MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by HenryBemis | 2025-05-25 22:32:50+00:00
You get downvoted a lot, but I challenge anyone to name a country that hasn't slashed _hard_ social benefits, pensions, % of GDP for healthcare, and similar..

I get it that some countries have had a plethora of scammers (prescribing pregnancy meds to men so docs can hit quotas and get bonuses/bribes from pharmaceutical companies, people trying to fake blindness to get an early retirement, etc.

But overall reduction of cost with reduction of salaries will ultimately lead to worse healthcare.

A friend was in Germany skiing this past winter. The 10k population town he was staying didn't have a paediatrician and they had to drive 2h to get care for their kid. In Germany, in 2025. I wonder how this very town will be in 2030 or 2050 with that trend..
by throw310822 | 2025-05-25 22:33:12+00:00
> I'm just explaining what the thought process was that lead up to the invasion

Are you sure you explained the thought process, or you just explained the justifications and the propaganda in support for a plan that had different purposes? Because of course if you need to convince an entire country (including its politicians and intelligentsia) to start a war, handwaving things such as "democracy", "domino effect" and spreading fears about WMDs is an obvious strategy.
by Veserv | 2025-05-25 22:33:13+00:00
One of the main problems is that the apportionment of liability is lossy.

It is fairly easy to determine that a collective, as a whole, is liable for some action. However, it is very hard to determine the culpability of any specific individual in the collective in isolation. The net result is that the collective is guilty, but then the liability just poofs out of existence when we attempt to prosecute the individuals separately.

It would probably be better if we assessed the guilt of the collective, then assess the lossless distribution of that liability amongst the members. The liability and guilt is known; now it is just a question of who and what bears the responsibility.

This is not a complete solution as a malicious corporation could argue that all of their evil is perpetrated by Joe the janitor, but it solves one of the problems of liability just disappearing if you make the situation complex enough, and boy howdy are lawyers good at doing that.

The problem of making sure we apportion the responsibility in a fair and just manner will be left as a orthogonal problem that I will not attempt to address here.
by foobarqux | 2025-05-25 22:33:23+00:00
> I read it and found nothing similar to “Stop wasting your time; naval vessels do it all the time.”

You implied in the previous paragraph that you didn't in fact read it and you only "skimmed" it. Maybe that's why you "found nothing similar to 'stop wasting your time; naval vessels do it all the time". But even in skimming the paper it's incomprehensible how you could miss it: At least the first 23 pages of the draft version I have just describe how well LLMs perform and completely ignores the relevant question of how human language works. (It doesn't get any better after the first 23 pages). So presumably you just don't know what an analogy is and are literally searching for the term "naval vessels".

Here's just one example demonstrating that Piantodosi does in fact claim what Chomsky says he does: Piantodosi writes "The success of large language models is a failure for generative theories because it goes against virtually all of the principles these theories have espoused." Rewriting that statement using Chomsky's analogy illustrates how idiotic the original statement is: "The success of naval vessels is a failure for insect navigation theories because it goes against all of the principles these theories have espoused".
by MichaelZuo | 2025-05-25 22:34:02+00:00
Huh? Modern modular air cooled chillers go up to 800 tons each and can remove multiple MW of heat load continuously pretty much 24/7.

500 of them could remove 1.4 GW of heat.

Of course there are many ways to improve efficiency, but even assuming the worst case it’s still technically feasible to remove many times more heat than the line generates.
by sebastiennight | 2025-05-25 22:34:12+00:00
This is hilarious and reminds me of when I was exactly that age, and learning to spit out Busta Rhymes's "Break Your Neck" [0] at full speed.

When Busta makes more intelligible listening than the arguments of your debate team, you know debate is broken.

[0]: Start 2 minutes in, give it a try: https://youtu.be/W7FfCJb8JZQ?feature=shared&t=120
by 999900000999 | 2025-05-25 22:34:20+00:00
Depending on what your goals are just adding a Bluetooth keyboard to an Android E Reader gets you 90% of the way there.

https://shop.boox.com/products/go103

I dabbled in hardware and I quickly found you need millions to do anything.

