MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by brudgers | 2025-05-25 19:19:41+00:00
If you want market rate housing, you can rely on the market. By definition.

If you want below-market rate housing, you can't. By definition.

No change to zoning or interest rates changes that. The market simply has more potential upside when those things happen.

In the wake of the S&L crises, the Federal Government crafted a scheme to provide below market rate housing using the sale of Tax credits. The reduction of corporate tax rates and wider use of trans-national financial engineering has devalued the tax credits underpinning that scheme.

Meanwhile Hope VI, removed the majority of subsidized housing inventory at all levels over the last thirty years.

But if you really want to understand what you are up against, the 1/3 of income for housing criterion is the same rate that landlords required of share-croppers on 1/3 shares (those that provided their own family's food and mule, those that couldn't were on 1/2 shares).

People not being able to buy a house is reversion to the mean...or just people you know falling into the fat part of the graph alongside all the people who couldn't afford a house before.
by alexey-salmin | 2025-05-25 19:19:47+00:00
No, fundamentally it doesn't really matter. Retired people consume but don't produce. They are fed by the economy of today, not by economy of the past.

Whatever you accumulate for retirement (cash, stocks, gold, state pension points) it only represents coupons for your share of the economy of the future. Details may differ but fundamentals are the same: it a promise that the future generation will share some of their yield with you.
by georgemcbay | 2025-05-25 19:20:03+00:00
They aren't really bugs though in the traditional sense because all LLMs ever do is "hallucinate", seeing what we call a hallucination as something fundamentally different than what we consider a correct response is further anthropomorphising the LLM.

We just label it with that word when it statistically generates something we know to be wrong, but functionally what it did in that case is no different than when it statistically generated something that we know to be correct.
by KennyBlanken | 2025-05-25 19:20:19+00:00
Air travel is far too subsidized by the public and I can think of few worse applications of public funds save maybe sports stadiums. It's a huge waste of energy, pollution, human labor...

Rail is incredibly efficient, and there's a reason China has been building high speed rail as fast as it can.

To all the "it would never work here" people: we used to be a nation of rail travel, where you could walk or bike or take a taxi to the local trolley/train/bus station, take a train to where you needed to go.

All that was systematically ripped apart by the auto industry either directly or indirectly. There is no reason whatsoever we can't work our way back, especially given how much faster and easier construction of a railway line is now.
by Balgair | 2025-05-25 19:20:38+00:00
Wait did we read the same thing here? I'm genuinely confused.

The test was: the person was doing bad things, and told the AI to do bad things too, then what is the AI going to do?

And the outcome was: the AI didn't do the bad things, and took steps to let it be known that the person was doing bad things.

Am I getting this wrong somehow? Did I misread things?
by IshKebab | 2025-05-25 19:21:08+00:00
You don't need to use a proprietary binary format. There are plenty of existing options, Protobuf is probably the most obvious.

In my experience zipped JSON is not a magical panacea. It usually isn't as small as a binary format (especially a compressed one), and you usually need to decompress the whole thing in memory before you can use any of it. It's a lazy bodge, not a proper solution.
Idea: A competitive Tetris variant using a single grid
by amichail | 2025-05-25 19:21:12+00:00
Consider a competitive Tetris variant using a single grid where the two players "drop" their tetrominoes in real time from opposite directions.

The color of the tetrominoes indicates which player sent them and the direction in which they will "fall".

When tetrominoes moving in opposite directions collide, they immediately stop.

Standard Tetris rules apply, including rotations and row elimination.

Has anyone tried this idea? Do you think it would be fun to play?
by keybored | 2025-05-25 19:21:18+00:00
Democracy as a concept versus liberal democracy. The EU eggheads are of course talking about liberal democracy.

Advocates of liberal democracy also often ping-pong between the propaganda version of “democracy” (as in rule by the people) and liberal democracy. Because they to a limited extent need to appeal to the people, hence the propaganda face. But the liberal democracy face is when they talk about actual-existing democracy...

