MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nichochar | 2025-06-25 23:24:27+00:00
This analysis is very much on point. I'm building a product in this space (https://getmocha.com), and can share a few more insider insights:

- The churn from companies like lovable is indeed very high, and user frustration is high also.

- There are sub-niches available. Building internal tools is not the same as landing pages is not the same as saas. In the previous website builder market, different players (webflow, squarespace, wix) found and dominated a sub-niche

- The market is way bigger than anyone realizes. Today hundreds of millions for basically early adopters and highly tech-savvy users. This tech can and will go mainstream

- A huge issue with lovable, solved by others like mocha and replit, is the app backend. Lovable took a shortcut and partnered with supabase but that deal will not last. Supabase is losing big on their free tier (had to raise 200M to support it) and both want to capture the margin from the customer. There will be a reckoning.
by Viliam1234 | 2025-06-25 23:24:43+00:00
It was Aurornis who made the claim "Yudkowski has gone back and edited his old endorsement" that EnPissant asked evidence for. And nope, he didn't receive it.

Similarly, Aurornis made a claim that "Scott Alexander predicted at least $250 million in damages from Black Lives Matter protests", when if fact (as the very link provided by Aurornis shows) Scott predicted that the probability of such thing happening was 30%, i.e. it's more likely not to happen.

Elsewhere in this thread, another user, tptacek, claims that "Scott Alexander published some of his best-known posts under his own name". When I asked him for evidence, he said "I know more about this than you, and I'm not invested in this discussion enough to educate you adversarially". Translated: no evidence provided.

.

From my perspective, this all kinda proves my point.

Is the rationality community the only place where people care about evidence? Of course not.

But is the rationality community a rare place where people can ask for evidence in an informal debate and reasonably expect to actually get it? Unfortunately, I think the evidence we got here points towards yes.

Hacker News is a website mostly visited by smart people who are curious about many things. They are even smart enough to notice that some claims are suspicious, and ask for evidence. But will they receive it? No, they usually won't.

And in the next debate on the same topic, most likely the same false claims will be made again, maybe by people who have learned them in this thread. And the claims will be upvoted again.

This is an aspect where the rationality community strives to do better. It is not about some people being smarter than others, or whatever accusations are typically made. It is about establishing social norms where people e.g. don't get upvoted for making unsubstantiated negative claims about someone they don't like, without being asked to back it up, or get downvoted.
by hilbert42 | 2025-06-25 23:24:50+00:00
No, I'd never use a 2-person startup, that's silly and irresponsible. I'd keep my services in-house and use multiple companies to store backups as I've done for decades—as we all used to do before the renting/leasing software (ripoff) model.

Nor would I ever use software that lives on a remote server that I've no direct control over.

Let's hope Trump does more blocking, it's the only way to wake up a lazy sleepy world.

BTW, isn't 'infinitely' somewhat of an exaggeration?
by Aloisius | 2025-06-25 23:25:01+00:00
The limits are defined in what is considered to be a "commercial business purpose":

> (e) “Commercial business purpose” means the processing of personal information that satisfies either of the following criteria:

> (1) Is performed to further a business purpose as defined in subdivision (e) of Section 1798.140 of the Civil Code.

> (2) Is subject to a consumer’s opt-out rights under Sections 1798.120, 1798.121, and 1798.135 of the Civil Code.

Specifically what OP describes is §1798.140(e): https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

So it is fairly limited.
by jiggawatts | 2025-06-25 23:25:10+00:00
Amazon or Wallmart are much better analogies.

Ticketmaster is in no way comparable, because they gouge customers and provide no protections.

Someone in the music industry explained that both bands and venues like Ticketmaster because then Ticketmaster is the "bad guy" and the band can just shrug their shoulders and pretend to be the victim while profiting enormously from Ticketmaster's evil practices.
by jmyeet | 2025-06-25 23:25:35+00:00
So this is another reason why I see Dyson Swarms as being the inevitable evolution of human civilization. Let me explain why.

