MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lolinder | 2025-05-24 14:33:11+00:00
Heat is mentioned in passing with literally no attempt at quantifying the cost:

> 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.

That's it. The line in the budget for heat is there and was left intentionally blank:

> Heat:

You can't just hand-wave away the cost of electric heating at the temperatures they get in upstate NY, even if the 0.04 number is accurate year-round (which it almost certainly isn't), and wood-burning stoves use way more wood than the author appears to be imagining with their "scrap wood" comment.

[0] https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/massena/new-york/unite...
Ask HN: How feasible is a Personal Development startup?
by SMAAART | 2025-05-24 14:34:59+00:00
I have read about 700 self-help books from happiness to confidence to depression; and the vast majority suck because they are akin to sugar pill: they convince the reader that whatever their problem is it's not their fault, but it's someone else's fault, the system, society whatnot. And the reader eats this left and right, and they are willing to pay 19.99 for what is practically an alibi for life.

Life coaches are a joke.

Most executive coaches are a scam.

But, there are some valid "techniques" that work at getting results, the only problem is that they require a lot of work, hold the individual accountable, and therefore they are not popular.

I have identified a few, and - looking back at my life - certain things have helped me claw my way out of generational poverty and now doing OK financially; getting rid of my depression; managing my anxiety; and - overall - living a very satisfactory life.

Looking around online, most everyone is unhappy, and with many unfulfilled wishes. From a business perspective it's a huge untapped market; untapped because the solutions don't work.

So, my question to this forum is: am I delusional to think that I can put together a program, under the freemium model, whereas my basic "tools" are out there, for free (open source license), for anyone to use; and then have certain "services" under the tiered subscription model.

Individuals who get benefits greater then the cost would gladly participate, everyone else can continue on their own merry life.

I only need 1,000 true friends after all, and I can use the lean startup methodology.

So, be brutal HN, aside from being hard AF, do you find any fault in this thinking?

Any tips besides eventually applying to Y Combinator?

Thank in advance.
by jader201 | 2025-05-24 14:35:25+00:00
> I honestly don't know how anyone can live out in the boonies without a car.

Why would you want to live out in the boonies without owning a car?

Just get a car.

They’re not that expensive, you can get a used beater for not much more than an iPhone. If you don’t want a beater, you can probably afford to spend a little more with the money you save from living out in the boonies.

Most people who live in the boonies owns a car.
by antonvs | 2025-05-24 14:35:43+00:00
You're still focusing on averages, which is the error inherent in the myth.

While it's true that average life expectancy has increased, the point is that it was absolutely routine for people to live into their 60s, and not uncommon for them to live into their 70s or 80s.

See e.g. https://www.sapiens.org/biology/human-lifespan-history/
by firesteelrain | 2025-05-24 14:36:56+00:00
I will explain.

Under 8 CFR § 214.3(a)(3) and § 214.4(a)(2)(ii), schools are required to maintain accurate records and comply with all SEVP-related responsibilities, which include ensuring that F-1 students are not engaged in activities that violate status or federal law. If DHS believes that international students were involved in threatening, discriminatory, or unlawful activity and the school either failed to document, disclose, or respond appropriately, that’s a direct compliance issue.

Harvard’s own ASAIB report admits that antisemitic conduct occurred-including exclusion of Jewish students, verbal harassment, and bias in classroom settings. If any of that involved foreign students-and Harvard didn’t report it or take disciplinary action-DHS can reasonably infer noncompliance with 214.3(g)(1) (required records) and failure to enforce visa conditions.

In fact, the ASAIB report might be evidence that Harvard knew about the issues and didn’t fully cooperate, justifying DHS’s conclusion that the university wasn’t acting in good faith.
by Barrin92 | 2025-05-24 14:37:07+00:00
Not close from my parents home is a small farm collective of mostly ex hippies who have been living there communally for decades with people well into their 80s now. It was so successful that the city, taking that as inspiration, ran trials of creating more autonomous senior communities that are largely self supervised, including even people with dementia.

