MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by throwawayffffas | 2025-07-06 17:33:54+00:00
> They are immune to prosecution,

Are they really, that sounds improbable but I will believe you for the purposes of this discussion.

> will be funded no matter what, and if some politician, judge, or media organisation gets in their way they can simply neutralise them.

They are MI5, they are pretty much glorified police. Their funding is not guaranteed, their existence is not guaranteed, they could be replaced as an organization as whole, or piecemeal.

See what's happening to the FBI, this could happen to them. All it would take would be sufficient political momentum or a teflon politician.

A politician on whom nothing sticks.
by nicoburniske | 2025-07-06 17:34:28+00:00
hey hn! I built comically after getting frustrated waiting forever for manga conversions. reading manga on e-readers has always been painful - washed out contrast, huge file sizes, and tiny double-page spreads.

comically is a terminal-based optimizer that fixes these issues:

- 5-6x faster than existing tools (processes 100+ pages/second)

- live preview in your terminal while tweaking settings

- smart contrast adjustment for e-ink displays

- automatically crops margins and handles double-page spreads

- shrinks file sizes by ~80% without quality loss

written in rust with a focus on speed. I regularly convert entire series (like 72 volumes of naruto in under 5 minutes).

happy to answer any questions!
by throw10920 | 2025-07-06 17:35:15+00:00
> Working on something means you put in effort, not that it's focused properly or that you even understand the real issues

They definitely understand them far more than you, who has zero experience with them and regularly makes fallacious arguments and outright incorrect claims about them.

> Their interests are implicitly considered and they're transmitted on channels you and I don't have access to.

Where, exactly?

> You are conflating winning a popular election with leading for the people.

No, you failed to actually read their comment correctly. Their comment was a refutation of your claim that "money is a superpower so the more one has, the more one can take". They were not claiming that winning an election meant leading for the people, only pointing out the evidence against your claim.

> Because if you aren't saying this, you aren't saying anything.

What does this even mean?

> you'll keep blaming "the lazy" that things don't change

Fact: active participation from voters is a necessary precondition for a democracy to survive.

> showing up to fight for digital privacy, or almost anything that's not life and death, is the least of their concerns

Yes, that's correct, but those same people don't participate on politics at all, with any of the time that they have. The middle class doesn't participate. I've literally never heard a friend or acquaintance of mine say that they've ever contacted a representative (in federal or state government) about a political issue. This factually is an issue of people being lazy and disengaged, because of the fact that people with lots of disposable time and income don't put in the effort.

> You decided to label them "lazy". Ever wondered if your work "on these issues" is tainted by this opinion

No, it's a trivial implication of the nature of democracies. If you don't get that active participation is necessary for democracies to survive, you fundamentally don't understand how democracies work.

This is also an extremely lazy cop-out (which is thematically consistent) where you're dismissing someone's opinion because they have more experience than you in that field...which is insane.

> that's why ultimately all you can achieve is only for the people who can afford it

And, again, this is factually incorrect as to the root of the problem, because the people who can afford to participate in politics (which at the very least includes the middle-class) do not.

> No wealth means no power, not even personal agency, let alone in national policy.

This is also factually incorrect. The eligibility to vote has zero requirements as to income or wealth. Bezos gets the exact same number of votes as I do, despite having orders of magnitude more wealth. And guess how our representatives get elected?

You should really consider listening to someone who has actual experience in the relevant field rather than spewing fallacies and factual inaccuracies.
by marvinborner | 2025-07-06 17:35:46+00:00
There's a video by Hannah Cairo that explains the conjecture and her results [1]

Also, Terence Tao hinted at some further advances some time ago [2], does anyone know more about that?

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZeH_8sTyKA

[2]: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/114003793236630744
by seuros | 2025-07-06 17:36:11+00:00
Appreciate the feedback—really.

You are correct to point out the mismatch on the image caption, i generated a few and copied the wrong one. That one's on me, i will update it later.

And while AI might correct a typo or help rephrase a sentence here or there (I’m not a native English speaker), everything in that README—tone, structure, content, rants, and lore—is 100% me. It's my style. Love it or leave it.