First, to clarify, a Dyson Swarm is a cloud of orbitals around a star to use most or all of its energy via solar collectors. This was originally called a Dyson Sphere but was renamed because of confusion: people thought a Dyson Swarm was a rigid shell. It never was.

Anyway, the classic orbital is an O'Neil Cylinder, which would be 3-4 miles in diameter and 10-20 miles long. You spin it to get earthlike gravity. With this diameter the rotation isn't likely disconcerting and the centrifugal forces aren't so large as to tear it apart.

This kind of structure could be built with a material no stronger than stainless steel and using solar panels for power. It's relatively low tech. There aren't any exotic physics or exotic static states of matter required. It's basically an engineering problem and can be built incrementally.

Why do I mention this? Because fo rthe distances involved, an interstellar starshhip is basically just an O'Neil Cylinder. You need to support people for centuries. Such a cylinder could get 10s of thousands of people, possibly 100k+ to another system in relative comfort.

So how do you get to another star? The tyranny of the rocket equation means any form of propulsion where you need to carry to propellant just won't work with the possible exception of nuclear fusion.

But what if you didn't have to carry propellant at all? To accelerate or decelerate. That makes it way easier. But how would yo udo that? Easy, at least in theory: solar sails. The solar wind carries pretty significant momentum. A sufficiently large solar sail (and it would have to be large for such a ship) would absolutely be capable of accelerating a ship to at least 0.01c. And you can decelerate with the same solar sail.

You can do even better by collecting energy from the Sun and concentrating it on the sails, which is yet another reason to build a Dyson Swarm.

The energy budget to travel to even our closest star is so vast that we would need to do things like collect most of the Sun's output energy. I personally don't believe FTL is possible. Time dilation only really kicks in meaningfully at >0.99c and I just don't think that's parctical and, if it were, the energy required is even more vast.

In fact, at 0.99c you would suffer drag from the interstellar medium (gas and dust)..

So any intersteallar ship is going to be a generation ship, a habitat.
by Nevermark | 2025-06-25 23:25:55+00:00
For me the Vision Pro is my main machine now (supported by a MacBook Pro). And I absolutely love it.

Which is saying something. My second most ergonomic situation is a 120" screen with two 55" screens tilting in from both sides (both in portrait, so all 3 screen verticals line up). All wall mounted. I started wall mounting to get screens off my desk, at which point it was clear bigger was always better.

But for the Vision it took many rounds of trying third party head gear, and customization, before I could wear it comfortably for unlimited time. I just kept trying things until I got there.

I am an obsessive optimist when it comes to ergonomics. Once the Vision is ergonomic for one's head, then it becomes a super ergonomic solution over all. The screen can be wherever you need it for best neck, back and body posture, whether at a desk, couch, (non-driving) car seat, or in bed. And a very wide screen beats any screen patchwork. Although I would like the Vision even more if I could have more than one Mac driven screen when I wanted to. (Recommend expansion batteries that clip on the original, and round magnetic USB-C cable adapters, for more spontaneous mobility.)

I like the standard Apple straps in a pinch. But my face needs a serious break from the weight they distribute on it, every 30-120 minutes.
by altairprime | 2025-06-25 23:26:50+00:00
> “Towards the end of 2004 I sent a note to somebody I knew here and saying that I was interested in anything that they might have and it turned out that Google was interested in Firefox. They liked the product and they thought it would be good to support its development, so eventually they hired myself and several other people from the Mozilla community to continue development on it.”

https://mozillamemory.org/detailview.php%3Fid=977.html

Presumably then Google developed a competing browser so they could collect more data and not come into constant conflict with Mozilla’s insistence on client-side-only data processing — but, as the interview above notes, the initial engagement appears to be because a coder suggested Google pay for Firefox development.
by allenu | 2025-06-25 23:26:59+00:00
I'm not a huge table top gamer or anything and have checked out my local shop to play with others. It was definitely fun, but I'll admit that it wasn't for me and I stopped going. If you are into board games, you definitely should check them out though. I just found it required more interest in board games than I was willing to partake in when I really just wanted a third space to hang out.

