MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by raattgift | 2025-06-16 22:25:10+00:00
Sorry, I don't want to get into metaphysics.

Black hole mergers are studied using post-Newtonian methods and numerical methods because there is no general analytical approach known. SXS, Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes, and the black hole perturbation toolkit both have web presences, you could start there. There is also an academic literature on matching the waveforms in both regimes. These are checked against results from multimessenger astronomy.

> I'd really love to see what shape two Schwarzschild blackholes (and by that I mean their event horizons because, I don't believe anything beyond them is real to us) hitting each other could look like

This is well into the numerical relativity regime.

ETA: I'd pick <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkpfXByQHxA> (SXS collab, "Event horizon for equal mass inspiral BBH in two coordinate systems") and the zoom-in at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4MTsCDtHMM> from a quickie cruise through some visualizations. There are links in the video description. Do beware that there are several types of horizon involved here, and they will not match your intuitions from Schwarzschild (see the point made in the zoom-in video description) which I would wager are built on the presence of a static Killing field which becomes null at the horizon, but the entire Killing field doesn't exist in these BH merger spacetimes. Roughly, though, if anything is in an orange region, it stays in an orange region. That includes a lot of gravitational radiation moving inwards in the purple region. [ETA again: the related Phys. Rev. D paper <https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.00436> has some nice details about the "duck bill" topology, too, and offers further detail on the purple region.]

https://www.youtube.com/@mpi_grav has several videos particularly in their NR playlist <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acHmN2MlJQQ&list=PLSYkic-Csf...>. Look for distortions in the BH horizons (whether it's an apparent horizon or some comparable surface gets into metaphysics; apparent horizons are at least locally observable), particularly the so-called "duck bill". Bear in mind the these are data visualizations principally of the waveforms, and the choices in intensities and hues are probably not going to be aligned with your intuition.

SXS has several videos too https://www.youtube.com/@SXSCollaboration - last month there was a major catalogue reorganization by the SXS collab so it may be that some internal links and semi-recent videos have issues.

And see for example https://www.black-holes.org/2024/10/02/BBH-mergers-with-spec...

Generally such simulations allow one to trace lightlike geodesics as a local probe of the lightlike horizon surfaces.

> I don't know which is the case

Exactly. That honest self-admission must be made near the start of any research programme.
by akater | 2025-06-16 22:25:27+00:00
There is a difference. I write a Lisp program, and it runs everywhere Emacs does, including my Android device. I wouldn't do that with Java, as thaw would be extremely impractical. (I might be biased: I probably wouldn't be programming at all if Lisp didn't exist.)

Lisp is the №1 enabler of Stallman's “Freedom 1”. Smalltalk might be close but I can't really say, and it doesn't look like I can install Pharo on my Android device. Nothing else even comes close.
by readthenotes1 | 2025-06-16 22:25:29+00:00
"William James, considered the father of American psychology ...., is said to have to come to many of his own most central ideas at least in part through hallucinatory experiences with nitrous oxide"

That's a pretty good explainer for psychology. We have a Coke addled Freud who is the father of it all and another drug abuser shepherding the USA.

I wonder how many people have tried to replicate their experiments and succeeded?
by rxtexit | 2025-06-16 22:25:34+00:00
I am full remote for a very small, non-software business but I think even for us we are probably losing productivity vs the office.

I think child care is a big driver but no one can come out and say this.

I am more productive remote but I wouldn't be if I was also baby sitting a 5 year old while working. A big reason I am more productive is living alone and not being distracted.

A company can't demand a remote worker pay for child care so the kid isn't at home like in an office.

I also think my increase in productivity doesn't offset the office slackers who are doing basically nothing at home. I think the office can squeeze some productivity out of the slackers while it is a lost cause remote.

In the aggregate, I think for most companies it has to be a net loss of productivity to be 100% remote.