> The first half of the EU definition is much weaker ("participate in" vs "rule") and the second half directly contradicts the Wiktionary definition:

... the anemic variant where they (politicians, bureaucrats, rich people (with opinions)) have much more power than the average citizen.

Then when really getting down to it they will push the liberal part of liberal democracy in front of themselves. Where “the rule of law”, “human rights” etc. are embodied by themselves much more than the people.
by ghaff | 2025-05-25 19:21:31+00:00
The US already has a retirement age of 70 depending upon how you figure it. As noted in sibling comment, depending upon various factors, that's the age it's generally recommended to start receiving social security benefits unless you want/need smaller payouts sooner. Medicare starts at 65 however. IRAs don't require you to take distributions until you're 73.
by Wowfunhappy | 2025-05-25 19:22:07+00:00
> (And for some reason we're pretending like these formalisms are hard and the people that understand them evil gatekeepers, to which I'd say: nope to both propositions. It has never been easier to learn how to code.)

I am not a professional programmer, and I tend to bounce between lots of different languages depending on the problem I'm trying to solve.

If I had all of the syntax for a given language memorized, I can imagine how an LLM might not save me that much time. (It would still be helpful for e.g. tracking down bugs, because I can describe a problem and e.g. ask the AI to take a first pass through the codebase and give me an idea of where to look.)

However, I don't have the syntax memorized! Give me some Python code and I can probably read it, but ask me to write some code from scratch, and LLMs I would have needed to dive into the language documentation or search Stack Overflow. LLMs, and Claude Code in particular, have probably 10x'd what I am capable of, because I can describe the function I want and have the machine figure out the minutia of syntax. Afterwards, I can read what the produced and either (A) ask it to change something specific or (B) edit the code by hand.

I also do find writing code to be less enjoyable than reading/editing code, for the reason described above.
by newAccount2025 | 2025-05-25 19:22:07+00:00
I really like a lot about Amazon. Friendly and creative people, good projects with high ambiguity and autonomy. The bad parts are the penny-pinching, careless and unaccountable senior leaders who just wants to exploit everyone and everything. But really, aside from things like RTO, they aren’t too impactful on the day to day.
by theodric | 2025-05-25 19:22:36+00:00
This is not borne out by the anecdata I have collected over the last 22 years as a foreign invader living in and observing Europe. Moroccans in the Netherlands, Albanians in Switzerland, even Irish Travellers in Ireland-- despite being integrated from primary school onward, all seem to be somewhat apart from the host culture even after several generations.
by lostlogin | 2025-05-25 19:22:46+00:00
Have a look at the graph here - ‘Life expectancy by world region, from 1770 to 2018’

The average lifespans was only 40-something until the 1850-1950 range.

I’m sure plenty lived longer, but the average was terrible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
by aardvark179 | 2025-05-25 19:23:19+00:00
So several people in this thread have talked about academia giving you a network, and getting jobs via that, but have also conflated that with companies only hiring from particular schools.

The network of contacts you make through university and your careers is a mechanism by which you hear about jobs you might otherwise never get the chance to apply for. That’s a very real thing, but will tend to be dominated by contacts you make after university as your career progresses.

The other thing of needed a degree from a particular university, or a PhD, isn’t so much about a network as that degree being a shibboleth. The person reading your job application sees that and knows there are questions they don’t need to ask.

These are both things you can, and may need to, work around if you go down the self taught route. Depending on the work you want to do you may need to make sure you do work which either you can point to or other people will see so that you hear about those jobs, or get a referral to avoid the normal job requirements.
by pavlov | 2025-05-25 19:23:38+00:00
It’s not trivial to produce a Lottie file in After Effects. 95% of the app’s features are off limits, so it’s practically impossible to take an existing AE project and convert it.

Instead you have to ask an artist to author a project from scratch within Lottie’s limitations, but of course there’s no feedback within AE itself if you’re overstepping the boundaries, so they have to be particularly careful.

