MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by wjnc | 2025-06-30 06:16:08+00:00
First law of dentistry: Any innovation that does not increase dentist margin, will not reach market.

To expand on this argument. I think even medical health care is more open to innovation that mainly benefits consumer health. Doctors are kind of oblivious of the cost of procedures. This has a host of other problems, but at least innovation and health outcomes are aligned (and less aligned with cost). Dentists are massively private equity owned where I live. Bottom line is everything. You notice that where you’re in the chair. Six minute procedures (the billing time) always take seven. Kids are state insured and always get upsold to whatever procedure is fashionable (or should I say: has the highest margin). I have a strong feeling innovations are swallowed up and shelved in this sector. It makes sense for the PE to kill innovation once you have a market cornered.

The only thing this anti market rant (not my usual spiel) does not have is an explanation for how PE coordinates the suppression of innovation. I should look into the owners of the parties that deliver the dentist supplies and machinery. That would be the best way to corner a market, by owning the supply chain as well.
by carlosdp | 2025-06-30 06:16:09+00:00
> Pure vision will never be enough because it does not contain information about the physical feedback like pressure and touch, or the strength required to perform a task.

I'm not sure that's necessarily true for a lot of tasks.

A good way to measure this in your head is this:

"If you were given remote control of two robot arms, and just one camera to look through, how many different tasks do you think you could complete successfully?"

When you start thinking about it, you realize there are a lot of things you could do with just the arms and one camera, because you as a human have really good intuition about the world.

It therefore follows that robots should be able to learn with just RGB images too! Counterexamples would be things like grabbing an egg without crushing, perhaps. Though I suspect that could also be done with just vision.
by rpcope1 | 2025-06-30 06:16:16+00:00
An intelligent flatbed setup (what I think the Australians call "trays") is usually way better than a regular bed (barring maybe aerodynamics). A good Bradford or Circle D flatbed (as examples) can take way, way more punishment than a regular bed, and it's real easy to bring a forklift up and load pallets on the side, add boxes or tie downs, etc. One major reason you don't see a lot of them in the states is that many insurers (if you tell them you've put an flatbed on -- even a pretty aluminum one on a mini truck) will automatically assume the truck is being used in some sort of revenue service, and charge you significantly more expensive commercial rates no matter what you tell them.
by tempestn | 2025-06-30 06:16:28+00:00
I feel like you're saying something like,"That expensive painting is inferior in every way to wallpaper, which covers the wall more effectively and durably, at a fraction of the cost."

The Rolex (or luxury watches in general) are pieces of jewellery that also tell the time. The more expensive ones have some combination of -more expensive materials -better finishing -superior craftsmanship (including more intricate complications)

The goal is not just to tell the time, it's to wear a piece of artistic craftsmanship. (Though I would agree that other brands are a better example than Rolex, and some people do indeed just buy expensive watches in general and Rolex in particular just to flex. As some do with art.)
by DoingIsLearning | 2025-06-30 06:16:46+00:00
> At this point I don't even need to wear a CGM every day; I can tell my glucose level just by thinking of what I ate earlier.

Would be interesting to create some form of model of that and see how accurately you could 'guess' gliglycemia levels for a specific individual just by knowing biometric info and accurate food intake.

As in could you potentially appify your newly acquired intuition?
by andersource | 2025-06-30 06:16:56+00:00
Hofstadter introduces several sequences in GEB, [0] may be an interesting submission on its own but I was especially captivated by this self-referencing one. Plus a title including both Hofstadter's sequence and a description is too long for HN and I preferred the descriptive one

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter_sequence
by arauhala | 2025-06-30 06:18:35+00:00
I'm bootstrapping my predictive database startup https://aito.ai/ :-)

More specifically, I have worked on the demo https://github.com/AitoDotAI/aito-demo to make use cases visual and well described. E.g. smart search use case is here https://github.com/AitoDotAI/aito-demo/blob/main/docs/use-ca...

