MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by micromacrofoot | 2025-05-19 13:20:43+00:00
Wood buildings can and have stood for hundreds of years, I'm in one right now. The ROI has been met after a few decades regardless of the material... at this point it becomes more economical to transport lighter materials that are easier to work with. Wood is also better for carbon storage as long as we're sourcing it sustainably. Concrete is one of the most carbon-intense materials out there.
by BlackFly | 2025-05-19 13:20:51+00:00
You missed the forest for the trees. Since my claim is that

> people who care and have your interests in mind

that have valuable insights about the problems of the language and so understand constructors and destructors but don't make you susceptible to survivor bias are

>> especially people that stopped using the language.

People that don't want to learn the language in the first place offer a different kind of insight, insight into a world where constructors and destructors aren't needed.
by cess11 | 2025-05-19 13:20:54+00:00
Object-oriented PHP, i.e. PHP 5, was released in 2004. PHP 4 was killed in 2008.

Separating out templates was already something one used to do back when Laravel added Blade back in 2010-2011 sometime, in one of the first iterations of the framework. It's not like they experienced pushback because of Blade.
by whatamidoingyo | 2025-05-19 13:21:15+00:00
During its peak, the blog I own, JavaScript Today, would make anywhere from $30-1,000/month combined with every income source. Some companies would pay $70 just to get a link included in an article, or $500 to write about a certain technology.

Really nice, but I don't really have the interest any more to continue working on it. I've tried to sell it before, was offered $5,000 if I sold immediately, but refused. Was also talking to a guy who wanted to buy it for $10,000, but he eventually ghosted.

No idea what to do with it. I may eventually rebuild it or something, or possibly give it away, I dunno.
by sharpshadow | 2025-05-19 13:21:44+00:00
There was a inventor in Germany which got featured in a science show on television, which did something similar. He build a big pressure cooker where he placed the wood and a liquid mixture inside and let it cook for many hours. The wood got soak through completely, which gave it, as he claimed, resistance against rotting at every layer. For outdoor appliances the wood would not need any coating and not deteriorate. There was no mention about the hardness, but he also didn’t press it.
by imglorp | 2025-05-19 13:21:51+00:00
It's true that dimensions are all screwy, evidently due to variable shrinkage during drying in the old days. The mills control for it now, but meanwhile everyone got used to the weird sizes and we're stuck with them because everyone centered on the shrunk sizes for tooling and standards. Pros know but it's a pain for DIYers.

https://www.inchcalculator.com/actual-size-of-dimensional-lu...
by codelikeawolf | 2025-05-19 13:22:22+00:00
I've been frustrated about this for a while, but I haven't had a good term to describe it, so thanks for that! The biggest annoyance I find from the increasingly complex types is the impact on tooling. My IDE slows to a crawl trying to process recursive types. tsc takes 4 minutes because of some needlessly complicated library types. Just pump the brakes on the types and write some damn unit tests.
by MandieD | 2025-05-19 13:23:16+00:00
The most useless thing Google Maps does on my US-localized phone here in Germany: literally translates the proper names of businesses. For example, listing Stoff Bauer as "Fabric Farmer" in the results when I search for "Stoff" - the reverse of helpful (Bauer is a very common German surname, but also literally means "farmer").
by dagw | 2025-05-19 13:23:22+00:00
Chamonix and ski next to kings, princes or industry moguls on same slopes they do, use same lifts, but you can ie go of piste for some extra fun.

This makes no sense to me. First of all Chamonix is hardly what I'd consider a 'rich' people ski resort. You're far more likely to be skiing next to a broke ski bum than "kings, princes or industry mogul". But beyond that, why can't the rich people ski off piste? In fact the rich people have the option to decide on a whim to take a helicopter to the really nice off piste runs and do 7 runs in a day if they feel like it, while you and I can only do one since we have to walk up. They can also travel to some of the finest skiing in the world, do two quick runs, decide the snow wasn't great and then just chill at the hotel bar and fly home early, knowing that it doesn't matter because if they want they can just come back in a few weeks.

