MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AngryData | 2025-05-27 22:03:41+00:00
A cow can kick you and you can get injured, but it isn't anything close to like a horse kick that can easily instant KO or kill you if they hit somewhere vital and cows aren't nearly as aggressive. Cows are fairly gentle and docile despite their potential size. If someone does die from a cow, which is itself pretty rare, 9/10 times its from someone falling down and getting trampled from the cow being in a panic.

It also partly depends on the size of the cow. Some regular jersey cow might weight 800 pounds but are still pretty broad so if they fall on you you aren't likely to be killed but of course you could be injured. However some holsteins are pushing 2,000+ pounds and could crush your bones if it fell on you. But cows aren't likely to tip over sideways in general, they have much better lateral movement of their legs than horses to stay steady. And if they start to slip or feel unsteady and can't keep themselves upright, they mostly just try to sit or drop down on their belly. It is why cow tipping doesn't work either which is kind of just a hollywood myth. If you did somehow manage to push a cow sideways enough for them to start tipping, which is already going to be incredibly difficult, they will eventually let their legs buckle beneath them and drop down to their stomach, and not fall over at full height with extended legs.
by buremba | 2025-05-27 22:04:53+00:00
You are right, you can only scale vertically for single query execution but given that cloud providers now have beefy machines available with TBs of memory and hundreds of CPUs, it’s not a blocker unless you are querying petabyte level raw data. Trino/Spark is still unbeatable in that way but in most cases, you partition the data and use predicate pushdown anyways.

You can scale horizontally if you have many concurrent queries pretty well, that’s what I was referring to.
by sshine | 2025-05-27 22:05:30+00:00
> Our school converted a computer lab to a programming lab. Computers in the lab have editors/compilers/interpreters, and whitelist documentation, plus an internal server for grading and submission. No internet access otherwise. We've used it for one course so far with good results, and and extending it to more courses in the fall.

Excellent approach. It requires a big buy-in from the school.

Thanks for suggesting it.

I'm doing something for one kind of assignment inspired by the game "bashcrawl" where you have to learn Linux commands through an adventure-style game. I'm bundling it in a container and letting you submit your progress via curl commands, so that you pass after having run a certain set of commands. Trying to make the levels unskippable by using tarballs. Essentially, if you can break the game instead of beating it honestly, you get a passing grade, too.
by bluGill | 2025-05-27 22:05:39+00:00
Every year my city does a clean up day - put anything on the curb and they will take it away (hazardous waste needs to go to a special collection location not the curb). All the scrappers know that day and will be driving around trying to beat the trash trucks to anything good and as a result most of the "trash" doesn't get to the dump.

People do put things on the curb other times of the year, but a dedicated clean up day helps everyone - you know when it is your turn, and the scrappers don't waste gas driving down dead end streets.
by bob684378 | 2025-05-27 22:05:48+00:00
Almost.

Super Tetris 3 on SNES has one mode like this called Maglicaliss.

-You have full R/G/B tetrominoes.

-Doing a full 360 rotation of a tetromino cycles it between the three the colours.

-If you make a line that is all one colour, every one of that colour is cleared off the field.

-If you do a line of mixed colours, it is a regular line-clear.

There are also steel (grey) tri/do/monominoes, which complicates things a bit:

-Steel minoes fall at random just like any other tetrominoe.

-Steel minoes do not change colour from 360s.

-Lines with steel blocks allow for regular line-clears with the caveat that the steel blocks stay on screen after a clear. This can lead to combos, since clearing a line will have the above line move down to connect with steel blocks from the previously cleared line.

-The only way to clear a steel blocks is to make a full steel line.

-Full steel lines, like lines of all one colour will clear the entire field of steel blocks.

Super Tetris 3 also has stadard Tetris and Sparkliss, which is mostly like Bombliss on Tetris Blast and Super Tetris 2. Note there are still line-clears in bombliss, it's NOT like NES Tetris 2, which is essentially Doctor Mario with tetrominoes.

