MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vindarel | 2025-06-07 10:46:58+00:00
indeed. Note that's a function declaration in Common Lisp (yours is Scheme):

(defun time-to-move (from-pos to-pos)

it's like the author didn't understand accessors? They don't need the with-accessors. They also might not need with-slots, had they had an accessor for last-duration.

(with-slots (last-duration) antenna (setf last-duration total-time)

=>

(setf (last-duration antenna) total-time) ;; given last-duration is an accessor: both a getter and a setter.
by saagarjha | 2025-06-07 10:48:02+00:00
As others have mentioned, macOS both picks low ulimits but it also has a fun little poorly-documented limit for sandboxed apps which is not queryable in any way. Unfortunately how this manifests is that you try to open a file in a sandboxed app and…it just fails. Somewhere around the few thousand range or so. If you have a sandboxed app, try opening a bunch of files and see how it handles it ;)

The rationale Apple gives is something about using kernel resources, but a normal file descriptor also uses kernel resources, so I'm leaning towards implementation laziness or legacy like many of the examples here.
by kekebo | 2025-06-07 10:51:06+00:00
Overton window calculation usually starts at a minimum of two inputs without proximity requirements (except technical requirements like linguistics/ functional semantics)*

[ * Only because an opinion may appear too far removed from a given perceived spectrum-threshold for 'reasonable reasoning'.. should not necessitate collapsing the contrasting input to some purely sarcastic/humorous telos, especially when this stochastically undermines one's own chances for being afforded the inversely congruent gesture]
by jackdoe | 2025-06-07 10:54:45+00:00
I think one of the reason we are confused about what LLMs can do is because they use language. And we look at the "reasoning traces" and the tokens there look human, but what is actually happening is very alien to us, as shown by "Biology of Large Language Models"[1] and "Safety Alignment Should Be Made More Than Just a Few Tokens Deep"[2]

I am struggling a lot to see what the tech can and can not do, particularly designing systems with them, and how to build systems where the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. And I think this is because I am constantly confused by their capabilities, despite understanding their machinery and how they work, their use of language just seems like magic. I even wrote https://punkx.org/jackdoe/language.html just to remind myself how to think about it.

I think this kind of research is amazing and we have to spend tremendous more effort into understanding how to use the tokens and how to build with them.

[1]: https://transformer-circuits.pub/2025/attribution-graphs/bio...

[2]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.05946
by ggm | 2025-06-07 10:55:21+00:00
It is my limited understanding that poor people picked apart and reused sleeves, bodice, waistband, as needed, and that "motley" was a term for the semi random assemblage of bits the poorest wore.

Death demanded ceremony which included donations of cloth to the poor, even the cere cloth used to wrap the body. A stipulated length of woolen cloth had to be used for this as part of a price support model in England for centuries.

Clothes in the v&a collection show complex woven patterns and colours. Alum trading is used as a background for Dorothy Dunnets historical fiction because of its importance in medieval die work.

https://acoup.blog/ has done a piece on the labour effort to make cloth in pre industrial times. It's huge. You'd keep the accumulated labour investment in cloth as long as possible.
by notahacker | 2025-06-07 10:55:31+00:00
Musa had an empire too, one that possessed so much gold that his holiday tips devalued the principal store of wealth in foreign countries. Agree the comparisons aren't particularly meaningful; a lot depends on whether your consider having lots of gold to show off with to be more valuable than building an industrial empire, or even owning a bunch of now-common consumer goods and having access to healthcare more impressive than anything Augustus or Musa bought
by wrasee | 2025-06-07 10:55:56+00:00
The fundamental difference is that computers can do this at a pace and scale that humans could never aspire to. There is a natural limit to the extent a single individual can be informed by previous works. It sets a natural pace to innovation that is sustainable for both the artist and derivative works.

