MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AStonesThrow | 2025-05-19 12:29:38+00:00
> Religion is probably one of the most complex yet misunderstood areas

Well, yes, and as a religious person, I would suggest that the metaphor is more accurate than you think.

To the pagans, a god is a supernatural force that demands worship, sacrifice, attention, effort, appeasement. To a Christian, a false idol is something that steals from the worship and sacrifice that is due to the One True God.

You can spot a modern American pagan by the deference and attention they give to their false idols. What sort of priority is ceded to our devices that detracts from truly transcendent and holy things in life? When I approach my church I've developed a ritual for taming and shutting down my phone -- yes, a ritual to put it in its place! But most days, the devices and the Internet are taking charge and telling us what we want and what we can do with ourselves.

False worship and pagan gods are slavery and bondage for us. The liberation from Egypt is a parable for today. If we cannot break free from our devices and scrolling the Internet, then Pharaoh will take away the straw and make us forage for ourselves. Our labors and the pains of bondage will increase.

Perhaps irreligious people are sensitive and defensive when others suggest that they may indeed be religious worshippers of false idols. This is an ancient phenomenon that, it is felt by the irreligious, belongs to the realm of anthropology and archaeology. Religious worship of a graven image -- it can't possibly be something done by a guy on his phone on the street corner! But it is. I assure you, it is real.

It is possible to engage the modern world without being trapped in this pagan worship, but it is not necessarily easy.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” — Charles Baudelaire
by aspizu | 2025-05-19 12:30:32+00:00
You can kinda do this using sb2gs [1], which is a decompiler for goboscript. It turns Scratch projects into text-based goboscript projects automatically, for people who wish to work on their Scratch projects in goboscript without having to manually port their entire project to goboscript. Though, sb2gs isn't the best at decompiling everything properly, so a few manual edits are required.

[1]: https://github.com/aspizu/sb2gs
by makeitdouble | 2025-05-19 12:30:35+00:00
> never offer half-baked translations

Sadly that ship has sailed.

We can look at the reaction from smaller youtubers as auto-dub rolled out. Most are sympathetic to the quality issues but are seeing it as either a "good enough" or at least a "better than nothing" feature that helps them expand their audience with no visible cost on their side.

Or official government sites that have explicitely disclosed AI translations and didn't bother passing it through a regular translator.

This situation just won't get better. Except perhaps the day AI is actually intelligent and we have human being level translators running on cloud servers.

> Wikipedia

Yes, those are not translations, but in that specific case they also don't need to: the quality of the article will vary depending on the editor, but there's no "original" article, so nothing to translate from IMHO.
by ajb | 2025-05-19 12:30:54+00:00
Pretty cool. Once suggestion: any bot for home use (and many industrial uses) needs to be able to wash itself. No-one wants a bot that cleans the toilet and then gets dirt all round the house. This will be hard to retrofit (just covering it with silicone will give you massive thermal issues) so have a think about it early.

When I see a video of one of these things taking a shower, I'll think about buying it :-)
by alias_neo | 2025-05-19 12:30:56+00:00
> likely accessed data

There's nothing "likely" about it.

> On Friday 16 May we discovered the attack was more extensive than originally understood and that the group behind it had accessed a large amount of information relating to legal aid applicants.

> We believe the group has accessed and downloaded a significant amount of personal data from those who applied for legal aid through our digital service since 2010.

> This data may have included contact details and addresses of applicants, their dates of birth, national ID numbers, criminal history, employment status and financial data such as contribution amounts, debts and payments.

source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/legal-aid-agency-data-bre...
Would you use a Calendly alternative made just for indie hackers?
by chetansorted | 2025-05-19 12:30:58+00:00
Hey hackers, I’m thinking about building a scheduling tool like Calendly, but specifically for indie hackers. Something lightweight, fast, and focused on our use cases — like syncing with your project time zones, showcasing what you’re working on, and making it easy to book quick coffee chats or collab calls.

Before I dive in, I’d love to hear from you:

How do you currently schedule meetings or collabs?