However, this definitely is a market waiting for a product. I’d lean towards looking if you can add a custom screen to the framework laptop.

That’ll be much cheaper to build and easier. I reckon you’d only need a custom Linux driver for the screen.
by avianlyric | 2025-05-25 22:35:32+00:00
How do you handle work that involves building novel systems, where good prior art simply doesn’t exist?

I’m currently dealing with a project that involves developing systems where the existing prior art is either completely proprietary and inaccessible, or public, but extremely nacient and thus documented learnings are less developed than our own learnings and designs.

Many projects may have the primary objective of getting something working. But we don’t all have the luxury of being able to declare something working and walk away. I specifically have requirements around long term evolution of our project (I.e. over a 5-10 year time horizon at a minimum), plus long term operational burden and cost. While also delivering value in the short term.

LLM provide are an invaluable tool for exploring the many possible solutions to what we’re building, and helping to evaluate the longer term consequences of our design decisions, before we’ve committed significant resources to developing them completely.

Of course we could do all this without LLMs, but LLMs substantially increase the distance we can explore before timelines force us to commit.
by moritzwarhier | 2025-05-25 22:35:46+00:00
> Because that's the other side of this. There are rarely high margins in actually selling someone something that they then own. Much better to rent it to them. They'll own nothing and you'll convince them they should be happy.

> By what sorcery? Fear, mostly. Vanity, sometimes. Sloth, occasionally. Pride, definitely. The more insecurities the merchants of complexity can trigger, the easier the sell.

https://world.hey.com/dhh/merchants-of-complexity-4851301b

You can also find blogs and podcasts about this subject, when DHH coined the phrase.

Think about the topic what you will, but the submission looks like a regurgitation to me.
by msarca | 2025-05-25 22:35:57+00:00
Thanks! We primarily focus on SVG animations, while Rive has its proprietary format and player. SVG animations run natively in the browser and don't require a player. By having their own format and player, they are not limited by standards and can, naturally, provide more features. Of course, this comes with disadvantages too, as users get vendor-locked. Also, they have a subscription-based model, while we offer perpetual licenses for a one-off payment.
by ghaff | 2025-05-25 22:36:03+00:00
I read it as a little more general than that.

>A college graduate working in a job that typically does not require a college degree is considered underemployed.

So, it's not just about philosophy majors working in a job that doesn't require a philosophy degree but about any college grad working in a job that doesn't require a degree--which according to this thread presumably includes developer jobs but that's a bit of a stretch :-) given that it often requires a degree.
by layer8 | 2025-05-25 22:36:14+00:00
It’s tedious to type when you want to do `ls *.mustachemingle` or similar.

It’s prone to get cut off in UIs with dedicated columns for file extensions.

As you say, it’s unconventional and therefore risks not being immediately recognized as a file extension.

On the other hand, Java uses .properties as a file extension, so there is some precedent.
by cranky908canuck | 2025-05-25 22:36:14+00:00
To me, 'disable abovegound regen' feels like not likely to solve the problem, just from a feeling that those systems are not that closely coupled. Otherwise, it seems easy to just keep on doing regen and set up (maybe not even need to: run a cable up to) aboveground dissipation grids.

I will guess that the limit is how much regen current can be passed back from the train into the supply system through the power supply rails / pickup shoes.

If I were making (confess, yes, untrained outsider) suggestions, I'd add water tanks to the trains, use the resistive braking to heat the water (not ambient air) during the trip, then change out the now-hot water for cold at the destination layover points. Not thinking this is a particularly creative solution, sounds like the "pull trains full of ice" already noted. Also this is off-the-cuff, so welcoming critiques!