While it is a huge increase in my general well being and happiness, the highly productive workers are going to be highly productive either way and not that much more productive remote. It is everyone else that causes remote to not work as well at the margin. Then if a competitor does RTO, the company almost has to hedge and RTO as well.
by aucisson_masque | 2025-06-16 22:26:49+00:00
I do have issue tho, that’s the reason I’m saying that. I can’t concentrate at all on something that isn’t interesting to me to the point where I needed 4 hours to learn basic trigonometric algorithms when I was a kid.

Call it adhd or something else, my point is that doing something interesting is 99% of the solution.

It’s like poker, when you got a bad hand you deal with it. Play on your qualities, not on your flaws.
by hatsunearu | 2025-06-16 22:27:14+00:00
My interpretation of entropy is that if you have X states that are equally probable, but not all states are distinct from each other in some sense, then the next state will likely be one where the states satisfying that condition is most numerous.

For example, if you flip N coins, there are 2^N states available once the flip is done. Each outcome has an 1/2^N probability of outcome. There's only one state where all of the states show all heads. While there's only one state where coins numbers 1-N/2 are heads, and N/2-N are tails, so that particular outcome is 1/2^N, if all we care is the macroscopic behavior of "how many heads did we get"--we'll see that we got "roughly" N/2 heads especially as N gets larger.

Entropy is simply saying there's a tendency towards these macroscopically likely groups of states.
by t_mann | 2025-06-16 22:28:03+00:00
For a lot of eg security-related applications where you want random numbers you don't want them to be publicly known. I wonder whether there are any risks to a naive approach of turning those numbers into private random numbers, eg hashing them together with a secret? Should you rotate the secret?

It would be interesting if the researchers could clarify this before people start rolling their own solutions.
by pfdietz | 2025-06-16 22:28:43+00:00
It was a technical failure, I believe. It was too difficult to hydrolyze cellulose and hemicellulose efficiently into a mixture that would allow enzymatic conversion to ethanol. Enzymes are easily poisoned and the mixture is more complex than what one gets from starch (which is just polymerized glucose.)

There is one success story, in Brazil.

https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/75/7/22/2848574/Wh...

Conversion of cellulosic biomass into chemicals other than ethanol might be the better route to take, particularly if green hydrogen can be used to boost the yield. Virent (which was bought out by an oil company) has a process for doing this. It would yield even more fuel per unit of biomass than conversion to ethanol, as potentially all the carbon can end up in the fuel. The fuel could also be drop-in replacement for existing hydrocarbon fuels. But there's not much interest in this as long as oil is still being used.
by probably_wrong | 2025-06-16 22:28:49+00:00
You are correct about the second point - I'll strike it through once I find out how.

As for the anonymous part, that's why I wrote "with style-detection and deanonymization tools". If the Internet could find Shia Labeouf's flag in a day [1], could they find a reviewer based on their writing?

[1] https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/4chan-shia-labeouf-secret-l...
by aDyslecticCrow | 2025-06-16 22:28:57+00:00
I think there are a few groups and reasons of distrust. Some more or less valid.

Those that distrust authority as a whole and lean into conspiracies cannot be saved with this kind of thing.

But i think news and science are having similar perception issues recently.

Distrust for news growing among the average population (for some good reasons). People are loosing faith in the objectivity of established media organisations. Most people are exposed to science through these traditional news.

So adding back some sense of confidence and authority to scientific institutions is very valuable to non-academics. Even if they themselves would not read the papers or revews.
by const_cast | 2025-06-16 22:29:01+00:00
You can't solve your health issues without paying money.

If you have high cholesterol and you decide to make lifestyle changes, you still have to go to the cardiologist. Because you have absolutely no idea if you actually lowered your cholesterol.

A big fallacy is people thinking they know if they are healthy or they know about their bodies. You don't. Even if you live a very healthy lifestyle, you still have to go to the doctor. You still need screening.
by jcranmer | 2025-06-16 22:29:24+00:00
I'd imagine that it's going to end up both getting somewhat better and somewhat worse.