Claude Code is doing absolute wonders on setting things up. One has to just check out for hallucinations and made-up stuff in any written content.
by socalgal2 | 2025-06-30 06:18:38+00:00
unless there's illegal collusion, someone will see a market opporunity and step in to fill it.

That said, a quick search for new cars under $25k: Chevrolet Trax $20.5k, Nissan Versa $17.2k, Hyundai Venue $20.5k, Kia Soul $20.5k, and Nissan Kicks $22k. Other options include the Toyota Corolla $22.3k, Hyundai Elantra $22.1k, and Volkswagen Jetta $22.5k

I think maybe the article is BS?
by edanm | 2025-06-30 06:19:27+00:00
> Likewise, is there evidence for this? Maybe our most "effective" altruism is in fact to pay taxes in a liberal democracy after all.

I think this depends quite a bit on what you're trying to achieve. Hard to measure effectiveness otherwise.

E.g. if you care about global human welfare (and setting aside longtermist ideas), the most effective use of a marginal dollar is to donate money to people in poorer countries (via various methods). One of the main reasons is that the richer countries have a much more robust social welfare system already via taxation.
by marcus_holmes | 2025-06-30 06:19:53+00:00
Many people get (for example) pneumonia and recover. Some people get pneumonia and die. The people who died of pneumonia died because of pneumonia. The fact that other people survived it doesn't mean that they didn't die of it.

Saying that we should not work on cures for pneumonia because it's a Chesterton Fence is obviously, blatantly, illogical. Saying that we should change the system so that government officials working for moneyed interests can't hound someone to death is similarly illogical.
by puzzlingcaptcha | 2025-06-30 06:20:06+00:00
You can still buy a new subcompact car (like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia) in Europe for under 20k EUR.

The more interesting question is why these cars disappeared in the US. And while many of the factors discussed here are true for both EU and US (inflation, interest rates, manufacturer profit margins etc) I am surprised no one mentioned the 'SUV loophole' of US regulations that effectively boosted the SUVs (off-road vehicles are classified as non-passenger automobiles with everything that entails, notably much less stringent emission standards) and made the small cars unprofitable to make in comparison.
by pamelafox | 2025-06-30 06:20:36+00:00
Finally cleaned up a free online Python course: https://proficientpython.com/

I wrote the articles/exercises/projects a few years ago, but now I've made interactive coding and quiz widgets, using Pyodide, Lit, web workers, etc. All open source: https://github.com/pamelafox/proficient-python
by audunw | 2025-06-30 06:20:42+00:00
> Also its only specific to some reactors that are on the rivers, the ones that are next to the sea doesn't have this limitation.

Not true, I can find instances of similar issues for nuclear reactors by the sea.

I acknowledge that newer or different types of power plants can find ways around it. You can always find ways to get additional cooling. But additional engineering adds additional costs, and cost is already a huge challenge with nuclear.

> Meanwhile heat on solar panels …

Like I said, most of these issues are frequently discussed and well understood.

I think everyone now understands that renewables needs energy balancing. How many people know that the first pumped hydro plant was built to help with load balancing for a nuclear power plant?

> Annnddd there's exactly the same limitations for all the other plants (coal and gas)

Coal yes, those are thermal power plants. Gas power use gas turbines. As far as I understand the cooling requirements are lower.

It should also be said that thermal power plants contribute directly to global warming through thermal forcing. Not the biggest contributor. But enough that it’s worth thinking about considering that we’re already on the tipping point. (Replacing an existing fossil fuel thermal power plant with nuclear is a no-brainer of course)
by motorest | 2025-06-30 06:21:22+00:00
> I don’t understand your comments about “fairness” in the context of UBI. Doesn’t everyone get the benefit whether they work or don’t? Otherwise that wouldn’t be “universal”, would it?

Your comment would only make sense if somehow you failed to understand the basics of the issue and fooled yourself into believing the system would only feature consumers and there were no producers at all. Everyone receives free money from the state, and thus it's all good. Right?

But think about it for a second. That money that everyone consumed, where do you expect it to come from? Who pays the bill? It's an income redistribution scheme, but whose income is subtracted do that there is money to pay someone else's income?

