MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by haberman | 2025-06-07 19:38:13+00:00
> I feel like I can write powerful code in any language, but the goal is to write code for a framework that is most future proof, so that you can maintain modular stuff for decades.

I like Zig a lot, but long-term maintainability and modularity is one of its weakest points IMHO.

Zig is hostile to encapsulation. You cannot make struct members private: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/9909#issuecomment-9426...

Key quote:

> The idea of private fields and getter/setter methods was popularized by Java, but it is an anti-pattern. Fields are there; they exist. They are the data that underpins any abstraction. My recommendation is to name fields carefully and leave them as part of the public API, carefully documenting what they do.

You cannot reasonably form API contracts (which are the foundation of software modularity) unless you can hide the internal representation. You need to be able to change the internal representation without breaking users.

Zig's position is that there should be no such thing as internal representation; you should publicly expose, document, and guarantee the behavior of your representation to all users.

I hope Zig reverses this decision someday and supports private fields.
by RodgerTheGreat | 2025-06-07 19:38:53+00:00
Some programs, games, and zines made with Decker: https://itch.io/games/tag-decker

Unlike LiveCode (or so far as I am aware HyperNext), Decker is free and open-source: https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Decker

HyperNext doesn't appear to be actively developed; the most recent updates I see are from last year, and it can't be used on modern computers. Decker's most recent release was yesterday morning.

I'd be happy to go into more detail if you like.
by chiph | 2025-06-07 19:39:04+00:00
I agree with the other posters that 200 km is not very far for Americans (My trips to the dentist are 294 km each way).

So far as self-loading - for comparison, I believe the Eurostar loads cars on a single-level. The Auto Train loads cars into two-levels where the decking is open mesh and not safe for the public to walk on. The published time is a little misleading - that's when you have to check-in. Departure time is about 90 minutes after last check-in. You could have nearly completed a 200 km drive in that time, so something like the Auto Train is only useful for much longer distances (it currently runs ~1400 km)

Amtrak has two sizes of cars. The single-level cars have to be used in the Northeast because of the lower clearances of tunnels & bridges (legacy infrastructure...) The bi-level Superliners can be used everywhere else. The Auto Train cars are bi-level height and cannot operate any further north than they presently do.
by aleph_minus_one | 2025-06-07 19:39:37+00:00
> Not possible, because can't be guardrailed with 100% accuracy. You'll ask it something outside of the Warcraft world (e.g. US politics), and it'll happily oblige. I imagine NPCs will generate really weird immersion breaking stuff even if you cannot freeform interact with them anyway.

> Not to mention the current token cost.

You of course have to train the AI from ground up and on material that is as much as possible only related to the topics that are in the game world (i.e. don't include real-world events in the training data that has no implications in-universe).
by jeroenhd | 2025-06-07 19:40:02+00:00
Not necessarily. You need some source of truth (i.e. government ID) to sign digital tokens representing attributes like "18+". Those tokens are uploaded to those websites.

The risk becomes "kids loading their parents' ID into their phones" but with decent digital ID that shouldn't be a problem.

Yivi already solves this problem. It's being used as a basis for an implementation of a European digital ID of sorts, though I'm still sceptical of the European side of things.

The app works on any device because the device doesn't do anything special. All it does is POST some signed token if the user clicks "approve".

I suppose this can be a problem in the US where people hate the idea of digital government ID for some reason, but that's a political problem, not a technical one. France already has a digital ID equivalent for use with government services, as do all other EU member states in their own way, so the source of these tokens is practically ready to go.
by mindslight | 2025-06-07 19:40:47+00:00
No, just someone who isn't steeped in surveillance culture. My obtuseness is just a direct response to the obtuseness of the surveillance industry demanding "consent" when I'm trying to read about someone's death. I have also entered throwaway nyms for the online streams of family funerals that have tried to bundle abusive legal terms. What's socially gauche here is letting a moment of mourning turn into leverage for the surveillance industry.
by gopher_space | 2025-06-07 19:41:05+00:00
> My general impression is that Rwanda has been compressed down to a simplistic morality play when the reality seems a lot more complex and in many ways more unsettling.