The Next Tetris on PSX/SAT/PC has a mode with mixed coloured tetrominoes that fall after a line-clear and make combos. I forget the specifics but that game is heavily broken. Rotations after touching down, reset the lock timer. You can endlessly rotate tetrominoes to take the time to decide where to leave it.

High recommend the Super Tets. They along with Tetris 64, (Not to be confused with Tetrisphere, which sucks), are some of my favourite variants. That said, Nothing holds a candle to Tetris Party Premium or OF COURSE, Tetris The Grand Master series. (IMO)

If you haven't played The Grand Master series and have an interest in Tetris... oh my god, please try it. It does things to my brain that nothing else in life has done.

(edited for formatting)
by toss1 | 2025-05-27 22:06:58+00:00
Our flicker fusion rate is different for the fovea and nearby central vision vs the peripheral vision.

The central vision is slower-response, higher-resolution, and of course color vision.

The peripheral vision is monochrome and has a much faster flicker-fusion, tuned to picking up motion in the periphery.

So, the same flicker rate that you never notice on a small monitor may flicker annoyingly on a large monitor. To check that a setup will not flicker for you, set it up in a darkish room, focus around 70°-100° to one side of the monitor so it is in your peripheral vision, and both look at one place and notice your periphery, and also move your focus quickly from one place to another and notice if the screen blurs like bright stationary objects or looks like a discontinuous blur (really easy to get that effect with fluorescent lights). Do it both left & right and towards the ceiling. If flicker shows up in these tests, it will still eventually bug you when looking directly at the screen, even if it isn't as noticeable because your focus is in the center of your vision.
by AngryData | 2025-05-27 22:08:29+00:00
Fences are useful, but if a cow truly wants through a fence, they can and will just push through it and snap it. Electric fences and barbed wire can make them a better deterrent, but even then if the grass on the other side looks tasty enough they will push all of their potentially 2,000+ pounds against that fence until it tips over or snaps.
by the_absurdist | 2025-05-27 22:09:20+00:00
What did my post say? Did it reference "this symbology" OR did it reference "Chicano culture" in the following statement:

"Everyone knows (including the Vietnamese barber) the deep, inextricable connection this symbology has to antisocial, criminal, and destructive behavior."

Looks like you equate Chicano culture to face tattoos, hair nets, and gangster clothing...not me.
by jonny_eh | 2025-05-27 22:09:24+00:00
We call it Awful Waffle, based on a Board Game called Brain Strain. They had "Awful Waffle" as an example.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8785/brain-strain

I made a proof-of-concept daily game: https://awfulwaffle.jonabrams.com/
by kesslern | 2025-05-27 22:11:01+00:00
This matches my experience. I attended the local community college, which works closely and matches curriculum with Ohio State University. The same classes, with the same content, were taught at both schools.

The biggest difference between them is the community college offering class sizes of about 20 people, while the university equivalent was taught in a lecture hall with hundreds of students, and cost significantly more.
by aspenmayer | 2025-05-27 22:11:58+00:00
> In the late 80's/early 90's I was working for a little electronics manufacturer that also sold Color Computer software. I remember all the phone calls and letters asking for support and there was one lady in particular whose complete address I remembered because she wrote us so often, trying to get her Digitizer working. She was finally successful and pasted a scanned photo of her daughter in a cowboy hat into her final thank-you letter :-)

That was really touching. Thank you for sharing.

“Computers aren’t the thing. They’re the thing that gets us to the thing.”
by Yizahi | 2025-05-27 22:12:10+00:00
Visa is a tiny little middleman compared to a Federal Reserve, however crazy that may sound. Visa is a) only one of similar middleman, b) it has no power over bank accounts or any other entity holding USD, it's only involved during a transaction. In fact, I could probably survive without touching Visa/MC for a long time (and without touching their Chinese or other alternatives). I can for example wire money from bank acc to bank acc directly and people can self organize to do that at scale and not involve a proxy. It's just won't be as convenient, no cards, no card terminals etc. There are multiple proto alternatives too, for example BLIK in Poland. EU has pretty robust bank system.