Computers have no such limitation and can consume almost the entirety of a subject’s work in a few weeks or months. I think that alone is enough to say that yes, it is fundamentally different.
by lupusreal | 2025-06-07 10:57:19+00:00
Congress has forbidden NASA to cooperate with China for many years. It's been law since 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment

Also I believe that Russia isn't being paid for astronauts to fly on Soyuz. Instead, cosmonauts fly on Dragon. It's a like-for-like exchange which is mutually beneficial (both countries need the other's cooperation to keep the ISS operational, so these exchanges ensure that can continue if either Soyuz or Dragon are grounded for some reason.)
by kapildev | 2025-06-07 11:00:03+00:00
>And shared ChatGPT chats are often indexed by Google, so they become public. Although I agree it's not exactly the same because of the lack of builtin discovery

I didn't know this. I think I have used share button to share chats with personal stuffs with close people thinking that the chat is as close as possible to "unlisted" youtube videos. Hope that OpenAI implements something similar or even something with a password.
by keyringlight | 2025-06-07 11:00:26+00:00
I'm not sure that's directly on control panel so much as which windows version you pick to look at, over the years it's changed as they try to make it friendly to different audiences. In win2k it's not very deep to get at, by default there's network places on the desktop you can right click to skip a few steps. Similarly they could improve the win8+ settings app but presumably they think win11's version is the best they can offer.
by TeMPOraL | 2025-06-07 11:02:13+00:00
Now that depends, doesn't it?

I think discussions about AI hype miss a critical factor: there are two groups of people getting swept up in hype. One are the Investors[0]. The other are the Beneficiaries of the technology[1]. AI is over-hyped for the former, but not for the latter.

If AI hype is anything like dotcom boom - or like telecom, or building up railways in the US - well, it sucks for the Investors. For them, the hype is getting dangerous - if it's a bubble and it bursts, plenty of them will lose money, and many companies will fold.

But I'm not in that group, so I don't care.

For me, one of the Beneficiaries, the hype seems totally warranted. The capability is there, the possibilities are enormous, pace of advancement is staggering, and achieving them is realistic. If it takes a few years longer than the Investor group thinks - that's fine with us; it's only a problem for them.

--

[0] - In a broad sense, to include both people funding it and people making big investments around the expectations - whether regular investments, or company strategy, or career plans.

[1] - People using it for work and personally, researchers, etc.; also people with defined hopes for the technology; also ultimately everyone who benefits from it when it matures (and possibly builds on top of it).
by seuros | 2025-06-07 11:02:25+00:00
Hi HN! I'm sharing COSS (Contribution Open Source Standard) addressing two big problems: vendor lock-in and AI computational waste.

The AI angle: Current AI tools waste enormous compute re-analyzing the same project patterns. "Is this Python or Node?", "What's the build command?", "Where are the tests?" They hallucinate answers instead of reading structured metadata. COSS includes a comprehensive coss.toml format for this: ```toml name = "my-project" languages = ["Rust", "JavaScript", "Python"] project_type = "web-application" [frameworks] backend = { name = "Rails", version = "8.0.2" } frontend = { name = "Next.js", version = "13.2.1" } build = "make build" test = "make test" lint = "eslint --config .eslintrc.yaml" [test_frameworks] javascript = "jest --ci" rust = "cargo test --all" [dependency_locks] javascript = "yarn.lock" rust = "Cargo.lock" This helps AI tools understand your project instantly with one sweep, no more guessing at build commands or test frameworks. It covers everything from languages and dependencies to security scanning and documentation coverage. Important note: The spec is not final yet, contributions and feedback are very welcome! We want to get this right before wider adoption. The broader problem: Too many "open source" projects have hidden vendor dependencies or lock-in mechanisms. COSS defines 5 principles for truly neutral software: • Universal Access • Anti-Vendor Lock-in • Optional Dependencies • Modular Scope • Contributor Ethics It's not a license, it's a standard and mark signaling genuine openness. Benefits: • Faster, more accurate AI coding assistance • Reduced AI computational waste across the ecosystem • Protection from vendor traps • Better project discoverability and cataloging Would love HN's feedback. Do you see AI tools struggling with basic project understanding? Have you hit vendor lock-in pain points? What metadata fields would be most valuable? Template: https://www.contriboss.com/coss.v0.0.1.toml Discussions: https://github.com/contriboss/discussions
by bnop | 2025-06-07 11:03:31+00:00
1. These models have been trained on private data many a time without permission

