MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by MangoToupe | 2025-06-04 02:08:29+00:00
I don't see why it can't be both. I've also heard this from the better-compensated police. Not discussing "physical danger" or whatever mind you, but the toll of constantly facing conflict and seeing some of the worst of humanity. Not a direct parallel, but burn out extends beyond compensation. I've also heard this from social workers, who granted also deserve better compensation.

I think it's possible we should be spreading out emergency response better amongst society, but I don't have much in the way of practical suggestion.

Of course, we should also compensate our non-police emergency responders much better. My understanding is that EMTs make close to minimum wage and tend to carry higher individual liability.
by insin | 2025-06-04 02:09:23+00:00
Why would you expect them to be able to given how they work? [1]

Someone where I work was trying to get an LLM to evaluate responses to an internal multiple-choice quiz (A, B or C), putting people into different buckets based on a combination of the total number of correct responses and having answered specific questions correctly. They spent a week "prompt engineering" it back and forth, with subtle changes to their instructions on how the scoring should work, with no appreciable effect on accuracy or consistency.

That's another scenario where I felt someone was asking for something with no mechanical sympathy for how it was supposed to happen. Maybe a "thinking" model (why do "AI" companies always abuse terms like this? (rhetorical)) would have been able to get enough stuff into the context for it to be able to get closer to a better outcome, but I took their prompt asked it to write code instead, and got it translated into some overly-commented but simple-enough code which would do the job perfectly every time, including a comment that the instructions they'd provided had a gap where people answering with a certain combination of answers wouldn't fall into any bucket.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI
by moralestapia | 2025-06-04 02:09:40+00:00
It's all nepo.

If you're in the right circle you can do illegal stuff and it will be brushed off as "the cost of innovation".

If you're in the wrong circle you might get your company shut down because you can only consume up to 500 gallons of water a month unless you apply for a special permit and last month you did 501.5 gallons, or some other crap. And the same people will say "yeah, I know it's a bit harsh but that's the cost of keeping order in society bla bla bla".
by dang | 2025-06-04 02:10:32+00:00
Related. Others?

Start a Business from Plastic Waste - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860992 - April 2021 (98 comments)

Precious Plastic Version 4 [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21986375 - Jan 2020 (12 comments)

Precious Plastic Version 3.0 aims to fix plastic pollution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15497732 - Oct 2017 (35 comments)
by unvalley | 2025-06-04 02:11:05+00:00
Thank you, I’ve written a bit about the thinking behind this app in the form of a short guide: https://github.com/unvalley/ephe/blob/main/.github/guide.md

I think the difference in philosophy shows up in the feature set too. For example, Ephe currently only gives you a single page because the focus is on today. If there are any features you find essential in apps like Joplin but missing in Ephe, I’d love to hear. I want to keep improving it.
by kazinator | 2025-06-04 02:11:10+00:00
> Our problem was Chrome-6, a chemical the municipality found in the paint from the building that was applied 40 years ago. Which meant we had to leave the workspace fast, and the building was large, we had a lot of machines and items to sell, in a short amount of time, during lockdowns. This meant we had to sell many things below value since that period most people were looking to buy bread machines, not robot arms.

That's an asshole thing to do. Nothing is more petty than municipal politics, especially if amplified by a pandemic.

"The sky is going to fall if something isn't done about the 40-year-old Chrome-6! Everyone must GTF out of that building, right NOW!"
by throwcarsales | 2025-06-04 02:15:32+00:00
I sold cars for a decade. I love manuals. My brand offered some cars still in manual at that time. I convinced the owner to spec more of our cars as manuals from the factory.

They sat and sat. I made it my personal goal to sell them because I felt bad. I would present them while walking past them no matter what car you came for. I eventually sold them all, even though there were 6 other salespeople working there. I was top 1% in the country so it wasn't a skill issue.