Speculate: district level heating (wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating) using heat pumps to draw out the tunnel heat; not sure if that is too complex altogether, maybe it would work as a longterm maintenance process but not as a 'fix the current problem' one...?
by bibabaloo | 2025-05-25 22:37:10+00:00
I feel, generally, with an aging population + rising unemployment due to AI, we'll reach a crunch point that puts governments under immense pressure to increase taxes (probably on megacorps & the wealthy) more in order to fund welfare. The most optimistic, utopian, solution would be UBI and an artisan economy, but I think we all know that capitalism isn't kind enough for that to play out so we'll probably end up with something much more dystopian.
by tomp | 2025-05-25 22:37:34+00:00
Pension is a Ponzi scheme. Explained in terms of economic theory, if everybody works and saves in time period 1, and retires and receives pension in time period 2, then... their pension is worthless, because there's infinite inflation, because no more goods and services get produced.

Retirement depends on having young workers. People approaching 60, 70 simply didn't have enough kids to have good retirement. It's not a problem that has easy and/or fast solutions. Yet, actions have consequences...
by jackyinger | 2025-05-25 22:37:59+00:00
To the contrary, if voters are manipulated it is not a well functioning democracy. It is a farce of a democracy, the subtle manipulation just adds a veneer of legitimacy because it appears to be a democracy. Those who are manipulating people are the ones in power, not the citizens.

Edit: I say subtle in the sense that those being manipulated are not particularly aware of being manipulated.
by Alex-Programs | 2025-05-25 22:38:29+00:00
I had an idea at one point that I'd record every cover letter I wrote, so that eventually I could fine tune a model to write in my style.

I didn't end up sending many, but I've noticed that it's really difficult to get AI to write in a decent style. I've tried giving it a list of AI-isms to avoid, and it just doesn't work.

I has the most success with deepseek V3, giving a list of AI-isms, then ending with "You have been randomly assigned the following writing style/personality: [codeblock]" then a stereotype. Eg "Write in the style of a to-the-point, concise HN commenter" works alright, while "Write naturally and without AI-isms" is hopeless.

(Don't worry, I'm not using it for HN botting or whatever, it just tends to write in a nice style when you give it that)
by jurmous | 2025-05-25 22:38:38+00:00
I’m a Kotlin dev, and Koog feels like a breath of fresh air being able to spin up agents with a typesafe, Kotlin-native DSL is really nice. The magic for me is the ability to swap between OpenAI, Anthropic, or your own Llama with zero friction. Plus, the smart history compression already looks like it’ll save a ton on tokens, and the streaming + persistent memory hooks look nice too! Can’t wait to dig in and see how it holds up in a real project!
by autobodie | 2025-05-25 22:39:05+00:00
> Why is that, I thought? That doesn't fit being sanctioned by the US(and vassals), being poor in general, and so on.

I think the word for that is capitalist realism. You cannot imagine a motive beyond calitalist logic, but that doesn't mean nobody else can.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism
by bengold14 | 2025-05-25 22:39:14+00:00
RankPic (https://www.rankpic.info) is an app to help users crowdsource their best photo. I've been building over the past 3 years & it's grown into a lovely community of people who help each other pick their best pictures for dating apps, professional photos etc.

I've seen some pretty fun novel use cases, such as (multiple!) people using it to pick out glasses, wedding invites & so on.

I recently completed a leaderboard function that cross compares photos from different tests using Claude, which was really impressive and scared me for my day job..
by spicybright | 2025-05-25 22:39:21+00:00
I'm not the most knowledgeable, but a protocol talks to another process through a specific format.

I personally think its more powerful than writing a new process to replace and existing.

My favorite example is an X11 windows manager implementing in about 18 lines of python.

Obviously there's dependencies to talk to the X server, but the power of a protocol comes from any program written in any la gage communicate with existing code.
by ferguess_k | 2025-05-25 22:39:27+00:00
They like to give contracts to connected outsiders so that they can take care of their friends and take the blame away. 30 years? quoting the venerable Sir Humphrey Appleby:

"Precisely. Months of fruitful work. Leading to a mature and responsible conclusion."

Since it takes 30 years it must be a responsible piece of software, polished to the bone.
by sarchertech | 2025-05-25 22:40:13+00:00
I worked for several years as a software dev before I went back to school for my CS degree.