Visiting the Genocide Memorial in Rwanda compresses the event into a simple morality play by displaying a wall of personal pictures of the dead. Snapshots of random people at a happy moment in time, but they're all violently dead now for absolutely no reason.
by scythe | 2025-06-07 19:42:48+00:00
The viscose process used to produce cellophane is highly toxic. The lyocell process is safer because the chemicals used are less volatile. But both require a lot of fine chemicals (carbon disulfide or N-methylmorpholine oxide or, recently, 1,5-diazabicyclo[4.3.0]non-5-enium acetate). This is why cellophane is typically used in small amounts and rayon likewise.

By contrast, lithium bromide is a stable salt and is basically as cheap as the elements used to produce it, so it can be easily scaled up and recycled.
by homebrewer | 2025-06-07 19:43:13+00:00
There's not much sense in using these advanced backup tools if you're already on ZFS, even if it's just on the backup server, I would stick with something simpler. Their whole point is in reliable checksums, incremental backups, deduplication, snapshotting on top of a 'simple' classical filesystem. Sounds familiar to any ZFS user?
by mccolin | 2025-06-07 19:43:32+00:00
> Fixing 174 would mean handing a tax break to the same companies many voters in both parties see as symbols of corporate excess.

This is frustratingly accurate. Through a zero sum political lens it'd be a handout to "big tech," so many politicians argue for keeping this on the books, but in reality S174 deeply affects small companies, new companies, boutique agencies, and individuals who want to consult or start smaller operations. I worked for a ~20 person shop that was gutted by this tax code change. It completely changed the affordability of talent.
by m104 | 2025-06-07 19:44:21+00:00
It's the "impact" style of technical write-ups: sell the problem and the scale, then present the solution, which is thus presented and understood through the lens of business and customer success.

Generously, this writing style is supposed to show the business value of teams and individuals, for promotions or other recognition. But yeah, it can be frustrating to read this style.
by tasuki | 2025-06-07 19:46:36+00:00
> Certainly so many people can't be too weak to regulate one of the most basic facets of existence?

Why not? We're all weak, in one way or another.

> How did we come all this way as a species if we are so fundamentally flawed at basic metabolic regulation?

There never was enough calories to go around. Getting as much as you can and storing them for later as fat used to make sense until very, very recently.
by asmor | 2025-06-07 19:46:58+00:00
I wonder if LLMs will ever not be AI. Applications using LLMs that aren't terrible experiences are so because they replace large parts of things people say LLMs can do with vector databases, glorified if conditions and brute force retrying.

I coincidentally can run local LLMs (7900 XTX, 24 GB), but I almost never want to because the output of raw LLMs is trash.
by the_af | 2025-06-07 19:47:24+00:00
Didn't know these details about Musk's family.

It doesn't surprise me at all that a guy so gross in his personal life comes from a gross family. Everything about Musk is deranged.

Do you remember the (not so distant era) when Musk was the nerd's and hacker's darling? SpaceX, his genius, his vision! This was before we knew much about his personal life and opinions. It seems so long ago now... Before he took to Twitter to claim it was OK to coup countries for their resources, or started naming children like mathematical formulas.
by rayiner | 2025-06-07 19:47:34+00:00
> I think that is a misrepresentation of the fundamental progressive position, which is to make progress but never at the cost of the marginalized.

That just means that the marginalized become an anchor preventing progress. We can’t have nice things until we solve the problems of the bottom quantile—which we never will.