From what I heard it works extremely well, not the least because it's more dignified and keeps people engaged, active, and self reliant. The modern notion of the drooling, dependent nursing home patient is a product of our (artificially!) atomized system.
Ask HN: What's your favorite architect/editor pair with Aider?
by 34679 | 2025-05-24 14:37:19+00:00
I'm currently using Gemini 2.5 Pro as the architect with Devstral Small (free version via OpenRouter) as the editor. I've only spent a few hours with it so far, but have been impressed with the quality of results and reduction of cost.

What pairs have you tried? Do you have any that you've been really impressed with?

This LLM leaderboard page is what got me interested:

https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/

Aider's initial announcement regarding architect/editor:

https://aider.chat/2024/09/26/architect.html
by mauvehaus | 2025-05-24 14:37:37+00:00
Your social "things" adapt somewhat to the environment. Since moving to rural Vermont, my wife and I have taken up hunting, and she has gotten back into fishing. There's a group of (mostly older) people who get together Wednesday mornings and shoot muzzleloaders and have coffee. I join them when work allows.

As a happy side-effect, it let me get into muzzleloader season with some support from people with a lot of experience. In Vermont, muzzleloader season falls during the damnable month between Thanksgiving and New Year's when the days just keep getting shorter, and there isn't usually enough snow (where we live) for snowshoeing. Having a reason to get out in the woods and be really present and observing nature when I otherwise would have trouble is outstanding for my mental health during that month.

That's not to say there aren't opportunities to climb. A rock gym just opened near-enoughish-by and I have friends who climb outside weekly at a nearby crag.
by amiga386 | 2025-05-24 14:37:38+00:00
Because they actively thwarted security.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/12/nope-...

https://web.archive.org/web/20191220215533/https://stripe.ia...

> this site uses an EV certificate for "Stripe, Inc", that was legitimately issued by Comodo. However, when you hear "Stripe, Inc", you are probably thinking of the payment processor incorporated in Delaware. Here, though, you are talking to the "Stripe, Inc" incorporated in Kentucky.

There's a lot of validation that's difficult to get around in DV (Domain Validation) and in DNS generally. Unless you go to every legal jurisdiction in the world and open businesses and file and have granted trademarks, you _cannot_ guarantee that no other person will have the same visible EV identity as you.

It's up to visitors to know that apple.com is where you buy Apple stuff, while apple.net, applecart.com, 4ppl3.com, аррlе.сом, ., example.com/https://apple.com are not. But if they can manage that, they can trust apple.com more than they could any URL with an "Apple, Inc." EV certificate. When browsers show the URL bar tend to highlight the top-level domain prominently, and they reject DNS names with mixed script, to avoid scammers fooling you. It's working better than EV.
by the__alchemist | 2025-05-24 14:37:43+00:00
Learned something new today! I've used a handful of these. Had assumed the term was interchangeable with "BGA" from a design perspective. I.e. just pick this one if it's what the part's available in, or you want a smaller one than the QFN etc variant, and can stomach not being able to visually inspect the pins. You can usually get away with the net and footprint abstraction if not doing high speed or RF.

You can see how this would be overlooked: a given board may have many parts, and data sheets can be long. Usually you get good at picking out the important parts: Protocol description, pin maps, ref layouts, voltage tolerance etc. Reading the fine print certainly would have prevented this, but you can justify skipping it. Maybe less justifiable for a device like this that's produced in huge quantities though!
by TimorousBestie | 2025-05-24 14:37:57+00:00
> I have a far worse one and I rarely bring it up and that’s my choice, as it’s hers to wave the flag or tout overcoming it as some kind of accomplishment to celebrate.

It’s one of a handful of things in your HN bio. The pinned article on your blog is largely about its effects on your life.

That’s okay.