2011 is around the time that programmers start taking undefined behavior seriously as an actual bug in their code and not in the compiler, especially as we start to see the birth of tools to better diagnose undefined behavior issues the compilers didn't (yet) take advantage of. There's also a set of major, language-breaking changes to the C and C++ standards that took effect around the time (e.g., C99 introduced inline with different semantics from gcc's extension, which broke a lot of software until gcc finally switched the default from C89 to C11 around 2014). And newer language versions tend to make obsolete hacky workarounds that end up being more brittle because they're taking advantage of unintentional complexity (e.g., constexpr-if removes the need for a decent chunk of template metaprogramming that relied on SFINAE, a concept which is difficult to explain even to knowledgeable C++ programmers). So in general, newer code is likelier to be substantially more compatible with future compilers and future language changes.

But on the other hand, we've also seen a greater tend towards libraries with less-well-defined and less stable APIs, which means future software is probably going to have a rougher time with getting all the libraries to play nice with each other if you're trying to work with old versions. Even worse, modern software tends to be a lot more aggressive about dropping compatibility with obsolete systems. Things like (as mentioned in the blog post) accessing the modern web with decade-old software is going to be incredibly difficult, for example.
by UncleSlacky | 2025-06-16 22:30:00+00:00
Relevant paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0143-0807/8/2/006...

Abstract: "According to the weak form of the equivalence principle all objects fall at the same rate in a gravitational field. However, recent calculations in finite-temperature quantum field theory have revealed that at T>0 heavier and/or colder objects actually fall faster than their lighter and/or warmer counterparts. This unexpected result is demonstrated using elementary quantum mechanical arguments."

Downloadable here: https://www.academia.edu/download/109363694/download.pdf
by sorcerer-mar | 2025-06-16 22:30:18+00:00
They're no different on the dimension that you identified as relevant: is he able to express himself or not?

I mean, you could put someone in solitary confinement and he'd be "able to express himself."

It's almost as if your heuristic is a bad one, which is why it is not the one established in the US Constitution or 250 years of case law.
Show HN: I built CareerMind AI – an AI tool to Level Up your career
by Roshan_Shams | 2025-06-16 22:30:21+00:00
Hey HN,

I’m an 18-year-old solo developer and I recently built CareerMind AI — an AI-powered platform that helps job seekers and freelancers manage the messy stuff: resumes, outreach, proposals, and contracts.

I built it because I got tired of jumping between 5+ tools just to apply for a job or pitch a freelance client. Nothing felt cohesive, and everything was either too generic or too complex.

CareerMind AI is designed to help you:

Build strong, professional resumes and cover letters

Write personalized outreach messages and client proposals

Optimize your LinkedIn or freelance profiles

Analyze contracts and spot red flags before signing

It’s meant for anyone trying to land work online — whether you’re applying to jobs or trying to grow your freelance business.

I built this in just under 3 weeks it’s live and working. Would really appreciate feedback from the HN community: anything broken, anything you’d improve, or even what you’d remove entirely.

Thanks for reading https://career-mindai.vercel.app
by genewitch | 2025-06-16 22:30:32+00:00
i used software defined radios to make a few sets of one time pads with entropy. The randomness of proper SDR or even a webcam in a lightproof coffee can or something is demonstrable with any of the tools for "testing randomness"; sibling is correct, MEMS are notorious for "noise" and that noise is "random", one can use a GM tube to trigger interrupts and use the timing to get entropy.

I don't know how you'd prove something is truly random, though, just that it looks and acts "random" enough; fitness for use.
by standardUser | 2025-06-16 22:30:36+00:00
That sounds nice, but in reality most of my extended friend group has migrated to WhatsApp over the last 10 years and is unlikely to change anytime soon. Interoperability would be nice (like we used to have) but that will never happen until Apple stops using their lack of interoperability as a way to ostracize young people and sell more phones.
by pedalpete | 2025-06-16 22:31:03+00:00
I've mentioned this in on other posts, but I think there are a few things that are getting missed here, and this is how we're hopefully helping grads and students in our start-up.

We have the duality of people complaining that there aren't enough good jobs, while at the same time suggesting that as boomers are retiring, there aren't enough people to fill the jobs they are leaving.

