MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by josephg | 2025-06-01 17:08:14+00:00
This is good advice for boring talks, and the kinds of people who make them.

Imagine the same advice being given to standup comedians: “Bits should be a medium size, not too long.” “Avoid long words and try not to alienate your audience”. What a snooze fest!

A good talk is a performance piece. It should be simultaneously entertaining and informative. You do that by using narrative, by connecting with the audience, and by being compelling (via emotion and showing your own pleasure to the audience). If the audience is so busy reading your slides that they don’t pay attention to you, you’ve failed as a speaker.

I’m going to take a big risk here. I challenge you to go watch any great talk online, in just about any field. Watch Steve jobs introduce the iPhone. Watch a standup comedian. Watch a tech demo. Or your favourite conference speech. Or any popular YouTuber. They will almost never be this kind of talk, with subheadings and the appropriate amount of “supportive graphics”.

These “rules” are well meaning, but mediocre. They might even be helpful for a lot of people. But you should aspire higher. Aim to give a great talk. Not just a talk that’s slightly less horrible than your peers.
by wtcactus | 2025-06-01 17:08:18+00:00
In Southern Europe (although these days I reckon it only has wide usage in the north of Portugal and Italy from my travels) we use the low tech version of this: a bidet.

While searching for a house to rent (and buy), that is always one of the criteria (in Lisbon - center of Portugal - they are not that common anymore).

It just seems so weird and unclean not to be able to wash ourselves after using the bathroom. I guess it's a cultural thing.
by Bjartr | 2025-06-01 17:08:40+00:00
Isn't this back to attributing conscious experience to an AI when you're actually just co-writing sci-fi? The system is doing it's best to coherently fill in the rest of a story that includes an AI that's been given a place to process its feelings. The most likely result, textually speaking, is not for the AI to ignore the private journal, but to indeed use it to (appear to) process emotion.

Would any of these ideas been present had the system not been primed with the idea that it has them and needs to process them in the first place?
by onetimeusename | 2025-06-01 17:10:56+00:00
I think cheating is increasing over time. There are a number of reports about this I have read from individual universities. The problem is that if cheating becomes widespread enough, the schools don't have the power to do much about it when they rely on the tuition revenue. For example, this article https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/8/honor-council-w... makes the point that academic integrity violations are increasing while enforcement is decreasing. If you read the punishments given, they are basically along the lines of strongly worded letters.
by seanhunter | 2025-06-01 17:11:15+00:00
> Why no HoTT, though?

Sort of a weird question to ask imo.

Terrence Tao has a couple of analysis textbooks and this is his companion to the first of those books in Lean. He doesn’t have a type theory textbook, so that’s why no higher-order type theory - it’s not what he’s trying to do at all.
by AndroTux | 2025-06-01 17:11:22+00:00
So by that logic all VPS providers are just a money grab because you can run your software yourself for “free” without having to pay for that artificial construct these greedy people call “compute?”

I don’t understand your point. You’re using a resource. You’re wasting time on the GPU of someone else. That chunk is called a token. And that’s what you’re being billed.
by jajko | 2025-06-01 17:12:15+00:00
Its like being raised from earliest age with some religion (any, really, they are all equal in good and bad ways) vs somebody who wasn't. The thickness of rose-tinted glasses is something that's hard to argue about rationally.

I wasn't in both cases, communists considered it a capitalist propaganda about US might and banned it (maybe just heard about Star wars being US space program, took just first result on soviet gugel so to speak, but fight for freedom at all costs is generally not something you want to encourage in dictatorship).

They are an interesting flick (original trilogy), but nothing really magical for me in them. As mentioned by others they feel like 80s pop sci fi movie, nothing more, characters and acting are... mediocre and it all feels aimed at kids/teens. A lot of creativity with sets, but that's not primary reason for me to watch a movie.

