MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hintymad | 2025-06-11 17:03:22+00:00
> I still don't understand the benefit of relying on someone/something else to write your code and then reading it

Maybe the key is this: our brains are great at spotting patterns, but not so great at remembering every little detail. And a lot of coding involves boilerplate—stuff that’s hard to describe precisely but can be generated anyway. Even if we like to think our work is all unique and creative, the truth is, a lot of it is repetitive and statistically has a limited number of sound variations. It’s like code that could be part of a library, but hasn’t been abstracted yet. That’s where AI comes in: it’s really good at generating that kind of code.

It’s kind of like NP problems: finding a solution may take exponentially longer, but checking one takes only polynomial time. Similarly, AI gives us a fast draft that may take a human much longer to write, and we review it quickly. The result? We get more done, faster.
by magicalhippo | 2025-06-11 17:03:32+00:00
Here in Norway there had been increasing focus on the long-term consequences of working on oil rigs.

There's been several studies[1] showing multiple different forms of cancer are over-represented among oil workers[2], and linked to benzene and crude oil exposure.

Granted Norway's oil is exclusively offshore, so exposure might be different.

But, contrary to what a former boss supposedly told his rig workers, just because oil is a natural product does imply it and its processing is harmless.

[1]: https://www.fhi.no/en/cancer/studies/cancer-among-offshorewo...

[2]: https://www.forskning.no/arbeidsvilkar-olje-og-gass/olje-pio...
by alexjplant | 2025-06-11 17:03:41+00:00
I'm convinced that "Pet Sounds" is lyrically a proto-emo album dressed up in an instrumental psychedelic doo-wop trenchcoat. For years I dismissed it as one of those albums that people pretended to like to seem smart until I was mature enough to understand it. Now it's one of my favorites.

RIP.
by spauldo | 2025-06-11 17:03:51+00:00
I can't speak for NetBSD's install guide, other than I didn't have trouble with it when I last installed it. Also, floppies are still relevant for the BSDs, since a lot of people use BSDs in retrocomputing.

Regarding "less innovative," I suspect you're just unfamiliar with what goes on with FreeBSD and OpenBSD. There's lots of innovation there. NetBSD stays simple and traditional, but that's an intentional choice.

FreeBSD has a policy that they don't accept undocumented changes. If you add or modify a feature in a program, you have to update any relevant man pages and also the handbook if necessary. I assume NetBSD and OpenBSD have similar rules. The man pages are where the BSDs really shine - the difference is night and day.
by dblohm7 | 2025-06-11 17:04:26+00:00
I worked at Mozilla during this time, originally on desktop and later on mobile.

I think the fundamental problem then (and still a problem today) is that Mozilla only ever had the budget to do Desktop XOR Mobile. Not both.

They basically mortgaged Desktop Firefox to build Firefox OS, but when things didn't pan out was quickly as they liked, they had to revert back to Desktop to save the cash cow.

After that experience, upper management became averse to mobile, to the extent that it was (and probably still is) very difficult to get resources allocated to mobile implementations of Gecko features that are supposed to be cross-platform. In practice many of those features are never implemented with mobile in mind.
by LordDragonfang | 2025-06-11 17:04:31+00:00
Do we know that with certainty? Do we actually?

Because my understanding is that how "thinking" works is actually still a total mystery. How is it we no for certain that the basis for the analog electric-potential-based computing done by neurons is not based on statistical prediction?

Do we have actual evidence of that, or are you just doing "statistical token prediction" yourself?
by ofjcihen | 2025-06-11 17:05:33+00:00
“ It did in 10 minutes what would take me several days to learn and cobble together a bad solution.”

Another way to look at this is you’re outsourcing your understanding to something that ultimately doesn’t think.

This means 2 things: your solution could be severely suboptimal in multiple areas such as security and two because you didn’t bother understanding it yourself you’ll never be able to identify that.

You might think “that’s fine, the LLM can fix it”. The issue with that is when you don’t know enough to know something needs to be fixed.