If progressives had been in charge, America and everything it created wouldn’t exist. They never would have allowed us to displace the Indian tribes so the land could be put to better use.
by MPSFounder | 2025-06-07 19:47:35+00:00
Curious about your response to the other dude's reply. It is irrefutable that over 10k children (lowest estimate) have been killed by the IDF. Btw I am very much western in my values and morals, but I think it would be foolish to state that the war in Iraq, which we know for a fact was based on lies, or Israel's occupation and genocide, constitute our western spirit. They are stains on every moral (western, religious, or ethical), and hate begets hate. Ghaza is very interesting as far as I am concerned. There is no world where the occupation and settlements imposed by Israel are aligned with our morals, but it is interesting how a diaspora of religious individuals, who ascribe to a devoted loyalty to a fictional nation (Israel, based on the Jewish Bible), can excuse genocides, curtailing the first amendment and free speech, and every western value you speak of, for its sake. This is but case A. Iraq is currently a mess (and for the last decade, was worse because of our invasion), while Afghanistan fell under an oppressive regime the moment we left. But I must come back to Ghaza. I think it is an abomination on every western society, and I am amazed at the stronghold Israel has over us. Western figures (like Ben Shapiro) call for wars against half of our country (leftists), and have no issue bullying refugees, LGBT members that are American, or preventing Americans from marrying who they wish or being themselves. Yet, any critique of Israel, and de facto our foreign policy, is a red line. I view these people, and those comments in the spirit of yours, as treacherous. Being critical of one's country is what makes America great, for if we do not hold ourselves accountable, then we might fall victims to those oppressions that made America a haven in the days of yore.
by pcdoodle | 2025-06-07 19:47:36+00:00
Oh man, he's a legend. My condolences to any family members passing by in remembrance. My highest respect goes to those with the tenacity and character required to force a good idea into existence. Bill inspired many people. While reading about him in "Revolution in the Valley", it felt like it recalibrated my own personal compass and gave me a sense of purpose in my own endeavors.
by emehex | 2025-06-07 19:48:15+00:00
I haven't seriously used R in nearly a decade but I still miss (and think about) dpylr and the hadleyverse...

A few years ago I made a package called "redframes" that tried to "solve" all of my frustrations with pandas, make data wrangling feel more like R, while retaining all the best bits of Python...

Alas, it never really took off. For those curious: https://github.com/maxhumber/redframes
by leptons | 2025-06-07 19:48:15+00:00
It's a race to the (AI-slop) bottom. But most of the inhabitants of the world will barely notice.

I have to wonder if movies will improve or not with AI, because some really stupid franchises have seen stupid amounts of money, while most people barely watch the actually good creative stuff. We're already swamped with unwatchable schlock, but I'm not sure it will improve if we automate it. It's the same people spending the money to make, promote, and distribute movies, the AI doesn't have any money to make a movie or the impetus. But if most people cared about art, creativity, and good storytelling, there probably wouldn't be a race to the bottom in the entertainment industry.

Idiocracy was a documentary, and "ASS" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kJZjU2k5abs is what the AI will calculate we want to see, and it will win awards.
by bigyabai | 2025-06-07 19:48:21+00:00
1. You and I both clearly agree that superintelligent AI doesn't exist. Anyone that's "seriously" talking about superintelligent AI has not seen it and is extrapolating from guesswork. Their credibility on this subject directly correlates to how seriously they understand AI from a technical perspective. Right now, we are eschewing every technical detail to assume that somehow, superintelligence exists one day. I cannot give you any further benefit of the doubt.

2. AI requires heuristic variability. It cannot operate or generate unique responses without seeding some form of entropy. Regardless of whether you think AI is smart or dumb, this creates a system of mutual distrust where researchers will never know whether they've created superintelligence. ChatGPT could give you the solution to world peace right now, and you'd probably re-roll it because it's not exciting enough. Conversely, many people will take superintelligent responses too seriously and beg for fake solutions to issues that cannot be resolved. We cannot square the issue of "consistently correct" and "always different" with AI.

3. We already have a framework for evaluating AI impact, it's called "the last 5 years of your waking life". You may notice that AI isn't replacing much of anything. Your favorite YouTubers and musicians are still human. Your favorite joke is still decades old. If a superintelligent ChatGPT materialized overnight, I don't think any of that would change. Maybe that's because we're dumber than the AI, but maybe it's also because we have irreconcilable differences.
by DougMerritt | 2025-06-07 19:49:35+00:00
...which needs more to explain it, such as (if true): "the diversity originating in Africa did not migrate out of Africa, and the gene lines that did leave Africa did not develop as much diversity as had existed in the ancestral gene pool, despite facing far more diversity in climate than exists in Africa".

