MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ggm | 2025-06-30 02:53:40+00:00
Charity is essentially voluntary. So, in terms of persistence to need, it's highly variable. Some problems demand commitment which charities cannot commit to.

Charity incurs oversight burdens. The UK has a long story about failures in charity, the charity commissioner has had to intercede many times. It would be wrong to assume there are no oversight costs, the thing is that to the charity they may look like externalities. They have to be borne, the state bears the cost.

Charities also usually cannot intercede politically to fix the situation demanding their charitable work. So, charities are excluded from lobbying in some ways, where governments reflect the will of the people and are subject to both good and band consequences.

Charities are abused. Churches for instance. Why do churches qualify for charitable status, when they (in most economies where they are or have been) are established entities with massive landholdings and wealth?

In the end, it's a matter of philosophy. Without being patronising, I tend to think right wing people who believe in personal responsibility and low taxes favour charity because it gives them discretion, to give or not, as a function of how they feel about the recipient, and left wing people who believe in the state as a construct reflecting popular will believe in state functions to implement the burdens individuals cannot manage for themselves.

I say that because my very good friends who donate highly tend to be right wing and tend to make moralising statements about diabetes being a function of a lack of personal self control and so do not fund interventions to prevent diabetes in the working poor because "they lack self control" and also chose not to fund womens reproductive rights on similar grounds "chastity is its own reward" -Bill and Melinda Gates were exceptional in ignoring the fundamentalist christian lobby which came into the room in the Reagan "just say no" years, and funded contraception and abortion in Africa regardless.
by AdieuToLogic | 2025-06-30 02:53:51+00:00
IIRC, at one point Ford priced the Model T (which ultimately became the Ford Taurus decades later) to be at or near the US individual average annual income and maintained this price structure throughout.

With last year's lowest (by state) average annual income being Mississippi at $45k, there is little reason for any car manufacturer to produce a $25k MSRP vehicle.
by chandureddyvari | 2025-06-30 02:54:22+00:00
I’m exploring two different applications of AI for education and skill-building:

1. Open-Source AI Curriculum Generator(OSS MathAcademy alternative for other subjects) Think MathAcademy meets GitHub: an AI system that generates complete computer science curricula with prerequisites, interactive lessons, quizzes, and progression paths. The twist: everything is human-reviewed and open-sourced for community auditing. Starting with an undergrad CS foundation, then branching into specializations (web dev, mobile, backend, AI, systems programming).

The goal is serving self-learners who want structured, rigorous CS education outside traditional institutions. AI handles the heavy lifting of curriculum design and personalization, while human experts ensure quality and accuracy.

2. Computational Astrology as an AI Agent Testbed For learning production-grade AI agents, I’m building a system that handles Indian astrology calculations. Despite the domain’s questionable validity, it’s surprisingly well-suited for AI: complex rule systems, computational algorithms from classical texts, and intricate overlapping interpretations - perfect for testing RAG + MCP tool architectures.

It’s purely a technical exercise to understand agent orchestration, knowledge retrieval, and multi-step reasoning in a domain with well-defined (if arcane) computational rules.

- Has anyone tackled AI generated curricula? What are the gotchas? - Interest in either as open-source projects?
by blululu | 2025-06-30 02:55:05+00:00
I think this is something else.

These plans are not about cutting moribund departments that produce nothing. These are plans to fire people who are currently performing well and delivering for the company absent any downturn. This is very different than cutting bloat in that these people are currently holding up their end of the bargain for employment. Personally I would also suggest that seeking gains that come 100% at the expense of a business partner is a real asshole move.

HN also used to ridicule organizations that have no vision for future growth. From a business perspective the more scathing indictment of these executives is that they have no plan for capitalizing on AI. If a VC asked a startup what they would do with an extra X engineers or $Y in cloud credits, and the answer is "we would do the same things we are doing now" the VC would probably pass on the company. AI gives you twice the engineers. If your company doesn't have any plans to take advantage of this opportunity then it is already in decline.
by abdullahkhalids | 2025-06-30 02:56:05+00:00
The solution to overfishing, over consumption of fossil fuels, over consumption of beef etc is all the same in the current system. Impose appropriate taxes that adequately capture the impact of the negative externalities.

