MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AngryData | 2025-06-01 09:17:38+00:00
Just my personal theory, but maybe universities wanted to avoid being considered just pay-to-test institutions that couldn't justify their insane and continuously rising costs when the only thing that really mattered for a degree was passing an exam. Someone spending thousands of dollars just to skip every class but then show up and pass the exam test is not a good look for the university and could devalue the entire thing from the perspective of the public and potential future students. But if someone is required to go to every class nobody can easily claim the classes were pointless or bogus for passing exams and getting a degree because nobody can do that. Increases in overall schooling costs can also be explained away as more invested in classes whether it was true or not. And it makes people who were forced to attend classes whether they wanted to or needed to look disfavorably upon the potential for future students to be allowed to simply pass an exam by completely itself, in a sort of bucket of crabs situation where people think "I had to go through all this bogus stuff for my piece of paper, these younger kids should have to too!"

But I have zero qualifications for any of these opinions other than having been forced to attend a number of nearly worthless university classes that were pointless in the face of just reading the course book. Of course I also had some classes that were worth way more than just the book material, but probably half the classes I had to take I felt were dubiously useful to start with, not to mention the absolutely terrible actual class, and forcing people to attend to get a passing grade was just there to prevent 95% of the class being empty every week.
by perching_aix | 2025-06-01 09:17:38+00:00
> So, it is your opinion that the mere expression of opinion "without anything else" is not allowed in a discussion?

This is not what I said, no: I said that asserting your opinion over others' and then suddenly pretending to be in a debate is "not allowed" (read: is no way to have a proper discussion).

A mere expression of opinion would have been like this:

> [I believe] LLMs don't understand.

And sure, having to stick an explicit "I think / I believe" everywhere is annoying. But it became necessary, when all the other things you had to say continued to omit this magic phrase, and it became clearly intentionally not present, when you started talking as if you made any arguments of your own. Merely expressing your opinion is not what you did, even when reading it charitably. That's my problem.

> Would your own contribution to the discussion pass your own test?

And so yes, I believe it does.

> You might have overlooked that I provided extensive arguments all around in this thread. Please reconsider.

I did consider this. It cannot be established that the person whose comment you took a whole lot of issue with also considered those though, so why would I do so? And so, I didn't, and will not either. Should I change my mind, you'll see me in those subthreads later.
by davidcalloway | 2025-06-01 09:17:41+00:00
So many assumptions here that it's hard to know where to start. The fact that I prefer a mindset which prioritizes time with friends and family is extrapolated into a caricature of me as a freeloader. It's a bit of a stretch.

On that note, you seem to be saying that immigration is a form of freeloading in general. But the expense of my upbringing all happened in America, and I basically arrived ready to contribute right away in Germany. And I've paid plenty of taxes along the way.

At the end you make wild assumptions about my political support for which you have no evidence. I'm aware that Germany faces serious issues surrounding immigration, but I didn't think rhetoric which paints the current picture as a catastrophe and inevitable decline into chaos is very helpful.

There are so many other points... It's hard to know what set you off by my mere remark that the author is largely correct in his observations and I prefer living in a country that values free time as well as work!
by zevon | 2025-06-01 09:18:12+00:00
Of course sewers are amazing but they are used for a lot more than toilets. My point was: Composting toilets do not need to take up much more space than water-based toilets and it's entirely feasible to use them in many living settings. It's also possible to make use of the "waste" by composting it further, using urine as fertilizer and so on.
by constantcrying | 2025-06-01 09:18:48+00:00
>Nobody said local anywhere though, right?

I was speaking in very general terms about the subject, I was not making mathematically correct statements. Your are completely correct about the counter example.

You actually need some stronger assumptions, namely that f is C^1, meaning it has a continous derivative. In that case any function f defined on a compact set K has a continuous derivative f' which assumes its maximum on K, giving Lipschitz continuity. Every function in C^1 on K is Lipschitz, yet not every Lipschitz function is C^1 or even differentiable.

To be more specific and to give the reason Lipschitz functions are important, look at the following statement from Wikipedia. "A Lipschitz function g : R → R is absolutely continuous and therefore is differentiable almost everywhere, that is, differentiable at every point outside a set of Lebesgue measure zero."

Given this I hope that you can understand what I said about Lipschitz functions being a weaker version of differentiabilty.
by user_7832 | 2025-06-01 09:20:31+00:00
Tangential but I find modern presentation software bizarrely “broken”. It’s like the xerox (PARC?) “everything is paper” analogy is the only way to do things.