I’m a much better developer after spending 3 years (already had 90 hours worth of a history degree) studying a prepared curriculum instead of bouncing around learning about whatever interested me.

I think it’s possible to do that on your own but the vast majority of people will never come close.

I’ve also definitely worked with self taught programmers who were better than me. But I’ve also noticed gaps they had and to a person I think they’d have been even better if they’d spent 4 years in a decent CS program.
by peab | 2025-05-25 22:40:13+00:00
HN is probably not the target audience for this, but hey, here we are: https://www.youtarot.app/pages/about

A web app for people to get tarot readings, and create their own tarot cards using AI. I'm enjoying working on this because I'm using as an opportunity to learn parts of the stack that I didn't usually do at my day job - frontend, design and marketing (my career has focused more on the backend).
by nkoren | 2025-05-25 22:40:14+00:00
Indeed. At 3C in London, the humidity seeps into every pore and settles into your bones. Riding a bike at 3C, unless you're wearing a balaclava and a ski mask, is an exercise in pure pain, as the wetness sublimating off your face has approximately the same effect on your facial nerves as being flayed.

Ok the other hand, -2C in London is crisp and invigorating and entirely preferable in every possible way.
by timschmidt | 2025-05-25 22:40:27+00:00
> Pension is a Ponzi scheme. Explained in terms of economic theory, if everybody works and saves in time period 1, and retires and receives pension in time period 2, then... their pension is worthless, because there's infinite inflation, because no more goods and services get produced.

You've created an impossible situation which will never exist and then offered it as an example of why taking care of the elderly, something humans have done since before recorded history, is flawed.

As Bill and Ted would say: Bogus!
by bb88 | 2025-05-25 22:41:12+00:00
Humans are fungible, typically -- or at least that's the thought process of management. Sometimes management are literally removing an unnecessary department or need to merge departments because of market conditions -- and they really don't have time to get into the nitty gritty about how that's going to affect your job.

But also humans are messy apparently, so rather than try to introspect about what went wrong to make themselves a better manager, or improve their hiring process, or figure out how to remove bad managers, they punt: "Humans are messy. Metrics are actionable. Humans aren't metrics. shrug."

Humans can be replaced, sure, but you can't replace a surgeon with a landscaper -- but that's not going to stop some managers from trying!
by jmpetroske | 2025-05-25 22:41:24+00:00
Correction to myself, I believe we have more than enough people to provide the labor.

I really don't mean to get into the nitty gritty details - I'm not an economist and I'm not providing solutions, just stating what I see as the problem. I believe that we have enough resources, and there are issues getting those resources to where they need to go.

Example: Assume we do have a shortage of elderly care workers. Why is this the case? Could this be fixed by increasing their wages? Then that implores the question of who is paying for these increased wages, which is the question I'm not answering and I don't know enough to answer.

I just don't really believe that keeping the birth rates high is the answer to this economic problem. It might be a solution, but it's more of a band-aid than truly facing the issue. If you have a inefficient engine you can either figure out how to produce more gasoline (babies), or you can figure out how to produce a more efficient engine.
by dralley | 2025-05-25 22:41:51+00:00
Humans need a constant supply of resources and shelter to survive. There is no "system" which avoids this inconvenient fact. In the absence of any "system" at all, you would still need to constantly work for survival - and in fact you'd just die as soon as you were no longer able to do so due to illness or injury much less old age.

In other words if there were no "system" there would be no such concept as "retirement" in the first place.

We all wish that we could spend our best years doing whatever we want. That doesn't mathematically work out, though. European social safety nets are pretty damn generous all things considered. Plenty of vacation days, especially compared to the US. It's not like it's impossible to use those well during your "best years".
by sebastiennight | 2025-05-25 22:42:00+00:00
> I mean there is probably not a specific rule I could point to that a high school athlete couldn't ride a bike or a motorcycle in a 400m track run either.

There most definitely is such a rule, and there most definitely are people who have tried to do that - and been the cause of the original rule wording ; and others who still have tried to do so by "creatively interpreting" said rule.