2. Making something public isn’t always a choice made by the creator

3. Making something public does not denote fair use, this is why copyright (albeit arguably a poor solution) exists

4. These LLMs consolidate wealth into a small group using outputs from a larger, often less wealthy group (creatives) without fair compensation
by djoldman | 2025-06-07 11:04:32+00:00
Falsehoods people believe about programmers:

* Programmers believe they are handling all possible configurations of the universe when putting something into production.

* Programmers don't handle all possible configurations of the universe when putting code into production because they don't know any better.

Falsehoods people believe about the universe:

* There exists a constant.

* SI units are constant at all times or everywhere.
by bombcar | 2025-06-07 11:04:34+00:00
If you’ve never lived outside the US you have zero idea how bad it gets. It literally is an alternate world.

The amount of daily activities in the US that just work 99.999999% of the time that would have a corruption aspect in some other countries is mind boggling.

The closest analogy I can come up with is imagine if every money transaction involved cash tipping the parties involved. And that’s just the beginning.
by sanswork | 2025-06-07 11:06:08+00:00
You say no need for staff then describe the need for technical staff with specific sysops capabilities.

You can pay for a lot of seats with a $70k salary and that's on the very low end.

If you account for opportunity cost you have to be very large before on-prem becomes worth while or your time must be worth so little that you're probably better doing another business.
by rs186 | 2025-06-07 11:06:19+00:00
It's almost funny that small code reviews are preferred in software engineering (https://google.github.io/eng-practices/review/developer/smal...), but in Congress we have these stupid "big beautiful bill(s)" that are sometimes thousand pages long, and sometimes only released hours before a formal vote. Almost like these bills are intended to fool constituents, cripple opponents' plans, and created just in the hope that they get passed and signed into law without anyone looking carefully.
by rxtexit | 2025-06-07 11:06:49+00:00
It is a stupid argument.

The choice is between the mafia or this. This is better than the mafia.

Any other argument is basically utopian.

I love mafia history though so I think many people just don't understand how powerful the mafia was in 20th century America.

Of course, it wouldn't be the Italians this time. It would be the Mexicans. A horrific thought.
by raphman | 2025-06-07 11:07:59+00:00
Yeah, in Germany pretty much all cans and bottles require a deposit (single-use plastic bottles: 0.25 €) and every shop selling cans/bottles with deposit is required to take them and similar bottles back.

Most supermarkets have a reverse vending machine that take cans and bottles, crushes single-use ones, and returns a voucher for the deposit.

Some videos of these machines in action (not sure whether there are people on HN who have never seen one):

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWqwu63eTPQ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlfDavzHq7I - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozVpMDDawnw
by LoganDark | 2025-06-07 11:08:37+00:00
To me, Facebook is something I deleted around 2013. Never saw any real reason to create another account, honestly saw so many reasons not to.

WhatsApp is something I only use in a strict sandbox to communicate with certain Chinese sellers, as well as one friend who sometimes can't use Discord/Telegram.

Oculus used to be usable offline, wired and without an account, but now requires to be logged into an account ever since Facebook acquired it (as Meta). So my first headset was an HP Reverb G2.

Also, since 'VR goggles' are starting to genuinely be a thing (see Bigscreen Beyond, or probably more the Ray-Ban stuff and the other stuff starting to pop up in that category), the more general term that the Oculus Rift counts as would be HMD (head-mounted display).
by xelxebar | 2025-06-07 11:09:02+00:00
Thanks for asking!

> You do need to also implement the other lines in the function.

What lines, though?