All that text above is just underscore this - a future Fed owned token would be on a completely different level of control. Cross border control too.

Regarding alternative token systems - a) outside of maybe 2-5 tokens all others won't be adopted and die out (unless enforced in a totalitarian way), b) the survivors will share the same traits, copied from one to another, after all they will be controlled by the same orgs - central banks.

And finally - no, you won't be able to sell tokens to money. Only if the owner of all tokens (a central bank) will graciously allow it. For example in the pilot in my country it did not. Thinking logically - if token system is created to restrict freedoms and bring more control to the govt, why would that govt allow "exiting" this new system? Everyone who cares and all potential targets will sell this token and go back to using money. So of course any bridges will be either heavily restricted (for the inner circle, corrupt officials, oligarchs etc.) or won't be allowed at all from the start.
by creer | 2025-05-27 22:12:43+00:00
Thrift store pricing: It's disappointing.

> You can barely give away china these days. [...] it would just sit there.

Most times I look, it's overpriced. Very much so. Price lower. Obviously?

> Most fast fashion is worthless [$6 for a piece that's new for $10]

Well duh? Price lower? Obviously?

Around here it feels like thrift stores have not noticed the revolution in pricing for online, delivered, made-in-china-but-not-only. What's happening? They seem desperate for the occasional buy by someone who doesn't know any better? Not cool. And a completely self-inflicted defeat. I see local stores receive floods of donations, have significant foot traffic - and priced to make soooo few sales.

Do they really make more money by shipping most donations to other countries - that they can ignore the reality of online, mass market, fast fashion pricing? How come these other countries can pay more money still - to compensate for the shipping cost? What's going on? Are these stores a front for something else? Some other way to pay the lease and employees?
by eigenspace | 2025-05-27 22:12:48+00:00
Their strategy doesn't make sense to you because you're looking for a technical feature that differentiates them. But technical features aren't their key differentiator, geography is their key differentiator. They'll get a lot of contracts in Europe simply because they're European. Everyone is keenly aware of how dependant European tech stacks are on increasingly unfriendly foreign powers.

If there's a local European option that does most of what an American or Chinese company does, that's simply a safer choice.

From this point of view, them trying to do everything at once makes a lot of sense. They don't actually need to be the absolute best or even the cheapest at any one thing. They need to just exist in Europe, be stable, and offer good services that people want. Casting a wide net is a better strategy for them.
by Rochus | 2025-05-27 22:13:40+00:00
That's interesting. Implementing an efficient GC without moving/copying is certainly a challange and it's nice to see that research and development is still ongoing and successful. I wonder how large Go enterprise applications compare to Java or DotNet in terms of throughput, memory bandwidth and latency. Is opting out of moving/copying from the GC architecture a disadvantage at all?
by bluGill | 2025-05-27 22:15:49+00:00
My wife often sells things we are done with. If half the people who arrange a meeting to buy something show up she is doing well. Many times she has listed something for $10, has someone say "I really want this, will you take $20" - then not show up to meet. (we are always first come first serve, but if the first person offers $20...)

My wife doesn't have a regular job so she has some time to deal with this - but her time is still valuable (there are plenty of other things do to - I don't see how dual income families can raise kids!)
by DFHippie | 2025-05-27 22:16:02+00:00
This is commonplace where I live in Vermont, to the point where sometimes things are taken which you didn't mean to give away. You put "free" on it -- or don't, see above -- put it by the curb, and it's gone within the hour.

There are also plentiful thrift stores which take donations. The profound selfishness of throwing this stuff out rather than passing it on so eventually some person with less can have a better life -- the thrift stores generally are non-profits supporting the homeless, hospices, and so forth -- boggles my mind.
by neltnerb | 2025-05-27 22:16:32+00:00
If you mean, why police would ever be involved, the answer is that there are a lot of police and not a lot of municipal workers walking around. The only way municipal workers would do anything here is if a resident of the area contacts them with 311 to inform them. And even then it can take months (if ever) if it's something like a blocked sidewalk or broken bollards rather than something important like a pothole.