Do you face any annoyances with tools like Calendly or SavvyCal?

What specific features would make a scheduling tool feel tailor-made for indie hackers?
by jleyank | 2025-05-19 12:32:06+00:00
This takes a little bit of effort, but I’ve always preferred to listen to music in the order I want to. Sometimes, in the order than the artist wants me to. While streaming can help find new artists to listen to, storage is basically free. The iPod’s dream of carrying your record collection in your hand came true long ago. And it’s not an incremental charge to my phone.

Purists can make their own rips at higher quality or whatever, but my hearing is far too bad for that. But at least I like my music at the tempo/pitch I remember it as.
by edanm | 2025-05-19 12:32:30+00:00
I don't really know what we're disagreeing on.

> This isn't markdown, but markdown + dozens of extensions,

Yes, if the way you use Obsidian includes dozens of extensions that each use a proprietary format, then it's similar to just using Evernote in many ways.

If you're mostly using plain markdown with only a few custom formats, then it's still easier.

If today, right now, Obsidian stopped working, I could literally open my Obsidian folder in VSCode and still be able to do 90% of the things that I do in Obsidian.

If today, right now, Evernote stopped working, it would take some effort to find a working version, export the files, convert them to markdown or whatever, etc.

I just don't know how you can claim that Obsidian is more effort to use outside of Obsidian than something proprietary.
by ezst | 2025-05-19 12:32:37+00:00
That's correct, there is no official mobile app with full offline sync at the moment, but there are independent efforts underway¹ and more or less involving workarounds².

If you have internet and don't need full offline sync, you should be able to use Trilium decently well today, with the recent responsive theming efforts that went into Trilium Next.

¹: https://github.com/FliegendeWurst/TriliumDroid ²: https://github.com/orgs/TriliumNext/discussions/827
by pixl97 | 2025-05-19 12:32:49+00:00
>but that it's slowing down

Progress isn't a smooth curve but more step like.

Also, the last 10% of getting AI right is 90% of the work, but it doesn't seem to us humans. I don't think you understand the gigantic impact that last 10% is going to make on the world and how fast it will change things once we accomplish it.

Personally, I hope it takes us a while. We're not ready for this as a society and planet.
by SeriousGamesKit | 2025-05-19 12:33:14+00:00
I've made a habit of regularly ordering in out-of-print business books when I see them recommended by people whose writing I have found useful. Some highlights have been 'The Rickover Effect', which details the construction of the first nuclear power plants, and 'Selling Microsoft', which discusses the day-to-day life and structure of enterprise technology salespeople in the 90s.

By far the best has been 'Managing the Design Factory' by Donald Reinertsen, which I strongly recommend to software engineering managers. I really appreciated the exploration of how organising teams and tasks impacts development speed, cost, performance and unit cost in different ways. Even though it was written in the 90s, I don't think I've seen as good a discussion on how architectural decisions impact corporate strategy.
by leonheld | 2025-05-19 12:33:28+00:00
While others have expressed sentiments about YouTube and Google, let me tell you what I really hate - translated reddit posts.

They're polluting search results and it's the ultimate disrespect against multi-lingual users... it's made my life hell when trying to find localized information (for example, in Portuguese), when my computer is set to Portuguese but I'm searching in English.
by diggan | 2025-05-19 12:33:48+00:00
"Show HN" (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) is a great way of getting a general (but very techy) group of people to try it out and give feedback.

Otherwise, if you're solving a specific problem in a niche, start hanging out wherever those people hang out, participate in the community and share your solution if it's applicable to the discussion. Make sure not to spam/self-promote a lot though, as it comes off as really tacky in most places.
by cwassert | 2025-05-19 12:34:08+00:00
First of all, of course one country should be able to influence other countries in the EU. That's the whole point of the EU.

Secondly, the waste products of nuclear reactors are much more problematic than CO2. Handling of this waste is often overlooked when looking at the costs or CO2 footprint.

