MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bdw5204 | 2025-06-24 11:59:07+00:00
It's also worth noting that reliable daily temperature records only go back to the late 1800s. The way you know this is that there are no record highs or lows in 1788 or even 1828. Most likely, at least some of the real records were set prior to the invention of temperature measurement.

On a related note, global population data before about 1800 or so is also unreliable because censuses hadn't been invented yet. During the Enlightenment, people actually debated if world population was increasing or decreasing. Many thought it had been constantly decreasing since the decline and fall of Rome. In general, reliable statistics for more or less anything are newer than the United States of America.
by moron4hire | 2025-06-24 11:59:09+00:00
This is an earlier work from the same author that I found absolutely delightful. https://www.sbnation.com/2014/8/18/5998715/the-tim-tebow-cfl...

You cannot predict where this story will go. It will take a turn and you will think, "oh, that's weird, but ok, I get it". And then it will do it again, and again, and again. But somehow, by the end of it all, it all makes sense.
by skydhash | 2025-06-24 12:00:20+00:00
The issue with this is that code is the final form of specs, but fit for machine execution. Coding is mostly f(a, b, c, d, e, …) where all the variables are specifications. Iterating on specs is tweaking individual variables. You’re still missing the broader interactions between them, and sometimes, the formula itself changes (discarding some variables and getting new ones). And as soon as you hit production, the function is recursive (code is part of the things to take into account)

So, specs is more like an historical archive of decisions taken. I prefer to take a change request (ticket) transform it into a list of requirements, then apply that against the code rather than iterating through old specs in order to produce a new version of the code.

So it becomes f(z, k) where z is the specs for the change and k the old code, instead of f(a, b, c, …, z) (without k) where a and the others are updated specs and z is the new one.

ADDENDUM

In other words, specs are like memos while the code is the company policy handbook. No one edits past memos, you just issue new one, and then edit the handbook.

So I rather have code versions (git commits, …) that links to change requests, which link to discussion and analysis. Not dealing with a pile of documents.
by floundy | 2025-06-24 12:00:25+00:00
>plants grow in the dirt and risk having insects crawling all over them

Non-sequitor.

>And the sheer number of lifestyle diseases people have.

Red herring. Other peoples' diabetes or obesity doesn't really impact me. Plastic has contaminated water and soil, it's not possible to opt out of the consequences of others using it even if you do not use it yourself.

>I've heard it said

Must be true!
by Simulacra | 2025-06-24 12:00:26+00:00
Tangentially related: I was friends with a lady who was lobbying congress to get ridnof thermal receipt paper. Over time, thermal receipts fadr, and after a year you really no longer have the receipt because it's mostly faded. This makes it almost a disappearing warranty.

I scan my receipts for major purchases, but I think she had a point.
by palata | 2025-06-24 12:01:19+00:00
> To facilitate planned obsolescence, manufacturers stop providing OS updates

I don't think it works like that. Manufacturers stop providing OS updates as soon as they can because providing any kind of support has a cost. Planned obsolescence means "they care about making it obsolete" (active). But the reality is that they just "don't care about keeping the product alive" (passive). And the only way to make them provide updates is to force them by law.

> If you unlock the device and install a custom ROM, which may or may not function adequately for you to begin with, then you're probably also compromising secure boot

You can relock the bootloader with the FairPhone. You will still have a message saying it's a custom OS, but I don't think it compromises the secure boot, does it?

> many apps simply refuse to work with this setup

I heard that there are apps that refuse to work with an unlocked bootloader, but I haven't heard of apps refusing to work with a relocked bootloader. Is that a thing?
by orbital-decay | 2025-06-24 12:02:04+00:00
Wait, you're describing CLI: command line and infinite history. TUI is a distinct thing, it exists on an addressable 2D character grid instead of the bitmapped canvas. For example top and mc are TUI applications, but there's no command line in them (unless you count passing different parameters from the external CLI or a script, which you can also do with a GUI application as it's separate from the interface).

> Every GUI automation is highly non-standard, ad hoc, finicky (usually, depends on exact pixel positions), possibly Turing complete, but even if it is, it's harder to use compared to writing a script.