On the flip side, I was into swing dancing for a few years and I found that was a great place to socialize. Of course, like the board games thing, it's not for everyone. That said, I did find it was a bit easier to just show up there and just socialize. Once you're a regular, you don't necessarily have to be constantly dancing or anything. (I did when I got started, though.) You can just hang out and have a good conversation with another regular, and often there's a bar where you can chill with a drink. It's definitely intimidating to go dancing as a newb, though, so I recommend going some place that offers a weekly class. That's a great way to meet other newbies and go to the dance together.
by ben0x539 | 2025-06-25 23:29:17+00:00
When I, as a little child (or at least that is how it feels now), got excited about contributing to open source, it was not the thought that one day my code might help run some giant web platform's infrastructure or ship as part of some AAA videogame codebase that motivated me. The motivation was the idea that my code might be useful to people even with no corporation or business having to be involved!
by ensgoat | 2025-06-25 23:30:11+00:00
I always had trouble understanding advanced indicators, doing manual MTF/Category analysis etc. The whole process was just exhausting - jumping between timeframes, trying to correlate news with price action, missing obvious patterns because there's just too much data to process manually.

So I started working on a tool that can do all those for me. Uses real-time OHLCV data to calculate indicators, has access to internet for getting asset-specific news, and provides AI powered signals and analysis with (optional) custom queries.

Now with acceptable accuracy of signals, I think I'm onto something. It's been 6 months and the tool is more production-grade now, so I opened up a waitlist to get more feedback. I did share on X but figured I could target a more specific audience here who actually understands the difference and help me backtest and fine tune the models/calculations.

This tool is NOT to be compared to 'dumb' tools (eg Tradvio) where you paste a chart image to get AI signals... that's just... nevermind lol. AiQue uses REAL OHLCV data to calculate indicators and passes sometimes up to 2000 lines of data and indicators to AI for analysis.

If you're interested, join the waitlist and I'll reach out: aique.markets
by al_borland | 2025-06-25 23:31:45+00:00
People are busy and can’t accommodate random pop-ins all the time. That is also a nightmare for certain personality types, and is often considered quite rude.

My dad is in his early 70s and still regularly gets together with people from all eras of his life, going all the way back to high school. Old neighbors, former co-workers and employees, and various others he met along the way. Unlike a lot of retirees, he has a rich social life and a packed calendar with dozens of close friends. This was all due to him regularly reaching out and scheduling a meal or activity, or just time to chat, over the course of his life. Friendships don’t just spontaneously last decades, they take effort, especially as people go through different stages of life.
by energywut | 2025-06-25 23:31:45+00:00
You have any data to support that? I've lived in Seattle for 40 years, and crime here is way less of a concern now than it ever has been. Especially violent crime.

My experience also seems to match statistics. So, it would seem that your friend's experience might be the outlier -- I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm saying their experience doesn't match the data and there's at least one anecdote (mine) that runs counter to their anecdote. Seems like a good opportunity to try and find data that supports your hypothesis?
by proc0 | 2025-06-25 23:32:08+00:00
Certainly with that attitude it is. Joke aside I suspect the flaw in this hypothesis is probably in how AGI is defined and/or constrained:

> True AGI—a system capable of general intelligence without human input—cannot exist.

"without human input"... is an extreme constraint that is unfounded. Human intelligence cannot exist without human input. Children learn from others and it would be impossible to create an adult human mind without the input of thousands, if not millions of humans (via textbooks, and lately the Internet).

The easiest way to prove AGI is not possible is to prove that the human mind cannot be simulated in a Turing machine, i.e. there's a quantum factor.
by danans | 2025-06-25 23:34:26+00:00
> Is there really opportunity if you can't afford it?

If your argument is that a suburban lifestyle of convenient access to opportunity is not universally affordable given the current configuration of American society, then I'd be in complete agreement.

Question is what to do about that, if anything.

My preference is to densify the suburbs, allow mixed use development, and add better transit links.
by 0xWTF | 2025-06-25 23:34:46+00:00
I think the current subtrends of things like a resurgence of interest in mechanical watches, fountain pens, steampunk, etc, are sort of a large excursion on a dampening social problem: that technology is too far beyond our comprehension.

