MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by DrScientist | 2025-05-08 09:45:20+00:00
This comment is at the heart of many of the challenges tech companies face - they can scale the serving of content - but struggle to scale the content moderation and/or dispute resolution.

It's a common problem with automation - the focus is often on accelerating the 'happy' path, only to realise dealing with the exceptions is where the real challenges lie.

One tried and trust way around that is to cherry pick customers as part of your strategy. You sell insurance to people who will never claim ( and hence dispute), and shun those likely to.

However such market segmentation results in no insurance for people who would need it and the people who don't wondering why they are buying it - ie optimal efficiency for an insurance company is to simply offer no value at all.

ie you could argue the whole value proposition of an insurance company is to pool, not segmented risk, and critically to provide fair arbitration ( protecting the majority of the pool from those that would do insurance fraud, while still paying out ).

Buying 'peace of mind' requires a belief in a fair dealing insurer - that's the key scale challenge - not pricing or sales.
by elisson22 | 2025-05-08 09:45:24+00:00
This argument that dignity must be earned through honor — and that dignity without honor leads to cultural decay — is compelling, but also dangerously close to justifying exclusion or inequality on the basis of arbitrary cultural metrics.

Isn't there a risk in tying access to social esteem (and therefore credit, opportunity, and participation) to norms of 'earned' dignity, especially when those norms are defined by dominant groups?

How do we balance a meritocratic esteem economy with the need for universal human dignity?
by k4rli | 2025-05-08 09:45:46+00:00
I'm mostly on the same page, but jumping into a new project with a not-so-familiar language has been made much less painful with Cursor. Regular anthropic chats spew nonsense most of the time and are disappointing, but Cursor really seems to be useful.

Of course it also gets stuff wrong and everything needs to be properly validated, but it's a nice tool to try out.
by dgrr19 | 2025-05-08 09:48:05+00:00
Tell third-world countries that centralization is good :)

Centralization could be good, sometimes (if it works idk). The problem is that the financial world has been monopolized by certain entities and the barrier of entry is enormous. It is never fair to not play by the same rules when regulation favors big institutions, etc... Access to credit is difficult sometimes and unfair. But that is just a reason you could give in the US.

Decentralization ensures that countries that condemn their citizens to raising inflation can access other types of income. Some argentinians get paid in USDC, because their currency is just worthless in other countries, and they would never be able to access USD in their banks.

Decentralization (I have in mind something like Hyperliquid or even BTC) ensures that everybody in the world have access to the same economy without intermediaries asking for a fee. Which means, a person in Indian can access to income the same way a person in the US would. Or you could do a transfer overseas with less fees or regulation problems.
by kahicks | 2025-05-08 09:48:11+00:00
>WP has so many issues with both its data, and their governance.

Indeed. See "Canceling Disputes": https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c....

Here are some non-Wiki links:

Gnutella: https://computer.howstuffworks.com/file-sharing.htm

Segment routing: https://www.segment-routing.net/

BAN Logic: https://www.cdk5.net/security/Ed2/BANLogic.pdf

and ProVerif: https://bblanche.gitlabpages.inria.fr/proverif/
by easygenes | 2025-05-08 09:48:35+00:00
Yeah. Squared error is optimal when the noise is Gaussian because it estimates the conditional mean; absolute error is optimal under Laplace noise because it estimates the conditional median. If your housing data have a few eight-figure outliers, the heavy tails break the Gaussian assumption, so a full quantile regression for, say, the 90th percentile—will predict prices more robustly than plain least squares.
by lelanthran | 2025-05-08 09:50:22+00:00
> C++ does not (or at least did not at the time) have a concept of interfaces. There was a pattern in some development communities for defining interfaces by writing classes that followed particular rules, but no first-class support for them in the language.

Your distinction between "first class support for interfaces" and "C++ support for interfaces" looks like an artificial one to me.

Other than not requiring the keyword "interface", what is it about the C++ way of creating an interface that makes it not "first class support"?
by juliangmp | 2025-05-08 09:50:36+00:00
> No luck! Both clang 19 and gcc 14 will take that and not complain - even with -std=c++23 -Wall -Wextra -Wpedantic, which I use for all of the C++ code in this article!

