MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hnarn | 2025-07-06 09:36:24+00:00
> Even if you have a DR plan you should assume your incremental backups are no good and you need to restore the whole thing from scratch.

"Restore from scratch" can mean a lot of different things, if you have a read replica that you can promote then in relative terms to 72h+ downtime, this should be fairly quick, no?

If you have block-level backups or snapshots, with ZFS for example as someone mentioned, it should also be relatively quick -- although I assume this would make any hypothetical read replica split-brain.
by vkazanov | 2025-07-06 09:36:28+00:00
I am well past the phase of trying to pull everything into emacs. All reasons to not use eshell you mention are valid, and I can add one more: vanilla eshell doesn't really work well with visual commands.

But recently I installed eshell-eat, and my biggest paint point just went away.

I never expected to use eshell as a full-blown terminal replacement. I use half A dozen aliases (find-file dired...) , some lightweight lisp scripting, git that, apt install there... That's about it.

In that capacity it's a valid quick tool.
by bostik | 2025-07-06 09:37:54+00:00
> The distribution is heavily lopsided with a long tail.

You'll see this in any properly active online system. Back in the previous job we had to drill it to teams that mean() was never an acceptable latency measurement. For that reason the telemetry agent we used provided out-of-the-box p50 (median), p90, p95, p99 and max values for every timer measurement window.

The difference between p99 and max was an incredibly useful indicator of poor tail latency cases. After all, every one of those max figures was an occurrence of someone or something experiencing the long wait.

These days, if I had the pleasure of dealing with systems where individual nodes handled thousands of messages per second, I'd add p999 to the mix.
by daft_pink | 2025-07-06 09:38:01+00:00
I think the concern is that stablecoins are actually minting dollars, because they don’t appear to have $1 for $1 reserves of their stablecoin.

If you look at the Tether controversy where they were investigated by the government, the reason why they were able to sell was that they were no longer operating in the USA not that they had the proven reserves to back the currency.
by atoav | 2025-07-06 09:38:05+00:00
The rotational On-Off switch for a computer is cool and provides excellent feedback, but like many stateful electromechanical input elements it has the problem that it might run out of sync with the system it controls. E.g. what if the PC is shutdown, it is practically off (you can't do useful stuff with) but technically on (only in a weird shutdown state).

I am a fan of the conceptional clarity, but having to wait for my PC to shutdown only to have to flip a switch myself is not good UX. The absolute ideal would be the switch mechanically turning to off once it is off, and such switches exist, but they are expensive and require extra electronics to drive the electromagnetic part. A really good example of this UX principle are the motor faders in digital audio mixers: You can move them with your hand but if you cange to a different channel layout the mixer can move the faders for you. The downside of those is mainly cost.

The cheap 80/20 solution for the PC is a momentary push-button and a Green/Red LED to display the current state. 5s holding is power-off because everything else has the danger of accidentally switching off — but this isn't obvious to the non-initialized.
by johnisgood | 2025-07-06 09:39:11+00:00
I installed many Arch Linux for servers, they have been online for decades. There is no fuss. The only downtime was when I issued a reboot, but it was back in 5 seconds if not less.

So you really do not have to be bothered by installation or anything of these lines. You install once and you are fine. You should check out the Wiki pages of Arch Linux, for example. It is pretty straightforward. As for upgrades, Arch Linux NEVER broke. Not on my servers, and not on my desktop.

That said, to each their own.
by rollcat | 2025-07-06 09:39:37+00:00
Quoting Rasmus Lerdorf:

> I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say "Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that." I’ll just restart Apache every 10 requests.

PHP got a very long way since then, but a huge part of that was correcting the early mistakes.

> PHP 8 is significantly better because it contains a lot less of my code.
by danlitt | 2025-07-06 09:40:08+00:00
That's very gracious of you to admit! Obviously "the creator should dictate ..." part I just disagree with. Incidentally note that what you say is actually much stronger than the real situation - in the real world, copyright is time-limited and subject to exceptions ("fair uses"). It does not sound like you agree with these justifications - if you do, then my position can be phrased more palatably as "I think the class of fair uses is broader than you do".