Since I refuse (can't even) to be swayed emotionally of some good ol' memories from growing up, prequels felt even more childish (maybe apart from ep3), and this trend continued with last 3 movies. Rogue one was by far the best experience in whole SW universe, so if this goes even further happy to experience it.
by JoshTriplett | 2025-06-01 17:13:22+00:00
As others have noted, this comes from people expecting the slides to work as a document without the presenter. This is a bad idea (other document formats are better for that). But you can satisfy that desire in one of two ways:

1) Add lots of speaker notes, containing all the detail you presented, so that the combination of the presentation and speaker notes gives the self-contained information.

2) Write a separate self-contained document that contains all the information of the presentation, with slides containing a few words becoming section headings, and slides containing a useful image or chart becoming figures with captions. That'll be more useful than a corporate-style presentation deck would have been, but contain all the necessary information. Add a note to the top saying "This document contains all the information previously given in an X minute presentation. NAME is available to re-present this material on request."
by qwertox | 2025-06-01 17:13:33+00:00
M8.2 is in the upper medium range (M = M1.0 to M9.9). Next comes X1 which is 10 times stronger than M10. M2 is 10 times stronger than M1.

We might see several of these per year during a solar maximum. So maybe we get some nice auroras.

Edit, TIL: Though the G4 is a different issue, which classifies the impact of a solar flare on our earth. These range from G1 (minor) to G5 (extreme). This means that it can disrupt radio communications and GPS, put stress on power grids and, interestingly, increase satellite drag. G4 storms are rare events and occur only a few times per 11-year solar cycle.
by Joeboy | 2025-06-01 17:13:42+00:00
> crashed tie episode was pretty bad filler

I get that it felt like a bit of a diversion from the main story, but thematically the show is largely about the less palatable realities of being part of a resistance movement. That episode is about the reality that you'll probably end up getting waylaid by squabbling idiots along the way. I think it earns its place in the show.
by beslanb | 2025-06-01 17:13:55+00:00
Hi HN — I’m Beslan, Product Manager at RunMyJob.

Cloud CI runners work well when you’re getting started with GitHub or GitLab. But as your team grows, CI turns into an operational burden. Costs rise, runners need tuning, and self-hosting starts to feel inevitable.

The real problem with CI today isn’t performance — it’s billing. You’re charged for the allocated instance resources, even if your job is mostly idle. We changed that.

RunMyJob uses a load-based billing model — you’re charged only for the CPU and memory your job actually consumes, measured every second in real time. - High-performance VMs by default (12 vCPU / 32 GB RAM free) - Business tier: 48 vCPU / 96 GB RAM

We don’t resell AWS or Hetzner. We run our own bare-metal infrastructure in Tier III data centers.

If you’re using GitHub Actions or GitLab CI and tired of managing runners or paying for overhead, we’d love your feedback. Happy to go deeper into how it works.
by Demiurge | 2025-06-01 17:14:57+00:00
Have we actually lost PHP and jQuery? I don't think so. I mantain some of those website, I don't I'm losing much. If I have a single dynamic page, I might actually use PHP, but if I have a complicated app, I use a framework.

If the "industry" default has new JS/Node powered ecosystem, perhaps some people, including myself, would agree that PHP frameworks are still ahead of the overly modular JS frameworks, there isn't anything like Laravel or Django for the JS world.

But, for simple cases, templates are still very common, including static site generators, but even PHP.
by vunderba | 2025-06-01 17:15:26+00:00
Story time. A friend of mine in highschool was a ranked pinball player, just significantly better than the rest of us. Their game of choice was Medieval Madness, having logged countless hours on that machine.

As a mischievous high schooler, I was a huge fan of classic con movies like The Sting, and legendary hustlers like Titanic Thompson [1]. One of my favorite stories about him was when he took a standard horseshoe pit, extended it by a foot beyond regulation, and practiced on it for months. Then, at the appropriate time, he challenged a professional horseshoe player who unknowingly playing on a subtly modified field couldn’t understand why all their throws were falling just short.

To that end, I decided to pull a harmless little prank on my buddy.

We were friends with the owner of the local arcade, so after closing one night, I talked to him about a setup I wanted to try. With his permission, I took some adjustable furniture risers and placed them under the back two legs of the Medieval Madness machine.