The same applies to TUI applications. How do you automate top or mc? Don't conflate presentation (which is silly to even attempt automating) with internal logic.

The entire reason for TUI to exist is that TUI apps can be used in a terminal window, alongside CLI, so you don't have to switch to a separate window. But fundamentally it's just "GUI on a character grid".
by neilv | 2025-06-24 12:02:33+00:00
> Temperatures in some locations from Philadelphia to Boston could be the hottest in any month in over a decade. Additional records could fall Wednesday and Thursday.

Boston here (home of decaying old red brick pizza oven buildings, not designed for modern summers).

This morning, as we enter a forecast high of 102F real temp, and heat index up to 110, my own old building is trying to get a 5-hour water shutdown of our entire building of ~100 residents, including elderly... postponed until after the scorching peak of the heat wave is over.

Not only do we have neither the architecture nor the acclimation for hot climate, but we don't even know what's ridiculously stupid behavior in such a climate.
by bombcar | 2025-06-24 12:02:55+00:00
Ban personal liability on loans (full recourse).

If the lender can only take the thing (like repossession of the car or foreclosure of the house) and can’t go after the borrower for the difference, lots of problems solve themselves.

Credit can still exist in various secured ways, business credit is barely impacted for real businesses, and people stop being able to go way below zero.
by palata | 2025-06-24 12:03:31+00:00
I wonder, but it could be that some of the hardware they use doesn't offer an open source firmware. Qualcomm for instance isn't super open.

IMO we should put in the law that manufacturers have to mainstream their device and provide a way to flash an updated firmware. There is no way they do it without being forced, because it's a pure source of cost for them.

That's how it works: companies optimise in the legal framework we give them. Regulations set that framework.
by 6510 | 2025-06-24 12:03:39+00:00
It depends entirely on comments like the one you wrote here.

To me it is obvious they had more than enough time and opportunity to do it properly themselves and the tools at their disposal get more glorious every year. Users grow more and more dependent on them. Services control more of our lives.

They have LLM's now! Really good ones! So good they can format and sort 90% of the customer service issues into well known boxes.

You can also have people pay for support. 1000 euro might be nothing compared to losing an account. Write me a nice report what exactly went wrong. It can be [] my fault [] their fault. It can result in [] permanently banned [] account restored. They can [] refund the fee [] ask for ____ more money.

They thought themselves to important to do it themselves. You are unworthy of even the worse kangaroo court and unworthy of trial by robot. Those are pretty damn low standards.

It will eventually happen because we have lots of wealthy influential people in the global law apparatus and they are really being mocked here.

Mega corps are going for the heaviest punishment they can apply for all possible offenses they chose not to describe. LOL You aren't sentenced to death only because they lack the means to do it but I'm sure they are killing plenty of people indirectly.

I even think out taxes should pay for their customer service.
by Lerc | 2025-06-24 12:03:58+00:00
Do we laugh at Romans for using lead and mercury?

I'd say they did things that were harmful that they did not know they were harmful. Unless they did it in the face of clear evidence of the harm, what is there to mock?

I expect the people in 100 years from now will laugh at us for doing all of the things that we absolutely know are harming the environment right now. Perhaps they will even laugh at us for hand wringing about plastics on the possibility that they might be harmful while doing next to nothing about the things we do actually have evidence for,
by lm28469 | 2025-06-24 12:04:51+00:00
> It’s all just people making choices.

Yeah sure... and some people get together and make choices that impact other people ability to make choices, it really isn't rocket science.

If you think Zuckerbeg spending hundreds of millions a year to get the top XXX behavioural scientists to work on how to milk your attention span has the same impact as "my wife puts the straw in the washing machine to reuse them" I have bad news for you

idk how you call lobbies spending literal billions every year to make you think "cars are freedom", "debt is wealth", &c.
by roxolotl | 2025-06-24 12:05:32+00:00
I’d be surprised if there weren’t microplastics in the veggies I’m growing in my organic backyard garden. They are in the water and since uptake by plants has been shown[0] I’d assume they are basically unavoidably at this point. Of course limiting consumption is a goal so avoiding the industrial food system and eating mostly things at the bottom of the food chain are good ways to do that.