And that does not even touch the associated risks.
by lolinder | 2025-05-19 12:34:25+00:00
An example of the prompt engineering phenomenon: my wife and I were recently discussing a financial decision. I'd offered my arguments in favor of one choice and she was mostly persuaded but decided to check in with ChatGPT to help reassure herself that I was right. She asked the financial question in layman's terms and got the opposite answer that I had given.

She showed me the result and I immediately saw the logical flaws and pointed them out to her. She pressed the model on it and it of course apologized and corrected itself. Out of curiosity I tried the prompt again, this time using financial jargon that I was familiar with and my wife was not. The intended meaning of the words was the same, the only difference is that my prompt sounded like it came from someone who knew finance. The result was that the model got it right and gave an explanation for the reasoning in exacting detail.

It was an interesting result to me because it shows that experts in a field are not only more likely to recognize when a model is giving incorrect answers but they're also more likely to get correct answers because they are able to tap into a set of weights that are populated by text that knew what it was talking about. Lay people trying to use an LLM to understand an unfamiliar field are vulnerable to accidentally tapping into the "amateur" weights and ending up with an answer learned from random Reddit threads or SEO marketing blog posts, whereas experts can use jargon correctly in order to tap into answers learned from other experts.
by brudgers | 2025-05-19 12:34:26+00:00
The graph of people who will be happy using Linux is a big bi-modal smiley face.

At one end are the people with the computer knowledge you mention.

At the other end are people with very little computer knowledge.

It's all the people in the middle with a little computer knowledge who will struggle when they try to manage files.

But the experts will expert and the uninformed will just use the computer to do the high level tasks they do (e.g. browse and email and store everything on the desktop). Modulo obscure hardware, Ubuntu will just work for them.

Which is not to say this is the year of the Linux desktop.
by znpy | 2025-05-19 12:34:30+00:00
> Apple avoided MVPs, choosing instead to launch highly polished products.

This point is flawed though, and doesn't account for the same advantage that the author ascribes to, say, Peter Thiel: being already established and having already great advantage (large amount of capital and a very recognizable and trusted brand).

The author is comparing startup companies launching an MVP (their first product) to established multi-national companies launching their 100th products 25-30+ years after being created. Quite literally apple-to-oranges (pun not intended) comparison.

btw: if you look at pictures of the Apple 1 (for example at https://www.apple1registry.com/en/71.html) you'll see a computer that's not very polished at all, because it was sold either as a kit (that you would assemble yourself) or as motherboard only.

After reading this line I question the coherence of the reasoning about other books.
by bluGill | 2025-05-19 12:34:46+00:00
A lot of things aimed at the middle class are better than what is aimed at the rich. There are not enough rich people pay engineers and so you end up with a $30,000 appliance that has the same features as the $1000 version and is lower quality because the few people who can afford to spend that much isn't enough to work out all the over time, while the lower priced models they release a limited run and then watch to see what breaks and fixes that....
by rsynnott | 2025-05-19 12:35:01+00:00
> Maybe a Miele dishwasher last twice as long at double the price. But it will become old after 10 years even so.

It... won't support the new dishes that come out in the 2030s?

Like, other than energy efficiency (and this is basically already into diminishing returns for appliances like dishwashers), what must-have progress are you expecting?
by iggldiggl | 2025-05-19 12:35:08+00:00
> j-n: So... you go a day or two without a phone, replace it, and then things work again.

Which still is an option right now, where a lot of things haven't yet been app-ified, but if you follow "Why should we handicap new, shiny things to make them usable without a phone?" to the maximum, things could end up rather difficult in the future. Like if you've been commuting by public transport and public transport is no longer accessible without a smartphone, how would you continue going to work until the new phone arrives?
by d--b | 2025-05-19 12:36:26+00:00
Idk, I've seen 40-year-old Ikea cabinets being totally fine (in France).

Nowadays, the trend is that people buy the cabinet frames from Ikea, and then buy the doors, handles, and bottom support from someone else who makes more durable ones.