As for scaring people off ? That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. This is an open source circuit breaker, not a SaaS onboarding funnel. If someone decides not to use a well-tested library because the README isn’t sterile enough for their corporate taste, that is their loss. I'm not here trying to win two potential enterprise clients who expect a PDF pitch deck and a hug.

The circuit breaker pattern itself isn’t new, I didn't invent it, it has even its own wikipedia page. But the Ruby ecosystem? Still treating it like a nice to have.

Existing circuit breaker gems like Circuitbox, Semian, etc., are stuck in the past. They rely on patterns and syntax from the Ruby 2.6 era, and integrating them into a modern codebase often means a painful refactor or bending your architecture backwards. BreakerMachines is built for 2025, fully async, fiber-safe, and designed to work with modern Ruby without dragging a legacy ball and chain. It's don't even support version of ruby that is 1 version behind. Upgrade then use.

If someone is going to get frustrated by a long README or AI-generated images, they’re welcome to go pay someone to write them a handcrafted if/else block and call it resilience.

The code is clean. The tests are good. And if just that MD file makes them walk away from that—again, their loss. They don't even read it.

I maintain a ton of gems. And I’ll be honest: my enthusiasm for open source has been repeatedly drained by the "please make this more corporate-friendly" crowd. Not talking about you specifically—but there’s a whole wave of people who want everything politically polished and personality-free. That’s not why Ruby was created.

Ruby was made for joy. And this gem? It reflects that.

Cheers for actually reading and for giving honest feedback. You’re rare for that. Just don’t expect me to dress up like a SaaS salesperson anytime soon.
by waswaswas | 2025-07-06 17:36:13+00:00
I hate the Google AI Overview. More of my knowledge-seeking searches than not are things that have a consequential, singular correct answer. It's hard to break the habit of reading the search AI response first, it feeling not quite right, remembering that I can't actually trust it, then skipping down to pull up a page with the actual answer. Involuntary injection of needless confusion and mental effort with every query. If I wanted a vibe-answer, I'd ask ChatGPT with my plus subscription instead of Google, because at least then I get a proper model instead of whatever junk is cheap enough for Google to auto-run on every query without a subscription.

And of course there's no way to disable it without also losing calculator, unit conversions, and other useful functionality.
by crote | 2025-07-06 17:36:51+00:00
Is it, though?

Modern luxury EVs have a range of close to 500km, and they are able to charge at over 1000km of range per hour. Split that 6-hour leg into two 3-hour legs with a 15-minute charging session & pee break, and you can easily do that.

Besides, why optimize for the absolute best experience on your once-a-year trip? What about the _other_ 300+ days of the year? How much time are you going to save by plugging your car into a charger when you get home once or twice a week, instead of going to a petrol station to fill it up?
by Modified3019 | 2025-07-06 17:36:57+00:00
Same. It is a bit curious, at first I didn’t care for them for some reason. Not outright against, just a bit negative on it. I can’t even remember exactly why.

If I had to guess, it’s because it’s so closely associated with the awful to use touch controlled center console. That and “new features” in general tend to take away from the ease of use and durability of the vehicle.

It may also have to do with now having an additional place to look during a stressful activity, which I’ve now fully adapted to.

I’m 100% on board with it now, if I had a vehicle without one I’d retrofit one. I also want side and front cameras.

I’ve got a big stupid truck (work provided) with a 140” wheelbase that I use for my agriculture job to transport my ATV (my real work vehicle) around. I absolutely hate the bloated, boxy, dangerous designs of modern pickups. Frankly they should be banned and forced to look stupid via visibility and child collision safety requirements.
by nextos | 2025-07-06 17:37:01+00:00
A PhD in the US requires a lot of coursework, aside from research. Perhaps, she is interested in that. Otherwise, some universities, especially in EU, offer PhDs by publication. She could simply wrap up her counter-example publication (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.06137) as a thesis and possibly graduate. Sometimes, you can even do this without a supervisor.
by austin-cheney | 2025-07-06 17:37:34+00:00
I stopped maintaining it because it required a stupendous amount of time. That's fine except I had mostly stopped using it myself for the last 2 or 3 years I was maintaining it and I wanted the freedom to use that time to explore other unrelated projects.