If you mean why would "authorities" care, there's a lot of people that put what amounts to trash on the sidewalk and then move to a new apartment without cleaning it up, or else just ignore that they left it in front of their house until "someone else" takes care of it.
by UncleSlacky | 2025-05-27 22:16:37+00:00
> The hovercraft was not radio-controlled as I had imagined. It had a flashlight-like handle that held 2x "D" cells and a motor that rotated a thin cable. The cable stretched several feet to a "hovercraft" with a light plastic hull and fan blades.

I had one of those, though I knew what I was getting (from Edmund Scientific Catalog).
by sshine | 2025-05-27 22:16:54+00:00
> Isn't auto-grading cheating by the instructors?

Certainly not. There's a misconception at play here.

Once you have graded a few thousand assignments, you realize that people make the same mistakes. You think "I could do a really good write-up for the next student to make this mistake," and so you do and you save it as a snippet, and soon enough, 90% of your feedback are elaborate snippets. Once in a while you realize someone makes a new mistake, and it deserves another elaborate snippet. Some snippets don't generalise. That's called personal feedback. Other snippets generalise insanely. That's called being efficient.

Students don't care if their neighbors got the same feedback if the feedback applies well and is excellent. The difficult part is making that feedback apply well. A human robot will make that job better. And building a bot that gives the right feedback based on patterns is... actually a lot of work, even compared to copy-pasting snippets thousands of times.

But if you repeat an exercise enough times, it may be worth it.

Students are incentivised to put in the work in order to learn. Students cannot learn by copy-pasting from LLMs.

Instructors are incentivised to put in the work in order to provide authentic, valuable feedback. Instructors can provide that by repeating their best feedback when applicable. If instructors fed assignments to an LLM and said "give feedback", that'd be in the category of bullshit behavior we're criticising students for.
by quesera | 2025-05-27 22:17:45+00:00
> that's where the term "Craftsman home" came from

FWIW, this etymology is incorrect. The American Craftsman architecture style was a derivative of the British Arts & Crafts movement, post Victorian era.

Timeline is roughly: Arts & Crafts circa 1880, American Craftsman circa 1900.

The Sears Craftsman brand was created in 1927.
by creer | 2025-05-27 22:17:52+00:00
So, it's surprising at first, but as others mention, it seems like a roughly functioning system: The students are rushed by the university to move, move, move. They do what they can which is not much for many, who don't yet have their life in order. Buying too much, too expensive, not downscaling in time, etc, why so surprising? Some universities have a decent system in place for temporarily holding that stuff for other students. For the rest, the locals - individuals and business can come and do the sorting.

Same thing happens on Craigslist: You can post an item for sale for a fair price - and it may take days or weeks - or you can post it free and it will gone in hours (to someone who will resell it perhaps but whatever.)
by 90s_dev | 2025-05-27 22:18:40+00:00
Hmm.

1. Get a job that pays the bills for starters, doesn't have to be fancy or pay much, just enough that you don't become homeless.

2. Do something in your spare time that you're interested, just for fun, with no expectations or even plans of making money from it.

3. You will profit in a way you couldn't possibly plan or predict. Or maybe not. But probably. Either way, you're not homeless or starving.
by furyofantares | 2025-05-27 22:19:11+00:00
I don't use llm, but I have my own "think" tool (with MUCH less support than llm, it just calls openai + some special prompt I have set) and what I use it for is when I need to call an llm from a script.

Most recently I wanted a script that could produce word lists from a dictionary of 180k words given a query, like "is this an animal?" The script breaks the dictionary up into chunks of size N (asking "which of these words is an animal? respond with just the list of words that match, or NONE if none, and nothing else"), makes M parallel "think" queries, and aggregates the results in an output text file.

I had Claude Code do it, and even though I'm _already_ talking to an LLM, it's not a task that I trust an LLM to do without breaking the word list up into much smaller chunks and making loads of requests.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-05-27 22:20:53+00:00
> Wonder how does that work... is HN considered a "social media site"? Is reddit?