The thing is that with Ikea, I kind of know what I get. From a custom kitchen cabinet maker, I could get something that lasts a lifetime, or something that wears quickly.
by lou1306 | 2025-05-19 12:36:45+00:00
I briefly worked on synchronized applause (well, a toy discretised cellular automata-like model of such), and the individual agents don't even need to know the mean, or to receive continuous feedback (which is what happens with synchronised metronomes).

As long as they can infer a collective pace from listening to the general loudness in the room, they can do very basic adjustments to their own clapping rhythm=phase and they will get in sync.

And applause is just a stand-in for any locally periodic behaviour with regular signals (claps) which can be aggregated (more claps = louder).
by patapong | 2025-05-19 12:37:25+00:00
This assumes that LLMs are only useful if they are AGI. I don't think we do - what we have today is already sufficient to unlock an enormous amount of value, we just haven't done so yet.

Thus, I think we can compare them to electricity - a sophisticated technology with a ton of potential, which will take years to fully exploit, even if there are no more fundamental breakthroughs. But also not the solution to every single problem.
Show HN: Logdash – Zero-config observability for side projects
by szymeo | 2025-05-19 12:37:38+00:00
Hey HN

We’ve been building Logdash as a lightweight observability tool for side projects and prototypes. Most logging/metrics tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK...) are amazing, but feel like overkill when you're just hacking on something small.

Logdash gives you: - Real-time logs and custom metrics - Zero config (no YAML, no setup) - One tiny SDK to drop in - Hosted UI with live dashboards

We use Logdash to monitor Logdash — our own prod dashboard is public here: https://logdash.io/demo-dashboard

Would love feedback, ideas, or questions!
by etruong42 | 2025-05-19 12:38:34+00:00
I love some of the ideas you pointed out.

> Precise but not accurate. Since it is always open to interpretation, it simply cannot be used for verification

Agreed - the main way I try to manage this is to have a very coarse interpretation of statements - almost like a probability distribution of semantic meaning[1]. For example, if someone says "I like spaghetti", most of the probability distribution is located somewhere between "I tolerate spaghetti, but I won't say it that way in case you're about to serve me spaghetti" to "My favorite food is spaghetti, but only if it's served in the general style of my hometown".

I might be misinterpreting what you're saying right now, but we can continue to have this conversation, and I hope you're enjoying it even as I am enjoying it!

I generally agree with the idea that it cannot be used for verification, depending on what you precisely mean (my probably distribution of _your meaning_ has significant overlap with what I would agree with, but not entirely, though to be pedantic, it never entirely overlaps since there's always a chance of misinterpretation). I think that's why it's important to establish relationships and baselines of communications. Repeatedly successfully interpreting each other's words can provide a strong baseline for future communicative success. It's important not to project one relationship onto another, which we are _very_ prone to do. E.g. we should not project how we communicate with one sex to another sex, or necessarily even one person to another person!

[1] Maybe this is the next representation of semantic meaning that LLMs will use somewhere in its internals? Instead of a single embedding, it describes some probability distribution around an embedding with the greatest probability?
by OtherShrezzing | 2025-05-19 12:39:03+00:00
These books are all either written by ghost authors, or journalists given such privileged access to the source material, that they feel a debt to the subjects. I read them, but do so with a bullshit-filter on. They become far more useful with a critical eye.

For example, in "The Founders - story of PayPal" the author fawns over how great one of the Founders at PayPal was at SQL. The Founder would often jump in and fix issues alongside the admins, build dbs for features and front-end forms to populate them. The founder reduces headcount at the end of a feature build-out to reduce running costs, as maintenance wasn't important on these features. Later in the book, the company almost goes bankrupt due to the high fraud rates on the platform, specifically, they struggled with SQL-injection issues. The author doesn't manage to make the connection between these three events, but a modestly-technical reader with a critical eye can see that the company was haemorrhaging money because a Founder over-indexed on their own competency. Later, the same founder orders a ground-up rewrite of PayPal in .Net, at the dismay of his entire technical team. This almost bankrupts the company a second time, and wastes an entire fundraising round's money.