About the specific moral question you pose:

> If a musican wants to do a performance once and not leave a record, why should he not?

Reversing the question is obviously, "If I want to record a performance I went to see, why should I not?". But I think this is easy to just answer directly. It is very hard to portray the musician who wants to prevent recording here sympathetically. Of course we can't appeal to the usual reasoning (that they're recording it themselves, and want to sell the recording) since you say they don't want it recorded at all. Maybe they want to sell an album, and they're playing the album in the show, and they want to keep recordings of those songs artificially scarce. So let's limit to the case where I record it for my personal use, and I'm not allowed to share it. Or I can sell the recording for the same price as the album, and I have to give it to the musician. What harm is there left for it to do?

The only remaining thing I can say as the musician is "I don't like it and I created the music so you can't have it". Sorry to say this, but this is the logic of a playground bully. Comparing the harm ("I don't like it and I will throw a tantrum if you record me") with the potential benefit ("I get to remember and relive this concert for the rest of my life") it is just a no-brainer to me.
by jlokier | 2025-07-06 09:40:15+00:00
> Taxis are almost always twice or sometimes (airport) 3x the price.

Not where I live. Here, Uber is 50-100% more* than the price of a local taxi, at all times of day. Uber is also at least 30% more expensive than hailing a black cab.

So even though I have the app, after optimistically checking the Uber price, I invariably choose to book a taxi instead.

The shorter arrival times shown in the Uber app are sometimes tempting, but after waiting nearly 30 minutes for a car that Uber continuously said was 4 minutes or less away, with their location moving around (so not stuck in traffic) and driver repeatedly changing, I don't take the time seriously any more.

I just wanted to correct the impression that's often put out that Uber is cheaper (or faster) for the customer. It's evidently true in some places. But where i live, other than when they ran a 50% discount for the first few months after arriving in town, I've never seen Uber be anything other than the most expensive option.

It's not due to lack of drivers: I've been told most drivers at the biggest local firm switched to Uber as soon as they arrived in town, and that's backed up by seeing Uber-marked cars everywhere.
by verisimi | 2025-07-06 09:41:01+00:00
It shouldn't be idolised. Engineering people to love government is not a good thing. Americans are more free in practise than Europeans. The simplest way to see this is gun rights - Amrericans are allowed guns whereas the only corrective mechanism europeans have is to expound on how benign the governments are. Which is akin to the Chinese or N. Koreans expressing love for their 'dear leader'. But somehow, most europeans look down on the Chinese and US model.
by sothatsit | 2025-07-06 09:41:17+00:00
That's an oversimplification. Yes, wealthy individuals inevitably have more influence. But there are numerous countries whose governments regularly act against corporate interests. For example, as much as I dislike GDPR, it is a strong example of governments implementing a policy that is explicitly against corporate interests. Another example is the OECD global minimum corporate tax.

So, there are governments that oversee capitalist countries that are willing to implement policies that hurt corporate interests with the goal of helping consumers. I'd say the problem is that often these policies made with good intentions, like GDPR, end up being poorly implemented and therefore harming consumers as well as hurting corporations... but that's an entirely different problem.
by nandomrumber | 2025-07-06 09:41:27+00:00
Isn't Dexedrine just slow release dextroamphetamine?

There isn't really a whole lot of difference between amphetamine and methamphetamine. Meth is, weight for weight, stronger due to the methyl- group enabling the molecule to pass through cell membranes / the blood-brain barrier easier, and at the effect-equivalent dose most people wouldn't notice any difference.
by Kwpolska | 2025-07-06 09:41:48+00:00
He was banned for 3 months for opposing a change to the PSF bylaws that would allow the board to remove members with a simple majority vote.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/09/core_python_developer...

https://tim-one.github.io/psf/ban

https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...
by lukan | 2025-07-06 09:42:15+00:00
"Thanks for the reality check."