I keep a list of "additional" error codes for my work with GCC and its at least two dozen parameters. The fact that some of these aren't the default is outrageous to me. And Wconversion is one of those things that seemingly no one uses so every open source library I include gives me those errors.
by 9dev | 2025-05-08 09:50:45+00:00
> I feel like these days people just want quick answers to do very specific things but that's a very inefficient way to learn something like SQLAlchemy.

Good documentation should absolutely provide a usable reference to quickly look up common ways to solve common problems. Even the PHP docs got that right twenty years ago.

Also, I disagree: A library should be as self-evident and incrementally understandable as possible, not require reading a full tome and grow a grey beard before being accessible.

> "Complex queries" usually turn up when you're doing something like rendering a table or report or something. You don't need the ORM for this kind of thing, just write a query.

Or, when building generic filtering/sorting/pagination logic for a bog-standard CRUD app. Or to do full-text search. Or when doing lateral joins to minimize queries. Or to iterate over a huge table. There's lots of cases where I want the ergonomics and malleability of ORM query instances even when working with complex queries.
by lcarsip | 2025-05-08 09:50:51+00:00
printk is the low level primitive for stdout printing and it's done this way as low level drivers generally only accept single characters.

There are upper level functions which simply takes a []byte and make fmt.Printf() work seamlessly and effectively when not printing on an UART that only takes a single character as output.

In TamaGo stdout is primarily used for debugging.
by eqvinox | 2025-05-08 09:52:12+00:00
> 1.5 million potentially new variable objects

How many of these have been peer reviewed? If it's not peer reviewed, it's not science.

(NB: peer review doesn't necessarily mean manual human work, just independent work. In this case, that could be some 'classic' machine processing. Or even a distinct AI model, if there's some consensus for that.)
by oneeyedpigeon | 2025-05-08 09:54:37+00:00
I think what you say is partly true—systems are definitely more locked down nowadays and we mostly just accept what corporations give us. But I think this is also, at least in part, consumer-driven. Computers are less of a novelty nowadays, so fewer people are interested in tweaking and configuring for the sake of it, while more are just looking to get work done.
by Agingcoder | 2025-05-08 09:54:41+00:00
Do you know how cheap culturing bacteria is ( I really have no idea )?

At 1 million/year ( worst case ), that’s roughly 3k/day so 40 dollars / analysis using your numbers . Assuming the machine lasts a bit longer ( say 5 years ) that’s 8 dollars/analysis, assuming 20min/sample. Make it a bit faster (5 minutes) and you’re down to two dollars which doesn’t look super expensive to me.
by Yizahi | 2025-05-08 09:55:07+00:00
I'm wildly guessing here, but I remember that at some point in time macos had (and maybe has) this feature enabled by default which artificially makes pseudo-bold font out of regular font. That's why some websites have very thin and unreadable fonts, because they were tested only on macos. Maybe it's the same issue here? Looks kinda similar.

Setting on macos was called "use font smoothing when available".
Show HN: One-Line Installer for Cursor on Linux
by trbndev | 2025-05-08 09:58:08+00:00
Cursor is an AI-first code editor, but Linux support is rough. AppImages, no integration, no updates. So I built simple install/update/uninstall scripts that fix this.

Install with one command:

```bash

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/t128n/cursor-linux/main/in... | sudo bash

```

Scripts:

- install.sh: Downloads Cursor AppImage, installs to /opt, sets up icons, symlinks, desktop entry.

- update.sh: Checks latest version, updates if needed.

- uninstall.sh: Clean removal.

=> GitHub: https://github.com/t128n/cursor-linux

---

[!!!] Always review scripts before running them, especially with sudo.
by jampekka | 2025-05-08 09:58:18+00:00
If by stochastic methods you mean something like MCMC, they are increasing in popularity, but still used a lot less than analytical or numerical methods. And almost exclusively only for more complicated models than basic linear regression. Sampling methods have major downsides, and approximation methods like ADVI are becoming more popular. Though sampling vs approximations is a bit off topic, as neither usually have closed form solutions.