Once you figure that out, you will them be in a position to actually start thinking about the actual problem of equity and fairness: what incentive is there for anyone to generate the income that others require?
by mbalk | 2025-06-30 06:21:55+00:00
Working on a platform to create virtual personas for social media and educational content. The personas have a consistent personality, looks and voice. Content can be scheduled on social media channels. It is still very much work in progress but already live as a generic content creation platform. https://postcrest.com

Also working on an email communication assistant https://merel.ai creates draft responses for gmail and outlook based on your company data, email history, website content and extensive organisation settings. Still work in progress as well.
by chipx86 | 2025-06-30 06:22:21+00:00
That's always the challenge when iterating on interfaces that other people depend on.

What we do is go through a deprecation phase. Our process is:

* We provide compatibility with the old signature for 2 major releases.

* We document the change and the timeline clearly in the docstring.

* The function gets decorated with a helper that checks the call, and if any keyword-only arguments are provided as positional, it warns and converts them to keyword-only.

* After 2 major releases, we move fully to the new signature.

We buit a Python library called housekeeping (https://github.com/beanbaginc/housekeeping) to help with this. One of the things it contains is a decorator called `@deprecate_non_keyword_only_args`, which takes a deprecation warning class and a function using the signature we're moving to. That decorator handles the check logic and generates a suitable, consistent deprecation message.

That normally looks like:

@deprecate_non_keyword_only_args(MyDeprecationWarning) def my_func(*, a, b, c): ...

But this is a bit more tricky with dataclasses, since `__init__()` is generated automatically. Fortunately, it can be patched after the fact. A bit less clean, but doable.

So here's how we'd handle this case with dataclasses:

from dataclasses import dataclass from housekeeping import BaseRemovedInWarning, deprecate_non_keyword_only_args class RemovedInMyProject20Warning(BaseRemovedInWarning): product = 'MyProject' version = '2.0' @dataclass(kw_only=True) class MyDataclass: a: int b: int c: str MyDataclass.__init__ = deprecate_non_keyword_only_args( RemovedInMyProject20Warning )(MyDataclass.__init__)

Call it with some positional arguments:

dc = MyDataclass(1, 2, c='hi')

and you'd get:

testdataclass.py:26: RemovedInMyProject20Warning: Positional arguments `a`, `b` must be passed as keyword arguments when calling `__main__.MyDataclass.__init__()`. Passing as positional arguments will be required in MyProject 2.0. dc = MyDataclass(1, 2, c='hi')

We'll probably add explicit dataclass support to this soon, since we're starting to move to kw_only=True for dataclasses.
by iredi | 2025-06-30 06:22:24+00:00
¿Por qué zRAM es mejor que el swap tradicional?

Usar zRAM es una forma inteligente y eficiente de mejorar el rendimiento en Linux, especialmente si tu equipo tiene recursos limitados

El sistema de swap tradicional en Linux usa el disco duro o SSD para almacenar datos que no caben en la RAM. Aunque útil, esto tiene dos grandes problemas

Es lento: incluso los SSD son mucho más lentos que la RAM Desgasta el disco: especialmente los SSD, con cada escritura

zRAM resuelve este problema al crear un bloque de swap comprimido dentro de la misma RAM

Ahorra espacio de RAM al comprimir los datos poco usados Aumenta el rendimiento, porque acceder a RAM comprimida es mucho más rápido que al disco Evita el desgaste de tu disco

Ideal para equipos con poca RAM, netbooks, servidores pequeños o sistemas embebidos ¿Cómo activar zRAM en Linux? 1. Instalá los paquetes necesarios

sudo apt install zram-tools

Editá el archivo de configuración

sudo nano /etc/default/zramswap Ejemplo de configuración básica

ENABLED=true ALGO=zstd #zstd = buena compresión, lz4 = más rápido PERCENT=50 #Porcentaje de RAM que se usará como zRAM

Activá zRAM

sudo systemctl restart zramswap

sudo service restart zramswap Revisamos que esté todo ok

swapon --show

Deberías ver /dev/zram0 en la lista de swap activos
by jameshush | 2025-06-30 06:22:26+00:00
Your logic works out fine if you don't mind a dash of risk (e.g. from a job loss). But when I ran the numbers from my perspective it didn't seem worth it. (I might be doing my math wrong).

