MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by olau | 2025-05-14 13:22:07+00:00
I recently bought a second-hand Microsoft Surface tablet, installed Debian and now run GNOME on it. The first time it came up and I logged into a familiar GNOME environment was a profound experience. I was pretty sure what was going to happen, but it still took me by surprise.

So I don't think the convergence idea is necessarily bad. It's perhaps somewhat niche, and it's not easy to pull off.

I almost never use a phone, so for me the major selling point of my tablet is no Android oddities or second-rate citizen vibes. I don't need to wade through an app store to do simple things. I'm not depending on a hardware vendor where support stops a few years down the road. Plugin a keyboard and mouse, and it's just like any other computer with a really small screen. I already have a desktop computer, so it doesn't replace anything, but the familiarity is still nice.

The touch experience is not as polished as Android. It's fine for my purposes, though. I'm mostly using the tablet as a night-time reader for epubs - dark background, light level at minimum, and then it works surprisingly well for when I wake up and need something to do before I can fall asleep again.
by formerly_proven | 2025-05-14 13:22:07+00:00
(Near-)retirees are typically the largest voting bloc and usually the only one experiencing any growth in most of the West. It is unsurprising that they get to set policies that solely benefit them at the expense of everyone else, including those that are yet to be born and those who will never be born because of those policies. And why would they care about the future? Retirees, by revealed preference, don't, and why would they? It's not their future they're destroying. Indeed, they're making quite a nice (short) future for themselves by bleeding societies dry.
by bee_rider | 2025-05-14 13:22:27+00:00
This sounds like a “postal banking system,” some countries have done it. The US had it at one point.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings...

> The United States Postal Savings System was a postal savings system signed into law by President William Howard Taft and operated by the United States Post Office Department, predecessor of the United States Postal Service, from January 1, 1911, until July 1, 1967.

Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren have suggested bringing it back.
by inoshy | 2025-05-14 13:23:42+00:00
I have encountered many video players in my life - be it youtube, vimeo and sites that I will not mention here (chuckles). All of them sucked in different ways. Some of them had no timeline thumbnail scrubbing, some of them had control buttons that blocks your view. some have timeline scrubbing but your mouse needs to be close to the slider otherwise the timeline preview will disappear.

All of these comes as minor annoyances but they play a crucial role on your users if they will come back to your site or not.

Being fed up, I decided to make a video player that will solve most of these problem and put the user first and rest second. That is the inspiration behind Roseplayer.

Just do `npm install roseplayer` and users will keep coming back to your site :)
by xnickb | 2025-05-14 13:23:46+00:00
Many people can borrow your toy to have look at it, but only one person can borrow it and play with it. And they are only allowed to play while no one is watching. And if you want to modify your toy with some tool it's not your's anymore, it yas moved and now belongs to the tool.

I guess I'm trying to say that analogy is of limited use here.
by rsynnott | 2025-05-14 13:23:48+00:00
> It would take years to make a single new bus route in any city, I don't think I've ever even seen that happen.

I live in a city in a Western European country which adds multiple new bus routes a year, and always has done. Honestly I'd assume this is the case for any medium to large city.

The unusual bit about the Shanghai initiative is that, presumably, they have significant _spare_ capacity, to be used for low-volume/experimental stuff like this. Spare capacity is a slightly weird thing for a bus network to have; they tend to run basically on the edge.
by metalman | 2025-05-14 13:24:04+00:00
there was an(old old) tree, and surounding medow destroyed for a roundabout(recent), not just any tree, but one with a literary conection, the authors name escapes me, the house of the author is part of the councils holdings, as was the tree and medow, but, famously, as per another author, "but roundabouts must be built", england somewhere , last 3-4 years
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-05-14 13:24:05+00:00
Directionality is the key. Do we see things as getting better, staying the same, or getting worse?