Presentations seem to be a way of getting whatever text and photos you want to put, and hope the reader can read between the lines and get value out of it. Just look at powerpoint’s smart art examples for starters… and compare them with any professional published report by any large agency. A medium which allows animations should not be behind a static PDF, yet if you want to make your ppt that polished you need to spend an inordinate amount of time as ppt doesn’t support any of the nicer stuff natively.

I haven’t used miro’s extension for powerpoint but I suspect whatever it allows would be far superior to what Microsoft allows natively.
by DonHopkins | 2025-06-01 09:21:16+00:00
It's been done, but there are legal and ethical issues with photographing children's buttholes.

Scientists Working on Toilet That Identifies You by Your Butthole Many users "wouldn’t, for very good reasons, like cameras pointing up their bottoms.":

https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-toilet-identifies-b...

Anal-genital viewing device and method:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110083264A1/en

A Very Suggestive Toilet | Alpine Shepherd Boy | Better Call Saul:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR1m29cNVsc
by Grimblewald | 2025-06-01 09:21:55+00:00
ok, have an amateur implement a hand-written Fourier transform in C, and have it beat numpy's implementation. There, now you have two examples, and there are loads more, like image and signal processing in general, handling data frame operations like grouping / joining things, big integer arithmetic / cryptography in general, just plain old sorting, etc.

Amateurs and even some folks who have worked with these things for a while won't beat off the shelf python calls to highly optimized and well constructed libraries.
by immibis | 2025-06-01 09:22:42+00:00
There's no end - it's just Trump following his learned or innate behaviour.

Same behaviour that bankrupted every institution he's ever been in charge of before. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results.

It's possible he'll stop chickening out to win his internal argument against that reporter who said he always chickens out. Feeling like he's winning seems to be important to him and he holds grudges for a long time. In that case the American economy goes bye bye.

We already know he wants to end the dollar reserve currency status, because he said so - trade deficit and reserve currency status are different words for the same thing.
by atombender | 2025-06-01 09:24:53+00:00
The implementation of WithMeta() is flawed. Not only is it not concurrency-safe, every nested call will be modifying the parent map.

The way to do this in a safe and performant manner is to structure the metadata as a tree, with a parent pointing to the previous metadata. You'd probably want to do some pooling and other optimizations to avoid allocating a map every time. Then all the maps can be immutable and therefore not require any locks. To construct the final map at error time, you simply traverse the map depth-first, building a merged map.

I'm not sure I agree with the approach, however. This system will incur a performance and memory penalty every time you descend into a new metadata context, even when no errors are occurring. Building up this contextual data (which presumably already exists on the call stack in the form of local variables) will be constantly going on and causing trouble in hot paths.

A better approach is to return a structured error describing the failed action that includes data known to the returner, which should have enough data to be meaningful. Then, every time you pass an error up the stack, you augment it with additional data so that everything can be gleaned from it. Rather than:

val, err := GetStuff() if err != nil { return err }

You do:

val, err := GetStuff() if err != nil { return fmt.Errorf("getting stuff: %w") }

Or maybe:

val, err := GetStuff() if err != nil { return wrapWithMetadata(err, meta.KV("database", db.Name)) }

Here, wrapWithMetadata() can construct an efficient error value that implements Unwrap().

This pays the performance cost only at error time, and the contextual information travels up the stack with a tree of error causes that can be gotten with `errors.Unwrap()`. The point is that Go errors already are a tree of causes.

Sometimes tracking contextual information in a context is useful, of course. But I think the benefit of my approach is that a function returning an error only needs to provide what it knows about the failing error. Any "ambient" contextual information can be added by the caller at no extra cost when following the happy path.
by buserror | 2025-06-01 09:27:09+00:00
While I don't use UTC for my local devices, I use UTC for any logs on remote machines, servers etc. It solves all kind of problems of trying to remember or have to care about where they are (I have machines in multiple time zones).

But yes I wish sometimes everyone had one standard time, trying to book a meeting with Chinese people AND west coast people while I am on the GMT line are a nightmare, as it isn't even the same day anymore!
by hualaka | 2025-06-01 09:27:32+00:00
1. nature can add methods to built-in types, example

fn int.to_string() { }

I haven't considered whether union types can add methods, so I tested it, and it seems to be possible, but this may cause some unexpected behavior, so maybe I should disable this possibility for now.

type test_t = int|null

fn test_t.hello() { println('hello world') }

2. Enum support is planned. I plan to use type declarations. Why hasn't enum been added yet? Nature has adopted a conservative syntax design, and I hope to hear more opinions and avoid affecting existing functionality as much as possible when adding syntax features.

type weekly = enum {}

So methods can be added to enums.

fn weekly.found() { }

3. UTF-8 should be solvable via a library. I haven't thought much about UTF-8 yet, but if it can enhance nature's usability, I'll implement it as soon as possible. Usability is a key focus for nature moving forward.

