MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by naasking | 2025-06-19 12:50:50+00:00
> PLA is not strong and doesn't like to warm up in the sun

"Strong" is ambiguous. PLA is stiffer than many other thermoplastics (resists bending loads well), but it's not as tough (impact strength is poor/it's brittle).

PLA becomes even stiffer and resists higher temperatures than many other thermoplastics if you anneal it.

You want stiffness in a telescope because deflecting under load moves your optics out of alignment. A telescope has moving masses as well, so stiffness along all axes under load is important.
by nu11ptr | 2025-06-19 12:51:06+00:00
> SpaceX has made excellent progress with its Starship rocket. The stainless steel vehicle can now explode before even leaving the Earth.

Honest question as I don't often read the theregister.com: is such sarcasm/bias typical?

UPDATE: I guess had I actually gone to the homepage and looked around it would have answered my question.
by lightedman | 2025-06-19 12:51:07+00:00
There are other ways to dim LEDs. Voltage stepping to control how much current can actually flow through the diode is one method (and this is how we test LEDs where I work, a 3V LED gets tested at ~2.4-2.6V. It will barely draw a couple milliamps despite the power supply set to allow an amp of draw.) The LED will light up, enough to see that it is working well, but not eye-searingly bright.
by hombre_fatal | 2025-06-19 12:51:24+00:00
Griping exposes your internal state about an adverse event.

Not all adversity should be endured, that's true. Like dealing with an evil manager at work.

But when someone finds a line of leaf cutter ants in front of their hotel door or a shower iguana to be something worth bickering over with management despite booking a trip to the subtropics, they've been rotted by comfortable times.
by cat1750309572 | 2025-06-19 12:51:27+00:00
It was real, but maybe the username wasn't the only data point they used. Considering that:

1. Brand new Steam accounts were banned after logging in to Steam client, before even launching any game

2. Replacing "catbot" in user accounts with a random string stopped the bans completely

3. A linux VAC module, dumped similarly to the method described in the article, had access to usernames - I think it was via a getpwent() call. It also collected some other info about the environment (I don't have that binary anymore).

You can probably agree that user account names played at least some role in the bans, even if they weren't the only factor.

* I can't provide concrete evidence for either of those three points as the events took place 8 years ago, feel free to not take my word for it. Maybe you can find someone else from that circle who still has dumped VAC binaries, links to the empty banned accounts or a clone of bot orchestration software repository with a commit that renamed the user accounts and stopped the bans. Maybe even chat logs from that era.

Anyway, at this point it's just a funny piece of tf2 cheating history that has zero impact on anything anymore. So you might as well think it was all fake and I'm just making stuff up, it doesn't matter.
by hollowturtle | 2025-06-19 12:51:33+00:00
Being Linux is not a good thing imo, it took decades for tech like proton to run Windows games reliably, if not better as now, than Windows does. Software is still mostly develop for Windows and macOS. Not to mention the Linux Desktop that never took off, I mean one could mention Android but there is a large corporation behind it. Sure Linux is successfull in many ways, it's embedded everywhere but nowhere near being the OS of the everyday people, "traditional linux desktop" never took off
by neya | 2025-06-19 12:51:55+00:00
>I think you have an overcomplicated idea of what a "server"

That's actually true, because I'm always thinking from a cloud deployment perspective (which is my use case). What kind of architecture do you run this on, at scale on the cloud? You have very limited options if your monolith is on a serverless and is CPU/memory bound, too. So, that's where I was coming from.
by abdullin | 2025-06-19 12:52:57+00:00
Exactly!

This is why there has to be "write me a detailed implementation plan" step in between. Which files is it going to change, how, what are the gotchas, which tests will be affected or added etc.

It is easier to review one document and point out missing bits, than chase the loose ends.

Once the plan is done and good, it is usually a smooth path to the PR.
by vitaflo | 2025-06-19 12:53:13+00:00
I have the same issues. I actually had to return an iPhone because the oled screens they use are so bad and gave me migraines.

For bulbs tho I found this site that tests tons of them for flicker.

https://flickeralliance.org/

It was a godsend and I was able to get some Ikea bulbs with zero flicker and they’ve been great. So at least my house isn’t a flickering mess. Now I just gotta figure out a phone that’s not garbage.
by bawolff | 2025-06-19 12:53:20+00:00
I think you could reasonably say that there is credible information that Israel has attacked targets that are near or in residential areas (at the very least they seem to have done targeted assinations of high level military officials in their homes).