Let's say I get a car that costs $30k, I put $10k down, and I take a loan out using the numbers above rounded up just for napkin math (1% APR, 4% savings account).

After one year:

```

$30,000 x 0.04 = $1,200 from savings account interest

$1,200 x 0.33 = $396 in TAXES from the interest (assuming you earn over $145k/year in California)

$30,000 x 0.01 = $300 in loan interest

Total earned = $1,200 - $396 - $300 = $696

```

Don't get me wrong, $696 isn't _nothing_ but I personally would rather have the feeling of not owing people money then an extra $696 at the end of the year. Add in depreciation from getting a new car and it's almost a wash.
by energy123 | 2025-06-30 06:22:36+00:00
I take a lifecycle view. Early on, public subsidy of research is necessary. US President Carter and the Germans did a good job with that for solar. When you have a mature product 50 years later, that's when tax policy and/or industrial policy becomes more impactful. Industry itself is doing most of the innovating at this late stage, so you want policy to nudge existing consumers towards the preferred substitute. None of these policies are competing with one another, they are complementary. You can even use the tax revenue to fund the early-stage research of other moonshot technologies.
by philwelch | 2025-06-30 06:23:15+00:00
My wife and I are millennials and we paid off our student loans within a couple years once I started my career. I don’t even remember if it was before or after we got married and we’ve been married for over a decade now. Maybe we’re fortunate but I can’t imagine still having a monthly student loan payment.

Of course I also absolutely hated being in debt and having a monthly payment to begin with so I made it a priority to solve that problem asap. Likewise, I have always paid cash for every car I’ve bought. My only never-ending monthly payment is my mortgage and the alternative to that is paying rent which I like even less.

Fundamentally it’s a mindset thing. I also don’t buy taxi rides for my Chipotle orders.
by whitefang | 2025-06-30 06:25:37+00:00
Yes we have thought about that and we have multiple solutions to that.

- webbhook triggered - when a document is updated some CMS/tool provide webhooks triggering capability, which you can use to reindex that page - time based triggers - you can set a time like a cron and the document will be scanned in that time and checked if something has changed it will be reindexed

Happy to answer more questions.
by thor-rodrigues | 2025-06-30 06:25:49+00:00
What I find absolutely infuriating is that Abott (Freestyle Libre 1-3 devices) region locks their monitoring app depending on your region.

My father is T1 is uses the Libre CGM system for a couple years now. Libre users in the US and Europe can enjoy direct integration with their iOS devices, including constant updates and most importantly, notification alerts for dangerously high or low glucose levels, and it is even possible to share live updates of this with close family members or caretakers.

But none of this is available for my dad, as he lives in Brazil. Even though the product is same, he cannot download the iOS apps over the AppStore, as they are region locked.
by close04 | 2025-06-30 06:26:26+00:00
Your optimism is based on the assumption that companies will implement a system that will actively work against their current policies.

Look at the AI “support” Google or Facebook offer. Is it an empowering experience or a black hole of frustration leading nowhere?

Any tool is a mirror of what its owner needs it to be. AI will just commit the same abuses cheaper, faster, and with less accountability.
by ggm | 2025-06-30 06:27:08+00:00
Lawsuit is expensive. But, would the path to the out door have been faster if she had shown the commitment which comes with laywer time?

Mediation was how corporates tried to get out, but it should demand good faith. An awful lot of what happened to her wouldn't pass the good faith bar. At the end, she'd be offered a damn sight more than competitive finance terms as a future customer. On the steps of the courthouse, and bound into an NDA, but for her initial stake money, and therefore a path only available to rich people..?
by GlowOnDub | 2025-06-30 06:27:22+00:00
Hi devs!