0: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10966681/
by shwouchk | 2025-06-24 12:06:33+00:00
i was replying to “install your preferred editor on the remote” - without syncing your config, you might as well just use vim even if it’s not your favorite.

most of my remote editing fits into your description. of course, if you’re not an emacs user, you likely won’t find much value in tramp, magit, org-mode, dired, ediff, eshell, etc
by sgraphics8 | 2025-06-24 12:06:52+00:00
Hi HN,

I'm building Testr — an AI-powered browser automation/testing tool where you just describe what to test: "check login", "verify newsletter signup", etc. Kind of QA solution for vibe-coders

Under the hood, it’s a real challenge. No wonder AI browser automation is not yet a public good (OpenAI Operator I believe is in reserch preview).

I tried:

- Asking GPT-4o for pixel coordinates → failed

- Treating the screen like a chessboard and asking for coordinates → semi-broken

- Using HTML parsing alone → couldn’t deal with dynamic content or iframes

- Scrolling + hybrid DOM parsing + visibility scoring → finally good enough

For example, modern sites load 10+ iframes (like cookie banners) and bury the important CTAs inside one of them. AI often gets confused by elements not in view. And it refuses to use any coordinate system (pixel coordinates, transparent coordinate overlays).

Eventually I resorted to:

- Injecting custom numbered hit-testable overlays

- Randomizing highlight colors

- Using a hybrid visibility model to bias the AI toward clickable elements

- Keeping scroll position in sync with visible interaction zones

You can try the tool here: https://testr.pro (Note: currently requires signup, but you get 10 free credits to run tests.)

Happy to go deep on technical stuff. I'd love feedback:

- Any ideas to improve interaction targeting?

- Better ways to auto-scroll or discover hidden UI?

- Anyone else trying to make AI click like a human?

Here's a dev thread I wrote with some of the struggles: https://x.com/sgraphics8/status/1935244464559149396

– SG
by ur-whale | 2025-06-24 12:07:08+00:00
>the trade-off is not so clear.

Assuming very basic knowledge of CLI on Linux

for i in *.pdf; do convert "$i" "$i".png; done

10 seconds flat

If you've never heard of convert (part of imagemagick) then:

open chatgpt/gemini/claude/whatever, enter prompt: linux cli tool to convert pdf to png

Adds 30sec tops

Thank you for making my point for me.
by JimDabell | 2025-06-24 12:07:34+00:00
It’s not:

> uv will respect Python requirements defined in requires-python in the pyproject.toml file during project command invocations. The first Python version that is compatible with the requirement will be used, unless a version is otherwise requested, e.g., via a .python-version file or the --python flag.

— https://docs.astral.sh/uv/concepts/python-versions/#project-...
by PintScotch | 2025-06-24 12:07:49+00:00
You are misstating the complaint.

If you have a fictional series/universe it is important it is internally consistent. Most people use fantasy/science fiction as a form of escapism. They don't want to be reminded about stuff in the real world while trying to escape it.

What frequently is perceived (rightly or wrongly) by fans of a particular franchise is that Female/LGBTQ characters are inserted into places where it doesn't make sense to fill quotas. People generally don't have problems with the characters being female or LGBTQ if the character is charismatic and it doesn't break the internal consistency of the Universe.

The reason why people are vocal is because they've heavily invest their time into something and when it fundamentally changes they feel like they've had the proverbial rug pulled from under them.
by osigurdson | 2025-06-24 12:08:00+00:00
>> And perhaps the darkest trend in recent times is the holy grail for CEOs—not hiring people in the first place

I believe this complacency that companies currently have (i.e. everything will be the same except we'll need fewer people) will soon give away to fear. Companies will realize that they are in a race and now is the dumbest time ever to let people go as they will need every possible advantage to win. Lazily sitting around and waiting for AI to replace people while doing some layoffs here and there is really max complacency. These companies are going to get their butts handed to them by competitors who focus on leveraging AI + people.