However that's different than saying they are targeting residential areas themselves. That's the part that i think the other poster is objecting to. Air supperiority matters here because it means Israel has the ability to target basically anything they want (so you could assume things not targeted are by choice and not lack of ability).

If total wounded (not even killed, just wounded) of both millitary and civilians is ~1200, that kind of suggests that Israel is not targeting residential buildings in general, since just a few apartment building would likely have more casualties than that.

Not to say this is iron clad reasoning. Maybe Iran is downplaying casualties for propaganda purposes (otoh i think they would be splashing photos of destroyed residential buildings everywhere if Israel was destroying them in general, as that makes for great PR). I don't really know, but there is enough doubt here that I don't think its confirmed Israel is targeting residential areas in general.
by somenameforme | 2025-06-19 12:53:26+00:00
It doesn't. It simply makes clear that the reason is not 'value', as somebody might interpret it, but scarcity. If there were 100 million competent software engineers in the US, the value they add to companies wouldn't change, but their labor costs would - quite dramatically. In such a scenario coding and flipping burgers would offer relatively comparable wages.

Supply:demand makes the reason for this change completely clear, vague notions of poorly (and often circularly) defined 'value' do not.
by Arainach | 2025-06-19 12:53:36+00:00
There's always a tradeoff in use or contribution. If a project is under a more restrictive license the odds of individuals or companies contributing (or for certain licenses even using) drops radically.

If your intent is just "I wrote this thing, sharing the code" license as restrictively as you'd like. If your intent is "I want to build (and/or get others to help build) a bigger thing", restrictions scare folks off.

It's trivial for me to get approval from my employer to do almost anything in almost any MIT-licensed codebase; we use and contribute to a number of GPLv2 codebases. However GPLv3 is a very rigid line in the sand that I do not expect to ever change.
by elif | 2025-06-19 12:54:49+00:00
In my experience with Jules and (worse) Codex, juggling multiple pull requests at once is not advised.

Even if you tell the git-aware Jules to handle a merge conflict within the context window the patch was generated, it is like sorry bro I have no idea what's wrong can you send me a diff with the conflict?

I find i have to be in the iteration loop at every stage or else the agent will forget what it's doing or why rapidly. for instance don't trust Jules to run your full test suite after every change without handholding and asking for specific run results every time.

It feels like to an LLM, gaslighting you with code that nominally addresses the core of what you just asked while completely breaking unrelated code or disregarding previously discussed parameters is an unmitigated success.
by camgunz | 2025-06-19 12:55:03+00:00
Yeah I don't know or really care about Rationalism or whatever. But I took Aaronson's advice and read Zvi Mowshowitz' Childhood and Education #9: School is Hell [0], and while I share many of the criticisms (and cards on the table I also had pretty bad school experiences), I would have a hard time jumping onto this bus.

One point is that when Mowshowitz is dispelling the argument that abuse rates are much higher for homeschooled kids, he (and the counterargument in general) references a study [1] showing that abuse rates for non-homeschooled kids are similarly high: both around 37%. That paper's no good though! Their conclusion is "We estimate that 37.4% of all children experience a child protective services investigation by age 18 years." 37.4%? That's 27m kids! How can CPS run so many investigations? That's 4k investigations a day over 18 years, no holidays or weekends. Nah. Here are some good numbers (that I got to from the bad study, FWIW) [2], they're around 4.2%.

But, more broadly, the worst failing of the US educational system isn't how it treats smart kids, it's how it treats kids for whom it fails. If you're not the 80% of kids who can somehow make it in the school system, you're doomed. Mowshowitz' article is nearly entirely dedicated to how hard it is to liberate your suffering, gifted student from the prison of public education. This is a real problem! I agree it would be good to solve it!

But, it's just not the problem. Again I'm sympathetic to and agree with a lot of the points in the article, but you can really boil it down to "let smart, wealthy parents homeschool their kids without social media scorn". Fine, I guess. No one's stopping you from deleting your account and moving to California. But it's not an efficient use of resources--and it's certainly a terrible political strategy--to focus on such a small fraction of the population, and to be clear this is the absolute nicest way I can characterize these kinds of policy positions. This thing is going nowhere as long as it stays so self-obsessed.

[0]: https://thezvi.substack.com/p/childhood-and-education-9-scho...