So maybe instead of carts and oxen this is more akin to grandpa taking his computer to Best Buy to have them fix it for him?
by RollingRo11 | 2025-06-11 17:05:50+00:00
After using it for a couple more days, battery life hasn't really changed from 18. I'm tempted to say that it's better but I don't want to make any claims before I actually track battery life across a week and compare it to my battery life pre-update.

The overheating is a common occurrence, but it doesn't persist. It seems to be certain things (setting the animated backgrounds in iMessage is a good example), but the moment I'm not doing one of those things the temp feels fine. My battery does drop a percent or two during those cases (which sucks), but my typical use of the phone hasn't yielded any noticeable battery life loss compared to 18.5
by toast0 | 2025-06-11 17:07:18+00:00
The math works even better at $35. If you're in a high income economy, and your phone breaks, you might buy a $35 phone as an impulse buy to use while you wait for the phone you want to arrive. Then, when it works better than you expect, you might give it to a late adopter. Or if you're a late adopter, maybe you dip your toe in with a $35 phone.

For low income economies, which is where the majority of people are, and the majority of late adopters of smart phones are, a $35 phone is affordable --- or much closer to affordable than the rest of the market.

If you make a smartphone that works at that price point, the addressable market share is huge. And it could be subsidized by carriers in low income countries, too (see the JioPhone). The class of hardware they were targetting could provide a good experience --- similar specs provided good UX on iOS and reasonable to good UX on Windows Phone.

If you make 1 million $35 phones and none of them sell, that's a waste of $35Million (maybe less, because you presumably have some margin, but maybe more, because R&D). If you make 1 million $500 phones and none of them sell, that's a waste of a lot more money. Around this time frame, I bought several $500 phones for $100 each when they failed; the Amazon Fire phone, the Nextbit Robin, the Essential PH-1; all were a great deal for me, and a colossal waste for the hardware team.
by jihadjihad | 2025-06-11 17:08:49+00:00
Damn. I was literally thinking about the following quote from Dennis Wilson while I was getting ready this morning:

"Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys. He is the band. We're his fucking messengers. He is all of it. Period. We're nothing. He's everything." [0]

It was just a random thought I had this morning, related to how his brothers and father are depicted in Love and Mercy.

For all their abilities and talent, I think Dennis had it right. Brian was the Beach Boys. RIP.

0: https://books.google.com/books?id=eYyovo_AbqAC
by jeroenhd | 2025-06-11 17:09:03+00:00
I never got why people were so mad at the guy behind left-pad. The entire incident showcases the sheer lunacy behind common web frameworks, and the power and control they sacrificed for the ease of use of external dependencies. If your day is ruined because some random guy you've never heard of on the other side of the world got an angry letter from lawyers, maybe take a look at the house of cards your product is based on rather than lay down blame.

left-pad will happen again. Maybe not on NPM, but on crates.io/pypi/Google's go proxy. All it takes is for a developer to join the ICC and piss of Trump and suddenly the code is impossible to find on any of the standard repositories. Even Go will have issues because despite the Github references, all the standard go traffic still goes through Google. Or even worse, someone fights back against a recent invasion and uploads a virus that wipes the drive of whatever locale they're targeting.
by flippyhead | 2025-06-11 17:09:57+00:00
> Dollywood Express, the heritage steam train that operates within Dollywood, has a higher rail ridership than 27 states.

I don't now if it's useful, but this way of putting quanties in context, would be neat to see about all kinds of things. Like how they seem to always do rare things compared to your chance of getting hit by lightning.
by cubefox | 2025-06-11 17:10:43+00:00
I think the fundamental idea behind JEPA (not necessarily this concrete Meta implementation) will ultimately be correct: predicting embeddings instead of concrete tokens. That's arguably what animals do. Next-token prediction (a probability distribution over the possible next tokens) works well for the discrete domain of text, but it doesn't work well for a continuous domain like video, which would be needed for real-time robotics.