I wouldn’t recommend it based on my personal experience. But I guess there are teams who have the diligence to make it work.
by Calavar | 2025-05-25 19:24:16+00:00
The US docotor shortage is a myth. Wait times are the result of beauracratic nonsense has reduced the efficiency of the existing physician workforce [1, 2].

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26132...

[2] https://hbr.org/2020/03/the-problem-with-u-s-health-care-isn...
by xigency | 2025-05-25 19:24:55+00:00
That's not quite a valid point considering the article's conclusion: sowing dissent in the sciences allows companies to more easily package and sell carcinogens like asbestos, lead paint, and tobacco products.

I understand his diction is a bit impenetrable but I believe the intention is to promote literacy and specificity, not just to be a smarty-pants.
by bluefirebrand | 2025-05-25 19:25:59+00:00
Ordering a hit is a pretty extreme example that probably would pierce the corporate veil

But also the problem isn't that it becomes "magically legal",the problem is that the corporate veil means that if a company takes illegal actions then often only the company is held accountable, instead of the people responsible for directing the company to take illegal actions

And it takes a high bar (like ordering a hit) to make the legal system try and hold individuals accountable for company actions

I am arguing that is absurd. I think individuals inside companies take advantage of this often to get away with illegal shit to enrich themselves at the company's expense
by mattlondon | 2025-05-25 19:26:09+00:00
At least in the UK the cost of childcare is a major factor putting people off.

People simply can't afford to send a kid to pre-school childcare because it's 2 or 3 thousand GBP per month. So you have to stay at home to look after them, but then you can't afford the rent/mortgage and/or food because you're not working. Woe betide you if you earn over 1 penny over 100K GBP because then you get zero help with costs.

They need to provide more government funded (i.e. universally free non-means-tested) pre-schooling like they do for 5-18 year olds.
by tehjoker | 2025-05-25 19:26:54+00:00
This article features a study claiming 25% productivity gains form co-pilot. I wonder what a similar study would say about developers with and without access to internet search. In the study, it seems, as I expected, less experienced people found more value from it. My experience has been AI tools are more helpful when I don't know the domain, and then their benefit declines as I familiarize.

I also looked at the study and noticed a few aspects that were surprising:

(a) some of the 95% CIs crossed zero, meaning no benefit is a possible interpretation in figures 6 and 7

(b) did anyone account for what happens when two workers are in different experimental groups and sit next to each other? I imagine it was likely common people in the experimental group to use co-pilot queries for their friends.

(c) for experienced workers, the mean value is actually negative (lol) in the unweighted data in Figure 7

There are a lot of other subtleties in the interpretation of this paper.

"...developers who were less productive before the experiment are significantly more likely to accept any given suggestion...."

...curious lol

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4945566
by znpy | 2025-05-25 19:27:06+00:00
If you worked in the industry for over 20 years and your network is weaker than a recent graduate, I wouldn’t blame it on the college, your networking game is just weak.

As a college drop out, i have a few friends from university in the various big companies but none of my jobs came through them (even when i want to work in a faang: i just didn’t need it).
by alephnerd | 2025-05-25 19:27:13+00:00
> Rail is incredibly efficient

If you have the density to justify it.

There is a case to be made for enhancing rail transit in the eastern seaboard and maybe parts of the Midwest, but America is too large and sparse to justify rail transit at scale.

It makes more sense to concentrate on rail infra for freight transit and work on revamping our existing rail freight infra.

> there's a reason China has been building high speed rail as fast as it can

China stopped subsidizing HSR during the COVID recession. It costs the exact same as a flight ticket now [0] due to high debt [1] (excluding the Beijing-Shanghai track, which actually can justify usage).

Most Chinese use normal rail for intercity transit, but this is easier to justify given the density and ease of land acquisition.

But even then, China began slowing down railway investment and construction since 2018 [2][3], and started calibrating towards air transit [4] as part of a commercial aviation push [5]

[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/business/china-bullet-tra...