Rich people can (and do) do all things you do, but they can also do a bunch of additional things that you and I cannot hope to do.
by bluGill | 2025-05-19 13:23:43+00:00
Salaries in Europe are much worse than in the US. (I'm told for the best India pays better than Europe - though India is skewed by a lot of bad coders not making much). In US just maxing out your 401k for 15-20 years will do it (depending on your company match), and you still have far more than the average income left over. So if you live like the average person and save that difference as well 10 years seems doable.

That said I'm not sure I'd recommend it. It can pay off for some, but the future is unknown. I've been to funerals for several people who didn't live to 65. Your body starts declining as you get older so a lot of active things really need to be done young if you do them at all. Maxing a 401k seems like a good plan and then spend the rest today - you should still have a nice retirement if you live that long, but you can enjoy life now.

If you don't like the above, religion offers an afterlife if you choose the right one. However they agree choosing the wrong one won't... Good luck choosing.
by somenameforme | 2025-05-19 13:24:04+00:00
The problems aren't in the regular physical work. Our bodies were made to work and get stronger and more resilient with exertion. An average tradesman without some secondary issue like alcoholism is going to be in far better shape than your average programmer. The issue is that in the trades, and any physical work, there's always a chance of some freak accident. Fortunately these are extremely rare, and getting ever rarer over time, but they do exist. By contrast in software the worst somebody's going to have is falling out of their chair or slipping on the floor.
by esjeon | 2025-05-19 13:24:10+00:00
AI winters will keep coming as long as the definition of AI stays relative. We used to call chess programs chess "AIs", but hardly anyone says that anymore. We call LLMs "AIs" now, but let's be real: a few decades from now, we'll probably be calling them token predictors, while some shiny new "AIs" are already out there kicking asses.

At the end of the day, "AI" really just means throwing expensive algorithms at problems we've labeled as "subjective" and hoping for the best. More compute, faster communication, bigger storage, and we get to run more of those algorithms. Odds are, the real bottleneck is hardware, not software. Better hardware just lets us take bolder swings at problems, basically wasting even more computing power on nothing.

So yeah, we’ll get yet another AI boom when a new computing paradigm shows up. And that boom will hit yet another AI winter, because it'll smack into the same old bottleneck. And when that winter hits, we'll do what we've always done. Move the goalposts, lower the bar, and start the cycle all over again. Just with new chips this time.

Ah, Jesus. I should quit drinking Turkish coffee.
by masom | 2025-05-19 13:24:18+00:00
It's really sad what happened with Gnome3.

Gnome2 was a good functional desktop, sure it was copying the 2000s with windows 98/2000 style, but it worked. Hell, even OpenStep is more functional than Gnome3 as a daily computer interface.

Gnome3 targeted a weird mix of incompatible devices, like a windows 8 interface, and kinda failed as a design given the devices it optimized for never took over the market. There's not that many tablets running Gnome or touchscreen laptops anymore.

It's almost like Android took the design team by complete surprise, while they tried to make desktops a tablet experience, but failed at doing both.
by yostrovs | 2025-05-19 13:24:22+00:00
Propaganda is telling Americans for 4 years that their president is healthy, brilliant, and sharp, while they themselves see a fading grandpa who can't function on his own. Which leads people to not trust anything else the same media tells them. And then they start wondering about who actually is the president... Is it Jill or someone whose name they don't even recognize? And they get real angry at being taken for a fool, and vote accordingly. The last election was lost by the Dems rather than won by Trump.

This article is yet another example of how this happens.
by jeroenhd | 2025-05-19 13:24:32+00:00
Microsoft's OCR engine supports Windows 10.0.10240.0 and up. This project intends to support Windows 7 and up.

In theory you could maintain code paths for both, offering a slimmer package for Windows 10+, but that'd also cost more time and effort to maintain.

Also, not many people know Windows comes with an OCR API. It's extremely underused in my opinion.
by microwavesafe | 2025-05-19 13:24:58+00:00
I tried a number of note taking apps. I use them for longer term storage of ideas, rather than daily todos. For example holiday itinerary or project ideas. Because of this I don't use them very often and I found I could never remember the basics of Obsidian.