Good senior people are very expensive. Often worth their costs, but when we look at software engineering, there is also the ageism of hiring older developers.

So, everyone is screwed??

We're a bootstrapped neurotech start-up, and we quite frankly can't afford to hire senior people, yet we've had a bunch of university students (our office is at USyd) and graduates ask to come work for us.

In some cases, like marketing, though I have experience in marketing, it was ages ago, and so I don't feel I'm the best person to mentor a junior marketing person.

We're contracting with more experienced marketers who have time in the schedule to work with us part-time and guide the junior. We can't afford the more experienced person anyway, and they've got a more stable job, or young kids at home, and so they don't want the full-time work.

I suspect, and somewhat hope, this trend continues. Even for myself, I don't see myself "retiring" in the next 20 years (I'm 50), I'm sure I'd like to stay active, but perhaps not full time, and I could very much see myself enjoying engaging with the next generation and helping them transition into exciting work.

Having said that, as someone without a university degree, I also think the term "graduates" is loaded in this article. What the article doesn't discuss is that we've assumed that a university degree is necessary to enter the workforce. I am fortunate I had very few walls thrown up in front of me for not having a degree, but it did happen.
by rconti | 2025-06-16 22:31:58+00:00
I was just thinking about this the other day -- hotels so badly want me to book directly with them instead of using, say Booking.com.

But then to book directly and get the "guaranteed cheapest!" price, I have to sort through even more options than on an aggregator, I have to create an account, and now I'm getting spammed from ANOTHER entity I never plan to do business with again. At least with the aggregators I have one company whose privacy settings I've already dealt with.
by genewitch | 2025-06-16 22:32:18+00:00
https://web.archive.org/web/20010926211816/http://lavarand.o... 6 years prior to github, and the claim is 1996 on that link there, which is 12 years prior to github.

not denigrating, just pointing out that the "idea" was around before then, and i can't remember where i first saw it.
by camgunz | 2025-06-16 22:32:39+00:00
I'm not a subscriber, and I find Zitron's style to be too rage bait to really absorb it all, but I share his tech skeptic perspective. I don't think he has an exhortation as direct as Gerard's "don't invest in this", but his general "there's something fundamentally grifty about tech" resonates, and I think TFA's basic "the press is recklessly credulous to tech industry claims" premise is more or less on point.

(I looked up the interview [0] to be sure and I wanna say I remembered this perfectly I am the greatest) My anecdata here is I quit listening to Hard Fork (Kevin Roose & Casey Newton's NYT podcast about tech) after Roose was interviewing... the Cruise CEO. I'll put the exchange here:

Kevin Roose: Do you feel a similar sense of responsibility for the people who are currently driving for a living to find them new work or to create new work for them?

Kyle Vogt: I think we have to contribute to it, for sure. You know, I think — and that could take the form of to the extent we’re able providing training programs or alternate jobs for people. But more than that, I think it’s interacting with our government and our regulators and letting them know this is coming, when and how, and giving them some notice so we can plan ahead a little bit.

---

I quit listening because I wanted _any follow up_ to that at all (there are zero followups in the entire interview--they should rename the podcast to "No Followups" or "Spew Literally Anything To Our Listeners"), like, "who in Congress are you talking to", "what are your plans for training programs", "how have you staffed these efforts", but like, they start joking about rolling gyms or some bullshit (the irony of putting a fuckin stationary bike in a self-driving car honestly is too much, it just is too much I can't take it). I wouldn't write a screed like Zitron did. I would simply say the press doesn't treat tech seriously. Can you imagine a political interview where you have color commentary? It would literally be a joke.

I don't know if this is a satisfying answer to your "who is the audience for this" question, but TL;DR: I think it's basically... I wouldn't call them tech skeptics but rather people who think tech is actually hugely important and deserves to be treated with greater seriousness.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/podcasts/googles-ai-bonan...
by neilv | 2025-06-16 22:33:10+00:00
Is there, or could there be, a simple implementation of a compiler for the latest full Rust language (in C, Python, Scheme/Racket, or anything except Rust) that is greatly simplified because, although it accepts the latest full Rust language as input, it assumes the input is correct?