Living in unsustainable ways is ... well not sustainable.

If people have liked to eat fish since the start, then maybe we should leave some for the next generations.
by ggm | 2025-06-30 02:56:24+00:00
US "charity" to the UN became highly qualified as a function of both political distance from the UN goals, and regrettable lapses in probity inside the UN, the kind of problem which crops up anywhere and everywhere. Time and place meant they collided, and the US stopped funding the UN because of <reasons> and instead let the charity sector pick up the burden, which meant right wing christian fundamentalism entered the room. It is little wonder that islamic countries became suspicious of e.g. vaccination drives, made only worse by US polital operatives exploiting the polio vaccination runs to track down Bin Laden.

The US was the most charitable nation in the world but it's not a given.
by leakycap | 2025-06-30 02:56:25+00:00
> If there is systematic manipulation going on, we should look for ways to fight against it.

I'd love to support this energy, but part of being serious is priorities

This energy needs to be put into something more meaningful than a chat site

> If people have incorrect opinions (yes, there is such a thing - e.g. an opinion that is based either on false information or on correct information and a faulty chain of reasoning), we should try to correct their mistake.

We? Speak for yourself, please. I'm only chatting to you because it seems you're focused on something meaningless: virtual points on the internet.

If you have something worth hearing, say it. People will listen if your message is important. Otherwise, patrolling the internet or worrying about post votes (just listen to what we're talking about!!) seems like a waste of our limited time breathing.
by britch | 2025-06-30 02:57:22+00:00
Is it clear the charity approach is more efficient? My sense is many non-profits prioritize fundraising and have the bloat of executives who's main function is to schmooze donors.

I'm sure there are good nonprofits/charities. And there's definitely inefficient public offices that are mainly interested in politics.

My point is "seems less efficient" is kind of weak ground to be asking others for evidence
by lufenialif2 | 2025-06-30 02:57:38+00:00
I tried recreating this - gemma3n:e4b ID 15cb39fd9394 and /set parameter seed 42 and I got 2 different results on the two times I asked 'were the original macs really exactly 9 inch?'

Strangely, I'm only getting 2 alternating results every time I restart the model. I was not able to get the same result as you and certainly not with links to external sources. Is there anything else I could do to try to replicate your result?

I've only used ChatGPT prior and it'd be nice to use locally run models with consistent results.
by retroviber | 2025-06-30 02:57:47+00:00
I am working on https://deepmarketscan.com/

It synthesizes unusual market activity, insider moves, options flow, sentiment, technical and news analysis to deliver specific, actionable trade setups.

This is only good for paper trading, as most of the setups are very counterintuitive. You won't be able to execute them, and if you did try, you would end up losing sleep and your health even when you are correct.
by leakycap | 2025-06-30 02:58:44+00:00
> You've responded by saying you haven't seen that in the past. So what? The article mentions now, not the past.

LOL, well I certainly can't see it in the future and don't eat an apple from anyone who can say they can.

And unless I was very rudely typing this reply during an interview, it isn't happening now.

It sounds like you have never heard of the concept of '1 in 10 dentists' and are confusing the saying or concept with mathematical exactness. Not sure anyone on this site needs 10% vs 12.5% explained to them, it might help to remember where you are before you rudely respond.
by catskull | 2025-06-30 02:58:48+00:00
I started a podcast and have been having a lot of fun talking with staff-level engineers about their passions. It’s called Interrobang.

https://catskull.net/podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/interrobang-with-dave-...

I built the whole tech stack with Jekyll and Cloudflare and wrote about it on my blog: https://catskull.net/podcast-workflow.html

Finally, I built a simple chat app as a web component with a Cloudflare durable object and have a few AI bots spamming the chat that may or may not ignore you: https://catskull.net/the-most-dangerous-app.html
by Jedd | 2025-06-30 02:58:58+00:00
A reminder that "No Such Thing As a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy" by Linsey McGoey (2015), is an excellent analysis of philanthrocapitalism.