Right now, the future has very very few signs of promise. Humanity is behaving attrocious, being a menace and a monster is amazingly popular, science and free thinking are being cancelled and rounded up by government goons. The very rich prey ever more on everyone else.
by Boogie_Man | 2025-05-14 13:24:41+00:00
Spoilers:

My understanding is that the central thrust is that consciousness as we know it which separates us from all other animals may not be the deciding factor in advanced vs simple cognition and a state to which evolution and development is geared as we've always assumed, but rather an evolutionary aberration that doesn't necessarily exist in other advanced life forms and may cease to exist in humanity eventually.

At first I felt a bit depressed and devalued, but then recognized that even if it was true, it made consciousness and my conscious experience even more valuable than if it were a foregone conclusion, and added that much more importance to art and religion.
by aegypti | 2025-05-14 13:25:41+00:00
…yes?

That exact strain of provincial European quackiness is how you get homeopathy and alternative medicines covered under public health insurance and paid for by tax dollars in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, etc.

At least France grappled with it ~5 years ago and removed it IIRC. Still being debated in Germany.

Slippery slope.
by 999900000999 | 2025-05-14 13:26:05+00:00
The only way I think I’ll learn rust is if there’s a surge of job opportunities paying 300 K and up which require it.

The potential is definitely there, it looks like it might compete with C++ in the quant .

But we already have ocaml . From Jane Street, at least for me if you’re going to tell me, it’s time to learn an extremely difficult programming language, I need to see the money.

So far my highest paid programming job was in Python
by jqpabc123 | 2025-05-14 13:26:11+00:00
What is wrong with virtually all Tesla vehicles?

Musk's ego.

Musk's design ideas are elevated above common sense. He just can't resist the urge to "fix" things that aren't broken.

The Cybertruck is exhibit A but two more mundane examples --- dashboards and door latches.

These are two of the most frequently used aspects of a car that have been refined by over a century of design and user testing. Musk threw out convention --- in favor of his own ideas which are actually less user friendly and functional.

You can't get any status feedback (speed for example) without taking your eyes off the road and looking at the touch screen.

To open the door from the inside, you have to jam 2 fingers down inside the door handle and feel for the latch. As opposed to virtually every other car on the road which has a readily visible and accessible mechanical door latch.

Tesla needs to focus more on the user and less on Musk.
by dijit | 2025-05-14 13:26:25+00:00
I struggle because everything you're saying is your subjective truth, and mine differs.

Aside from the seminal discussion about text input latency from Dan Luu[0] there's very little we can do to disprove anything right now.

Back in the day asking my computer to "do" something was the thing I always dreaded, I could navigate, click around, use chat programs like IRC/ICQ and so on, and everything was fine, until I opened a program or "did" something that caused the computer to think.

Now it feels like there's no distinction between using a computer and asking it to do something heavy. The fact that I can't hear the harddisk screaming or the fan spin up (and have it be tied to something I asked the computer to do) might be related.

It becomes expectation management at some point, and nominally a "faster computer" in those days meant that those times I asked the computer to do something the computer would finish it's work quicker. Now it's much more about how responsive the machine will be... for a while, until it magically slows down over time again.

[0]: https://danluu.com/input-lag/
by giantg2 | 2025-05-14 13:26:38+00:00
I wonder what could be done about it. I suppose regulations like in the defense industry could be applied more broadly.

We didn't do anything about manufacturing being off-shored and it was even seen as a benefit by many, allowing the freed up labor to focus on higher skilled work (mostly). However, there doesn't seem to be a replacement this time for the labor to move into. I wonder if we've reached a point where automation and other technological improvements have created a global negative trend in required labor.
by hermitShell | 2025-05-14 13:27:01+00:00
Point 1 is why growth/debt is not a good economic model in the long run. We should have a care & maintenance focused economy and center our macro scale efforts on the overall good of the human race, not perceived wealth of the few.

If we focused on upkeep of older vehicles, re-use of older computers, etc. our landfills would be smaller proportional to 'growth'.