My speciality, you are are welcome.

I can only share anecdotically, that for me having 2 jobs did not worked out at all and I only started to make progress on my passion project once I quit all the other stuff. On the other hand money was tight and stress

So it probably depends, on the stress level of the ordinary job. If it is something that brings money but leaves you energy, it might be the better alternative to have more time but existential fear which blocks passion for me.
by whilenot-dev | 2025-07-06 09:42:33+00:00
> We should not underestimate the timeless human response to being manipulated: disengagement.

It's worth adding that "disengagement" does not mean "not giving a f*ck", and I worry that it isn't a good human response either.

So what's the difference between "not giving a f*ck" and "disengagement"? I think where the former works on the individual level, the latter is supposed to work on the collective level. I'm no scholar on any social sciences, mind you, but I worry that disengagement can only lead to positive change in conjunction with the Broken windows theory[0]. Here's the bummer: A lot of us are already in said stage of disengagement.

We somehow are in an atmosphere that makes it unpleasant for everyone and let the environment decay together, but the provoked collective change is just not happening. The dumbphone and digital detoxes are outliers. What happens instead is that the threshold for what's acceptable is systematically being lowered, and my biggest gripe is that it's done in the name of equality and inclusion while the imbalance between demographics is just growing. Tell me why?

There was a movement after Occupy Wall street and the Arabic Spring where it got fashionable to Not Giving a F*ck[1]. It contrasted a movement of self-optimization, growth-hacking, and some data-driven lifestyle usually reserved for corporate marketing. Morphemes such as hyper/super/über got resurrected from a nostalgic sentiment of the economic boom in the 80/90s, the neoliberal free-market Accelerationism and Bitcoin certainly fit in there. While "not giving a f*ck" was a critique of the established attention-grabbing system to promote the individuality of citizens, it also got misinterpreted by political representatives and corporate operators that started to put more focus on their own career than the responsibility of their current role. They all "didn't give a f*ck" anymore in a world that got more and more connected, year after year.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Subtle_Art_of_Not_Giving_a...
by pksebben | 2025-07-06 09:42:34+00:00
I dunno, that reads a little too simple to me. People aren't magical black boxes of mysterious drives and unfathomable causes, they're components of a larger system and reflections of their environment.

Speaking as a reformed 'teen who wanted to watch the world burn', for some it isn't simple omnidirectional malice, but rather a deep and confusing sense that the world is out to get you (spoiler; in some ways it absolutely is) and an instinct to throw a haymaker just so you feel you didn't go down without a fight.

Once this kind of person begins investigating the causes of their discontent - I myself have come to the conclusion that outdated institutions and capitalism are prime suspects - you can do quite a bit more to focus down that energy on the deserving. If you're young and/or dumb enough to not know the difference between the mynoise guy and 'the system' it's almost a forgivable mistake.

That said, from a practical standpoint, yes. Some people just kinda suck real bad. The why isn't always going to get you closer to a cure.
by einrealist | 2025-07-06 09:43:15+00:00
If those smaller models are sufficient for your use cases, go for it. But for how much longer will companies release smaller models for free? They invested so much. They have to recoup that money. Much will depend on investor pressure and the financial environment (tax deductions etc).

Open Source endeavors will have a hard time to bear the resources to train models that are competitive. Maybe we will see larger cooperatives, like a Apache Software Foundation for ML?
by hnaccount_rng | 2025-07-06 09:43:23+00:00
It's not (only) a cultural thing. It's primarily an economic one! Getting a $THING fixed requires typically:

1) Getting a technician out to identify the fault

2) Order the required replacement part and wait for it to be shipped

3) Getting the technician out again to actually fix the fault

The technician needs to be sufficiently skilled, wants vacations and sick days. We can somewhat trade-off utilisation vs. travel time, but I would be shocked if we can get a single turn out to be reliable below an hour. Even if we are optimistic and calculate with 100 bucks / hour this means the cheapest possible replacement is 200 bucks. That means it's _strictly_ cheaper to immediately throw everything below 200 away. And for everything more expensive we still need to beat opportunity costs and failed-to-actually-fix-the-problem fixes.