For text, with a two-byte tokenizer you get 2^16 (~65.000) possible next tokens, and computing a probability distribution over them is very much doable. But the "possible next frames" in a video feed would already be an extremely large number. If one frame is 1 megabyte uncompressed (instead of just 2 bytes for a text token) there are 2^(8*2^20) possible next frames, which is far too large a number. So we somehow need to predict only an embedding of a frame, of how the next frame of a video feed will look approximately.

Moreover, for robotics we don't want to just predict the next (approximate) frame of a video feed. We want to predict future sensory data more generally. That's arguably what animals do, including humans. We constantly anticipate what happens to us in "the future", approximately, and where the farther future is predicted progressively less exactly. We are relatively sure of what happens in a second, but less and less sure of what happens in a minute, or a day, or a year.
by jonah-archive | 2025-06-11 17:10:49+00:00
I've ridden it before, it's really fun! The two locomotives are Baldwin 2-8-2 Mikados built in 1938/9, more details here: https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=Canada&...

I think my favorite part is when the announcer explains the emergency stop system, and clarifies that getting a cinder in your face doesn't count as an emergency (IIRC they have safety goggles you can wear if you're concerned about it).

EDIT: found a video I took of it going by where you can hear the whistle blow (I was there over the holidays which is why it's decked out for Christmas): https://www.instagram.com/p/B64mteDJUBl/
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-06-11 17:11:02+00:00
> How does the system know whether the new bootloader is legitimate or not?

However it wants to. Maybe the existing bootloader (chosen by the owner rather than the vendor) or the OS it loads has its own signature verification system for update packages, like apt-get. Maybe the OS downloads it from a trusted URL via HTTPS and relies on web PKI. Maybe it uses Kerberos authentication to get it from the organization's own update servers. Maybe it just boots an OS that allows the operator to apply any update they want from a USB stick, but only after authenticating with the OS.

None of that is the firmware's problem, all it has to do is disallow modifications to itself unless the owner has entered the firmware password or the system is booted from the owner-designated trusted bootloader.

> All TPMs have private keys from the factory. They're entirely unrelated to the secure boot keys.

The point isn't which device has the keys, it's that it shouldn't contain any from the factory. Nothing good can come of it.
by MomsAVoxell | 2025-06-11 17:11:51+00:00
Disclaimer; this is clearly going to be about personal tastes.

However, it has to be argued: Taylor hardly breaks through genres to create entirely new ones, as Brian Wilson or Sly Stone did.

Taylor is a ‘safe’ songwriter whose market is intolerant of exceeding the limits of her chosen genre - Brian and Sly, however, can be perceived as being far more progressive as artists, willing not only to break the conformity of their extant music market, but to excel at creating entire new genres on their own.

What is Taylors “Pet Songs”?

Taylor Swift is the least likely of the three to have created her own genre of music outside market expectations. While she’s undeniably innovative, her contributions largely refine and personalize existing genres (country, pop, indie-folk) rather than inventing entirely new ones.

Both Wilson and Stone created groundbreaking sounds—Wilson with orchestral pop and Stone with funk/psychedelic soul—that were more radical departures from their era’s commercial norms.

Between Wilson and Stone, Stone’s creation of funk and his influence across multiple genres (funk, soul, rock, hip-hop) arguably had a broader impact, but Swift’s work, while transformative, operates more within established frameworks.
by mjburgess | 2025-06-11 17:12:08+00:00
That's what the propaganda says, but when we keep explaining it isn't true, and army arrives to repeat adcopy from their favourite tech guru.

All statistical models of the kind in use are interpolations through historical data -- there's no magic. So when you interpolate through historical texts, your model is of historical text.

Text is not a measure of the world, to say, "the sky is blue" is not even reliably associated with the blueness of the sky, let alone that the sky isnt blue (there is no sky, and the atmosphere isn't blue).

These models appear "capture more" only because when you interpret the text you attribute meaning/understanding to it as the cause of its generation -- but that wasnt the cause, this is necessarily an illusion. There is no model of the world in a model of historical text -- there is a model of the world in your head which you associate with text, and that association is exploited when you use LLMs to do more than mere syntax transformation.