Tldr; manufacturers have been tracking 'average days to sale' for decades. They saw the trends even when the cars were in stock. They took way longer to sell, thus they are gone.
by marcuskaz | 2025-06-04 02:16:57+00:00
You can also create a writing space in your browser using a data URL, paste the following into your address bar and boom! instant editor. You can bookmark it and will always be available.

``` data:text/html, <html contenteditable> ```

Plus bonus ephemeral, close the tab and your notes are gone with them. Here's an old post with examples using data URL adding style: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6005295
by zzrrt | 2025-06-04 02:18:40+00:00
Several of your points are general critiques of the system, which is fine, but not very interesting for now. I would accept some of these points without justifying what happened in this case.

> She said verbatim in the bodycam "some time tomorrow, when they don't know, get the baby out with CPS to the foster parents."

I've already said, CPS didn't need her to say that in order to put the baby into foster care, so this isn't evidence she was colluding with them for that purpose. But okay, I'll grant you it made it easier, and it's understandable it feels like collusion even if I don't think it altered the case much. I won't call it fraud because she was transparent to the temporary guardians of the baby.

> Losing a lot of weight does not mean abuse or neglect is involved, it can be some sort of disease or illness unrelated to parental malfeasance

Yeah, finding that illness is why the baby had doctor appointments... which the family missed one or more of, after already having been in and out of the hospital a few times, then resisting the police's attempts to check on the child. The state stepped in to ensure the baby could return to health and stay healthy. I get that these things can be controversial in general, but I don't think there's anything uniquely damning to the state in this case.

> Bundy is a case of someone actually doing something for justice for the kids

So it's okay to threaten and harass doctors, hospital security guards, police officers, social workers, judges, at their place of work and at their homes; cause hospitals to lockdown and divert ambulances; and claim the state and hospital are a pedophile child-trafficking network, as long as it gets a kid home early? Society can't function like that. If this kind of thing were done at scale, more people would be harmed than would be saved.

Maybe there are CPS cases where some of these extreme tactics would be justified in my mind, but it isn't this one, a malnourished infant who's been in and out of hospital and misses appointments with parents resisting police checkups. The baby probably would have been back home in a similar timeframe without threatening a bunch of professionals just trying to do a job so they can take care of their own children.
by recursivecaveat | 2025-06-04 02:18:54+00:00
This, along with stuff like implicit access modifiers based on case, nil interface confusion, named or multiple return values, channel lockups, and `append` oddities make it ring a bit hollow when people complain that no-one could be expected to google once and learn what snippet a `?` operator expands to. Like I don't even necessarily hate all these things, just please don't pretend it's the heart and soul of minimalism or approachable predictability.
by brikym | 2025-06-04 02:19:23+00:00
This is an ambulancing project. The focus should be on forcing industry to pay for the pollution they create on an industrial scale. It's never going to be cleaned up by small actors. These projects probably make plastic production more acceptable which is not what we want. Look over there, see recycling a few tones of plastic works, now let's carry on producing boat loads of shit.
by peter_d_sherman | 2025-06-04 02:20:25+00:00
This is a very interesting OS design:

>"1.1 High level overview

Barrelfish is “multikernel” operating system [3]: it consists of a small kernel running on each core (one kernel per core), and while rest of the OS is structured as a distributed system of single-core processes atop these kernels. Kernels share no memory, even on a machine with cache-coherent shared RAM, and the rest of the OS does not use shared memory except for transferring messages and data between cores, and booting other cores."
by krackers | 2025-06-04 02:20:32+00:00