[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227926/

[2]: https://acf.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cb/cm2023.pdf
by bluefirebrand | 2025-06-19 12:55:19+00:00
I think the calculator example is apt, but flawed

Is it safe to say that people are generally much worse at mental math nowadays due to calculators being ready available on every smartphone? I think it is reasonable to assume that's true. Math is more accessible thanks to tools now, but people are worse at it in general?

If that's true, that we became worse at mental math thanks to readily available tools, then what does it suggest about a readily available tool that "thinks" for us?

The same way we used to caution devs not to just copy and paste from Stack Overflow, we now have to repeat with AI... Except AI is being pushed to literally take over that whole workflow!

At least with Stack Overflow you had to identify where in the code to paste it!

Edit:

A further thought in Math. I suppose there is a difference between "Math" and "Calculation". Likely due to modern education people do know (at least vaguely) more about Math than before. Maybe the skill of actually performing calculations is not that valuable as long as you have some baseline understanding of the underlying Math

Still the problem with AI tools is they promise to do the Calculation and also understand the Math for you. To calculate an angle you need to know enough Trig to figure out which sides you need to measure and which function you need to use on the Calculator. With AI, in theory, you just ask it what it needs to calculate that angle, it tells you, you measure, input the numbers, and it gives you the angle back. No Human understanding of anything required. A total loss imo

You can view it as freeing our cognitive abilities for other things

I view it as never developing cognitive abilities because we never had to actually use them
by eloisant | 2025-06-19 12:55:21+00:00
I don't think it's true, sci-fi rarely tries to be an accurate prediction of the future.

Rather it's talking about the present, by accentuating some trends of the present to make people think about it. Black Mirror in particular is all about that, it's exaggerating some trends from the present to make us aware of them and the potential consequences if pushed too far.
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-06-19 12:55:42+00:00
>I'm guessing you're a US citizen, because this isn't about the US.

I'm not and I never said it is, I was just saying it's a bit hypocritical for people to complain about governments wanting to see your social media before letting you in the country, while being OK with giving up your biometrics.

You might say you're also not OK with giving up your biometrics, and then I would say, well why are you going to places that do things you're not OK with? Just stay home or go to other places. Why complain about the politics of countries you're not a citizen of and can't vote? Their country, their rules, only their citizen can enact change.

And BTW, I'm OK with governments wanting to see your social media before letting you in. Where I live in EU, there's a lot of middle eastern "refugees" whose social media is full of support of terrorist orgs and calling for death to Israel. Why would you want to let such people in? Would you want those people living next to you? If they're that brazen and stupid to be so open about extremist beliefs on social media, they don't belong in our society and shouldn't have been let in the first place. Granted that won't stop all these extremists, but it will at least stop the really dumb ones.

I expect my elected government to prioritize the safety of its taxpayers over the privacy rights of foreigners and visitors.
by AndySurtees | 2025-06-19 12:56:05+00:00
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by eth0up | 2025-06-19 12:56:32+00:00
I think this entirely depends on the application, if that's not self evident.

I do not have many options for discussions anymore. This is for various reasons.

Some of the dialogue I've experienced through various LLM systems has been far more intriguing and thought provoking than 90 percent of my human conversations. I distinctly recall thinking how great it was to have something to substitute the former roles of bygone friends, some of who were both highly educated and intelligent.

Some of my more enjoyable discussions have been in the realm of guerilla physics. So one could easily enough argue that my mind was wasting away while being cheaply entertained by bullshit. But other subjects have been equally satisfying and quite rewarding. Some credit may be due to very meticulous prompt construction. Or perhaps the simple earnestness of my inquiries. If my time spent in these sessions has reduced my cognitive activity, it is miraculous that I can function so well in a coma around most actual people, who do verily inspire one -- a coma, that is.

A deep one.
by Barrin92 | 2025-06-19 12:56:53+00:00
It would be of great use if it did that. Technology can roughly be grouped in two categories. One that enhances, amplifies and develops innate human capacity, and tools that diminish it.

Using a bow engages more faculties, both physical and mental than clobbering someone on the head but it's also a more effective tool. Using a debugger is both a difficult skill but also useful. You grow, and have to increase your aptitude , with the tool use. An exercise bike and meditation practice are harder than a sleeping pill and ozempic.