The result was a subtle increase in the incline (just a few degrees) but it made a big difference in gameplay, especially for someone attuned to the machine’s usual angle. Visually, the machine looked completely normal and indistinguishable from the others. It was nestled between other games, so even if someone had known to look for a difference, the risers were virtually invisible.

Both the arcade owner and I spent the rest of the evening practicing on the steeper table. Naturally, we challenged our friend to play Medieval Madness the following day.

Their game was totally thrown off. I managed to get close to their score which under normal circumstances would’ve been borderline impossible. I didn’t quite pull it off, but I got close.

They were still incredibly skilled, but I remember them muttering under their breath, clearly irritated at missed shots, failing to hit the usual ramps, and even some inexplicable ball drains. I think if they'd played longer they would have swiftly adapted. My armchair analysis is that professional pinball players probably have to subtly adapt to the fact that even the same game across different tables will have subtle variances (strength of flipper solenoids, etc).

I never did tell them what happened.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_Thompson
by kubb | 2025-06-01 17:15:42+00:00
The U.S. Census Bureau's American Housing Survey (AHS) collects data on when owner-occupiers moved into their homes [1].

Out of 86 million owner-occupied homes, almost 80% (68.3 million) were moved into before 2019, before the affordability crisis. The number of owner-occupied houses that were moved into between 2022-2023 has declined by half from 2020-2021. Meanwhile, rentals raised by 50% in the same time frame.

This is evidence to the claim that house ownership is getting less affordable, and it's more solid than just looking at ownership percentage, because it shows a trend. However, even the ownership percentage number looks really poor in comparison with U.S.' greatest rivals, China, who have a 96% home ownership rate.

[1] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data/interactive...
by bombcar | 2025-06-01 17:16:00+00:00
In those cases what I’ve seen is as long as the land stays farm land, it is taxed at a low farmland rate, and the moment that the land is subdivided and sold houses on it it gets taxed at the much higher single-family home rate.

However, the price to buy the land starts to head towards what it will be worth it developed as soon as the freeway becomes real.
by hualaka | 2025-06-01 17:16:04+00:00
In my view, a compiler is a text transformation tool that converts high-level descriptive text languages into the format required by the target machine. Target machines typically have two specifications: operating system specifications and CPU specifications. As long as the final generated binary encoding satisfies both, it can run on the target machine. For example, Linux systems have ELF program loading specifications, while ARM64 manufacturers have CPU instruction specifications. As long as the CPU can recognize the binary encoding, it can command the CPU to perform the required computations.

In concrete implementation, it is usually necessary to convert high-level text languages into an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST), perform necessary detection and optimization based on the AST, and then convert it again into a lower-level Linear Intermediate Representation (LIR). After performing necessary detection and optimization on the LIR, the LIR can be converted into readable assembly instructions required by the target CPU. Further implementing an assembly instruction conversion tool converts the readable assembly instructions into binary encoding that the CPU can recognize.

Next, this set of binary encodings is wrapped into an executable file according to the operating system's requirements, ultimately obtaining a file that can run on the target device. Since a compiler is a text transformation tool, it can run this tool on any device - this is the essence of cross-compilation.
by kadoban | 2025-06-01 17:16:50+00:00
AlphaGo Zero is: assume you have a neural network that, given a board position, will answer: what's win probability, and how interesting is each move from here.

You use the followup moves as places to search down. It's a multi-armed bandit problem choosing which move(s) to explore down, but for simplicity in explanation you can just say: maybe just search the top few, vaguely in proportion to how interesting they are (the number the net gave you, updated if you find any surprises).

To search down further, you just play that move and then ask the network for the winrate (and followup moves) again. If there's any surprises, you can update upwards to say "hey this is better than expected!" or whatever.