One app that is very simple to use had everything I needed and sync'd using Github is https://about.noteshub.app/. I have been using it for around 6 months and found it perfect for my needs.
by bemmu | 2025-05-19 13:26:18+00:00
Seems this is a free-for-all to drop language gripes, so here's mine about Apple TV.

Have a family member who only speaks Japanese. My Apple account is in Finland. We wanted to watch The Martian together, but can't select Japanese dub even though that audio track definitely exists. They just don't show you the options not relevant to your account country, and the only way around is to change your whole Apple account to a new country.

Which you cannot do while you have an active Apple TV subscription.

End result: unable to watch Apple TV as a family.
by makeitdouble | 2025-05-19 13:26:42+00:00
I'd assume most WordPress based sites handling multiple locales will switch based on the Accept-Language ? Same if they let a framework handle the switch instead of a home-baked solution.

Even for auto-translated content, I wouldn't be surprised if it was off-the-shelf plugins that handle the switch.

All in all, I think it takes more effort to ignore the Accept-Language header. That won't prevent sites from tweaking it or doing their own cooking, but it kinda requires intent.
by potato3732842 | 2025-05-19 13:26:46+00:00
Can you imagine how quickly moisture and winter would destroy the facade on that desert overpass in Minneapolis or how quickly vegetation would climb it in Savannah? When it comes to concrete those "ugly" flat surfaces do a great deal to make concrete weather more gracefully anywhere that gets a winter worth speaking of and prevent vegetation from finding a home in more tropical clients. The painted overpass would not wear as poorly but it still needs to be maintained. A simple pressure washing contract (that we all pay for) turns into something more costly. Multiply by everything you could get in the habit of prettying up with paint and it's a big bill.

When it comes to indoor capital investments those flat surfaces are easy to clean and they're places that label and storage of ancillary items can be affixed and they reduce wasted space when things are placed adjacent with other things. When it comes to buildings themselves those flat lines lend themselves to ease of laying out the indoor and space. The idea that you have to make things pretty for decision makers reflects how divorced those decision makers are from the daily realities of thing the things they decide (same goes for the peanut gallery).

I'm so sick of listening to people saying they ought to be prettier when doing so has serious tradeoffs. Are they willing to pay for it? Even a couple percent effort adds up when you make it part of your typical decision making. I would rather have 11 ugly widgets than ten pretty widgets.
by AdamN | 2025-05-19 13:27:10+00:00
That's really disingenuous. Clearly Biden Jr. was getting paid more than he would have but he probably did have unique insights that would be worth quite a bit of money to Burisma. But the accusation is just that he made a few $100k more than he would have and made some top-level connections (so the money actually seems sensible). Every well read person just takes these things at face value as a single individual fallling up - but he had no true secrets to give and no real power. The corruption within the Trump admin is expansive with hundreds of millions of dollars across multiple businesses and at least in the first administration real power vested in family members.
by sleepyguy | 2025-05-19 13:27:22+00:00
Are you sure the facade isn't just stone, or do you use stone in interior walls? Most houses in NA are built of wood with a brick or stone facade. Some houses have a facade siding that can be anything from wood to cement board. Typically, the interior of the house is framed with wood or, in some cases, steel (mostly commercial).

The facade of a house or structure is usually tied into the framing so it doesn't fall over. Hence, brick ties are used to secure it to the wood or steel framing.
by iggldiggl | 2025-05-19 13:27:38+00:00
> a 20 minute drive usually takes about 20 to 30 minutes due to the detours

That variability makes the whole system much less interesting once a change is involved, e.g. if the on-demand shuttle is only supposed to operate across the local area, but not for longer journeys traversing the whole city, especially if the connecting fixed-route transport runs less than every few minutes…

Or even without changes, but when you have some other external schedule constraints, because in those cases you always have to budget for the longer journey time, negating the benefit of direct routing somewhat.
by franga2000 | 2025-05-19 13:28:16+00:00
What I don't get is how the feature works. I see it for veeery few videos and those are usually highly profitable clickbait and/or big budget productions, so my assumption has been this is actually something the uploader has to enable or even fill out. My language is very "small", so it makes sense that only the broadly-popuar and highly-profitable would be worth translating the titles for.