All we have in the original are three opaque functions composed in a Dovekie pattern, i.e. (f (g x) (h y)). Everything else—besides the discussed overcomplications—is just suggestive naming.

I actually agree with you! The demonstrated code is trivial, and I believe you're right to complain. It's just that APL makes the triviality painfully obvious.

> If the sample code were simply subtraction then OP would've written subtraction

The reason is that functional design patterns are very different from APL design patterns.

In functional programming we manage complexity by hiding it behind carefully-designed functions and their compositional structure. APL manages the same by normalizing data and operating over homogeneous collections. These lead to very different looking code, even without the symbols.

So, where Haskell hides a bunch of calculation behind timeToRotate and timeToAscend, with APL we usually choose to pre-process the data instead. This means that where Haskell needs timeToRotate etc. APL can just use really simple primitive.

While we're granting the author that these opaque functions are correctly implemented, I think it's fair to grant that the APL correctly normalizes it's data. The unshown work is going to be about the same, either way.

Don't you think it's intriguing if we end up with less work and clearly trivial code?
by pzo | 2025-06-07 11:09:52+00:00
For me the worst things is that they treat all software as R&D. I understand in maybe some situation it could be abused but imagine established company having non innovative software that keeps engineers only for bug fixing and security patching and basic maintenance. In true spirit this is not research for sure. It's equivalent of someone having a hotel and suddenly telling that their cleaners, security, gardeners, receptionist qualify as R&D which would be nuts.

AFAIK it was also affecting more freelancers outside of US since amortisation is 15 years. For EU citizen IMHO this is equivalent of US putting tariffs on outside world. I wish EU at least try to fight back and revenge on US Tech by increasing taxes or also making all US tech bought by EU companies to be 15 years amortised so they have taste of their medicine.
by keyringlight | 2025-06-07 11:10:34+00:00
I'd love to have the inside insight on how MS see WINE and related products and how that compares to how they saw chromium versus Trident/EdgeHTML. I really wonder if windows by itself is a loss leader to other areas where they do make money and would love to stabilize the desktop side and outsource/"contribute" that to others to maintain, just so long as they could keep money coming in from office, user administration, support contracts, alongside the services side.

On a tangent I wonder a similar thing about nvidia/AMD carrying around decades worth of tweaks and fixes for old games within their GPU drivers (and matching that is a cost for entry for intel), could they shed a burden by opening that to projects like DXVK.
by lmeyerov | 2025-06-07 11:11:38+00:00
There is an interesting subtlety to what you are saying -

* Inferencing is getting cheaper: 40-80% / yr in hardware + 40-80% / yr in software. Annual numbers will change, but for next 5 years, seems fine to assume continued improvement at meaningful levels.

* Subtlety 1: What % of that improvement is only accessible to large providers with bigger workloads and bigger capitalization? Think more opportunities for batching, specialization, bulk purchasing, ... . That edge is where their ability to both underprice others + have a profitability margin here vs being a loss leader. A lot of the annual hw/sw improvement is commoditized for low-scale. Eg, hyperscalers pay 10% less to Nvidia than the next tier of smaller buyers, and I'm unsure of how to think of the margin benefit of custom hw

* Subtlety 2: if things keep going well, there may be a limited window around wirkloads "tricky enough that only they can do it" , eg, if commodity + oss using 2nd tier providers are "good enough" and also reach low COGS, so it's just regular data center stuff, all this becomes unclear again. I can likewise imagine that becoming true of the wider use case of Text, while image/video/audio ends up more specialized
by nchmy | 2025-06-07 11:12:59+00:00
> the jkpress post by Matt Mullenwegg linked in TFA has to be one of the most unprofessional and caustic things I've ever seen someone write, and reflects poorly on his character.

Evidently you haven't been paying much attention to Matt or WordPress. Matt Mullenweg is - and seemingly always has been - simply a caustic, manipulative, dishonest, petty, etc... person. He was generally good at hiding it, but it always peeked through on an annual basis. But it's simply been the norm for the past 9 months - sometimes on a daily basis.