Even the most popular more complicted models like multilevel (linear) regression make use of the mathematical convenience of the square error, even though the solutions aren't fully analytical.

Square error indeed gives estimates for normally distributed noise, but as I said, this assumption is quite often implicit, and not even really well understood by many practitioners.

Analytical solutions for squared errors have a long history for more or less all fields using regression and related models, and there's a lot of inertia for them. E.g. ANOVA is still the default method (although being replaced by multilevel regression) for many fields. This history is mainly due to the analytical convenience as they were computed on paper. That doesn't mean the normality assumption is not often justifiable. And when not directly, the traditional solution is to transform the variables to get (approximately) normally distributed ones for analytical solutions.
by ptsneves | 2025-05-08 09:59:08+00:00
This is doing correctly what the car company did wrong. They start with a system that does not have a fatal incident upon failure. Meaning that even 1% or 10% failure rate is totally fine and possibly positive in terms of ROI.

On the other hand, even 0.01% is not acceptable when the system is responsible for human lives.

I also believe that cameras and visible spectrum are scalable and sufficient, and there is evidence it is so. The most reliable system driving cars is the homo sapiens and apart from a bit of proprioceptive, vehicles are operated based on vision sensors(eyes).

To conclude, I find it a clever move to start refining the technology in a field where ROI is in dollar terms and not in lives saved.

To the found: Good luck, i am jealous.
by muzani | 2025-05-08 09:59:22+00:00
Cursor does a lot more of the work. It not only tells you what to write, it jumps across different files and makes the edits. It indexes your code and has a good idea how it goes together and where your code is.

They acquired Supermaven last year, which was also one of the fastest code completion with the biggest context window even versus the new models. So they are able to do a lot of quality work locally before involving the major LLMs.

A year's subscription falls at about $16/month. I would say Cursor is the first real use of AI and it gives so much unfair advantage to those who use it. You get quality + speed/stability + low price, there's just little reason to paste anything into websites anymore, and no reason to go back to Copilot.
Show HN: An AI-first visual editor using GPT-4o's GPT-image-1 model
by buss_jan | 2025-05-08 09:59:39+00:00
Hey HN! We’ve been experimenting with integrating multimodal models directly into creative workflows, and ended up building an AI-first image editor using OpenAI’s new `gpt-image-1` (from GPT-4o) inside our SDK.

Instead of prompting in ChatGPT and pasting outputs into a design tool, this lets you generate, edit, and remix images all in one canvas. This allows for really interesting new workflows, like quickly mixing multiple images, or creating visual prompts by using annotations and reference on the canvas.

Some key details:

- Built with our plugin system in CE.SDK (CreativeEditor SDK) - Works with any multi modal model/API, not just OpenAI - You can bring your own API key, or extend it however you like - Focused on real-world workflows, not just concept generation

We put together a live demo and wrote a bit more on why we built it.

Would love feedback or to hear how others are thinking about AI in creative tools. If you have questions or ideas, let us know!
by lqet | 2025-05-08 10:00:48+00:00
I live in a mountainous area that attracts huge amount of motorcyclists on weekends. Most of the fatal accidents I recall in the last years (usually around a dozen per year) were caused by right of way violations by cars, by excessive speeding of the cyclists, or by risky overtakes. I am not sure how a brake light would help there.

Also, serious off-topic question to the motorcycle enthusiasts here: how do you cope with the fact that your weekend leisure ride is often a massive noise disturbance for hundreds of people and animals?
by anovikov | 2025-05-08 10:01:22+00:00
(6) doesn't really work. Transplanting other person's hair works about as good as transplanting other person's liver - that is, it does work, but you are signing up for a life of disability on a immunosuppressant drugs. In case of liver when the alternative is death, it kinda makes sense, but being bald won't kill you. If that worked there would be absolutely no ethical concerns about it because it takes only a couple percents of a healthy person's hair "not to be bald" and no one will ever notice that amount of hair lacking on anyone. Typical transplant is ~1K follicles and it makes a great cosmetic effect, each follicle is 2-3 hairs and a healthy person has 100-150K hairs. One can probably take about 10x as many follicles from the back of one's skull without badly visible cosmetic effects and that could greatly improve lives of 10 people. Only if it worked.