Unfortunately, all the translations are machine-translated garbage and there is no setting to turn this off as a viewer, so it's just incredibly annoying.
by loveparade | 2025-05-19 13:28:44+00:00
I think "sold" probably doesn't mean what you think it means here. Have you looked at the projects? Nearly all of them are just statics lists of things. Like "a list of all country flags" or "a list of modern inventions"

Maybe it was some SEO related sale with the domain and bit of ad revenue that someone bought for $100, which probably isn't the definition of selling a side project that most users on HN have. In fact, looking at the domains, the domains were probably worth more than the content on those sites.

That's why I originally flagged this post because I thought it was a bit misleading. I didn't think most people here would consider simple lists of things as side projects.
by Hizonner | 2025-05-19 13:28:48+00:00
If they don't feel like they can just give anybody any plate they ask for (which indeed they probably shouldn't do), then they shouldn't be issuing custom plates at all. Stuff like this conditions people to think it's appropriate for governments to be arbiters of taste.

In an essentially irrelevant anecdote, I do always wonder how somebody a few blocks from me (not in California) managed to get "HOTWIFE".
by fragmede | 2025-05-19 13:28:53+00:00
> Scale the dollar amount up a few orders of magnitude

But that's what makes it "weird". Most people can't afford to do that. As you point out, it mashed a certain amount of sense, but we're in the midst of an housing crisis. People who have enough money to own, not just multiple houses, but so many cars that they got tired of different cars so they just bought more of the same? Weird because I've never done that.

How many iphone 13 minis have you used concurrently, and in how many different locations did you own them? Byb your own admission, you only use one at a time.
by pjmlp | 2025-05-19 13:29:27+00:00
The only reason I like WebGL and WebGPU is that they are the only 3D APIs where major players take managed language runtimes into consideration, because they can't do otherwise.

Had WebAssembly already been there without being forced to go through JavaScript for Web APIs, and most likely they would be C APIs where everyone and their dog are writing bindings insteads.

Now, it is pretty much a ChromeOS only API still, and only available across macOS, Android and Windows.

Safari and Firefox have it as preview, and who knows when it will ever it stable at a scale that doesn't require "Works best on Chrome" banners.

Support on GNU/Linux, even from Chrome, is pretty much not there, at least for something to use in production.

And then we have the whole drama that after 15 years, there are still no usable developer tools on browsers for 3D debugging, one is forced to either guess what rendering calls are from the browser or which are from the application, GPU printf debugging, or having a native version that can be plugged into Renderdoc or similar.
by bluGill | 2025-05-19 13:29:57+00:00
One of my coworkers - a senior engineer - came to the US from India and found it a big change - sure he knew how to cook, but he didn't realize he would have to cook every meal. He has two house keepers before who would come in the morning make breakfast, and clean the house. They would then leave for the afternoon and return to make supper and minor tidying up. He really only had enough work for 1 house keeper but having 2 meant if one was sick or quit he had time to find a second. Since he was paying them less than $1/day each the total cost was very reasonable.

Who know if or how long the above will continue, but it is still possible in many countries if you can get a job there.
Show HN: What Would Paul Graham Write? An experiment in personality extension
by georgestrakhov | 2025-05-19 13:29:58+00:00
WWPGW (What Would Paul Graham Write?) is an experiment in synthetic personality extension.

The research question is simple: How close are we to being able to extend a human personality and patterns of thought in a meaningful way?