Simultaneously the visibility around that project got me hired more than once, but my interest in doing JavaScript for employment was fading as well. I still write JavaScript/TypeScript in personal projects to this day, but I do completely unrelated work now for employment.
by sixo | 2025-07-06 17:38:27+00:00
A few questions occur to me while reading this, which I am far from qualified to answer:

- How much of this structure survives if you work on "fuzzy" real numbers? Can you make it work? Where I don't necessarily mean "fuzzy" in the specific technical sense, but in any sense in which a number is defined only up to a margin of error/length scale, which in my mind is similar to "finitism", or "automatic differentiation" in ML, or a "UV cutoff" in physics. I imagine the exact definition will determine how much vectorial structure survives. The obvious answer is that it works like a regular Fourier transform but with a low-pass filter applied, but I imagine this might not be the only answer.

- Then if this is possible, can you carry it across the analogy in the other direction? What would be the equivalent of "fuzzy vectors"?

- If it isn't possible, what similar construction on the fuzzy numbers would get you to the obvious endpoint of a "fourier analysis with a low pass filter pre-applied?"

- The argument arrives at fourier analysis by considering an orthonormal diagonalization of the Laplacian. In linear algebra, SVD applies more generally than diagonalizations—is there an "SVD" for functions?
by julianeon | 2025-07-06 17:39:13+00:00
Colombia produces the raw materials, so it is "essential" in that sense, but that is not where the money and power is now (that's Mexico). Kind of like how your iPhone is manufactured in China, but the world's-richest-company status goes to Apple, in the US.

Quoting an AI summary (because I'm looking for a quick answer here):

Mexico has become the primary financial beneficiary of cocaine money today. Mexican cartels now control the most lucrative parts of the supply chain - smuggling into the US market and wholesale distribution. They've essentially become the "middlemen" who buy cocaine from Colombian producers at relatively low prices and then sell it in the US at much higher prices, capturing most of the profit margin.

Colombia remains important as a producer of coca and cocaine, but the economics have changed dramatically. Colombian groups now often function more as suppliers to Mexican cartels rather than controlling the entire supply chain themselves. The raw materials and initial processing generate far less revenue than the final distribution stages.
by bcbernstein | 2025-07-06 17:39:25+00:00
Thanks!! Yeah I agree... I think a login is coming but I'd like to see how far we can get without it ... I hate friction.

2/ Just changed it to Tweet, not Xeet !

3/ Good idea, I just added a free and freeish option, and also separated daytime and nighttime vibes... can certainly be very different.

Let me know what you think of all that :)
by benreesman | 2025-07-06 17:39:35+00:00
As an American who agrees with you that this is a perennial failure mode for our culture and that this is by far the worst I've seen it in decades (I was a kid for "...government is the problem"), I still always remind everyone that it doesn't have to be this way, it wasn't this way 20 years ago, it was trending bad but not like this ten years ago, and that old proverb (Chinese I think and I'm probably butchering it) is spot on: "every step into a dark forest is a step you'll have to take to see the sun, but you have counted your steps".

Markets are great when they are well administered by competent and uncorrupted authority. And this is not an oxymoron! Brooksley Born should win the Nobel Peace Prize or something, she saw the road ahead and gave everything in a bitter battle against Clinton's goons and if we hadn't kneecapped her we wouldn't be here today.

More recently Lina Khan was a one-woman nightmare calamity for scammers, thieves, and other assorted bottom dwellers, and if Trump's goons hadn't had their way she'be ramming data privacy laws so far up FAANG's ass that Lt Colonel Boz would think he actually had been through legit basic.

The system can work, we get excellent people in charge of the important stuff with some frequency, but we have got to drop this red/blue crap and get behind leaders like the ones I mentioned or this goes one fucking way.