4. Select{} timeout handling does require a special timer channel, which will be addressed in the standard library. Currently, it can only be handled via ch.try_recv() and ch.try_send(), which do not block the channel.

5. Actually, this is the first time I've heard of the XDG standard. I will study and understand the specification.

---

I am not an experienced programming language designer, so thank you for your questions. I will carefully consider them.
by davidcalloway | 2025-06-01 09:28:49+00:00
Ah, now that I see this comment, I'm guessing you're one of the ones that flagged the post.

You're surely more knowledgeable than the author about America and Europe, but he's not commenting about the differences of those two things.

He's only remarking that he's observed a general difference in the mindsets in the two cultures.

As pointed out by another comment, it's a fairly broad observation that many have noticed.
by machekb | 2025-06-01 09:29:27+00:00
Thanks! Leap doesn't currently use an MCP, but it we've build the same sort of logic for reading information from the Encore app's runtime into the Leap application itself. We found it was more controllable and token efficient.

Encore does have an MCP server now though, for local dev: https://github.com/encoredev/encore/releases/tag/v1.47.0
by lifestyleguru | 2025-06-01 09:30:17+00:00
"digital nomad" is what you say when you travel and stay somewhere longer but don't want people to think you are a hobo or member of organized crime. Actually doing any constructive work in a rental without kitchen, washing machine, and equipped with 20 USD D-Link router? In a hostel or aparthotel with people randomly snoring, yelling, doing random weird and creepy things? I don't think that's possible.
by camgunz | 2025-06-01 09:32:12+00:00
I don't mean to be dismissive, but haven't we solved this by using different endpoints? There's so many virtues: you avoid head of line blocking; you can implement better filtering (eg "sort comments by most popular"); you can do live updates; you can iterate on the performance of individual objects (caching, etc).

---

I broadly see this as the fallout of using a document system as an application platform. Everything wants to treat a page like a doc, but applications don't usually work that way, so lots of code and infra gets built to massage the one into the other.
by ghaff | 2025-06-01 09:34:22+00:00
For a lot of routine internal corporate stuff, they sort of need to do double duty and the presenter needs to just skip over reading a lot of the fine print. Even if they want to spend the time to create a separate document, most people won't read it.

For a conference presentation, I may create speaker notes or include a link to background material but basically I feel no requirement to try to put everything I may talk about on the page.
by keybored | 2025-06-01 09:35:53+00:00
> As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them; and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land, and in the price of the greater part of commodities makes a third component part.

Wealth of Nations
by kkfx | 2025-06-01 09:36:21+00:00
A small notes: everyone seems to imaging eVTOL for cities, but hey, they are not for them at all. Look at https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... then see some advertisements like

- https://www.unmannedairspace.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/04...

- https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt31d6b0704ba9...

they are made for spread living because this is the sole form of living where we can really implement the Green New Deal, but most people fails not only to realize but to accept such damn simple reality, as they fails to accept that a condo consume more natural resources to be built than single-family homes and sheds one per apartment/shop in the condo and also more natural resources to evolve.

Until such reality, because that's what it is will not be understood eVTOL news will be like news from an unclear future no one think could be real.
by hualaka | 2025-06-01 09:36:22+00:00
This is an advertisement, and I usually don't put “no LLVM” in the title or use it as a promotional feature.

I posted this project on HackNews a few times, but it quickly sank to the bottom. Maybe “no LLVM” might pique some people's interest in the project, so I added it. Actually, I posted this link a few days ago and had already given up on it, but unexpectedly, it suddenly appeared on the HackNews homepage.

I now need some attention, which will give the Nature project more capital.
by uxcolumbo | 2025-06-01 09:36:32+00:00
Figma has so many things on the go (Sites, Make, etc), I doubt Slides is going to get the investment and TLC it needs.

I also try to avoid cloud first. If servers are slow or down or you're locked out for whatever reason, you won't have access to your own files.

Prefer apps like Powerpoint or Keynote. Local first and back up to the cloud.
by 3cats-in-a-coat | 2025-06-01 09:37:57+00:00
I often think this is the crux to the Great Filter. To overcome our natural, purely economic behavior, such as this paradox, and act intelligently considering long-term effects and sustainability.

Because it's easy to just drift along with the tide. Even bacteria follow those "economic" laws with regards to replication, food/energy, competition and so on. It takes no effort. And the only thing that keeps bacteria in check is that there is someone above them, limiting them.