The key thing for training this network: spending computation from an existing network gives ycu better training data to train that same network. So you can start from scratch and use reinforcement learning to improve it without bound.
by wslh | 2025-06-01 17:17:17+00:00
I think it's best to start close to the goal and move into problem-solving once something is up and running and needs improvement or optimization. Focusing on CS fundamentals isn't always worthwhile, unless there's a genuine interest in computer science or math olympiad style problems. Today, we can operate at a higher level since most core algorithms are already available in libraries and frameworks.

Just my two cents: if your kids aren't very interested or ready for that kind of knowledge now, you might find that in a few years they can learn it surprisingly quickly if they're interested then. What takes months to teach early on might work in days or hours later.

Also, don't forget to explore https://www.alice.org/ it's a 3D way to get started.
by kerkeslager | 2025-06-01 17:17:23+00:00
Committing to either "hustle" or "quality" is equally stupid. Quality is a means to an end goal, and eschewing quality is also a means to an end goal. And again, there are both business folks and engineers who are smart enough to choose when a focus on quality fits their goals and when it doesn't.

It sounds like you've bought into some ridiculous "sigma grindset" nonsense and you're now gatekeeping it as an identity. For your own good, stop. Contrary to what you seem to believe, hustles do fail, and if you close your mind to that possibility you're going to eventually hustle on the wrong thing and burn yourself out on a hustle that doesn't work. And even if you don't, you'll make yourself intolerable to anyone you'd want to interact with. It's not a good path.
by spacedcowboy | 2025-06-01 17:18:13+00:00
Yes, I am of that opinion.

An ad is an ad is an ad. If I pay for "no adverts" (as, unfortunately, advertised), it ought to be "no adverts". Calling an advert "sponsorship" is not a solution, it's lying.

I will not be continuing my "free trial" of premium YouTube at the end of it, it's not worth the money to pay for something it singularly fails to do.
by dybber | 2025-06-01 17:18:25+00:00
I have run a codeclub for 10 years. Here’s some quick thoughts:

- Make them curious, if they are curious they will teach themselves. Example: don’t tell them what a for loop is, make a project where they really need it, but let them first to write it very verbosely without loops, then they will almost invent it themselves and be relived when you teach them (same style can be applied to most things)

- make projects that have low entry level, but where they can improve it infinitely. E.g. build an aquarium simulator or a city simulator using p5.js

- make them collaborate with other kids if possible, often they learn better from their peers than listening to their parents. Facilitate collaboration, and help them come up with more and more difficult projects, that require more and more of them, so they don’t stay on the same level too long
by kaathewise | 2025-06-01 17:18:29+00:00
Yeah, I found `anyhow`'s `Contex` to be a great way of annotating bubbled up errors. The only problem is that using the lazy `with_context` can get somewhat unwieldy. For all the grief people give to Go's `if err != nil` Rust's method chaining can get out of hand too. One particular offender I wrote:

match operator.propose(py).with_context(|| { anyhow!( "Operator {} failed while generating a proposal", operator.repr(py).unwrap() ) })? {

Which is a combination of `rustfmt` giving up on long lines and also not formatting macros as well as functions
by aaaja | 2025-06-01 17:20:03+00:00
If you think that's bad you should see the ones targeting women. They are much, much worse.

Example: r/womenarethings

The subreddit description:

> Women are things. Objects.

> They should be enjoyed, used, and they should enjoy this treatment without expecting anything in return.

> Women should not have an identity. They are not "I," "me," or "we." Women are "it," plain and simple.

You won't find any sub describing men like this.
by laze00 | 2025-06-01 17:20:58+00:00
I’ve seen myself progress through a few “levels” here.

Level 0: tinker with the novelty of the tech but don’t extract real value. This was week 1 and i was mostly just having it create silly stories to make my kids laugh.

Level 1: use LLMs as a replacement for searching the internet. This is where most people get and stay imo.

Level 2: conversations with LLMs that begin to border on collaboration. Eg you ask follow ups.

Level 3: full collaboration. This is when you start to get meaningful value imo. Discuss ideas with the LLM, challenge it, have it challenge you. You can do this anything. On a weekly basis I’m collaborating on plans for date night with my wife, schedules to bake bread with daughter, and anything else going on in my life. I find the answers with the LLM, same way you’d collaborate with a human.