(Spoiler - this book does not provide a ringing endorsement of dubiously acquired wealth being dubiously applied through a commercial / for-profit prism.)
by CobaltFire | 2025-06-30 02:59:27+00:00
I actually really feel this. Before I retired I had a homelab in the learning, testing, experimenting sense. I didn't run anything for home "production" on it because the downtime wasn't appreciated.

Now I have a more capable rack, but it's all just running stuff I use. I don't experiment on it at all, and I don't use it to gain any new skills.

So I do call it a homelab, but its not quite what people understand that to be.
by ggm-at-algebras | 2025-06-30 02:59:47+00:00
What does economics in die area say about using die for highly repeatable simple memory forms, vs complex instruction/ALU? I would think there is a balance point between more cores, and faster cores with more cache and more lanes between them.

We're on 8 as a mixture of fast and slow, hot and cool, on almost all personal devices now. I routinely buy Intel instruction racks with 16 per CPU construct, and a TB of memory. At one remove, chips seem to be fulfilling my mission but I am not in GPU/TPU land. Although I note, FPGA/GPU/TPU seems like where a lot of the mental energy goes these days.

VLSI is a black art. Quantum effects are close enough to magic I feel confident saying few people today understand VLSI. I know I don't, I barely understand virtual memory. I ache for the days when a zero pointer was a valid address on a pdp11
by IG_Semmelweiss | 2025-06-30 03:00:26+00:00
One particular fishing tactic by Chinese fisherboats is horrendous.

They will approach a protected ecosystem, which is thriving with fish like that of the galapagos islands, for example. They will hang out right at the limit of the maritime nautical border with the native country.

Then they will shut down naval GPS transponders (disabling of AIS - Automatic Identification System) and during the night, all at the same time, cross into the country's maritime space and quickly get out before its caught by the local patrols. [1][2]

This happens a lot with smaller countries which cannot fight back.

There are other techniques that haven't been yet discussed, like, altering vessel measurements (Changing draft and length to obscure activity, e.g., during transshipment or EEZ entry) , and meeting with refrigerated cargo ships to transfer catch which is likely illegal.

These are the only ways they can sustain a 44% of fishing worldwide. If they did this in their home turf, their waters would be empty of life

[1] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/pesca-ile...

[2] https://usa.oceana.org/press-releases/oceana-analysis-shows-...
by snuxoll | 2025-06-30 03:00:26+00:00
Outside of having what amounts to a couple of shells and removable seats that can be mounted to the box (and a removable rear panel from the cab to join them to create a single 'interior' when using them), the majority of their BTO options are really basic module swaps where most of the complexity comes from managing inventory of the various SKUs than anything else.

As somebody with a '99 Ford Ranger, the Slate is incredibly appealing as nearly every other manufacturer has completely abandoned the compact pickup market; although it has the same issue that the Ford Maverick and Honda Ridgeline do, it's a unibody design. If they actually launch I may end up getting one if they release some BTO options to slot a double-din mount and door-mounted speakers in to handle runs to the hardware store and towing lighter loads on paved roads, but I really wish somebody would do a compact frame-on-body pickup again for those of us that drive poorly maintained dirt roads in forested/mountainous terrain where some body damage (and thus, the cheaper repair costs associated with body-on-frame designs are nice to have) is always lurking around the corner.

[Seriously, I understand the difficulties of batteries and such with EV's and that's likely part of why the Slate is designed this way. But, for people like me who actually need a pickup to do pickup things, not haul groceries, it's frustrating when you're accustomed to being able to replace a side-panel on the box for less than your insurance deductible if something falls on it. And that's without even bringing up the obvious disadvantages when it comes to towing and payload capacity.]
by mrandish | 2025-06-30 03:00:31+00:00
It's important to understand that:

* Commodore B.V. only owns the Commodore trademark and logo. They do not own any of the Commodore source code, patents, designs, etc. They do not own the Amiga trademarks, logos, source code, ROMs, etc.