Have you met humans?
by HappMacDonald | 2025-05-25 22:42:03+00:00
And why wouldn't a society owe its citizens anything after 40+ years of keeping their nose at the grindstone, and obeying all of its laws?

Society is defined by what we owe one another in pursuit of civil interactions with one another.

If the only contract society offers me is "work your hands to the bone and then be discarded once you can't work anymore" then I have no incentive to keep up my side of the contract and perform labor or observe property laws in the first place. And once everyone is trying to cheat and steal from one another then you no longer have a society anymore.
by drob518 | 2025-05-25 22:42:57+00:00
Bidding for tickets would cut out the scalpers and maximize revenue for the performers (and ticket agencies). So, if you want to go, pick your ticket class (rough area) and specify how much you’re willing to pay. The ticket seller orders bids by value, taking the top ones first, and then allocates tickets. Anything unsold is offered as usual on a specified day. People that really want to go get to go and the performers benefit rather than the scalpers.
by cranky908canuck | 2025-05-25 22:43:24+00:00
I think you are correct.

In this case, though, the excess heat is a major burden, so there is room to negotiate with a district thermal provider that pays that provider to absorb and redistribute the heat, as long as it's less than the cost to pump it out to the environment.

I'm not saying it's easy (it will likely be a bespoke solution). Given the organizations, I expect the difficulty to be as much business (setting the prices) and political (defending the prices set) as technical.
by michelangelodev | 2025-05-25 22:43:27+00:00
https://www.saintbeluga.org/

I was a YC founder in 2006 and still do software engineering and data science full-time, but on the side I also do Christian apologetics, helping fellow engineers/scientists/mathematicians seek answers to life's deepest questions.

Some cool articles for the HN crowd:

- My interview of Evan O'Dorney, a three-time Putnam Fellow and two-time IMO gold medalist, who converted to Catholic Christianity: https://www.saintbeluga.org/veritas-part-i-conversion-of-a-p...

- In-depth scientific overview of Eucharistic miracles: https://www.saintbeluga.org/eucharistic-miracles-god-under-t...

- Conversion testimony by the Chief Scientist at NASA JPL: https://www.saintbeluga.org/veritas-part-iii-bellows-of-aqui...
by wyager | 2025-05-25 22:43:39+00:00
> No, it is a resource allocation problem.

There are finite resources to allocate. If you can't conceptualize this, there's literally zero chance you can think about this in a productive way.

> I think there is something wrong when there's about 20 people who make more money while they take a shit, than most American families make in a year

That's usually indicative of a lack of understanding of highly connected networks, power law distributions, etc. - the types of things you need to grapple with if your question is "how do I maximize some economic objective for X million people?".

> This isn't a zero sum game

It's a constrained game (and there exists a zero-sum tradeoff between instantaneous allocation of resources to capital good production and consumable good production)

> Cathedral ceilings to only have a dirt floor

You're really leaning on this analogy that isn't very useful for actually thinking about the problem
by kingo55 | 2025-05-25 22:43:41+00:00
I'm trying out vibe coding a bit on my olive oil index site — building a full website with 11ty, tailwind and LLMs. The LLMs also serve as a data pipeline to watch and update content as new information is published online: https://www.extravirginvault.com/

I've always enjoyed the farm-to-table concept, but I find it really hard to identify trustworthy companies. Wine has been done to death, but I feel extra virgin olive oil is currently underserved.
by sholladay | 2025-05-25 22:44:23+00:00
As a human, I’ve had a bunch of positive experiences with Cloudflare Turnstile. It always seems to correctly identify me as a human faster than I could solve a CAPTCHA, without me having to do anything. I can’t speak to how effective it is at catching bots, though. Maybe it just errs on the side of assuming human?
by AttentionBlock | 2025-05-25 22:44:47+00:00
Using LLM as a judge architecture to optimize multi-agent system prompts and configurations. For now it's achieved through LLM based consensus system that evaluates another LLM output, and based on its performance for a specific task, it's tune the architecture and the prompt e.g. refine the prompt, change the base model to a smaller or cheaper model, etc