Practically, if you’re posting pro-Hamas content here and the guidelines wind up citing that as something they look for, yes.

> if I forgot the handle, am i doing fraud omitting it?

Fraud typically requires mens rea. Not legal advice. But I don’t think this would count as visa fraud.
by aliseplotova | 2025-05-27 22:20:56+00:00
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Most small teams post content hoping it works. We analyze what actually drives conversions in your industry (for you and your competitors), and then generate post ideas that work automatically.

No agencies. No overthinking. Just posts that get results.

We’re early, but hungry for feedback. If you’re a solo founder, indie SaaS builder, or small team doing your own marketing, we’d love to have you on the waitlist: contentum.space

What do y'all think?

Cheerzz!
by qwertycrackers | 2025-05-27 22:20:57+00:00
I think the reverse exists as well. I think I am a much better test taker than average, and this has very clearly given me some advantages that come from the structure of exam-focused education. Exam taking is a skill and it's possible to be good at it, independent of the underlying knowledge. Of course knowing the material is still required.

However you are correct in noticing that there are an anomalously high number of "bad test takers" in the world. Many students are probably using this as a flimsy excuse for poor performance. Overall I think the phenomenon does exist.
by shoo | 2025-05-27 22:21:02+00:00
That breach of privacy from the recruiter sounds extremely frustrating. but i'd suggest still looking for paid SWE work in the short term, so you have a way to pay the bills and save some money, until you figure out what your next plan is.

If you've founded multiple companies previously, can you reach out to your network and see if there's a former client / colleague you could help with consulting or contract work, using your skills and some of your existing domain specific knowledge?
by ckwalsh | 2025-05-27 22:21:09+00:00
Coming from a Meta background (not speaking on behalf of Meta):

"package/dependency management" - Everything is checked into a monorepo, and built with [Buck2](https://buck2.build/). There's tooling to import/update packages, but no need to reinvent pip or other package managers. Btw, Buck2 is pretty awesome and supports a ton of languages beyond python, but hasn't gotten a ton of traction outside of Meta.

"linting, formatting" - [Black](https://github.com/psf/black) and other public ecosystem tooling is great, no need to develop internally.

"why is type checking the exception" - Don't know about Astral, but for Meta / Google, most everyone else doesn't design for the scale of their monorepos. Meta moved from SVN to Git to Mercurial, then forked Mercurial into [Sapling](https://sapling-scm.com/) because simple operations were too slow for the number of files in their repo, and how frequently they receive diffs.

There are obvious safety benefits to type checking, but with how much Python code Meta has, mypy is not an option - it would take far too much time / memory to provide any value.
by msgodel | 2025-05-27 22:21:27+00:00
I saw things beginning to rapidly deteriorate years ago, checked out, and focused on being able to live on very little. I've got land, 10-20 years worth of savings, and a small shack. I think I'm just going to monetize side projects for the next few years and maybe try the truck farming thing.

Formal collaboration depends on a culture that's more or less dead now. I wouldn't bet my future on it getting sorted out.
by EndsOfnversion | 2025-05-27 22:22:09+00:00
From memory, the primary advantage of the 386SX was the ability to use a cheaper 16-bit motherboard layout and components. The lack of a 32bit bus mattered less when most software was written with 286 compatibility in mind, and the ISA bus was only 16-bits wide, which limited the utility of the 32-bit bus for fast graphics transfers.

The reduced 24-bit address bus was never a significant bottleneck during its commercial lifetime, as little consumer software at the time would require more than 4mb of RAM, and by the time it did the 486SX (32bit busses with no maths coprocessor) was the new value champion.
by tacker2000 | 2025-05-27 22:23:00+00:00
Are you serious? In the real world, people dont update software as soon as a new version comes out. Sometimes I am still using an age old version of an app or a framework because the client doesnt want to pay to upgrade, there are dependencies, or whatever…

Having easily accessible documentation for the older versions is a must, for anything that is remotely “serious”.

Just check the Laravel docs for example, or Vue, etc…