We want to be on top, but we don't act with the according responsibility. We can learn this lesson through misery and pain. But this is also how bacteria learn. It'd be sad if we can't do better.

Notice all multicellular organisms exist through their cells implementing such restraint. Cells restrain themselves on function (gene expression) and on replication. When they stop doing that, they revert to pre-organism behavior, and we call it cancer.

We call ourselves a society, but we're only experiencing brief flashes of what this means. Insects like ants and bees are literally better at it, than we are. Lots of work to be done...
by bmacho | 2025-06-01 09:38:26+00:00
> I improvised my post-2 work by simply washing with the shower pistol whose cord is long enough to reach behind me while I'm sitting on the toilet.

> Since then, whenever I search for a new apartment to rent, this became one of the criteria I look for! I simply can't go back to just dry wiping, ever.

If the cord is not long enough you can step in the shower/bathtub (if you are abled ofc) to wash yourself.
by threeducks | 2025-06-01 09:40:32+00:00
> Why not have written exams?

That is what we do now. Some reasons why we preferred oral exams before:

1. In order to write a written exam, you have to create a written exam.

2. Scheduling is more difficult. You have to reserve a room for the exam, ensure that the date does not collide with other exams, and students have to plan their vacations around it. For oral exams, you only have to schedule two people, which allows for much greater flexibility.

3. During oral exams, you can probe a bit deeper if you notice that a student did not understand the question correctly, but still knows the solution. In contrast, in a written exam, there is no way for the student to recover from an initially incorrect understanding.

4. It is much easier to cheat on a written exam, especially since there have been all kinds of technological improvements, like ear canal earphones, tiny cameras, glasses with integrated AI assistants, polarized smart watches and who knows what else.
by ksec | 2025-06-01 09:40:41+00:00
Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. 14 Years. His Presentation was legendary. iPhone was introduced in 2007. 18 years.

The world should have learned what a great presentation is and what presentation software should be like. And yet nearly 20 years later No Slides or presentation software, including MS Powerpoint is even at the level of Keynote in 2007.

If there is one thing I learned, is that even if you ask people to copy, making a 100% exact replica in itself is hard enough. Most people cant even copy exact and they ignore the small details. They copy and make things worse much like Microsoft in the 90s and 00s.

And this at the end may come down to taste. Just like Stave Jobs said, the biggest problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste. They do not have the craftsmanship or the product genius to make a call on what is a great product or a bad product. Instead a great product is distilled into one that sell or not, by the sales and marketing people, which is the current Apple.
by j1elo | 2025-06-01 09:40:50+00:00
I think this is the way to bubble up error messages that I like the most. Simple, not needing any additional tools, and very practical (sometimes even better than a stack trace).

The idea is to only add information that the caller isn't already aware of. Error messages shouldn't include the function name or any of its arguments, because the caller will include those in its own wrapping of that error.

This is done with fmt.Errorf():

userId := "A0101" err := database.Store(userId); if err != nil { return fmt.Errorf("database.Store({userId: %q}): %w", userId, err) }

If this is done consistently across all layers, and finally logged in the outermost layer, the end result will be nice error messages with all the context needed to understand the exact call chain that failed:

fmt.Printf("ERROR %v\n", err)

Output:

ERROR app.run(): room.start({name: "participant5"}): UseStorage({type: "sqlite"}): Store({userId: "A0101"}): the transaction was interrupted

This message shows at a quick glance which participant, which database selection, and which integer value where used when the call failed. Much more useful than Stack Traces, which don't show argument values.

Of course, longer error messages could be written, but it seems optimal to just convey a minimal expression of what function call and argument was being called when the error happened.

Adding to this, the Go code linter forbids writing error messages that start with Upper Case, precisely because it assumes that all this will be done and error messages are just parts of a longer sentence:

https://staticcheck.dev/docs/checks/#ST1005
by throwawayObvs27 | 2025-06-01 09:41:44+00:00
Have you seen a patient presenting with Huntington's? I wouldn't wish that suffering on my worst enemy.

The chance is 50% for every child of a person with Huntington's. Is it ethical to deliberately have children knowing that they have a 50% chance of of their lifespan being cut in half, then dying in unimaginable pain guaranteed? There is always a risk for birth defects, but this one is a _choice_. Some people knowingly choose this fate for their children instead of adopting - that feels so wrong to me.

Even ignoring the humanitarian side, think of the societal cost. Every patient needs expensive round-the-clock care in the later stages, families and friends watch their loved ones deteriorate. If I was born knowing I had an early expiration date with that fate, I'd certainly need therapy. It's completely preventable.