Why Paul Graham? Instead of using an average person with low signal-to-noise ratio sources like emails, this experiment works with a best-case scenario:

- Someone who has been thinking and documenting their thought process for an extended period

- Someone with a developed and distinct thinking and writing style

- Someone who writes many short-form pieces rather than few long books

- Someone moderately famous online - well represented in LLM training data

- Someone still alive - who could potentially assess the quality of their extension

- Someone with an existing community - for independent evaluation

The system:

- Allows users to generate essays by providing only a title

- Uses all of Paul Graham's essays as reference material

- Does RAG search of the reference material to provide the generator with the most relevant information in addition to the full corpus

- Employs a modern LLM (currently Gemini 2.5 flash preview) with large context window to generate new essays in his style (RAG's role is just to emphasize the most relevant parts)

- Collects ratings and comments on the generated essays

All generated essay data is freely available for research and analysis. (Download from https://wwpgw.georgestrakhov.com/about)

Technologies:

- scraper with python and Groq for smart MD conversion

- worker writer using cloudflare worker, queue, cloudflare autorag and openrouter

- website on nuxt3, deployed to nuxthub

Everything is open source. Have fun.
by jasongill | 2025-05-19 13:30:02+00:00
In a past life, this is an interview question that I would ask people: "We have thousands of servers, and you need to run the same command on 10 of them, what's one way you would do it?" and follow up with "What if you wanted to run the command on hundreds or thousands - what problems would you expect with this approach, and what might you do differently?"

I didn't really expect them to write code on the spot (hate that in interviews), but just to describe a possible solution; there were no wrong answers. Seeing how people came up with a quick hack for 10 and then being able to evolve their thinking for thousands was the point of the question and it could be enlightening to see.

I had a lot of people come up with things that I never even thought of, such as SSH'ing in to all 10 machines and then using a terminal feature to type into all of the windows at once.
by nozzlegear | 2025-05-19 13:30:26+00:00
> here we go

?

> since he's senile

You're already arguing from a position of bad faith and frankly it's going to be a waste of anyone's time to engage with you.

> I don't follow Nate Silver. The NYT and Dems hyped him for years but I never thought much of him. "Akshually", why do you follow Nate Silver? Why do you follow people who care what Nate Silver thinks?

I don't follow him either. I had to Google what this bad news cycle was and found an article by Nate Silver published a couple days ago that uses this book you're talking about as a jumping off point to say "haha I was right about Biden being old" in typical Nate silver fashion.
by kiliancs | 2025-05-19 13:31:13+00:00
Indeed. Catalan speakers have Spanish forced down their throat no matter if Spanish has never been associated to the Google account in any way, nor in the system or browser language preferences.

In my case, I live in the United States, but Google is determined to serve me Spanish results even for Catalan-related queries. E.g. preferring the Spanish Wikipedia. The search engine's behavior has had ups and downs over the years, but it has never been great.

This is very much a problem for my children, who don't understand Spanish, as well as for the Catalan-speaking regions of the world that are not in Spain, including Andorra.

In my experience, Gemini easily flags any Catalan content as unsafe and prevents the conversation from continuing. Even for prompts like "summarize this article". This may have improved lately, but still.

Google used to be an example in sensitivity to the world's diversity, being a responsible major player. Way back. Now, although I applaud some efforts multiple teams continue making, it is obvious this is no longer a priority.
by LocalH | 2025-05-19 13:31:16+00:00
Once they are released to the public, they are owned by the public, but on temporary lease to the copyright holder. Parent commenter only spoke to what should happen with works released to the public.

Any copyright holder who has supported (or whose estate has benefited from) extensions on copyright terms has stolen from the public in a way that all pirates combined have never stolen from the copyright holders.
by whstl | 2025-05-19 13:31:24+00:00
Oh nice! I never noticed that "Suggested languages" shows languages I previously selected.

But additionally, I like how it's not simply "pushing to the top", it does shows a previously selected language on the top, but it still keeps it duplicate in the list below, in case the user is going by muscle memory.

To me this is the best way.

Either make it VERY OBVIOUS that you're removing the item from the bottom of the list (which wouldn't be possible here), or don't remove it at all.

If I had a cent for each time a SaaS made my life harder by trying to "help me" I would be CEO of every SaaS I use.