Maybe at some point in the future when things have stabilized it might make sense to try to trim costs. Right now though, the ground is shaking and they need to move or die.
by elcritch | 2025-06-24 12:09:00+00:00
A bit ironic in my mind that people enjoying living in a city infamous for gaining much of its historical wealth and art by betraying the Byzantines and sacking Constantinople under the guise of helping it [1] are now complaining about ultra wealthy people renting out the place to enjoy that historical art.

1: https://gentlemanscodes.com/chivalry/the-sack-of-constantino... 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople
by belorn | 2025-06-24 12:09:43+00:00
There is a rather interesting historical person called Hans Jonatan (19th century) who was an escaped slave from a Danish colony, fled to the danish fleet, fought in the Battle of Copenhagen, and then fled to live in Iceland. Because of the very small amount of immigration from people with West African ancestry to Iceland, Hans has been the subject of fairly extensive Genetic study that found around 800 descendants.
by mjburgess | 2025-06-24 12:10:03+00:00
It's not clear to me why people think perfect geometries do not exist, they occur all the time in physics.

Of composite matter, sure, because it's composite in a certain sort of way, you do not get perfect circles. But the structure of macroscopic material does not exhaust the physically.

Even here, one could define some process (eg., gravitational) which drives matter towards being a perfect circle, because perfect circularity is a property of that process. This is, as a matter of fact, true of gravity -- if it weren't we'd observe violations of lorentz invariance, which we do not.
by neilv | 2025-06-24 12:10:29+00:00
Yep, flat black roof. 20 years ago, I'd get through Boston summers fine without AC. On the hottest days, just put down the blinds for the afternoon. And about one week per summer, I used a small fan.

I'm ready to upgrade, as soon as I know what city I'll be moving/staying to, after new job/startup search (and what my budget will be).
by graemep | 2025-06-24 12:11:39+00:00
Even after that records are not really up to current standards (and I am sure even current standards are not perfect - things will always go wrong). What would have been the highest temperature recorded in the UK in the 20th century not counted in records because there were issues with its reliability:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_United_Kingdom_heat_wave#...
by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | 2025-06-24 12:11:49+00:00
I don't understand people. If you need to use an installment plan why the hell are you using DoorDash which is a luxury ripoff?

I can afford it but I don't use it because it's obscene.

I'm tempted to say that some people are poor because they're imbeciles with poor financial sense.
by dmurray | 2025-06-24 12:12:00+00:00
> The union V_n = U_1 + U_2 + ... + U_n has combined length 1 - 1/2*n < 1, so it can't contain [0, 1].

This argument seems way less convincing to me than the diagonalization argument, because as n is going to infinity that length does become 1.
by layer8 | 2025-06-24 12:12:14+00:00
No, the argument was that existing character sets used in Japanese feature phones had them. Because Japanese characters are wider than Western characters, those platforms could be more creative with pictographic characters as well, and could easily add color due to the proprietary phone OS. Unicode added them because Unicode's goal is to provide round-trip compatability with existing character sets.

https://blog.emojipedia.org/correcting-the-record-on-the-fir...
by ben_w | 2025-06-24 12:12:51+00:00
Hydro is indeed as you say. Also, surprisingly to many, a big source of CO2.

Nuclear is high-variance in the ecological damage: 99.25% are basically fine, and those other three are (1) Three Mile Island; (2) Fukushima, more an embarrassing mistake than anything else, as the deaths and environmental damage due to the plant was far less than deaths and environmental damage due to the tsunami that also damaged the plant; and (3) Chernobyl.

It is simultaneously true that (1) even including Chernobyl, the amortised cost of handling nuclear disasters does not add much to the cost of the electricity; and (2) the cost of handling the disaster probably played a large part in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
by vladms | 2025-06-24 12:12:51+00:00
Talk about it (worked for the ozone layer and some pesticides), use less (not that hard), support any alternative. And I think this works for any topic. The helplessness is a feeling, hard to assess the impact of individual actions, so why bother? You do what you can/think of and continue living - with a critical mass things will move in the right direction.
by pjc50 | 2025-06-24 12:13:15+00:00
> Houses are depreciating assets

.. which sit on top of the ultimate appreciating asset: land.