Chatbots are more in the category of the 400 pound guy driving through wallmart on his electric scooter. Whatever use it has, it almost certainly diminishes if not totally atrophies their ability to move. Given that the modern framing of technology has changed to "what does it do for me" rather than "what does it do to me", it's not surprising that people are largely not capable to understand the difference.
by llm_nerd | 2025-06-19 12:56:57+00:00
>Much like when the administration announced an investment of 500 Billion USD in AI some months back

That was a project by Oracle to build some data centres, many of which had already broke ground and were under construction, and they pulled OpenAI and Softbank in to give it that AI veneer.

So it's stuff that is really happening, and was already happening. Similarly this TI plant was announced under the prior administration as a win of the chips act, and again it's being recycled to current.

This sort of shell game works for a while, but a couple of years the bill comes due.
by ItCouldBeWorse | 2025-06-19 12:57:24+00:00
I think Netanyahu is not certain of the left/international part of his population. They would likely abandon israel if things got to bad (which they tend to do in that neighborhood)- he sort of uses the senseless hatred of the arabs worldwide as a sort of kadyrite barrier troop- if you cant go anywhere and be save- might as well stay in israel.
by elif | 2025-06-19 12:57:41+00:00
Yep this is what Andrej talks about around 20 minutes into this talk.

You have to be extremely verbose in describing all of your requirements. There is seemingly no such thing as too much detail. The second you start being vague, even if it WOULD be clear to a person with common sense, the LLM views that vagueness as a potential aspect of it's own creative liberty.
by m4rtink | 2025-06-19 12:57:42+00:00
The Saturn V second stage (S-II) has at least two examples listed as destroyed during testing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-II

"First all-up S-II stage, assembled between 1963 and 1965. Completed several engine tests at the Mississippi Test Facility (now the Stennis Space Center). Destroyed by accidental LH2 tank overpressurization during pressure testing May 28, 1966[7][6]"

and

"Destroyed in test stand September 29, 1965"

Also described here: http://heroicrelics.org/ussrc/s-ii/index.html

"The S-II program was beset with problems and delays. NASA had planned on North American making an S-II stage, S-II-D, for dynamic testing but the order for that stage was cancelled in early 1965 in favor of using the structural static test stage, S-II-S, as a combined static/dynamic test stage; that stage was renamed to S-II-S/D. Unfortunately, the S-II-S/D stage was destroyed during testing, leaving S-II-F to take on the added role of dynamic testing and being redesignated as S-II-F/D."

I though all of the Saturn V stages were destroyed during testing at least once but it looks like I remembered it wrong. :)
by abdullin | 2025-06-19 12:58:15+00:00
Agreed. AI is just a tool. Letting in run the show is essentially what the vibe-coding is. It is a fun activity for prototyping, but tends to accumulate problems and tech debt at an astonishing pace.

Code, manually crafted by professionals, will almost always beat AI-driven code in quality. Yet, one has still to find such professionals and wait for them to get the job done.

I think, the right balance is somewhere in between - let tools handle the mundane parts (e.g. mechanically rewriting that legacy Progress ABL/4GL code to Kotlin), while human engineers will have fun with high-level tasks and shaping the direction of the project.
by HPsquared | 2025-06-19 12:58:48+00:00
NDT also will detect a range of defect shapes/sizes. The structural design also probably defines the maximum acceptable size of defects. That critical size depends on analysis that basically asks "what size of defect could we see, and be confident a defect smaller than this size won't grow sufficiently during operation, to a size that would challenge the structure or leakage etc requirements".

With this being metal, small defects tend to grow over time- called metal fatigue. This all depends on the stress in the material which depends on a lot of things: fluid flows and pressures, temperatures (and temperature differences and rates of change), vibrations (structural or induced by fluid flow), etc etc.

Mechanical engineering at this level is very complex! So many of these things boil down to probability distributions of each process involved. I don't know how "close to the edge" the design is, but this is the kind of thing you have to do when optimizing for weight.
by JdeBP | 2025-06-19 12:58:50+00:00
On the contrary, there are uses of "boffins" for "tech" articles in U.K. tabloids such as The Sun, The Daily Star, and The Daily Mirror within the past 3 days alone.

It looks like the request from 2023 fell on deaf ears.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44318264
by acdha | 2025-06-19 12:58:54+00:00
> USA is a beautiful place to visit and people are very hospitable.

There’s a high degree of variability there based on location, your English fluency, and skin color. I know people who’ve had very different experiences based on that - it’s why my white European friends never think twice about going on a backwoods camping trip but some from Africa or South America stopped. Even if most people are nice, the ⅓ or so set the tone for the entire trip.