I think it’s admirable for people to talk frankly about their struggles with disability, and I think it’s hypocritical of you to criticize the article’s author for doing so.
by f30e3dfed1c9 | 2025-05-24 14:38:21+00:00
I'm interested but when I provided my email address to get notifications, I am prompted to either sign in to or create an account at something called MailerLite. No idea what that's about, not gonna do it. You gotta realize that at this late date, my threshold for creating new accounts is pretty high. If I don't know exactly what I'm signing up for and why, I'm not gonna do it.
by ViktorRay | 2025-05-24 14:38:22+00:00
One issue here is that the molecules we breath in and out stop existing because they change and are broken apart.

In simple terms cellular respiration involves

Sugar molecules (C6H12O6) reacting with oxygen molecules (O2) to produce Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Water (H20).

Now a common misconception folks have from school is that the oxygen “turns into” carbon dioxide. This isn’t true. What actually happens is that the Hydrogen atoms from the sugar molecule eventually combine with the Oxygen molecule to produce water. The water is generated from hydrogen being accepted by the oxygen molecule. The carbon dioxide is what remains of the sugar molecules once the hydrogen has been removed.

Of course there are many steps in this process but this is broadly how cells generate energy. As you can see this process leads to the creation of molecules and the destruction of others.

Now let’s move away from the cell and towards the lungs more broadly.

During the act of breathing we breath in many molecules. Most of what we breath in is Nitrogen molecules which are inert and don’t do anything. We also breath many other molecules including oxygen, water, etc. Now not all the oxygen molecules we breath in enter the blood stream. Some will be expired out. When we breath out we also breath out those newly created carbon dioxide molecules I mentioned.

(It actually gets even more complicated because some of those carbon dioxide molecules get converted into other molecules that get removed through the urine).

Furthermore some of those water molecules that are created by our cells are also in the breath that we expire. It is important to keep the lungs moist. The breath we inspire is more humid than what we inspire. But it gets even more complicated. Because some of those water molecules being expired are created by our cells but others enter the body from the water we drink. Some of the water molecules our cells create leave in the urine or through our skin or through feces and some of those water molecules that leave from those areas are also those that enter the body from the water we drink.

So Caesar’s last breath happened thousands of years ago right? And we have countless animals and countless plants in all that time creating molecules and destroying them. Given all these animals and plants I would say that it stands to reason that these molecules either don’t exist or may no longer be in gaseous form.

And remember the nitrogen molecules I mentioned earlier? They are inert in our lungs but not inert in other parts of nature.

Anyway the point I’m making is that this question is more complicated because it’s doubtful a large chunk of Caesar’s Last breath’s molecules even exist anymore.
by fullstop | 2025-05-24 14:38:38+00:00
> Unfortunately, there is a lot of racism in upstate NY. I do know rural NY black people, and they do fine, but I'm not sure they appreciate the way insults are thrown about "present company excluded". It's those attitudes that kept me from wanting to stay.

This is so heartbreaking.

I live in a suburban area, and have friends and neighbors from around the world -- Trinidad, Sri Lanka, Korea, Canada, and I _love_ that aspect of where I live. As I get older, I don't like the din of lawnmowers and leaf blowers. Many of my neighbors have lawn services, and the ZTRs and backpack leaf blowers are even louder than what your average joe would have to do the same job.

On top of that, since there is land by me, the local government's zoning board has approved of more and more warehouses. As such, semi truck traffic has increased significantly, and somehow they all seem to have unmuffled straight pipe exhausts. I've contacted my representatives, but none of them seem to care. The state rep passes it off to the district rep, who passes it off to the township, who passes it back off to the state. The only winning move is to leave.

The point of my tangent here, is that a place like rural NY seems idyllic to escape the noise. Anecdotes like yours, though, steer me away. I understand that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in that regard.
by pavel_lishin | 2025-05-24 14:38:47+00:00
> Extract the kernel – everywhere I’ve ever worked, teams have struggled understanding executives. In every case, the executives could be clearer, but it’s not particularly interesting to frame these problems as something the executives need to fix. Sure, that’s true they could communicate better, but that framing makes you powerless, when you have a great deal of power to understand confusing communication. After all, even good communicators communicate poorly sometimes.