I'm sure there's some game theory construction of the above that shows that it's objectively an inferior strategy to be a conservationist though.
by fsflover | 2025-05-14 13:27:13+00:00
> just not seeing it gaining any significant market traction

There can be a lot of reasons for that, like the duopoly forces preventing the competition (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656355) or insufficient PR.

> Even the best of them would be mediocre at best at any specific event competing against athletes who have trained for that specific event.

In computing, if you have a general-purpose device, it usually can do most tasks sufficiently well.
by leCaptain | 2025-05-14 13:27:22+00:00
congrats on the launch!

i opened a random lecture (MIT 14.01 Lecture 19: International Trade: Welfare and Policy)

a- i tried an exercise without watching the video, and then clicked on 'watch' next to the question, i expected it would take me to relevant portion of the video instead it played it from beginning.

b- i used the ai tutor and asked 2 random questions, instead of giving me an answer it prodded to provide more detail. this might be an intentional choice to ensure learning, however i personally prefer chatgpt's style where it gives me some information and then provides more angles to pursue.

i also asked the tutor about batman, here's the response for reference:

tell me about batman That's a good start, but your question is very broad. When you say "tell me about Batman," are you looking for information about the character's origin, his role in comics, his significance in popular culture, or something else? Try to narrow down your question a bit.

For example, are you interested in: - Batman's backstory and how he became a superhero? - The different versions of Batman in comics, movies, and TV?
by the__alchemist | 2025-05-14 13:27:29+00:00
Update: No, I don't think so. Just tried Let Else... I like it more than the ex I posted.

That said, much like it took me a while to Grok if let syntax... this will be a struggle. See the other example in this thread where the one suggesting it reversed the syntax. That will take a bit to get right...
by throw0101c | 2025-05-14 13:27:56+00:00
> You weren't available all the time then. It was perfectly natural to assume someone wasn't at their computer and that was perfectly ok.

Someone made the observation back then that 'the less you talk about "being online", the more important it will be'. Nowadays, because of IP-over-radio (smartphones) we're all basically online all the time (which has been true to a certain extent for a while with (dumb) phones and SMS/texting).

But it goes further now with many more ways of interaction.
by rsynnott | 2025-05-14 13:28:16+00:00
> Adding massive amounts of service costs a lot of money. It is always a bad thing if you see that anywhere in the world.

Dublin Bus has added massive amounts of service over the last decade, going from an incredibly deficient bus service to merely a bad bus service, and has in the course of this been able to significantly lower journey prices, due to increased usage.

> It takes years for people to adjust their lives around better service

I think this possibly _used_ to be the case, but the likes of Google Maps have changed that. You'll see bus routes introduced days ago with full buses, because people want to get to a place, they ask Google Maps, and it tells them. 30 years ago, people would take the bus routes they were used to, but today they will take the bus route their phone tells them to take, so introducing new services has become a lot easier.

(This does sometimes have unintended consequences, when routes intended as low-volume feeders get identified by the apps as a shortcut and swamped.)
by Mr_Minderbinder | 2025-05-14 13:29:41+00:00
Unfortunately there is a distinct lack of any scientific investigation or rigorous analysis into the phenomenon allegedly occurring that is called “Wirth’s Law” unlike, say, Moore’s Law despite many anecdotal examples. Reasoning as if it were literally true leads to absurd conclusions that do not correspond with any reality that I can observe so I am tempted to say that as a broad phenomenon it is obviously false and that anyone who suggests otherwise is being disingenuous. For it to be true there would have to have been no progress whatever in computing-enabled technologies, yet the real manifestations of the increase in computing resources and the exploitation thereof permeates, alters and invades almost every aspect of society and of our personal day to day lives at a constantly increasing rate.
by sureIy | 2025-05-14 13:30:11+00:00
Oh absolutely. This makes leaving bad reviews even more important.