And then I would again ask of the latter, "what? Why not?"

Ultimately: Why did Africa stimulate so much gene pool diversity? It seems more homogenous in environments than the rest of the world that Homo Sapiens emigrated to.

And there would have been cross-breeding between African subpopulations. Environmental barriers in sub-Saharan Africa are minimal in terms of gene movement, aren't they?
by masklinn | 2025-06-07 19:50:43+00:00
The light mode is fine, but you're right the dark mode is truly awful, the code blocks are unreadable.

edit: for some reason the author overrode the background color on code blocks via an inline style of

background-color:#f0f0f0

from

var(--code-background-color) = #f2f2f2

to make the background nigh imperceptibly darker, but then while the stylesheet properly switches the to #01242e in dark mode the inline override stays and blows it to bit.

Not that it's amazing if you remove the inline stle, on account of operators and method names being styled pretty dark (#666 and #4070a0).
by api | 2025-06-07 19:53:10+00:00
I used the term raiding because this is what it’s called in chimps, our closest genetic relatives. This is primate behavior.

The proto-genocidal rhetoric you are hearing in the US right now is probably linked to fear that in the near future nobody below, say, the top 10% of the ability curve, will have a job. So close the borders and kick out “outsiders” and go after minorities. Chimp behavior.

By that I don’t mean to say these people are uniquely dumb. My point is that this is brain stem encoded behavior that can be triggered in all humans.
by coryrc | 2025-06-07 19:54:02+00:00
Freeway is a great example in more ways: large swaths of society were destroyed in the process of making them (less purposefully in the case of the Internet/social media I think) and paradoxically reduced social connections despite seemingly making it easier to travel/connect. Now everywhere is unsafe because of car dependence/social media everywhere (i.e. Pauly Likens meeting adults on grindr https://www.newsweek.com/missing-teen-dead-pauly-likens-dash...)
by kgwgk | 2025-06-07 19:54:07+00:00
> The annualized returns of bond ETFs cannot be relied upon because

The annualized returns are calculated from the prices you pay when you buy and the price you get when you sell. Whatever you think they do seems irrelevant. The fact is that you put $100 in 2002 and you get $250 in 2020 (if you reinvest the money they give you every month - if you spend it you will have only $140 left but that doesn't seem the right way to calculate things).

> also you don't get coupon payments on ETFs.

You get distributions. You know that, right?

> Take a look for yourself, the TLT fund was ~99% 1.8 10YR treasuries

That would be remarkable for an ETF that "seeks to track the investment results of an index composed of U.S. Treasury bonds with remaining maturities greater than twenty years." Where do you suggest that I look?

The price of the TLT share has dropped more than 50% from July 2020 to October 2023. Imagine if they had not been manipulating the price! (In total returns terms it's slightly better but not that much: a 48% drawdown.)
by the_af | 2025-06-07 19:54:08+00:00
> He supposedly learned it after the fact.

When exactly? He was friends with Trump and working in his administration until a few weeks ago (they hugged in his going away ceremony), and he broke up for reasons explicitly not about any pedophile rings.

So to lob this accusation now doesn't seem like it's because he just learned of it.

I don't know what Musk really believes. The guy behaves like a mentally unstable person, but maybe it's an act? What is true is that accusing the president of the US of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.

The scuba diver cannot really fight back, but I think the president of the US might.

(Based on replies to my comments elsewhere, I feel compelled to clarify I'm in no way defending Trump. I think this is a fight between two nasty people).
by rsync | 2025-06-07 19:54:13+00:00
Displaying graphics (of any kind) without a framebuffer is called "racing the beam" and is technically quite difficult and involves managing the real world speed of the electron beam with the cpu clock speed ... as in, if you tax the cpu too much the beam goes by and you missed it ...