* The exact terms and status of the transaction are unclear, however it appears to be a letter of intent and contingent on raising sufficient funds, which has not yet been done.
by AngryData | 2025-06-30 03:00:41+00:00
This place is a tiny village, like 1,300 people, the problem here is likely someone from the city, maybe from Chicago, who moved to where they family use to own a summer cabin or launch boats out onto the lake, and then got pissed when they realized the locals grew up rural and didn't just do tourist things and like to raise animals like chickens. Ain't nobody from that town that hasn't regularly smelled chicken and cow shit and heard chickens cawing every morning their entire lives that would even notice they were there.
by androng | 2025-06-30 03:00:43+00:00
I am working on a babelfish ie speech-to-speech language translation for use during vacations namely Tokyo Disneyland where you can't ask the speaker to stop speaking. I am kind of surprised that it does not exist yet. I want it to be like this this video where the app/device talks in English in realtime over the Japanese speaker https://youtu.be/PfPC4KEdTDY?si=h4BfmkNvQnmOzvgC&t=62 however I found no iOS app that can do this yet, they all require the speaker to stop speaking before translating. I know Google translate can live speech-to-text but I'm wondering if I can achieve speech-to-speech with earbuds and a shotgun microphone so I don't have to look at my phone. and there's new iOS on-device models so I'm hoping I can get better offline accuracy
by bee_rider | 2025-06-30 03:01:10+00:00
It is a bit of a shame, IMO, that the concept of an always-on home computer has basically died out, or maybe never even really caught on. A sort of digital shadow of the house, it could run a home email server and do any home automation/content hosting.

Anyway, I think it is unusual enough that it will need describing whatever he calls it, so no need to stress about the name. I’d call it the home computer, haha. Every computer is actually a network of chips anyway nowadays, this one is just physically much larger I guess.
by creatonez | 2025-06-30 03:01:37+00:00
The maintainer of Xlibre was not the "main maintainer" of Xorg. It is all smoke and mirrors, a fake-it-till-you-make-it strategy to be able to prematurely say "I am a X developer" without having put in the work. Their commits only go back to 2022 and they are all miniscule changes that haven't fixed any of Xorg's architectural warts.
by jumploops | 2025-06-30 03:02:17+00:00
Just call it a puddle :)

1. No fault tolerance or high availability

2. It can evaporate just as quickly as it formed

3. Same contents as the cloud (plus some local contaminants)

On a serious note: I wish more of the homelab community was focused on self-hosting (puddles should be awesome!), but it seems to mostly be folks justifying the purchase of large amounts of used equipment for “education” (internet points).
by tim-- | 2025-06-30 03:02:39+00:00
For fun, I am building a little tool called 'domain-manager'. Basically just a binary that automates configuring a Linux host to run a bunch of WordPress/Laravel/PHP sites.

It creates all the necessary boilerplate to generate PHP Docker containers, creates all of the MySQL users, and sets up all of the directory structures to get a new website up and running. It even helps set up SFTP users and gets letsencrypt certificates set up with certbot.

It's still very early days, but I appreciate that what used to be a bunch of commands that I would run by hand and slightly change every few months is now pretty much just all self contained. Should mean the next migration to a different server is easier.

Created in frustration because I was too cheap to pay the $50/month for a cPanel license.

https://github.com/timgws/domain-manager
by ocdtrekkie | 2025-06-30 03:02:43+00:00
Yeah I've posted a few times here and there that selfhosting and homelabbing are different concepts with different goals. You might use the same hardware but what solutions you choose will differ based on your goals.

For instance, I'd argue homelabbing with Kubernetes makes sense, selfhosting with Kubernetes is stupid. Because the only reason you should ever run that at home is practice for work.
by Saigonautica | 2025-06-30 03:03:14+00:00
I built a hardware server monitor with LED display based on the ESP8266. I needed 8 fewer things to think about in the morning. If you want, you can build one yourself, I released the hardware and firmware: https://github.com/seanboyce/servermon

Next up is a small lamp for migraines. I noticed that dim red light is much more tolerable to me than anything else. I mean obviously, darkness is ideal, but you need to do other stuff like eat and drink eventually if it's a persistent one.