I'm the maintainer of a relatively sucessful cross platform open source 3D viewer. We have had long standing macOS and Windows related issues and features that we have been struggling to adress in the past few years.

We got an european funding last year and we think that adding bounties on these issues may be a way forward.

So, if you are: - Interested by contributing to a awesome (not biased here :p ) open source projects - Knowledgeable in C++ macOS or Windoes API - Potentially motivated by small bounties

Then please join the project! I'd be happy to show you the ropes and I'm sure your skills will be up to the task!

Please note bounties can only be claimed once you are active in the project.

Our discord: https://discord.f3d.app

The bounties program: https://f3d.app/CONTRIBUTING.html#bounties
by nomilk | 2025-06-30 06:27:56+00:00
> the book includes a section on what they called “sludge” — tortuous administrative demands, endless wait times, and excessive procedural fuss that impede us

> a number of these obstacles are deliberate tools that discourage

This 'sludge' seems to be a common phenomena. Adobe are famous for making sign-up easy but unsubscribing extremely difficult.

'Sludge' had an unexpected upside when a friend's wordpress site went down when the host demanded 400% more for hosting. I waded through their intentionally broken UI and well-hidden online chat to try to help sort it out, but they eventually admitted (after three lengthly chats over 2 days) it was basically extortion as they advertised at $x but actually charge $(5x). The fact they wasted so much time was what frustrated me and prompted the irrational action of moving the entire site to lightsail, copying across the DNS records, setting up auto renew on SSL cert etc. A lot of work for a weekday evening considering I knew nothing about wp. But it worked!

tl;dr that hosting company's 'sludge' caused such frustration it prompted an irrational response, which had led to a very good outcome (leaving the company for a much better one, even through it wasn't worth it from a purely rational perspective).
by throwaway290 | 2025-06-30 06:28:50+00:00
> When I was in high school, my friends and I had a game we used to play at the mall: we would go into the Apple store and try to make it to the back wall of the store, touch it, and exit out the front without an Apple staff person talking to us.

Idk if this is about age or sex or location but in Apple Stores in Asia I play another fun game: just stand and wait until anybody talks to me. Could take 20+ minutes no problems. I play on my phone or I try to stare down staff but they chat among themselves and make sure to not accidentally look.

If the store has only one entrance and there is unoccupied staff, they sometimes assault me with questions when I enter. But even in those stores as soon as I browsed and made a choice and ready to buy they vanish magically!
by motorest | 2025-06-30 06:29:40+00:00
> Society is a perfectly valid response to your question. You are used to a certain society, societal rules that doesn't care about it's people.

No, it's quite the opposite actually: you clearly do not care about society if you see it as an ATM to unconditionally fund your whims and cravings all while rejecting any need to contribute back.

I'm asking s very simple question you are trying to avoid answering: why is it fair for those who actually sacrifice themselves to work to fund those who opt to not work. Explain exactly what is fair in having workers support actual freeloaders in society? I mean, you are not talking about social safety nets. You're talking about unconfitional basic incomes. You do nothing, and you get a salary in return. Explain in clear terms how is it fair to those who actual work to see their labor appropriated by those who choose not to work, which might very well be their own colleagues. Explain where is the fairness and equity in this.
by gsliepen | 2025-06-30 06:30:27+00:00
> With staging you get to control exactly what gets inlined/partially evaluated.

I want to stress that this is not true. Sure, sometimes it might work, but compilers can also uninline, as well as reorder the way things are evaluated. Compilers don't do a 1:1 mapping of lines of code to assembly instructions anymore; instead they are designed to take your program as input, and generate the best executable that has the same observable effect as your code. So whatever optimization you perform in the source code, it is going to be very brittle as well wrt to seemingly harmless compiler changes (like changing compiler flags, updating the compiler to a new version, and so on).

While indeed nothing is guaranteed, at this point in time the compiler is vastly better at optimizing code than humans are. If you want to make a point that multi-stage programming helps optimize code, you have to do much better than an example of raising x to some power.