The very characteristic horizontally stretched graphics of the Atari 2600 are due to this - the CPU was actually too slow, in a sense, for the electron beam which means your horizontal graphic elements had a fairly large minimum width - you couldn't change the output fast enough.

I strongly recommend:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam

... which goes into great detail on this topic and is one of my favorite books.
by Lerc | 2025-06-07 19:54:14+00:00
>Comparing teaching other humans to "teaching" a model is absurd.

Bold conclusion, but why is it absurd?

New ways of making thinks has always had an impact on the old ways of making things. Are you proposing we should seek no new ways of making things? I have been described as a creative person by some. The notion of restricting what people can make and how they can make them does not gel with my idea of creativity.

I am sympathetic to those who might have their source of income affected. That is not a problem with the current change, it has been a problem with all change throughout history. If the welfare of people is really your concern then your issue is not with the change but how society supports people effected by that change.
by saghm | 2025-06-07 19:55:10+00:00
I mean, they "decided" that it was an emergency that they needed to let it happen instead of waiting to actually decide if it's legal or not. They literally are saying that it would take too long for the case to finish for them to be able to do the work they want, which means that they only will "decide" in the sense you're describing after it's too late to do anything about. So in this case, yes, they've effectively "decided" it's allowed for this administration, and maybe we'll find out if it's legal or not in time for the next one.
by Ancapistani | 2025-06-07 19:55:23+00:00
> Because if internet/tech is the gun then the clear solution is “not giving your children guns”.

Funnily enough, no. The clear solution is to ensure that you talk to your children about [gun|online] safety. Show them how to use the [gun|internet] safely. Make sure they know that they can ask to use your [gun|device] any time they'd like -- but only under your supervision.

Take the mystery away through education and experience, and like anything else [guns|the internet] becomes just another part of adult life. Just one more thing that can be dangerous if used incorrectly.
by yhavr | 2025-06-07 19:56:57+00:00
besides porn, things like facebook, tiktok, instagram, reddit... generalising, it's everything that acts as a button "gib me more novelty" that one can press as much and as frequently as they want.

surely, not everybody is hooked by these things, and it's definitely possible to use them without harm, but sometimes it requires training and (self-)awareness.
by chistev | 2025-06-07 19:56:58+00:00
See that? See now, that's just the wrong way to look at it. 'Cause Joe had his time, and Omar put an end to that. Then Marlo had his time, short as it was, and the police put an end to that. And now, muthafucka, it's OUR time. Mines and yours. But instead of just shuttin' up and kickin' in, you gonna stand there cryin' that "back in the day" shit.

There ain't no "back in the day," nigga! Ain't no nostalgia to this shit here! There's just the street, and the game, and what happen here today.
by absurdwebsite | 2025-06-07 19:56:58+00:00
I’ve been exploring the idea of using one-time investments at birth to create self-sustaining retirement systems — not as charity, but as a compound-interest-powered policy model.

Basic math:

$3,284 invested at birth

10% average annual return (S&P 500 historical average)

Held for 60 years

Final value: ~$1,000,000

This isn’t wishful thinking — it’s Warren Buffett’s exact formula: start early, let time do the work.

Currently, retirement contributions typically begin around age 25–30. But starting at birth unlocks the full power of compounding — something policy almost completely ignores.

Even many municipalities already offer baby grants ($500–1,000). But if just a portion of that were invested long-term, the difference would be staggering.

Here’s a simple petition I launched to push this forward as policy: https://chng.it/D2RMjjGGKf

I’d love to hear the HN crowd’s take:

Would this work globally?

Are there legal/ethical/systemic blockers?

Has anyone done this personally for their children?

It feels like planting a financial tree at birth — and letting it grow for decades.
by kelseyfrog | 2025-06-07 19:57:26+00:00
Debatable. Capitalism has a kill count of 100 million and shows no signs of slowing down. Death counts linked to capitalism and neoliberalism are cumulative, indirect, and often undercounted because they manifest as "normal" outcomes of policy: poverty, malnutrition, or ecological collapse. Capitalism and neoliberalism externalize death ie: they make it appear as an individual or national failure, not a systemic one.