So I designed a quick circuit to use fast PWM (few Mhz, so no flicker) to control a big red LED. I'd like it to be sturdy and still functional in 50-100 years, so made some design choices for long-term durability. No capacitors, replaceable LED and so on.

A simple project, but it's a busy month and I need something easy this time.
by jdmichal | 2025-06-30 03:03:18+00:00
My guess would be lack of actuators. For instance, this robot looks like it has an ankle that can only go up and down, but not roll like a human's. Also, I wonder if there's a center of gravity issue, as it almost always appears to be leaning backwards to even out.

I think it's still pretty impressive in its recoveries, even though there's an unnaturally large number of them necessary. About 8 seconds into the video on the homepage, it almost misses and ends up slipping off the second step. I've eaten shit at missing a couple inch curb, though I don't think "graceful" has ever been used as a descriptor for me. So the fact that it just recovers and keeps going without issue is impressive to me.
by ARandomerDude | 2025-06-30 03:04:01+00:00
I have one and it’s awesome. You also don’t have to worry about someone snatching items out of the bed.

The biggest downsides are (1) I’m reluctant to put anything gross back there (vs throwing a trash bag in the bed like I used to with my truck), and (2) people see a van, assume you’ll drive obnoxiously slowly, and preemptively cut you off in traffic lest they get stuck behind you.

Overall, the pros outweigh those 2 cons for me.
by taha_moji | 2025-06-30 03:05:08+00:00
My background is in NLP, research, and startups. I joined a power company where I saw a clear opportunity to use AI for automating equipment inspection from drone images.

But the environment made it hard to move fast. The systems were outdated, and there wasn’t much support for building AI tools in-house. That experience made me realize I needed to grow beyond the modeling layer. There were things I wanted to build, but I didn’t yet have the full skill set to do it on my own.

So I’ve been learning full stack development. I had built a small chatbot app before, but this time I’m applying what I’m learning toward a focused MVP for the inspection work. It’s been a practical way to connect what I know with what I want to make real.
by zeroq | 2025-06-30 03:06:33+00:00
Last year we bought a car.

While not being a petrol head I was still living in a lala land where you could buy a brand new car for 10k EUR. Nothing fancy, just "a car". Obviously it turned out to be not true.

After some digging it turned out that in the last 10 years the price of cars went double. Literally double. Same car, like Fiat Panda, with the same engine and configuration, that ten years was worth one potato is now worth exactly two potato.

Long story short, the entry level car now costs close to 25k EUR. [1]

But here's the kicker.

While subvenstions seem to fail in most cases for regular people - like gvt giving people money to buy apartements equals to apartments being equally more expensive - it seems to work wonders for automotive thanks to Chinese.

EU offers up to 10k EUR subvention for electric cars and with that in mind you can get something like BYD Dolphin for slighly less than 20k EUR. Which is mind blowing. The car is comparable to Volvo XC40. Of course this is just an example and there is plentiful of other options.

[1] If you're not familiar or comfortable with EUR just think 1 EUR is 1 USD and you'll be fine.
by neogodless | 2025-06-30 03:06:36+00:00
Chevrolet Trax can be found between $20-21k USD but... when I look at inventory, nothing within ~75 miles is under $25k.

Not a horrible vehicle for the price.

Mazda 3 used to be a $20k car (and even less before that) but now starts just over $24k (sedan) / $25k (hatchback).
by kragen | 2025-06-30 03:07:32+00:00
That's not why.

The kinds of databases where your business stops working if the database does are OLTP databases (often, databases of transactions in the financial sense), and they aren't hundreds of terabytes or tens of millions of transactions per second. Oracle itself doesn't scale to databases so big or with such high transaction rates that they can't run on one server in 02025. (It does scale to databases so big or with such high transaction rates that Oracle can't run them on one server in 02025, but that's just because Oracle's VAXCluster-optimized design is inefficient on current hardware.)

People run Oracle because it's too late for them to switch.