LLMs excel most at "fuzzy retrieval" and things like coding -- the latter is principally a matter of syntax, and the former of recollection. As soon as you require the prompt-completion to maintain "semantic integrity" with non-syntactical/retrivable constraints, it falls apart.
by agnosticmantis | 2025-06-11 17:12:13+00:00
Thanks a lot for the recommendations.

Would you recommend the Real Analog course independently?

What does the Propscope one offer that Real Analog doesn’t? The Propscope one looks kinda old so I was wondering what I’d miss if I only used Real Analog.

Also not sure if there’s a parts kit for the Propscope one that I can buy.
by lisper | 2025-06-11 17:12:28+00:00
The comparison of the Dollywood Express ridership to statewide railways is pretty unfair. The Dollywood Express is not really transportation, it's an amusement park ride, more comparable to the Disney Railway than Amtrack, and I'm pretty sure more people ride the Disney Railway than the Dollywood Express. The economics of amusement park rides and actual transportation systems are radically different. (Actually, the Disney Monorail(s) would be a more apt comparison because it actually serves as transportation!)
by refurb | 2025-06-11 17:13:12+00:00
> Again, you either lack basic comprehension of written text, unable to imagine the conversation taking place with a context in mind, and understand that just because the message wasn't communicated the way you would have preferred doesn't mean the message is wrong or contradictory.

I find it hilarious how you try and gaslight me, when even the left-wing media admits Fauci and the CDC lied on several occasions and issued contradictory statements.

https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-...

"One thing is beyond a doubt, however: One of those two statements did not accurately reflect the evidence as Fauci saw it. Such high-profile mixed messages in a short time frame, without substantive new data to justify the change, generated confusion and a backlash from politicians, other experts, and the general public."

Maybe it's your own "ideological beliefs" that stop you from seeing something everyone else sees?
by pona-a | 2025-06-11 17:13:35+00:00
I believe you are making assumptions about my beliefs that don't follow from what I said.

> I believe that systemd won out because they chose to embrace some complexity to solve really hard problems. Let's not pretend that a modern "init" does only system initialization by calling shell scripts and then disappearing.

I made a point to clarify I do not think SysV init scripts are a good solution for most systems Starting the services in a correct maximally parallel order is a constraint satisfaction problem, and many modern alternative init systems understand that. My personal favorite, dinit, explicitly uses the systemd model to great success, being faster than runit or OpenRC with less LoC. If someone finds that too opaque, they are free to use a more imperative init system without any obstacles.

> They chose to solve hard problems and people adopted it. It's not anything more sinister. It's definitely not an "un-auditable mess". It's written in well-formatted C with structure, good tooling, and an open community. You can disagree with the ideology but that's open source for you.

A piece of software being hard to understand doesn't imply it's because it's badly written. systemd is simply more complex as an "enterprise" piece of software. Think about it: RedHat's business is selling support contracts, so they won't risk losing a major contract by not implementing a feature their client needs, even if most won't use it. This both made it more robust and much wider in scope than other init systems, maintained mostly by hobbyist desktops.

For contrast, despite Canonical having killed Upstart in 2014, Google still feels confident enough in its security to deploy it across millions of ChromeOS devices, because it's a simple program that does one thing well, and thus no more risky than any other privileged binary.

> systemd was chosen by distros and users across different communities because it solves hard problems better than the others. We can debate about why that is, but the maintainers of Systemd aren't running smear campaigns against other open source projects. Often systemd is the subject of such ire.

I'm not ascribing any intent to systemd maintainers. But it's undeniable there exists a connection between GNOME, Freedesktop, and systemd, namely that each receive support from RedHat and share the most active RedHat contributors. When systemd releases a new feature, GNOME very soon integrates it, which FreeDesktop then uses as a justification for their new specification, which other desktops soon follow. This often lead us to fast-tracking adoption of genuinely good standards, but there is the confounding factor of funding to their general merit.
by moron4hire | 2025-06-11 17:13:51+00:00
I concur. We did a family trip a few years ago with my parents and my sister and her family. 5 adults (2 in their 60s) and 3 children aged 5 to 8. Pigeon Forge and Dollywood were a great experience for everyone.