If you do these calculations in earnest I'd be shocked if _economically_ it's worth to repair anything below 500 bucks.
by hardwaresofton | 2025-07-06 09:44:01+00:00
> I don't think there are many proponents of that type of ubi.

Another good sign of a difficult policy to implement successfully/an idea that isn't ready for primetime. If everyone has different ideas of what the thing is, it's very hard to make good decisions, and easy for the "wrong" UBI to sneak in.

Other commenters have already made this point, but there are other ways to guarantee "subsistence". I think the hard to answer question is why are the targeted methods currently available not good enough? If we want to ensure people have food, then food subsidies/support make sense.

Also, if unemployment is the problem, fix that. If unemployment isn't the problem and people who are working aren't getting subsistence wages, fix that.

I think part of the problem is that no one wants to stick up and define what we think every human deserves and what we want society to provide. Does every human deserve housing? Access to green space? etc. Trying to clearly define this will lead to really interesting discussions that lay bare the disagreements core to society.

I think my early point still stands, UBI is not needed (we're making do without it now), and if it ever is needed, it's a sign of a lack of dynamism in the economy/ineffective wealth distribution mechanisms (basically, taxation).
by dluan | 2025-07-06 09:44:13+00:00
One example I heard of is Innotron/ChangXin producing DRAM chips, majorly backed by Anhui local government $2.4B investment. Fujian Jinhua and YMTC were other projects funded by Fujian and Wuhan local government as their horses in the race, but it seems there's one winner now, especially because of the sanction mess up of Fujian Jinhua. Housing and bike share bubbles also seem like successful examples but I don't know the details of how exactly government stepped in.

Feels like this could become CCP's method of doing quantitative easing, depending on how much of an appetite there is to be picking 'winners'. Prevent full blown panic, but keep investor capital flowing. But what happens after there is only one BYD left, one Huawei, one SMIC, one DJI, etc.? Just keep finding new industries to juice? Do all of these companies have the same destiny of offshoring production to Vietnam or some place else? And what happens with all the existing debt, who's expected to pick up that tab?
by delis-thumbs-7e | 2025-07-06 09:45:21+00:00
I was 37 last year when I finally got frustrated with my job and started to learn Python. Took a couple of open for all MOOC’s. Decided that damn this is cool and took math and alghorithm’s as well. Now I was accepted to the same university where a certain guy called Torvalds created Linux. I have written countless Python scripts and apps past year and am now learning C to actually make stuff I want to (OpenGL shaders, games, low code stuff, audio hardware). I also was diagnosed with ADHD some years ago. Therapy helped a lot to manage my issues in focus etc.

So it can be done! However, I had already been working as a tech (not programming though, more networks and sales tech support) for years, so it’s not like I had to learn what a CPU is.
by diggan | 2025-07-06 09:46:00+00:00
> pretend to be someone you’re not, blunt every aspect of your personality that may be an “ick.”

You don't have to "pretend" to do anything, or try to get rid of what others consider "icky", but generally I think most people aim to at least be neutral (if not pleasant) in the eyes of others, either by social pressure or because life just gets easier and less frustrating then.

I'd probably wager that the whole pretending thing you think is required, actually backfires as people eventually learn who you are, so better to just be yourself upfront.
by NitpickLawyer | 2025-07-06 09:46:05+00:00
> If chunks of code are small, modular, self-contained and trivial to copy-and-paste, the community can thrive via horizontal gene transfer. For any function (gene) or class (operon) that you write: can you imagine someone going "yoink" without knowing the rest of your code or having to import anything new, to gain a benefit? Could your code be a trending GitHub gist?

This is interesting. I don't do frontend, but from what I understand this was the biggest factor in the popularity gains for libraries like shadcn. Get everything as a c/p block of code. Adapt for your use-cases, but you now "own" that piece of code.