And there's a pretty optimistic message not in what George wrote, but that people like George are starting to ask if they're the baddies. He's always been brilliant but I was starting to wonder if he had gone TESCREAL on us, and I think we can see he (metaphorically) sobered up off the kool aid. If he can, idk, maybe Lex can, maybe pmarca can. If those guys took a cold shower? The world changes that day.
by JdeBP | 2025-07-06 17:39:48+00:00
In theory there isn't, and everyone is supposed to use forward slash. But in practice there is, because not everyone has stuck to using forward slashes over the decades. Some tools are more forgiving of the differences amongst the various ZIP archive creators than others.

These people having fun with "Unix" versus "FAT" over the past decade are seeing the tip of the iceberg, given that there was a PKZIP for OS/400, there is a PKZIP for z/OS (and a competitor that claims to be cheaper), there are tools of varying degrees of Unixiness for systems like the Atari ST and OS/2, and a whole bunch of things have accrued over the years such as an outright extra header giving alternative filenames specifically for MacOS.

* https://michaelrommel.com/create/2022-12-28-malformed-zip-fi...

* https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/166159/5132

* https://github.com/filebrowser/filebrowser/issues/1768
by mikestew | 2025-07-06 17:40:36+00:00
Am I sure? No, but I have been told this numerous times by actual diesel mechanics, and otherwise why was it necessary for Jacobs to invent the compression brake?

Your car also has rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag to contend with. Might work well at slowing a passenger car, not so much with a 50K lb. vehicle, hence the Jake brake.
by quickthrowman | 2025-07-06 17:40:38+00:00
I’m going to start tipping 10% now, if I get yelled at by waitstaff I’ll mention the tax break and explain they’re receiving the same tip as they would’ve received prior to the tax break. I’m sick of being shaken down everywhere I go for tip money. I suspect I’m not the only one who will be modifying my tipping behavior.
by simonw | 2025-07-06 17:40:45+00:00
I write CLI tools with LLMs all the time. I even have a custom Claude Project that teaches the LLM to use inline script dependencies with uv so I can "uv run script.py" without first having to install anything else: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/19/one-shot-python-tools/

I have a collection of tools I've built in this way here: https://tools.simonwillison.net/python/
by ysofunny | 2025-07-06 17:41:12+00:00
I find it impossible to determine the value of my own work.

the saturation of content makes me regard the work of uploading my own 'done' work into a cloud provider (so that anybody can stream my music for free) as not worth the kick I would get from meaningless metrics determined by the same cloud platform into which I would upload my stuff if I did which I won't as it's worthless to do.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-07-06 17:41:59+00:00
You are correct about the way we dehumanize others on the Internet, but I think hackers have changed, quite a bit, since War Games.

Hacking, these days, isn’t just for the lulz. Hackers have a purpose, and that’s usually monetary or military (sometimes both).

Hacking crews, these days, run professional organizations that would make a lot of SV C-Suiters green with envy.
by vel0city | 2025-07-06 17:42:06+00:00
My current microwave is 20 years old. It has a lot of buttons. I love the buttons it has. It's sensor modes are spot on.

I stab a potato and cover it in butter and salt, put it on a plate, press "potato" and it's cooked just perfect every time. Doesn't matter if it's big or small, it's just right.

When I have a plate of leftovers I just press reheat and it's perfect pretty much every time. Could be pork chops and Mac and cheese, could be a spaghetti with marinara sauce, could be whatever. Toss it in, lightly cover, press reheat, and it's good.

When I want to quickly thaw out some ground beef or ground sausage, I just toss it in, press defrost, put in a weight to a tenth of a pound, and it's defrosted without really being cooked yet.

Back when I microwaved popcorn, just pressing the popcorn button was spot on. Didn't matter what the bag size was, didn't matter the brand, the bag was always pretty much fully popped and not burned.

Despite being the same age it's still in excellent working order while yours with the dials fell apart.
by pjmlp | 2025-07-06 17:42:06+00:00
The difference is that I get to use Java at work, and never will be able to use SML, perfection usually fails in mainstream adoption, as proven by the whole worse is better mindset languages.