My mother has some mobility issues and the park was pretty well laid out for her to get around with an electric scooter. The park has lots of rides for different ages of children. And the surrounding Pigeon Forge area has lots of other attractions to make a jam-packed week of activities.
by mhluongo | 2025-06-11 17:14:56+00:00
We've incubated a private, local-first menstrual tracking app!

My partner is the founder. She's a PMDD sufferer who needed a proper, science-first tracker to treat her hormonal symptoms. After Roe, she didn't feel like she had any options but to build her own app — Embody.

We're getting ready for a security audit and to take it open source. Would love any feedback!

https://embody.space
by Verdex | 2025-06-11 17:15:15+00:00
Thanks for giving details about your workflow. At least for me it helps a lot in these sorts of discussions.

Although, it is interesting to me that the original posting mentioned LLMs "one-shot"ing parsers and this description sounds like a much more in depth process.

"And there is no parser generator [...] that starts with examples [...]"

People. People can generate parsers by starting with examples. Which, again, is more in line with the original "one-shot parsers" comment.

If people are finding LLMs useful as part of a process for parser generation then I'm glad. (And I mean testing parsers is pretty painful to me so I'm interested in the test case generation). However I'm much more interested in the existence or non-existent of one-shot parser generation.
by crazygringo | 2025-06-11 17:15:31+00:00
> The amount of money it's burned on this is giant

It's big, but it's honestly not that big. Most importantly, costs will quickly come down as we realize the limits of the models, the algorithms are optimized and even more-dedicated hardware is built. There's no reason to think it isn't sustainable, it will add up just fine.

But yes, it will attract a ton of advertising, the same curve every service goes through, like Google Search, YouTube, Amazon, etc. Still, just like Google and Amazon (subtly) label sponsored results, I expect LLM's to do the same. I don't think ads will be built into the main replies, because people will quickly lose trust in the results. Rather they'll be fed into a separate prompt that runs alongside the main text, or interrupts it, the way ads currently do, and with little labels indicating paid content. But the ads will likely be LLM-generated.
by cgriswald | 2025-06-11 17:16:01+00:00
All I see here is someone making a claim and someone else making a different claim. They may have erroneously intended the claim in opposition, either missing or interpreting differently the 'interspersed' qualifier. Or, alternatively, they may believe when any ads appeared is more meaningful in the context of this discussion.

I think Google search has gone downhill tremendously to the point of near uselessness and have been a Kagi subscriber for awhile, but I don't see astroturf in this instance. Do you have other examples?
by dijksterhuis | 2025-06-11 17:16:11+00:00
It's less of an "use this to do nasty shit to a bunch of unsuspecting victims" one, and more of a "people can get around your policies when you actually need policies that limit your users".

1. BigEnterpriseOrg central IT dept click the tick boxes to disable outside actions because <INSERT SECURITY FRAMEWORK> compliance requires not using external actions [0]

2. BigBrainedDeveloper wants to use ExternalAction, so uses the method documented in the post because they have a big brain

3. BigEnterpriseOrg is no longer compliant with <INSERT SECURITY FRAMEWORK> and, more importantly, the central IT dept have zero idea this is happening without continuously inspecting all the CI workflows for every team they support and signing off on all code changes [1]

That's why someone else's point of "you're supposed to fork the action into your organisation" is a solution if disabling local `uses:` is added as an option in the tick boxes -- the central IT dept have visibility over what's being used and by whom if BigBrainedDeveloper can ask for ExternalAction to be forked into BigEnterpriseOrg GH organisation. Central IT dept's involvement is now just review the codebase, fork it, maintain updates.

NOTE: This is not a panacea against all things that go against <INSERT SECURITY FRAMEWORK> compliance (downloading external binaries etc). But it would be an easy gap getting closed.

----

[0]: or something, i dunno, plenty of reasons enterprise IT depts do stuff that frustrates internal developers

[1]: A sure-fire way to piss off every single one of your internal developers.