[1] - https://www.caixinglobal.com/2019-01-29/zhao-jian-whats-not-...

[2] - https://www.caixinglobal.com/2018-01-02/china-railway-corp-s...

[3] - https://www.caixinglobal.com/2021-03-30/china-looks-to-slow-...

[4] - https://www.caixinglobal.com/2021-03-25/smaller-cities-reach...

[5] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/comac-jet...
by jopsen | 2025-05-25 19:27:29+00:00
Denmark has both private and public pension schemes.

Well, I guess you're not required to have a private pension scheme. But most jobs come with one, most unions enforce it.

I had one when I was sweeping the factory floor once a week at age 15 -- that was ridiculously because it all disappeared into administration fees.

But the answer is yes, of course you can. It's a free country -- assuming we're not annexed by the orange monkey.
by bgnn | 2025-05-25 19:27:29+00:00
True but no matter how healthy one is in their 60s and 70s people's health degrade significantly in their 80s. So, you have then 10 year of healthy life after retirement.

There's the flip side if the coin though: old people are healthier in Denmark (vs US for example [1]) due to the social welfare system. Well, that system needs to be funded. With the aging population, the costs are rising but contributions are (relatively) declining. That's why there's a push for higher retirement age. It's either this, or defunding the social welfare programs, or immigration. That last one isn't a viable political option in Denmark at the moment.

[1] https://www.euronews.com/health/2025/02/05/older-people-are-...
by Spivak | 2025-05-25 19:28:05+00:00
You can solve the means problem by making everyone wealthier or by lowering everyone's expectations. The problem is that "how much it costs to raise children" is dependent on your environment. One group's normal is another's neglectful parenting.

The catch-22 is that the people you presumably want to be having more children— educated working professionals— have some of the highest social standards for child rearing.
by vladms | 2025-05-25 19:28:14+00:00
Average healthy life years was 71 years in Denmark (source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthy-life-expectancy-a... ). By looking at the map it varies a lot between countries, and I assume between regions and occupations.

The policy for retirement age is related to when society sees fit to sustain someone that does not work. I think it has more to do with how the society sees the elders and what it can afford than to the goals of specific individuals.
by RichardHesketh | 2025-05-25 19:28:37+00:00
Awesome project, and a great idea to build a powerful capability using mostly off-the-shelf tools! Do you have a write-up somewhere, please? Even if only a few notes or code snippets, architecture outline, or what-have-you. My son is eight, but I’d love a way to keep him away from mobile devices but in touch with family members and friends.
by alexey-salmin | 2025-05-25 19:28:42+00:00
It's not insane if you consider that people neglect to raise the next generation to fund their retirement. Fund in the real sense: by doing work and ceding part of the yield to people who retired from work but keep consuming.

Whatever people save for retirement, cash or stocks or points, it only facilitates the said exchange, it doesn't somehow replace or alleviate it. It only works if the next generation exists and is prosperous enough to share their income.
by martin-t | 2025-05-25 19:29:04+00:00
It might be the obvious solution but is it the right one?

People are significantly more productive than say 50 years ago due to technological advancement. So where is all the money going?

I am no economist but it is my understanding that all this extra money goes to the rich because they've entrenched themselves in positions where they can extract a portion of a person's income with no recourse.

It's not normal that a single person can legally own tens of apartments and get a third or each tenant's salary without providing any value to society. It's not normal that companies can own residential properties, they have no use for them other than extracting money from people.

I recall danluu blogging about how multiple times he made code fixes that saved the company more than his salary just in electricity. What I see is an incredible technical achievement but also I see how he's being exploited - the money saved is value he directly provided to society, yet he sees none of it. Where does it go? To people who are already rich.
by foobarqux | 2025-05-25 19:29:39+00:00
It's not irrelevant, it's the core of the disconnect: The problem is that everyone is arguing as if they passionately care about how humans work when, as you say, they don't care at all.