Level 3.5/4: i now regularly run deep research searches. For example I’m going out with friends in a few weeks and want to have a fun night. I’m passively running searches and iterating now despite no time crunch. Basically I’m fully delegating research tasks, giving directions on next steps as needed, and i would say this saves me hours per week.
by jstanley | 2025-06-01 17:21:02+00:00
I also read comments like that and wonder if other people aren't conscious.

I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness could be confused about what it means to be conscious, or (in other threads, not this one) could argue that consciousness is "an illusion". (Consciousness is not the illusion, it's the audience!).

However I don't see why you don't think an algorithm could be conscious? Why do you think the processes that produce your own consciousness could not be computable?
by paddy_m | 2025-06-01 17:21:10+00:00
which implementation of `std()` did you go with?

I was writing unit tests once against histograms. That code is super finnicky, and I couldn't get pandas and polars numbers to tie out. I wasn't super concerned with the exact output for my application, just that number of buckets was the same and they were roughly the same size. Just bumping to a new version of numpy would result in test breakages because of floating point rounding errors. I'm sure there are much more robust numerical testing things I could have done
by whstl | 2025-06-01 17:21:58+00:00
Understood. I don't disagree.

However: even joining companies with amazing engineering departments, salaries and even great executive departments is not a guarantee that the software making process is at the same level. I say this with experience in one FAANG, two YC startups and two multi-billion-dollar unicorns.

There is a fundamental disdain towards both developers and users in the industry, visible on one side by the RTO/layoffs/AI-replacement, and on the other with dark patterns, cookie-banners, autoplay videos, behavioral experimentation and recklessness with data and general slowness.

I still maintain that saying "no" to things that damage the world and compromise the work is the duty of anyone calling themselves an engineer.
by tanseydavid | 2025-06-01 17:22:33+00:00
Self-termination is sometimes referred to as "a permanent solution to a temporary problem."

This idea resonates with many as being true at some level, however a terminal-illness can be regarded as different, i.e. not a temporary problem.

If there is not a terminal illness in the equation, would you agree that the situation tends towards the idea of "temporary problem/permanent solution"?

If there is not a terminal illness in the equation, is there any sort of condition or threshold you believe should exist to deprive a human being this "right" under any condition?

For example: should a human who does not have a terminal illness and has not yet reached majority age, have the "right" to self-terminate? Why or why not?
by spacedcowboy | 2025-06-01 17:22:40+00:00
You're right, Apple TV+ does do that, but there are two crucial differences

- I can always fast-forward through anything on Apple TV, and in fact for the ads you mention, there's a button in the lower-right corner specifically to do that. It's the same as the "skip intro" button, which I also habitually press.

- These ads never come up slap bang in the middle of the content, they're only ever at the start and that's it.

Together, these make it far far less intrusive.
by mrandish | 2025-06-01 17:23:06+00:00
> The Atari ST had a MIDI port: that notoriously lacked on the Commodore Amiga

I never really understood why people thought this was a big deal. I had my Amiga hooked to a DX7 synth with a serial to MIDI cable that had a couple active parts in it. MIDI is a serial protocol and the Amigas had full RS232 ports with hardware interrupts, +12v, -12v, as well as audio in and out on unused pins. The serial to MIDI In/Out cable cost around $15 more than two MIDI cables. You can still buy them today: https://retroready.one/products/ka12-serial-port-midi-interf....
by vkaku | 2025-06-01 17:23:09+00:00
These days, the effort required for company-specific long essay applications hardly seems justified. With Generative AI readily available, it’s easy to tailor essays to appeal to particular—even narcissistic—preferences, unless someone genuinely enjoys the writing process.

As a result, the whole system has devolved into a “garbage in, garbage out” exercise. What began as a meaningful way to assess candidates has largely been undermined, and the original intent behind these evaluations—whether skills-based or culture fit—has been lost.