The book is presented as a kind of victory-lap, honouring the effort, grit, nous, and determination of the Founding Team. But with the right eye, the book is a case-study in how PayPal was nearly destroyed dozens of times by the competency of its Founding Team.

You can read every business book with this filter, and you get much more out of them for it.
by bluGill | 2025-05-19 12:39:16+00:00
> Industrial dishwashers

Should be called dish sterilizers. They won't get dirt off - in industrial kitchens everything is rinsed first and then put in.

Home dishwashers get just as hot as the industrial versions (if you turn on those cycles - might not be allowed by modern code, but older ones do), and use harsher chemicals because they are expected to get clean after food that has dried on for a few days.
by resource_waste | 2025-05-19 12:39:24+00:00
>Lavish spending is still seen as pointlessly insecure by anyone on any budget.

I seen and lived this until I got my wake up call.

I was regular upper middle class, I would laugh at people who thought I was poor for having an Android because I could easily afford a $1000 iphone, I just didnt want it.

Then I got into philosophy and inevitably Stoicism, where I found happiness within.

Then I read too much philosophy and realized the promises of such ethical philosophy were harmful to my own well-being. I went full Nietzsche and realized that spending money was a demonstration of power. As Thomas Hobbes says: 'Fame makes more fame, power makes more power.'

Thus, pointless lavish spending does have a point, its to demonstrate power, which grows power.

I genuinely feel like 30+ years of my life I was tricked into a religion of modesty against my own interests. Meanwhile, the people I mocked, rappers/rich people/etc... had the right idea. Or at least right in my current set of Values.

(And if you disagree with my values, prove I'm wrong, best of luck, there is nothing backing pure reason, and if you want to be an empiricist, we have peacocking)
by ethbr1 | 2025-05-19 12:39:27+00:00
Thankfully, lumber has developed not-imprecise grading methods that are tied into guaranteed load values that are tied into architectural plans (which themselves include safety margins).

Basics: https://www.southernpine.com/grading-methods/ and https://bof.fire.ca.gov/media/llad34j2/full-14-b-presentatio...

Examples: https://www.nelma.org/the-grade-rule-book/ and https://nlga.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/NLGA-GR-2022-ver...
by GuestFAUniverse | 2025-05-19 12:39:29+00:00
Agree. These were pretty old numbers and are getting irrelevant by the day.

And as I tried to argue: for performance SSD are a no-brainer in all dimensions.

Space vs. cost: you don't have to tell me. We take care for more than a PB in-house. Guess what? Still mostly on HDs.
by avianlyric | 2025-05-19 12:39:36+00:00
If you read my reply again, you’ll notice that I explicitly highlight that K8s does not require the use of a CNI. There’s a reason CNIs are plugins, and not core parts of k8s.

How do you think external network traffic gets routed into a CNIs front proxy? It’s not via kube-proxy, kube-proxy isn’t designed for use in proper production systems, it’s only a stop gap to provide a functioning cluster to enable bootstrapping of a proper network management layer.

There is absolutely nothing preventing a network layer directly routing external traffic to pods, with the only translation being a basic iptable rule to enable routing of data sent to a nodes network interface with a pod IP to be accepted by the node and routed to the pod. Given it’s just basic Linux network interface bridging, happening entirely in the kernel with zero copies, the impact of this layer is practically zero.

Indeed the k8s services setup with external load balancers basically handle all of this setup for you.

There are plenty of reasons not to use k8s, but arguing that a k8s cluster must inherently introduce multiple additional network components and complexity is simply incorrect.
by alexey-salmin | 2025-05-19 12:40:19+00:00
It won't require the Wi-Fi connection to operate (so definitely a reason to stick to my 12 years old appliances)

I'm not even joking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43463200

> It says options with an asterisk—including Rinse, Machine Care (self-cleaning), HalfLoad, Eco, and Delay start, are "available through Home Connect app only and depending on your model."

This is happening now.