I have no idea honestly if it's legally banned, and it probably depends on jurisdiction, but if it is, only reason is that "we should prevent people from screwing their lives up for reasons that stupid" and i totally agree with the ban.
by DrScientist | 2025-05-08 10:01:31+00:00
I believe the key thing you are missing here is that there is probably an expectation that AI based coding tools will be more mass market, rather than traditional developer market.

ie it's a mistake to estimate the potential upside by looking at the size of the current developer market.

As you move you're coding tools towards a less technical customer base - there are two synergistic effects - your potential customer base is much much larger, and they are simultaneously less technically competent on average ( and so less likely to build their own tools if you charge too much ).

Whether those assumptions are true - time will tell - but I definitely see more people thinking software development is now accessible to them.
by aziaziazi | 2025-05-08 10:01:56+00:00
I understand and share your feeling, however I think OP question is interesting enough to deserve a more complete response. Trying to frame it another way:

Is that specific non-par feature voluntary from Apple or might them just didn’t thought about it yet? If that’s voluntary, what’s the logic that make them think it’s better for their business to not allow that feature?
by throwaway2037 | 2025-05-08 10:02:29+00:00
I don't agree with your assessment, but I want to encourage you to raise bug tickets on YouTrack (their answer to Jira). In the last 10 years, I have had more than 100 (no joke!) of my bug tickets fixed by JetBrains. If you write a good description with a min-repro, they will fix it.

> I wish it was a more stable product

Can you give a specific example of a bug that you encountered?
by ptsneves | 2025-05-08 10:02:46+00:00
> Sure. It's just a one line change in the configuration file (/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades). Or, if you're doing a mass deployment, just don't install the unattended-upgrades package.

That answer shows you have not seen that pattern fail.When that fails or is overwritten by an update, remember my comment.

Ironically you just added another way to configure a simple thing, proving my point.
by looofooo0 | 2025-05-08 10:02:47+00:00
Read Ross Anderson book Security Eng., it deals a lot with these types of issues. In short, banks try not do anything about as long they do not have to pay for it.

I suspect the issue is similar here with the multi stakeholder problem here. The college needs as many paying students as possible, the workload of the staff should be as low as possible, the office giving out loans wants to have a low workload... All in all good scammers will serve all these needs and happily take the money in the process.
by jonathanstrange | 2025-05-08 10:04:36+00:00
IMHO, libp2p has the worst API and project structure I've ever seen in an open source project. The project almost feels like sabotage. For example, I once asked whether there is an example of using libp2p to send one file from an endpoint to another one. Someone answered a year later and explained that there was no such functionality. They were really surprised someone might want to use libp2p to send a file from A to B.

I eventually figured out how to do it but decided not to use the library. However, there is still a real need for an easy to use p2p library for Go that can do some NAT traversal. It's a real pity that the developer of github.com/perlin-network/noise stopped working on it.
by tsimionescu | 2025-05-08 10:04:52+00:00
> The person I am having a conversation with is advocating for threads instead of processes. How do you think threads work?

I was certainly not, I explicitly said that thread-per-request is as bad as process-per-request. I could even agree that it's the worse of both worlds to some extent - none of the isolation, almost all of the overhead (except if you're using a language with a heavy runtime, like Java, where spawning a new JVM has a huge cost compared to a new thread in an existing JVM).

Modern operating systems provide many mechanisms for doing async IO specifically to prevent the need for spawning and switching between thousands of processes. Linux in particular has invested heavily in this, from select, to poll, to epoll, and now unto io_uring.