I gotta say, nothing fills me with as much excitement for a job as much as having to have a second job as a Kremlinologist, attempting to scry the motivations of the opaque execs, whose whims come down from On High, either engraved on stone tablets dropped directly into our teams, or brought down to us through three translation layers of middle-management.
by diggan | 2025-05-24 14:39:30+00:00
> If I want a 30-second breakdown of how to boil pasta, I'll look on the back of the box.

Yeah, but then you're in a foreign country or whatever, you understand that was just an example right? To illustrate something... Have some imagination.

> False dichotomoy, because even if I want to quickly know how to do something, I don't need AI, nor do I need to research everything either.

Right, I'm not claiming it's impossible to "learn X quickly without AI", but I would make the claim that I can learn X faster with AI, than without. YMMV and all that.

> But that doesn't mean we need to go to the level of AI to learn something

I don't have to use Wikipedia or the Internet instead of going to my local library, but if I'm in a rush, and need something quickly, I probably prefer those two options rather than the last.

> as even a study by Microsoft [1] shows that AI makes people stupider, so not really learning at all.

That study says no such thing, and the amount of people mislead by that paper is kind of shocking to me. If you're curious what the paper actually says, feel free to read the actual paper instead of a "YouTube AI thought-leader" summarization of it, or whatever you got the whole "AI makes people stupider" from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...
by philwelch | 2025-05-24 14:40:09+00:00
> 63360 inches in a mile

Nobody cares how many inches are in a mile. It doesn’t matter.

> Quick, what's 11/64" + 3/8"?

35/64. Was that supposed to be hard? Common denominators are elementary school level arithmetic.

> Quick, which weight is bigger: 0.6lbs or 10oz?

10oz. 10/16 is 5/8 which is .625.

I agree that metric is easier for people who don’t have a grasp of fifth grade arithmetic.
by vouaobrasil | 2025-05-24 14:40:17+00:00
> Is widespread, mandatory watermarking the only answer, or is it a technically flawed/doomed approach?

I don't see how you could seriously trust a technical solution like that. All technical solutions can be pretty much broken. In my opinion, you also need to build up a web of trust of people who are definitely against AI and who make it prominent that they refuse to use any generative AI content. For example, on my YouTube channel I make that abundantly clear, and on the website I work for we also have an anti-AI statement.

A better "technical" solution would be to build a platform that attracts like-minded people. Yes, once it gets large it might be flooded with AI content/bots, but the trick is not to let it get large, nor go for a large profit at first along the lines of typical technology solutions. The internet is flooded with AI content not because AI suddenly and rapidly came to exist, but because there was a niche for it.

Personally, I hate AI, with a passion. Find people who create and write and who hate AI and it's a start.
by tocs3 | 2025-05-24 14:41:05+00:00
Many papers have errors, yes—but our major results generally hold up, even when the intermediate steps are wrong!

This reminds me of a bunch of recent posts on HN about AI and its "reasoning" process.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44052713

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43673463

An interesting read and take on math papers.

[edit] adding another thought

Maybe LLMs and their reasoning could be used as a model for how a consensus is reached in a group.
by mizzao | 2025-05-24 14:42:23+00:00
Is it true that every field that originally started with no rails, eventually leads to rails being constructed there? Every trailblazer can create a well-trodden path

For example, startups were one of the most canonical examples of going off the rails. Yet now, many people equate doing a startup with (1) apply to YC, (2) raise a round from a prestigious VC, and other rail-like things. Some even go down these tracks with no firm idea of what they want their company to be, hoping that the train tracks will reveal it to them.
by projektfu | 2025-05-24 14:42:46+00:00
St. Lawrence County does offer several shuttles that run only 1-4 times per day in each direction. It is probably better to add a bike or e-bike to the list.