I rather have Java, C#, C++, Kotlin, Rust,.... with their imperfections to ML, Smalltalk, and Lisp ideas, than hoping for getting the right languages at the workplace.

Fully agree on the C edition.
by miki123211 | 2025-07-06 17:42:47+00:00
How does a microwave without a rotating tray even work?

Most microwaves only have the magnetron (the part actually producing the microwaves) on one side. The rotation is needed to cook your food evenly.

This is why food in the middle of the tray often ends up undercooked. No matter how the tray rotates, that part is never particularly close to it.
by Jolter | 2025-07-06 17:42:53+00:00
Crucially, the thing they was recently de-funded was not mapping but the federal agency that does hydrology. Hydrology being the science of how water flows in the environment around us.

For example, using GIS data combined with meteorological forecasts, a hydrological model may predict water levels of rivers or flood plains. If nobody is around to run the hydrological model on today’s data, you’re not getting your flood warning today.
by crote | 2025-07-06 17:43:05+00:00
The problem is that it is still going to interrupt your rest, and therefore your focus while driving. Getting woken up at all is a problem, the fact that you can go back to sleep after 15 minutes doesn't really matter. I would be quite surprised if the EU was willing to mess with that.

A better solution would be a truck stop with a charging connector per parking spot, and a way for the charger to dynamically connect to the trucks one-by-one. The driver can plug it in when they arrive, and the truck stop will handle the rest.

Alternatively, build a bunch of low-speed chargers instead of a single high-speed charger. When it comes to overnight charging, everyone is going to be there for at least 9 hours anyways. No need to hurry up and finish that charging session in 30 minutes.
by ruszki | 2025-07-06 17:43:22+00:00
Nothing changing? For people who are in their 30s? Do you mean internet, mobile phones, smart phones, Google, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Reddit were already widespread in mid 90s?

Or are they the only ones who understand that the rate of real information/(spam+disinformation+misinformation+lies) is worse than ever? And that in the past 2 years, this was thanks to AI, and people who never check what garbage AI spew out? And only they are who cares to not consume the shit? Because clearly above 50, most of them were completely fine with it for decades now. Do you say that below 30 most of the people are fine to consume garbage? I mean, seeing how many young people started to deny Holocaust, I can imagine it, but I would like some hard data, and not just some AI level guesswork.
by lazystar | 2025-07-06 17:44:48+00:00
> 2. Only people working front get tips. If you have a lazy busboy working front for the most talented chef in the world, the chef pockets $0.00/hr in tips.

im not saying that the current tipping system is a good design - your example is one of the most glaring flaws. to put it another way, my point is that the current system will stay in existence due to the lack of other incentives that reward harder working individuals. in order to get rid of tipping culture, you can't simply appeal to morality/shame tippers; you have to replace it with a new system that also incentivizes harder work.
by nosioptar | 2025-07-06 17:45:02+00:00
If you change the domain to xcancel.com, you can see twitter stuff without being on twitter.

The tweet claims a startup built an ai cheating tool, another ripped them off, then a YC backed start up ripped the second group off. The YC backed guy claims he isn't worried about legal because he got the license from gpt.

(Wouldn't that be killer evidence in a lawsuit that the defendant didn't even attempt due diligence?)

https://xcancel.com/ns123abc/status/1940980667455836578
by dworks | 2025-07-06 17:45:33+00:00
Yes. In fact, this report should be written in the context of other farewell letters to employers that have been published recently in China. There has recently been one, by a 15-year Alibaba veteran, who decried the decline of the company culture as a cause of its now lacking competitiveness and inability to launch new products.

The issues in this report are really about: 1. Lies about Huawei's capabilities to the country (important national issue) 2. Lies to customers who paid to use Huawei models 3. A rigid, KPI-focused and unthinking organization where dishonest gaming of the performance review system not only works but seems to be the whole point and is tacitly approved (this and the reporters idealism and loss of faith is the main point of the report as I see it)