Could this simple non-checking Rust implementation transliterate the real Rust compiler's code, to unchecked C, that is good enough for that minimal-steps, sustainable bootstrapping?

This simple non-checking compiler only has to be able to compile one program, and only under controlled conditions, possibly only on hardware with a ton of memory.
by rconti | 2025-06-16 22:33:37+00:00
I'm about to start paying for YouTube for the first time ever. Of course, they make it complicated because I don't actually want their bundled music service. And the "lite" version says most videos are ad-free. But what's preventing them from changing that deal the day after I sign up? And of course, once I become a customer, now I'm hooked, and I'm subject to their arbitrary price increases.

Of course, as a "free" customer I'm already subject to their whims whenever they decide to add another advertising layer.
by Roshan_Shams | 2025-06-16 22:33:53+00:00
Just to add a bit more context:

CareerMind AI is mostly built for solo operators — job seekers, remote workers, freelancers — who don’t want to bounce between 5 different tools for every application or client pitch.

Instead of just dumping AI into a resume tool, I tried to make each feature useful in a real-world workflow. For example:

The resume builder outputs ATS-friendly layouts that don't break

The contract analyzer helped me spot a red flag in a freelance deal last week

The LinkedIn/Upwork profile builder actually rewrites bios in a way that sounds natural

I’d love honest feedback on what feels useful vs overkill — still early and very open to iterating.
by sorcerer-mar | 2025-06-16 22:34:03+00:00
This will be my last comment as you've proven yourself incapable of loading words into your brain.

> You seem to argue that regardless of what the US as a country wanted (to not let him in) should be ignored, because he made it onto US soil. Sounds like a technicality.

This should read:

> You seem to argue that regardless of what the US federal government wanted (to not let him in) should be ignored, because their provided justification for achieving what they want would violate the Constitution. Sounds like how Constitutions work.
by godelski | 2025-06-16 22:34:28+00:00
A constant reminder: you can't have wizards without having noobs.

Every wizard was once a noob. No one is born that way, they were forged. It's in everybody's interest to train them. If they leave, you still benefit from the other companies who trained them, making the cost equal. Though if they leave, there's probably better ways to make them stay that you haven't considered (e.g. have you considered not paying new juniors more than your current junior that has been with the company for a few years? They should be able to get a pay bump without leaving)
by CamperBob2 | 2025-06-16 22:35:45+00:00
Having read the reply in 2.5 Pro, I have to agree with you there. I'm surprised it whiffed on those details. They are fairly basic and rather important. It could have provided a better answer (I fed your reply back to it at https://g.co/gemini/share/7f87b5e9d699 ), but it did a crappy job deciding what to include in its initial response.

I don't agree that you can pick one cherry example and use it to illustrate anything general about the progress of the models in general, though. There are far too many counterexamples to enumerate.

(Actually I suspect what will happen is that we'll change the way we write documentation to make it easy for LLMs to assimilate. I know I'm already doing that myself.)
by tobias3 | 2025-06-16 22:36:23+00:00
This illustrates a bit the price discrimination "problem" that is solved via ads. With ads, higher-income people probably earn you more money automatically.

With the fee to remove advertising, you'd need to use all the price discrimination tricks to maximize revenue. E.g., have sales, have discount codes, etc., and it would still not be close to the price discrimination possible via ads.

I also wonder what the income of OP's bubble was when they were not paying for WhatsApp.
by cadamsdotcom | 2025-06-16 22:36:25+00:00
I’m not saying they should; only that they could.

Nothing about it needs to be normie focused.

“merely to make his personal life easier” is the key. What made it what it is today is - after the first barebones release, it was worked on until it was useful enough to be worked on by more people; pretty soon there were a few folks using it, and eventually the snowball effect led to it being maintained by a motivated group of folks, which eventually leads us to today.

A collab tool doesn’t need to be built from scratch. Existing options include IRC, Matrix, Zulip... Maybe one fits the bill already.