- leave unemotional matter-of-fact reviews so they can't complain for slander

- leave them days later so they can't link them to you

- leave them for businesses that provide incentives for 5-star reviews

- leave them when multiple reviews already complain about unethical actions taken by the owner

A 4-star HIG hotel in Bangkok once proposed I leave a good review to fix one of their mistakes. I firmly said I wouldn't and then mentioned the request in my 2-star review. The mistake was assigning "free breakfast" to the wrong room in a 2-room booking. Had to fight 3 days to get it fixed.
by shadowgovt | 2025-05-14 13:30:17+00:00
That is quite possible, but I was thinking more that several generations of people not reproducing above replacement rate isn't really a disaster by itself.

If we don't have war, displacement, and mass starvation, and people still decide just to not have as many kids for a few generations, the species will survive (and from a resource consumption standpoint the planet will probably be better off).
by joshprice | 2025-05-14 13:30:22+00:00
There is definitely room for the Phoenix Form helpers to do more. Iommi looks like a really interesting approach I hadn't seen before.

For example AshAdmin (https://github.com/ash-project/ash_admin) takes these ideas further and generates a full super admin interface for you. It's a bit clunky and you should ultimately write your own admin, but it lets you focus on the important parts first.

For anyone else who hasn't seen it Iommi's motivation and docs are here:

Motivation https://kodare.net/2024/09/11/why-we-wrote-a-new-form-librar...

Iommi Forms https://docs.iommi.rocks/forms.html

Iommi Github repo https://github.com/iommirocks/iommi
by MonkeyClub | 2025-05-14 13:30:53+00:00
> Optimization should be treated as competitive advantage

That's just so true!

The right optimizations at the right moment can have a huge boost for both the product and the company.

However the old tenet regarding premature optimization has been cargo-culted and expanded to encompass any optimization, and the higher-ups would rather have ICs churn out new features instead, shifting the cost of the bloat to the customer by insisting on more and bigger machines.

It's good for the economy, surely, but it's bad for both the users and the eventual maintainers of the piles of crap that end up getting produced.
Show HN: "Fleck" Front End for Lyrion Music Server
by nbeversluis | 2025-05-14 13:31:35+00:00
This is a frontend for Lyrion Music Server (formerly Logitech Media Server). It is for users who:

- Like album art and mostly want to view their library as near as possible to a collection of discs. In track view, each track listing provides access to its full album in a single click. - Want the option of a simple and elegant library browser with controls minimal or hidden. The many other features remain accessible through the default or any other theme desired. - Want as few clicks/taps as possible to access library and playback

A live demo is at https://fleck-theme.org/

The theme, including source code mostly in React, is at https://github.com/nbeversl/fleck-theme

More info on Lyrion is here: https://lyrion.org/

Interested in user feedback/suggestions.
by seancorfield | 2025-05-14 13:32:26+00:00
I'm surprised this seemed to be voted down. I've been a hiring manager for over 30 years, and I never do "technical tests" -- no take-home, no live coding, none of it.

I have a map of topics and questions, and I get the candidate chatting about their past projects, their approach, and what they liked/disliked about past projects and various technology they've used.

It takes a maximum of one hour and usually close to about thirty minutes to make a yes/no decision on a candidate (sometimes it only takes ten minutes to make a no decision, and then it's a matter of trying to politely end the interview).

I've interviewed hundreds of candidates this way over the years, and everyone I've hired has been capable of doing the job. Not once have I ever had to let someone go for lack of technical ability.

Part of the problem is that we don't train people how to conduct interviews, and another part is "this is how I was interviewed, so this is how I'm going to interview other candidates" -- pure inertia.

As an industry, we really need to do better.

As for the OP, _if_ I had been administering a vague take-home project that had a 1-week delivery deadline, and a candidate peppered me with Qs and then presented a full proposal for the project for approval, prior to working on it... I would have rejected them. But I'm pretty certain I would have decided to reject them in my regular 30-60 "chat" interview, and I would not have moved on to the take-home project and wasted their time like that. So, again, I fault the interviewer(s) for not being able to filter candidates efficiently.
by rayiner | 2025-05-14 13:32:40+00:00
There’s two different issues. In the US, demographics is highly correlated with other factors. Even the most progressive parents will self-segregate to get away from these issues (under the pretext of finding a “good school district”), which in practice means the suburbs.