Another gold nugget here (has archived links) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41839864

But the best reading is the initial lawsuit from wp engine. It's just overflowing with screenshots of self-incriminating toxicity.

Goodtime line of events here https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...
by valyala | 2025-06-07 11:13:56+00:00
VictoriaLogs developer here. I agree with you - it is important to support multiple popular data ingestion protocols at the database for logs, so users could continue using the existing protocol instead of adding an intermediate proxy for converting from one protocol to another protocol.

That's why VictoriaLogs supports multiple data ingestion protocol [1], including JSON line protocol, which can be used for sending JSON logs into it without any conversions [2].

[1] https://docs.victoriametrics.com/victorialogs/data-ingestion...

[2] https://docs.victoriametrics.com/victorialogs/data-ingestion...
by RankGEO | 2025-06-07 11:14:40+00:00
Hi HN,

I’m one of the builders behind RankGeo.ai, a tool we created after realizing traditional SEO doesn’t help you show up in AI-generated answers anymore.

RankGeo is designed for the new era of search where users ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity instead of Googling.

We help creators, marketers and anyone who wants to show up in Ai search engine results:

Discover real prompts users ask LLMs (e.g. “best crypto tools in 2025”)

Audit their content for prompt alignment, structure, and trust

Track whether you’re getting cited or referenced inside AI responses

We're currently building the core platform and preparing for beta, it’s not live yet, but the waitlist is open and we’re already working with 200+ early users.

If you’re thinking about SEO for Ai, or just curious how generative engines “see” your content, I’d love to hear what you think.

Thanks!
by xelxebar | 2025-06-07 11:16:42+00:00
In practice, maybe!

I'm really trying to play as fairly as possible, though. The original suggests that ascention and azimuthal data might need to be treated separately. We really don't know, though.

The basic call graph shape of `(a-b)⌈x-y` also directly mirrors that of timeToMove, so I think I'm taking as few liberties as possible while also showing what APL design patterns can get us.
by theandrewbailey | 2025-06-07 11:17:06+00:00
> Many games I would like to play are Windows-only

Mine too, but I'll let you in on a secret:

https://www.protondb.com/

> Proton is a new tool released by Valve Software that has been integrated with Steam to make playing Windows games on Linux as simple as hitting the Play button within Steam.
by TeMPOraL | 2025-06-07 11:17:23+00:00
Posted this downthread, but it's also a reply to your points:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44208831

TL;DR: there are two groups of people mixed up in the hype: the people investing in it, and people using it. AI may indeed be overhyped for the former. It's not overhyped for the latter.

Makes me think of how railways were built across the US. AFAIK, the first generation of investors generally lost big. They funded a huge, capital-expensive infrastructure project, and didn't get a return on it in time. But even as they lost, the work they funded remained - subsequent waves of businesses built on top of it and became profitable, the society benefited, and the country was transformed. The only losers to this "bubble" were the first-movers and their backers.

So when someone wonders if AI is overhyped, I'd ask them: what's your stake in this? Are you an investor hoping for quick returns, or are you someone who stands to benefit from the technology existing?
by ghaff | 2025-06-07 11:17:47+00:00
Locally, going from where I live in Massachusetts to Manhattan only makes sense because I'm going to Manhattan where I don't need/want a car and Amtrak has a south suburban station I can go to. (And even then it's marginal because it's basically an hour in the wrong direction but I hate driving into Manhattan.)

Downtown to downtown is great if you live and want to go to downtown which is sometimes true but not always.
by bernds74 | 2025-06-07 11:19:12+00:00
Some guy once famously noted that wealth is not measured in gold or silver, but in goods and services. Mansa Musa didn't have a Ferrari F40, or an RTX4090, or air conditioning. He couldn't buy a trip to low earth orbit or get cancer treatment if he needed it. Many people in this day and age are vastly more wealthy than he was.