Right that's the explanation I've heard too (and I think Karpathy even said it so it's not some fringe theory). I wasn't dismissing the hypothesis but asking out of genuine curiosity, since this feels like something that can easily be tested on "small" large language models. There's lots of little experiments like this can be done with small-ish models trained on purely synthetic data (the stuff about digit multiplication was done on GPT-2 scale model IIRC). Can models learn to count? Can they learn to add? Can they learn to copy text verbatim accurately? Can they learn to recognize regular grammars, or even context-free grammars (this one has already been done, and the answer is yes). And if the answer to one of these turns out to be no, then we'd better find out sooner rather than later, since it means we probably need to rethink the architecture a bit.

I know there's a lot of theoretical CS work on deriving upper-bounds on these models from a circuit-complexity point of view, but as architectures are revised all the time it's hard to tell how much is still relevant. Nothing beats having a concrete, working example of a model that correctly parses CFGs as rebuttal to the claim that models just repeat their training data.
by thwaway | 2025-06-04 02:20:49+00:00
Anecdotal data

As a hiring a manager, I posted a job offer in Who’s hiring, and doubt I’ll do it again anytime soon.

In my field of work, I am looking for skills other than software (maths, physics, engineering…). There were few qualified applicants coming from the thread. Most of them were nice. One candidate, whose background was unrelated to my field of work, got very offended when I told them it wasn’t the right fit.

This never happened when screening candidates that reached out other means (LinkedIn, Lever…)
by js2 | 2025-06-04 02:20:51+00:00
The other day I was at an oil change place and the guy in front of me was waiting in front of the bay. After his oil was changed, an employee brought him his keys and he went and got into the car in the bay and drove it around, then went into the office and paid.

After he pulled around I guessed it was because his car was a manual and none of the kids changing oil had the ability to drive it. Confirmed it with him when he came out to leave.

I was sad. :-(

On a positive note, I recently read about a carjacker being foiled by a manual transmission, so there's that.
by enzojean | 2025-06-04 02:21:10+00:00
Sure, there's stuff like that. But there's also stuff MonsterUI creates itself that is higher level, such as navbars which are not 1:1 mapping and is higher level.

It has a lot of direct translation, and a lot of other stuff too like functions that integrate with external APIs and server side markdown rendering and theme syncing between lots of different libraries (5 listed on the main page).
by cogman10 | 2025-06-04 02:22:53+00:00
I agree if this was a brand new system.

However, they chose to replace an existing system with swift. The "arcana" I mentioned is start up options easily found and safe to apply. It's about as magical as "-O2" is to C++.

Sure, this may have been the right choice if the reason was to exercise swift. However, that shouldn't pretend like there was nothing to do to make Java better. The steps I described are like 1 or 2 days worth of dev work. How much time do you think a rewrite took?
by gremlinunderway | 2025-06-04 02:24:01+00:00
Nothing to do with software is real engineering in any case. Engineering outside the software world actually refers to real codified standards (not just "standards" based on vibes or popularity or generic best practices) that are enforced by central professional regulatory bodies. These are fields where your mistakes can land you in prison or debarred from practicing in the field. No such thing exists in software, so until it does then really anyone in this field should give themselves a real critical review over how snotty they want to be with terminology.
by munificent | 2025-06-04 02:24:14+00:00
The way the type system interacts with the rest of the language leads you down the path to monomorphization as the compilation strategy. Monomorphizing is what gives you huge piles of instantiated code that then has to be run through the compiler back end.

Blaming it on LLVM like another comment does misses the point. Any back end is slow if you throw a truck-load of code at it.

I'm not saying monomorphization is intrinsically bad. (My current hobby language works this way.) But it's certainly a trade-off with real costs and the Go folks didn't want their users to have to pay those costs.
by kiitos | 2025-06-04 02:24:19+00:00
This code: foo, err := someExpr if err != nil { return nil, err } Is entirely boilerplate

But you'd never write that, you'd write

if err != nil { return nil, fmt.Errorf("some expr: %w", err) }

which is _not_ boilerplate, in any sense that would benefit from being mitigated with new syntax or short-cuts.

> Condensing that particular snippet down to `?` would be less terrible than the status quo