Apart from that, cultural differences become much more salient when you’re a parent. Because culture is how we transmit our values—what we believe about how to live a good and successful life—to our children. Culture is also highly correlated with demographics and also is a source of conflict. My kids attend a private school with affluent white and black kids (about 2/3 and 1/3). The neighboring supermajority-black county is richer than our supermajority-white county, so there are no socioeconomic divides. But there’s quite a bit of racial conflict nonetheless. A couple of kids in my daughter’s friend group wanted to kick her out of a running group chat because they wanted to make it black-only (she looks fully south asian though she’s half white). My daughter is far more accepted by her white friends who aren’t socialized from an early age to have a sense of racial identity/group solidarity.

White/asian places like Brookline have cultural problems as well. My high school was about 30% asian, the remainder white (all affluent and educated). There was a lot of conflict over cheating and the school being a “pressure cooker” that boiled down to conflict between the asian immigrant proclivity of academically grinding to get ahead and the WASP mentality of raising “well rounded” students with diverse interests. Studies show that white families move out of school districts as asian families move in: https://www.the74million.org/article/fear-of-competition-res.... This is true even though, statistically, asians are more affluent than whites, much less likely to be arrested or imprisoned, etc.

Parenthood is where the rubber really hits the road in terms of any sociological preconceptions people may have. It’s the time when you’re faced with applying those ideas in practice in a situation that will have consequences for what you hold most dear.
by ryandrake | 2025-05-14 13:33:09+00:00
And then the goal posts will move again and people will defend it: “Well at least he’s not trying to ban toothpaste itself! Get a grip, libs!”

And then when he bans toothpaste: “You can get the topical treatment and a cleaning from the dentist if you want it so badly. Stop worrying so much!”

And then when he bans the topical treatment at the dentist: “It’s a logical move. Look, it’s not like he’s jailing dentists. You can still waste your money visiting your dentist if you think it’s going to help your teeth, LOL!”
by dagw | 2025-05-14 13:33:40+00:00
'Modern' coffee has many parallel movements and developments, and all of it certainly isn't for everyone. You see this in all kinds of areas, like for example beer, where you have development of both better quality 'basic' local lagers and experimental sour beers happening in parallel. End result everybody gets access to better beer that appeals to them, even if there is also lot of beer that not only won't appeal, but that they'll consider virtually undrinkable.
by IAmBroom | 2025-05-14 13:33:50+00:00
OK, this part was brilliant:

"To avoid this problem, the team divided their 100-milliwatt laser into eight beams. Each beam travels along a slightly different path through the turbulent atmosphere and thus receives a different random phase perturbation. Counterintuitively, this incoherent illumination makes the interference effects observable.

When I first started studying optical engineering, my teacher had worked on the first under-the-RADAR guidance system for bombers. He told lots of amusing stories, like how the pilots insisted on a manual override - so they "agreed" to provide a switch, noting to us manual piloting at near-treetop level and 1,000 ft/s is insane.

He taught us about the nominal amount of turbulence in the atmosphere, and that it limited space-based cameras to about half a foot resolution - a limit he said couldn't be broken. Therefore, license plates would never be readable from space...

Before I was out of grad school, they had broken it with laser techniques on nearby targets. Flash the laser at the same time as the image, scan the laser-illuminated spot, calculate the perturbance, and reverse-filter the image. A lot of processing (for that day), but it could be done back on Earth.

As you can see from the test images, the 8 lasers aren't enough to perfectly smooth out the noise. The noise is probably square-root-8 improved, so resolution should improve by a factor of not quite 3. Move those lasers slightly and repeat 12 times; you've improved resolution by 10. This is easy to do quickly; you should be able to read fine print held by a car passenger on the highway.