Incidentally this is why I think the first "AI" libraries were such a mess. People were trying to build heavily abstracted one-liners instead of building blocks (langchain et. all).

Coming back to the article, I think there's a lot of merit behind this idea. For one, we could have a repository of "things that have been done before", and have LLMs treat that as a "base example" from where they can start to edit and adapt to the current task. My only concern is that it'll inevitably become enshitified by marketing and spam. And some security concerns on top. But it's an interesting direction.
by pjerem | 2025-07-06 09:46:14+00:00
In essence, the lion is the monopolies and the ultra rich (who are consequences of monopolies … and inheritance).

Sure capitalism offered us the herd. But too big companies/people are just a net negative.

I hope someone today will have the courage to dismantle those big actors. Except, at least in the US, they now are protected by fascism.
by mdnahas | 2025-07-06 09:46:17+00:00
This sounds interesting. If you want to discuss it or just want a proofreader, please email me. I have done research in both distributed algorithms and economics. hackernews@mike.nahasmail.com

If you don’t know about these already, read about “self stabilizing algorithms”. They are fault-tolerant (to a certain definition) which is important in large distributed algorithms. I used one to build virtual networks with 10,000 nodes.
by vintagedave | 2025-07-06 09:46:50+00:00
This appears to be the related story about the agent: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61508520

Some truly crazy things in that article too. For example,

> X states he will kill her, leaves the room, and returns holding a machete ... The video cuts out amid her screams ... X was arrested, charged with assaulting Beth and appeared in court. However, while he was at court, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the case.

How can there be a _video_ of a machete attack and the case is dropped?

> items of hers that had also been seized by counter terror officers were returned to a member of her family by a man who did not identify himself. The relative assumed the man was an associate of X. ... We have established the visitor was an MI5 officer. Material seized by a police investigation, under a police warrant, had been given to MI5.

Just read that last sentence!

I'm not a UK national, but tend to believe in them -- including MI5 -- being the 'good guys'. We need good guys in today's world, desperately. This kind of article is hard to read.
by dvdkon | 2025-07-06 09:47:18+00:00
Where are you measuring the power consumption? I've recently started measuring the wattage of all the various electronics in my collection, and I haven't found any computer that's not underpowered and draws under 25W from the wall when idle, and that's with no HDDs and minimal RAM.

Turns out I actually have power supplies that alone draw over 30W with zero load; when trying for the lowest idle power consumption I've found that the choice of power supply matters a lot,
by jasonsb | 2025-07-06 09:49:19+00:00
You're describing incompetence or laziness—I’ve encountered those kinds of people as well. But I’ve also seen others who are 2-3 times more productive thanks to AI. That said, I’m not suggesting AI should be used for every single task, especially if the output is garbage. If someone blindly relies on AI without adding any real value beyond typing prompts, then they’re not contributing anything meaningful.
by iLoveOncall | 2025-07-06 09:49:56+00:00
User issue. Every single time this comes up.

People don't know how to search, that's it. Even the HN population.

Every time this gets posted, I ask for one example of thing you tried to find and what keywords you used. So I'm giving you the same offer, give me for one thing you couldn't find easily on Google and the keywords you used, and I'll show you Google search is just fine.
by neilwilson | 2025-07-06 09:50:34+00:00
That would be putting the cart before the horse.

Foreigners sell you things in exchange for your currency, because they want to hold the currency. Once a currency is usable for payment in taxes, it can be analysed like any other commodity.

There are no 'reserve currencies'. Anybody holding a financial asset in a denomination outside its home physical zone area is a 'reserve'. They are operationally no different from hoarding diamonds or gold bars.
by Kon5ole | 2025-07-06 09:50:45+00:00
>I'm actually not so sure. If the gradient is so steep that the vehicle is struggling to move at all

The problem isn't overloading the engine when you go up, it's overheating the brakes when you go down. The reasoning here is probably that EV semis will use regeneration for some of the braking thus avoiding the overheating to some extent.