Can you even even tell what network stack got you this packet?

How about the protocols that got it from the network to your screen?

How about the quantum mechanics of the phosphors that pushed out the photons?

There are certainly techno-luddites/visionaries who are running their own email servers, but it's a pretty hostile environment for personal email servers. Ignoring the spam, just getting the existing big boys to trust you can be humiliating exercise in futility.

Can I get by without Excel? Sure. Google Sheets? Sure. No spreadsheet at all? Gonna be hard.
by ethbr1 | 2025-06-25 23:35:16+00:00
Microsoft's GUI problem is two-fold.

Firstly, that nobody believes them when they swear that {new GUI framework} will be the future and used for everything. Really. Because this time is not like those other times.

Secondly, pre-release user feedback. Ironic, given other parts of Microsoft do feedback well.

Imho, the only way MS is going to truly displace WinForms at this point is to launch a 5-year project, developed in the open, and guided in part by their community instead of internally.

And toss a sweetener in, like free app signing or something.
by michaelt | 2025-06-25 23:35:17+00:00
> I really don’t understand solo unpaid maintainers who feel “pressure” from users.

Some open source projects which are well funded and/or motivated to grow are giddy with excitement at the prospect you might file a bug report [1,2]. Other projects will offer $250,000 bounties for top tier security bugs [3].

Other areas of society, like retail and food service, take an exceptionally apologetic, subservient attitude when customers report problems. Oh, sir, I'm terribly sorry your burger had pickles when you asked for no pickles. That must have made you so frustrated! I'll have the kitchen fix it right away, and of course I'll get your table some free desserts.

Some people therefore think doing a good job, as an open source maintainer, means emulating these attitudes. That you ought to be thankful for every bug report, and so very, very sorry to everyone who encounters a crash.

Needless to say, this isn't a sustainable way to run a one-person project, unless you're a masochist.

[1] https://llvm.org/docs/Contributing.html#id5 [2] https://dev.java/contribute/test/ [3] https://bughunters.google.com/about/rules/chrome-friends/574...
by SixFeetUp | 2025-06-25 23:37:35+00:00
Join IndyPy and IndyAWS on Tuesday, July 22 at 7pm ET for a joint hybrid meetup focused on real-world automation in the cloud. Austin Ottinger (Anu) will demo a serverless GenAI pipeline that consolidates newsletters into one intelligent feed. Jeff Licquia (Six Feet Up) will showcase Cloud Custodian, an open source policy-as-code tool for cutting costs and enforcing real-time AWS governance. Attend in person at E-gineering (8415 Allison Pointe Blvd, Suite 110, Indianapolis, IN) or join via Zoom. Free and open to all.
by gerdesj | 2025-06-25 23:37:52+00:00
I think a spherical D1 is far more interesting than a Möbius strip in this case.

Dn: after the Platonic solids, Dn generally has triangular facets and as n increases, the shape of the die tends towards a sphere made up of smaller and smaller triangular faces. A D20 is an icosahedron. I'm sure I remember a D30 and a D100.

However, in the limit, as the faces tend to zero in area, you end up with a D1. Now do you get a D infinity just before a D1, when the limit is nearly but not quite reached or just a multi faceted thing with a lot of countable faces?
by abnercoimbre | 2025-06-25 23:38:06+00:00
We run meetups for systems programmers [0] and have mostly addressed these challenges.

> 1. Finding space to have events

Talk to a coffee shop owner. Promise them your group will (reliably) order drinks or snacks. In exchange, every month we get an area "cordoned off" just for us.

> 2. Ensuring that people who said “I’m going” actually end up going.

Aside from sending a general newsletter, I personally ping and catch up with individuals. This is a lot of work. It pays off when they evangelize your event on your behalf.

> 3. Bootstrapping groups such that when I stumble upon The Offline Club, I can signup for something relevant to me, happening a short time from now.

See #2

> 4. Keeping organizers willing to continue hosting events

That's tougher. However, if the event is specialized/niche/unique enough, the organizers will be conferred high social status by the community.