I think when people write these articles, they should have lived the life instead of just totaling a few expenses. It is very hard to live without at least a few unforeseen expenses above the base budget. The life proposed here is like a 19th century life, waiting for the stagecoach to take you to where you can pay your property taxes, and then spending the day in town because the next stagecoach out doesn't come for hours.
Ask HN: Got any fun quirks or creative touches on your HN profile page?
by susam | 2025-05-24 14:43:08+00:00
This is a light-hearted Saturday social topic.

I've got some ASCII art on my HN profile page: a PC with two floppy disk drives and a Model M keyboard. Doesn't render very well on small screens. So you'll need a wide screen display to view it properly. I put it together a while ago.

I'm curious to see what other interesting HN profile pages are out there!
by contingencies | 2025-05-24 14:44:20+00:00
If you like this sort of thing I highly recommend seeking out a hardcover copy of the last edition of a long-running book, View Camera Technique: 7th Edition. I found it exceptionally well illustrated and very interesting.

https://www.amazon.com/View-Camera-Technique-Leslie-Stroebel...

Somebody in Dongguan once introduced me to the Korean running the iPhone lens assembly production systems (it was outsourced; ~COVID). IIRC they had 13 lens elements at the time and each assembly was characterized and digitally corrected according to its specific optical characteristics. Fascinating guy to talk to over beer. He moved east after that, someplace near Shanghai IIRC.
by hocuspocus | 2025-05-24 14:46:27+00:00
Two things:

- Only your outermost application entry-point will need to stack all effects; you'll wire the server, client, DB and so on in your `main` method that returns Unit \ (IO & Abort & Result & Transaction & Env ...). In specific modules individual functions should use only the narrowest effect.

- Good ergonomics for type polymorphism and type inference are obviously paramount to adding algebraic effects in a way that is minimally invasive. It's obviously not trivial and mostly a PL research field at this point, but existing implementations show that there's potential for better DX compared to alternatives (monadic effect systems, mostly).
by diggan | 2025-05-24 14:46:35+00:00
> And it's not bad for existing homeowners either, since they get the appreciation too.

Assuming everyone is only out after appreciating house prices. While the locals who lived there before you might like that the house gains in value, depending on how large the group is and what the culture is, they might not like it at all. There is a reason some rural people continue living in rural areas, and bringing parts of the city to them might not be ideal for those people.
by gio446 | 2025-05-24 14:46:36+00:00
Hi HN, I recently launched AffBlog.eu, a personal side project where I explore and review different web hosting providers, and explain how Fiverr’s affiliate program works for beginners.

It’s aimed at helping those starting out with affiliate marketing avoid common traps and pick reliable services. The blog is still in progress, and I’m open to suggestions on how to make it more useful.

Happy to hear your thoughts, feedback, or ideas for posts. Here’s the link: https://affblog.eu/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=communi...
by photochemsyn | 2025-05-24 14:47:15+00:00
Disappointing that they didn't benchmark DeepSeek side by side with OpenAI and Gemini although thelist of funders for cip may explain that:

https://www.cip.org/funding-partnerships

Incidentally DeepSeek will give very interesting results if you ask it for a tutorial on prompt engineering - be sure to ask it how to effectively use 'attention anchors' to create 'well-structured prompts', and why rambling disorganized prompts are usually, but not always, detrimental, depending on whether you want 'associative leaps' or not.

P.S. I find this intro very useful:

> "Task: evaluate the structure of the following prompt in terms of attention anchors and likelihood of it generating a well-structured response. Do not actually reply to the prompt, all we need is an analysis of the structure. Prompt begins:"
Ask HN: Can you give tips on writing a README for project?
by vseplet | 2025-05-24 14:48:07+00:00
I'm currently finishing up the initial version of my experimental embeddable library designed for creating web applications without a build step. But I'm not sure how to make the repository appealing and successful — something that makes people want to try it out, maybe even contribute or improve it.

https://github.com/vseplet/morph?tab=readme-ov-file#morph

So, I'd really appreciate any tips you have on writing a great README or structuring the repo — or pointing out any common mistakes I might have made along the way.