This simply isn't any kind of objective or agreed-upon truth. Many people, including myself, believe that the status quo is better than what you're suggesting here.

People who are annoyed with Go at some fundamental level, and who largely don't use the language themselves, delight in characterizing `if` blocks related to errors as "boilerplate" that serves no purpose, and needs to be addressed at a language level.

> `?` is exactly in line with `iota`, `foo_windows.go`, `flag.Var`, `http.HandleFunc`, etc.

I've thought on this at length and I have no clue as to what you think the common property between these things might be. A proposed language sigil that impacts control-flow, an existing keyword that's generally not recommended for use, a build-time filename convention, and two unrelated stdlib type definitions?
by whatrocks | 2025-06-04 02:25:08+00:00
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- Software Engineer, Product (Full Stack) • Build the marketplace and payments experience that hotel buyers and suppliers love

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Tech Stack: Rails, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, AWS, Elasticsearch

We're at your service: https://folio.co/careers
by NaOH | 2025-06-04 02:26:30+00:00
Open-Source Recycling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11533207 - April 2016 (40 comments)

PreciousPlastic – An Open Source Plastic Recycling Workshop - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11381530 - Mar 2016 (2 comments)
by munificent | 2025-06-04 02:26:47+00:00
> the spirit of all-consuming wankery.

Haha, a good way to describe it. :)

> the idea niche art is the source of human dignity that needs societal protection

I mean... have you looked around at the world today? We've got pick at least some sources of human dignity to protect because there seem to be fewer and fewer left.
Ask HN: Stripe and Chargebacks
by gtech1 | 2025-06-04 02:30:52+00:00
Can anyone shed some light as to why Stripe hits its customers with extra fees for getting a chargeback ?

Furthermore, is there any instance when a bank won't side with its customer ?

We are a SaaS, been with Stripe for 10 years or so. Our chargeback rate is 0.00001% or something silly like that, maybe 1 chargeback every 2-3 years out of thousands of transactions per month.

We are a legitimate business selling a very much wanted service. Users have the option to cancel from their billing panel whenever they want, we send billing reminders 30/14/7/3 days before

This user didn't see the renewal notice or something, who knows. The service was still active, still being used, he gets charged ( 25$ ), they wait 3-4 days and do a chargeback claiming he cancelled.

Stripe reverses the charge, hits us with chargeback fee as well, ask us to send proof to the bank to dispute the chargeback. How can you prove a negative ? Aka, how can you prove the customer DIDN'T send in a cancellation notice or logged in to cancel. We just sent service activity logs showing the service was still being used.

We wrote to the customer asking what's going on. No answer.

We locked the service. The customer logs in to the billing interface ( which remains active for allowing users to update their CC in case of problems), he adds in his CC again AND pays the last invoice again. Then the next day he does a second chargeback. More fees.

Meanwhile Stripe gets back to us saying the bank rule against us with this reason:

Summary of New Information:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESPONSE. THE MERCHANT S RESPONSE FAILS TO REMEDY THE DISPUTE. THE CARDHOLDER CANCELLED ON THE DATE PROVIDED ON OUR DISPUTE QUESTIONNAIRE. THE CARDHOLDER IS NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE PROOF OF CANCELLATION. THE MERCHANT S LIMITED CANCELLATION POLICY BEARS NO RELEVANCE IN A DISPUTE OF THIS NATURE. FULL CREDIT IS DUE

Is this nuts or what ?

Why are we getting fscked sideways by Stripe, BoA & the customer ?
by kazinator | 2025-06-04 02:32:43+00:00
By the following very short garden path:

1. How silly to write such a thing in C from scratch. Such a project will invariably invent half of Lisp in order to have the right kind of infrastructure for doing this and that.

2. Let's look for some of it up and down the tree. Oh look, there is a bitset and hashmap, see? I don't see test cases for these anywhere; is it original work from this project or battle-tested code taken from elsewhere?

3. Open hashmap.c ...

GPL violation found in half a minute.
by nradov | 2025-06-04 02:33:23+00:00
The issue isn't consumer demand but rather dealer demand. US franchise new car dealers live and die by inventory turn rates. Due to the way that floorplan financing works they can't afford to have a car sit on the lot for months. Most customers who would prefer a manual transmission will take an automatic for a good price, but customers who want an automatic won't take a manual at any price. Thus except for a few sports cars, dealers are almost never willing to order manuals from the manufacturer.