> 5. Keeping away organizers who see it as lead gen for their sales job

Mmm, could we define sales job? On the business front, the meetups are used to promote our (indie) conferences. The meetup groups don't mind when I ask them to buy a ticket. They can just say no and we're not pushy about it.

[0] https://handmadecities.com/meetups
by Arch-TK | 2025-06-25 23:39:16+00:00
I am currently working on a piece of code which I am actively trying to simplify and make smaller. It's not a piece of code which has any business ever getting larger or having more features. The design is such that it is feature complete until a whole system redesign is required at which point the code would be itself wholesale replaced. So I am sitting here trying to codegolf the code down in complexity and size. It's not just important to keep it simple, it's also important to keep it small as this bit of code is, as part of this solution, going to be executed using python -c. All the while not taking the piss and making it unreadable (I can use a minifier for that).
by _fat_santa | 2025-06-25 23:40:21+00:00
Well I guess the key difference is code is deterministic, that is whether an paper accomplishes it's goals is somewhat subjective but with code its an absolute certainty.

I'm sure that if a contributor working on a feature used cursor to initially generate the code but then goes over it to ensure it's working as expected that would be allowed, this is more for those folks that just want to jam in a quick vibe-coded PR so they can add "contributed to the QEMU project" on their resumes.
by rainsford | 2025-06-25 23:40:24+00:00
People care about a lot of technological features of their cars beyond "self-driving". Lots of people are also skeptical of "self-driving" that doesn't reach the level of allowing you to take nap while the car shuttles you to your destination, which Tesla certainly doesn't reach.

Paradoxically, I think the closer you get to real self-driving without actually reaching it, the more skeptical people will become since it lulls you into a false sense of security. A car that mostly seems like it will drive itself but will occasionally and unpredictably try to kill you is much more concerning for most people than a car that helps you out but presents no illusion that you can stop paying attention.
by Aloisius | 2025-06-25 23:42:31+00:00
> Basically, CIPA is a 1994 law

CIPA is a 1967 law. It's been amended numerous times though.

> rather than adding a blanket exception for commercial purposes

It's not a blanket exemption. It's limited to specific commercial purposes listed in Section 1798.140(e) or when it allows a consumer to opt-out in a reasonable way.
by disruptiveink | 2025-06-25 23:42:37+00:00
It was Bill fucking Atkinson. Not a disposable random contractor you hire by the dozen when you need to build more CRUD APIs.

At that time at Apple, even as an IC, Bill had lines of communication to Steve and was extremely valued. There's absolutely no doubt he could get "middle manager shenanigans" gone simply by not complying or "maliciously complying". Hell, I've seen ICs far less valuable, or even close to negative value get away with stunts far worse than these, succeed and keep their jobs. Out of all the stories in Folklore.org, this is the one you have an issue with?!
by energywut | 2025-06-25 23:42:46+00:00
Putting poor, desperate people in jail isn't going to solve the systemic issues that create poor, desperate people.

Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen. It costs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to house an inmate every year, to say nothing of the damage it causes that inmate. Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the future.

A person would have to be stealing like 40 bottles of mouthwash every single day for it to be cheaper to jail an inmate rather than just replace the mouthwash for the business. Cases like that also clog the justice system and prevent solving more serious crimes, deplete shared resources like police and public defenders, and overcrowd prisons.

Even if you aren't a prison abolitionist like me, surely the rational approach here isn't "Pay more and increase the likelyhood the petty criminal becomes a serious criminal". It just makes zero rational sense to try and solve the issue that way.
by mymythisisthis | 2025-06-25 23:43:00+00:00
I think that demographically we might be in a trough, of new born children. Also children born to the last major cohort (the children of the baby Boomers) are just becoming tweens and young teens, or very young adults. There might be a spike in crime, in the next 10 years, as they start to mature. It helps that they are more spread out, and not born in the same few years like the Boomers were, (a more flattened and spread curve).

Very rough midpoint years; Baby Boomers 1949, Gen X 1979, Millennial 2009.