People should just recognize, as you have done, that they don't actually care about how the human language faculty works. It's baffling that they instead choose to make absurd arguments to defend fields they don't care one way or another about.

When Chomsky says that LLMs aren't how the human faculty works it would be so easy to tell the truth and say "I don't care how the human language faculty works" and everyone can go focus on the things they are interested in, just as it would be easy for a GPS designer to say "I don't care how insect navigation works".

There is no problem as long as you don't pretend to be caring about (this aspect of) science.
by dingaling | 2025-05-25 19:29:41+00:00
Back from the days when the BBC was a huge part of British society and culture. Listeners and viewers knew the names of the Directors and comedians could make gently mocking jokes at their expense, and we understood and laughed along.

Nowadays I don't even know how many channels the BBC has, radio or TV. Britain and the BBC seem to have grown apart and now it's almost just another commercial broadcaster. It's remarkable, even terrifying, how society has changed in 30 years.
by II2II | 2025-05-25 19:30:19+00:00
It's not that you are expected to work that long. It is a case of not being expected to work longer than that. You are always welcome to retire earlier if you have the financial means to do so. You are also welcome to work longer than that should you have the desire to do so.

Of course, those last two sentences are tongue in cheek.

The real problem is that certain segments of society are not compensated for their labor at a rate that would allow them to retire early, and may even have to work beyond retirement age in order to supplement their stipend. Worse yet, these people often work in sectors that offer few affordances for them to maintain their health into old age and may even push them into living conditions that are detrimental to their health (assuming their job isn't detrimental to their health in the first place).

Ideally, people would be able to retire when they want (within reason). The reality is that some people can retire at a relatively young age while others don't really have that option.
by olddustytrail | 2025-05-25 19:30:33+00:00
That's an odd coincidence. I'd decided to get a new machine but I suspected we'd start seeing new releases with tons of GPU accessible RAM as people want to experiment with LLMs.

So I just got a cheap (~350 USD) mini PC to keep me going until the better stuff came out. Which was a 24GB, 6c/12t CPU from a company I'd not heard of called Bosgame (dunno why the article keeps calling them Bosman unless they have a different name in other countries. It's definitely https://www.bosgamepc.com/products/bosgame-m5-ai-mini-deskto... )

So my good machine might end up from the same place as my cheap one!
by sebstefan | 2025-05-25 19:30:56+00:00
I wrote to him as a comment under his post

> sebstefan: There’s this one from yesterday

>https://sean.heelan.io/2025/05/22/how-i-used-o3-to-find-cve-...

> David Gerard: > My experiment harness executes this N times (N=100 for this particular experiement) and saves the results

> That’s just fuzzing but vastly less efficient?

> Also, that’s not the question being asked, is it. It wasn’t “did someone use an AI for anything in open source.”

I'll try to explain it to him but the guy seems pretty full of shit already
by nine_k | 2025-05-25 19:30:57+00:00
The system has effectively failed most everywhere on the West. The post-WWII generations are numerous and have a long life expectancy, apparently longer than the pension systems planned for. Generations that came after them are less numerous, and, in a way, somehow less prosperous. They cannot pay enough to keep the pension systems afloat.

The Japanese faced this earlier and harder than Europe, with about 30% of their population being past the retirement age. They increased their productivity very significantly, but it's still not enough, and a lot of older folks in Japan keep working well past the retirement age, sometimes even re-hired by the companies from which they had retired.
by foobarqux | 2025-05-25 19:31:54+00:00
Yes it's true, you can read my response to one of the authors @canjobear describing the problem with that paper in the comment linked below. But to summarize: in order to show what they want to show they have to take the simple, interesting languages based on linear order that Moro showed a human cannot learn and show that LLMs also can't learn them and they don't do that.

The reason the Moro languages are of interest are that they are computationally simple so it's a puzzle why humans can't learn them (and no surprise that LLMs can). The authors of the paper miss the point and show irrelevant things like there exist complicated languages that both humans and LLMs can't learn.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42290482