In some other countries the new car sales system is a little different with more consumers wanting to custom order the car they want, then wait for it to be built. In the US, many mainstream brands won't even take custom orders anymore.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-06-04 02:34:39+00:00
Plastics are not the only waste you can gasify. Organics, cardboard, wood, paper, medical waste, household rubbish, etc. The only materials you don’t want in the waste stream are metals, glass, rock, and brick.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/plasma-gasi...
by andsoitis | 2025-06-04 02:34:44+00:00
"The budget - which includes multi-trillion dollar tax breaks and more defence spending while also allowing the US government to borrow more money"

The question is how long the US will be able to depend on investors continuing to lend the US money without crossing a death spiral.

Ray Dalio thinks there's a low risk of an imminent debt crisis, but a high-risk in the long-term.
by blagie | 2025-06-04 02:35:28+00:00
"Con" is a strong word, and I'm not sure appropriate.

If someone was taking a $500k salary from donated funds, I'd feel it's a con. I see nothing to that effect.

People without a clue sometimes pick up a clue after some time. Donors donate for a variety of reasons. There are angel investors who donate simply because they want to push a concept along, or want to help nice people.

If someone wealthy decides to support them instead of e.g. buying a supercar or a $10M painting, I think it's all good.

Live and let live.
by NAHWheatCracker | 2025-06-04 02:35:47+00:00
I wish I had followed this advice when I was first a tech lead a few years ago. I wasn't a manager per say, but I had two junior engineers. We had way too much to do in too little time. I explained how the PM had messed up the project plan. I figured I was just letting them know what was going on, but it just brought the mood down.

I think it's ideal that some level of commiseration happens, so people can try to find ways to fix problems that can be fixed or accept that they can't. It really depends on the people, relationship, and culture. Some people aren't willing to do anything for anyone else. Some cultures discourage trying to fix anything.
by programjames | 2025-06-04 02:36:13+00:00
(Note: this is Risk).

I recently played a game with higher-level players. One player was incredibly passive; their bonus would get broken every turn, and rather than doing anything to defend it (and they had enough troops to defend it), they pulled their troops into the middle of the bonus and let everyone else take turns breaking their bonus. This could work fine in a lower-level lobby—eventually the other players might get bored and start hitting each other—but not with better players. Good players realize a couple things about them:

1. They won't retaliate, so I can knock off a few of their troops at no risk to myself.

2. They won't do anything, so any fighting among the rest of the players will effectively be a troop subsidy to them.

Since they're unwilling to help anybody, no one wants to give them free troops, and since they've demonstrated an unwillingness to retaliate, there's really no risk with hitting them over and over. So, naturally, they were the next player to be eliminated.

One thing that's nice about Risk is there's very little to the mechanics. There aren't combos to practice or build orders to memorize, mostly just an understanding of what other people want and how to negotiate. Pretty much everyone rated intermediate and above has the mechanics down: how to move troops around to not block each other, how to choke out other players, what moves are game ending for you or another player, and so on. The thing that sets apart intermediates, experts, masters, and grandmasters is almost entirely their ability to work with other players. However, since many (most?) players are "smashy noobs", lots of people rise up the ranks by just assuming everyone else is a smashy noob, and playing extremely passively to compensate. It works, until they end up in a lobby full of masters.
by phendrenad2 | 2025-06-04 02:37:27+00:00
Your manager isn't your "bro" nor are they an uncaring faceless agent of the corporate bureaucracy. The best managers know how to be diplomatic and sympathize with grievances without over-committing. As a manager, you are as responsible for managing UP (and sideways) as well as down. Part of your job is being the "big gun" that your reports cc on emails when another team is absolutely just being a jerk.