces that allows different things to be closer, and using that control over the proportion of closeness allows you to make distinctions. This form of why is the explanation usually given in papers. It is possible to methodically show you will get the benefits described from techniques proposed.

The greater Why is much much harder, Harder to identify and harder to prove. the First why can tell you that something works, but it can't really tell you why it works in a way that can inform other techniques.

In the Transformer, the intuition is that the 'Why' is something along the lines of The Q transforms embeddings into an encoding of what information is needed in the embedding to resolve confusion, and that the K transforms embeddings into information to impart. When there's a match between 'What I want to know about' and 'what I know about' the V can be used as 'the things I know' to accumulate the information where it needs to be.

It's easy to see why this is the hard form, Once you get into the higher semantic descriptions of what is happening, it is much harder to prove that this is actually what is happening, or that it gives the benefits you think it might. Maybe Transformers don't work like that. Sometimes semantic relationships appear to be in processes when there is an unobserved quirk of the mathematics that makes the result coincidentally the same.

In a way I think of the maths of it as picking up a many dimentional object in each hand and magically rotating and (linearly) squishing them differently until they look aligned enough to see the relationship I'm looking at and poking those bits towards each other. I can't really think about that and the semantic "what things want to know about" at the same time, even though they are conceptualisations of the same operation.

The advantage of the lower why is that you can show that it works. The advantage of the upper why is that it can enable you to consider other mechanisms that might do the same function. They may be mathematically different but achieve the goal.

To take a much simpler example in computer graphics. There are many ways to draw a circle with simple loops processing mathematically provable descriptions of a circle. The Bressenham Circle drawing algorithm does so with a why that shows why it makes a circle but the "Why do it that way" was informed by a greater understanding of what the task being performed was.
by gkhartman | 2025-05-11 22:09:32+00:00
As a Linux fan and owner of a Sync 1.0 vehicle I feel your pain. I want to replace it with something aftermarket, but the cost of a dash kit is pretty steep if you want one of decent quality. I reboot it weekly, which takes minutes, so it doesn't freeze during the week. I'm guessing there's memory leak that takes a while to accumulate.
by Bender | 2025-05-11 22:09:53+00:00
It is probably quite a bit slower though needing to have roundtrips at each stage of the resolution

My experience does not align with this. My Unbound instances cache only what I am requesting and I have full control over that cache memory allocation, min-ttl, zero-ttl serving and re-fetching, cron jobs that look up my most common requests hourly, etc... I do not have to share memory with anyone outside of my home. Just about anything I request on a regular basis is in the micro-seconds always shows as 0 milliseconds in dig. I've run performance tests against Unbound and all the major DNS recursive providers and my setup always wins for anything I use more than a few times a month or more than a dozen times in a year.

For the cases where I am requesting a domain for the first time the delay is a tiny fraction of the overall page loading of the site as belorn mentioned. I keep query response logs and that also has the response time for every DNS server I have queried. I also use those query response logs to build a table of domains that I look up hourly NS and A records to build the infrastructure cache in addition to resource record cache.

Now where there would be latency is if I had to enable my local Unbound -> DoT over Tinc VPN -> rented server Unbound -> root servers. That would only occur if my ISP decided to block anyone talking to the root servers directly and my DoT setup would only be in place while my legal teams get ready to roast my ISP and I start putting up billboards. That would of course be a waste of time and money when I could just get the IP's of censored sites from a cron-job running on multiple VM's and shove them into my hosts file. This could even be a public contribution into a git repo and automated on everyone's machines.
by Veedrac | 2025-05-11 22:10:19+00:00
I've suggested a different take on PNBL in the context of gambling before, to protect people against addiction without outright making it illegal as is widely done today. The idea is if you want to gamble more than some unprotected quantity, you have to first allocate the money and leave it for a month or two. People with insufficient impulse control or financial security will find that hard, but light recreational users shouldn't be inconvenienced too much.

The same ideas can work for other things, though it's easiest to apply to predatory behaviour.
by gjm11 | 2025-05-11 22:10:24+00:00
I don't know whether it's in Concrete Mathematics, but perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kummer%27s_theorem will do?

(That page has a link to another beautiful theorem with a similar feel, Lucas's theorem: if p is prime, then (n choose r) mod p is the product of the (n_i choose r_i) where n_i and r_i are corresponding digits of n and r when written in base p.)
by rayhaanj | 2025-05-11 22:10:56+00:00
I just did some measurements and am impressed on both fronts: DNS recursive resolution is faster than I anticipated, but also page load times for well optimised sites are also very fast (sub 0.5s). Here's some data:

Recursively resolve bbc.com: 18ms https://pastebin.com/d94f1Z7P Recursively resolve ethz.ch: 17ms https://pastebin.com/x6jSHgDn Recursively resolve admin.ch: 39ms: https://pastebin.com/DUTg8Rit

Page load in Firefox: bbc.com DOMContentLoaded: ~40ms, page loaded: ~300ms reuters.com DOMContentLoaded: ~200ms, page loaded: ~300ms google.com DOMContentLoaded: ~160ms, page loaded: ~290ms

So it's quite reasonable to do full recursive resolution, and you'll still benefit from caching after the first time it's loaded. One other idea I had but never looked into it was instead of throwing out entries after TTL expiry to just refresh it and keep it cached, no idea if BIND/Unbound can do that but you can probably build something with https://github.com/hickory-dns/hickory-dns to achieve that.
by echoangle | 2025-05-11 22:10:57+00:00
Maybe my non-native English is showing but I’m having difficulty reading the article. First, it describes how the satellite can’t be used over the US and Europe and then says:

> Still, this isn't the worst setback. [… stuff how the satellite will be used over southern America …]

I was waiting for the description of an even worse setback, which makes the satellite even more limited, but it seems like „this isn’t the worst setback“ was supposed to mean „it’s not too bad, we can still do other useful stuff“. Was that understandable for native speakers?
by kurthr | 2025-05-11 22:11:01+00:00
There has always been commentary that the size (over 1300 pages) of the General Rel book Gravitation by Meisner Thorne and Wheeler was done for demonstration purposes. Apparently, modern versions are only 2.5" thick which leads me to believe they must be on incredibly thin paper. I remember it being about 4-5".

https://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Charles-W-Misner/dp/06911...

Maybe tome size a Kip thing?