OS process schedulers are really a poor tool for doing massively parallel IO. They are a general purpose algorithm that has to keep in mind many possible types of heterogeneous processes, and has no insight into the plausible behaviors of those. For a constrained problem like parallel IO, it's a much better idea to use a purpose-built algorithm and tool. And they have simply not been optimized with this kind of scale in mind, because it's much more important and common use case to run quickly for a small number of processes than it is to scale up to thousands. There's a reason typical ulimit configurations are limited to around 1000 threads/processes per system for all common distros.
by alchemio | 2025-05-08 10:05:36+00:00
Zig’s general purpose allocator might detect use after free in debug builds, however zig appears to be ok with dangling (invalidated) pointers/slices and use after free for stack variables, which is more concerning, especially from a security standpoint.

```zig

const std = @import("std");

fn get_ptr() i32 { var a: i32 = 6; return &a; }

pub fn main() void {

var x: ?*i32 = undefined; { var a: i32 = 5; x.? = &a; } std.debug.print("{} {}", .{ x.?.*, get_ptr().* });

}

``` These are trivial examples that Zig doesn’t even warn about, even though similar code in C or C++ gets a warning in gcc and clang.

This discussion:

https://ziggit.dev/t/what-makes-ban-returning-pointer-to-sta...

indicates that core zig devs aren’t interested in diagnosing such usage.
by bell-cot | 2025-05-08 10:05:39+00:00
Supposedly, the engine controls in my VW diesel (90HP 4-cylinder "TDI" engine) cut off all fuel when the driver was engine breaking (no throttle, RPM's above current desired idle speed). Perhaps they made other adjustments. It could brake pretty hard that way.

I'd guess the engine controls in your Mercedes handled that situation rather differently, for "Mercedes customers will expect..." reasons.
by AStonesThrow | 2025-05-08 10:06:11+00:00
Most drunks would rather not invite trouble by carrying around glass bottles. You don't want them near pools or jacuzzis, and you don't want to drop one on a bus or train and cause undue attention. Dropping or abandoning a metal can, by comparison, is no trouble.

And you're definitely right about recovery value. I believe, in Arizona, that glass has no redemption value at all, and so cans are the only logical choice.

There used to be a guy around here, a real character, called himself the Can Man, and he weighed about 350 lbs, and just rode the bus all the day, accompanied by an enormous bag full of cans that he would collect from every site possible. And he had songs he would sing and a little patter about himself, and whereas a can-collecting dude would normally be sort of smelly and repulsive, he managed to add to the "local color" and be somewhat endearing as he rode the bus around doing his can-collecting thing. I miss that guy!
by jy14898 | 2025-05-08 10:06:46+00:00
I think I take the attitude that you parse/validate data as soon as possible (ie when reading a file/coming from an API), so that the rest of the code can rely on typechecks alone.

That said, I come from a background where the language doesn't let you consider that the type of a value might be wrong (Haskell, for example), so perhaps I have more trust than typescript deserves.
by starspangled | 2025-05-08 10:07:40+00:00
I'm not sold on the evidence of much in the way of programming language features from the "object oriented" era.

They were pushed by cultish types with little evidence. There was this assertion that all these things were wonderful and would reduce effort and therefore they must be good and we all must use them. We got object oriented everything including object oriented CPUs, object oriented relational databases, object oriented "xtUML". If you weren't object oriented you were a pile of garbage in those days.

For all that, I don't know if there was ever any good evidence at all that any of it worked. It was like the entire industry all fell for snakeoil salesmen and are collectively too embarrassed about it to have much introspection or talk about it. Not that it was the last time the industry has fallen for snakeoil...
by WhyNotHugo | 2025-05-08 10:08:29+00:00
All nodes on Mycoria end up in one huge network. The PN in VPN is for "private network", so I couldn't say this can do anything that a regular VPN can do.

Any node on the network can find my node via mDNS discovery and access any services which I expose. Services need to be secured in the same way I'd do on the public Internet, and not in the same way I do on a trusted private network between a few trusted nodes.

That said, I do believe this is useful in a lot of scenarios where a VPN might be too much work to set up. While one does need to ensure that all services do authentication, the encryption part is valuable, and this does ease exposing services from non-routable nodes with no consistent public IP.