> That's why almost all landlords are small-time and not corporate.

https://wustllawreview.org/2023/12/27/corporate-consolidatio...

"Ownership of the nation’s rental housing stock is in transition. The approximately twenty million rental properties in the United States, and fifty million rental units within those properties, have been steadily shifting from individual to corporate hands".

Rent is profitable and the housing shortage is difficult to solve.
by wiether | 2025-06-24 12:13:45+00:00
It started as soon as I left the orthodontist's place.

Based on what I can see in the mirror and the fact that some people asked me if I had lost weight (I didn't), it appears that the braces on the upper teeth are pushing my upper lip away, which in turns is pulling my face skin, resulting in more hollow cheeks and more visible cheekbones.
by deadbabe | 2025-06-24 12:13:58+00:00
I haven’t heard much about Climate Change in recent months, and to be honest it’s kind of comforting to forget it exists. If we can’t do anything about it, then might as well not think about it. It’s so much less stressful and doesn’t put me in a bad mood the way doomer articles do. The outcome won’t change either way. If someone isn’t proposing a solution, I don’t want to hear the problems.
by voidUpdate | 2025-06-24 12:14:08+00:00
Does the speed of your shell matter? Surely the speed of the programs that you're running through your shell matter more. I've never been let down by how fast bash can tell a program to start running

EDIT: oh, i misunderstood, its just the prompt at the start of your shell... I dont think ive ever been annoyed at how fast that renders either
by ajsnigrutin | 2025-06-24 12:14:41+00:00
Sure, but the retail price of a ASUS E410 laptop (some celeron, 4gb ram, 64gb storage) is currently $159 on bezos' website.

So for the same price, I either get some small gadget that is horrible to actually use (just try scrolling through tens of pages on this), or a full featured laptop (yes, performane-wise it sucks, but less than the gadget) and just run gEdit fullscreen. Keyboard included.
by Forgeties79 | 2025-06-24 12:14:42+00:00
It takes a lot of work to be a parent and also monitor all that media consumption/stop all ads. The “average person” isn’t as tech savvy as most of us here and that stuff just doesn’t come as easily to them.

For instance I am very comfortable letting my kids play video games. I play a lot myself, I can make good judgments about what is appropriate for them, what is an appropriate amount of time to play, what is good/bad behavior when playing, what systems are a good choice or if online access (if any) is appropriate. I barely need to think about these things, but for some people this is an incredibly time-consuming, intimidating task.
by Zambyte | 2025-06-24 12:14:44+00:00
Fortunately bikes (and even e-bikes!) exist.

Edit: Also Google Maps says San Rafael to Palo Alto will take 2 hours give or take a few minutes on public transit, with 3 buses, but the middle one you could easily cut out with a bike or a 4 block walk. That doesn't really seem absurd at all for an occasional trip. People do 2 hour drives for an occasional trip and no one bats an eye.
by netdevphoenix | 2025-06-24 12:14:47+00:00
> Instagram ToS

I am curious, is there something in there that legally binds them to restore an account automatically disabled? I was under the impression that, since Instagram is a free service offered by a non-state company, they are not legally obligated to keep any account opened. What would the lawyers sue Meta for? As I understand it, if you build a business on instagram and your account gets deleted/disabled for whatever reason, you have no grounds to sue Meta
by jpizagno | 2025-06-24 12:15:06+00:00
You worked on the design? That is interesting. I worked on the simulating the LSST , back in 2008 to 2010. The goal of which was to test the data reduction software. We were on the Image Simulation team.

It is surreal to see LSST/Rubin finally get first light.

Even more interesting to see who is still working on LSST, and who is not.
by dataflow | 2025-06-24 12:15:08+00:00
> Why doesn't the bank just trade anyway? Because if they do that, you can enter their buildings and take their equipment, arrest their employees, etc.

Or just cut off their power (or network access, or whatever)?

I know "monopoly on violence" is the term in the literature, but I think it's more like monopoly on coercion than monopoly on violence per se. The latter is one way to implement the former, but not the only way.

To give a hypothetical larger-scale example, if the population relies on a dam for water/power, then an implicit threat to destroy the dam could coerce them without any violence.