MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by gambiting | 2025-07-28 18:28:45+00:00
>>they also demand immediate repayment of all childcare allowance so far that year.

So this might or might not be in line with official guidance but I was exactly in this situation and I expected to earn around £99k last tax year then I was given an unexpected £4k bonus in my march salary, and I wasn't told about it until it was in my account already so it was too late to put it into pension. I asked HMRC about it and they said as long as I was being truthful at every quarterly questionnaire where they ask if you expect to make over £100k and I told them the situation changed as soon as I became aware of it I don't have to pay anything back for the free childcare hours. I asked my accountant and she said since I have it in writing it should be fine(but HMRC can always change their mind so who the hell knows).

Compare that to the insane situation of the benefit for carers where people are being asked to repay benefits going back years if they went over the threshold by a single pound - I imagine HMRC is being incentivieed to go after benefit takers more than other areas like childcare hours, for various more or less political reasons.
by Blevs24 | 2025-07-28 18:29:20+00:00
Hello World! Just tossing my latest and greatest project up here. I started with my OG startup Paws AI, which did AI notes for veterinarians. Then after that didn't work we went and interviewed one of our beta testers. He was an independent radiologist and after interviewing him, we realized that almost 40% of his clients come in for a consultation and paid, but that is all they could afford. Many animals' cancer treatments can cost greater than $1,000. So, we decided to aggregate studies which would help animal owners with the burden of cancer treatment. We also have made the rounds in academia and have secured the backing of three of the most published oncologists in the world! Let me know how it goes and what you think sucks! Thank you!
by mikewarot | 2025-07-28 18:29:23+00:00
The question more than 100 years ago was "If anyone can put together a lamp and plug it in, how will we keep our houses from getting burned down by the wires in the wall?"

The solution then, and the solution now, is to limit what can be delivered to a load, electrical, or computational, before plugging things in.

In our homes, we have circuit breakers, or fuses, electrical codes and their enforcement.

In our computers, we could have the PowerBox[1], which, much like the breakers in a house, serves to limit what resources are given to a program. Unlike AppArmor, etc., this is done at run-time, and takes the place (often seemlessly to the user) of the file handling dialog boxes the user would encounter anyway. The actual application code changes required would be minimal.

PS: Yes, this has been brought up before[2]

[1] https://wiki.c2.com/?PowerBox

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[1] https://wiki.c2.com/?PowerBox
by jmclnx | 2025-07-28 18:29:43+00:00
This is just a peek into a possible future. With the trend of eliminating cash, the powers that be can prevent people from buying anything deemed harmful. Or a large company can close down a small but innovative competitor with a flick of the wrist.

Yes, some may save the bitcoins will save us from this. But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the *coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards.

So we need to ensure we keep cash available.
by bee_rider | 2025-07-28 18:30:36+00:00
It would be kind of interesting to require companies to limit marketing budgets to half of R&D, or whatever.

The obvious objection is that this will result in inflated research budgets and maybe marketing-adjacent research (like benchmarking). But actually, more benchmarking could be good. Or maybe they’ll inflate their research budgets by dropping money into basic research.
by dist-epoch | 2025-07-28 18:31:02+00:00
> The number of users who root their devices will always be so comparitively tiny that the increased risk of data exfil is incredibly small

> the only reason to prevent users from rooting their phones is to protect companies' profits by ensuring users can't fight back against the blatant tracking, data mining, and analytics capture

You contradict yourself, if the number of users which will root their devices is tiny, the lost profits from tracking, data mining, analytics is tiny as well.
by noahjk | 2025-07-28 18:31:05+00:00
That was my initial thought, too - "I bet they can use a nicer voice now!"

Sounds like the robotic voice is more important than we give it credit for, though - from the article's "Do You Really Understand What It’s Saying?" section:

> Unlike human speech, a screen reader’s synthetic voice reads a word in the same way every time. This makes it possible to get used to how it speaks. With years of practice, comprehension becomes automatic. This is just like learning a new language.

When I listened to the voice sample in that section of the article, it sounds very choppy and almost like every phoneme isn't captured. Now, maybe they (the phonemes) are all captured, or maybe they actually aren't - but the fact that the sound per word is _exactly_ the same, every time, possibly means that each sound is a precise substitute for the 'full' or 'slow' word, meaning that any introduced variation from a "natural" voice could actually make the 8x speech unintelligible.

Hope the author can shed a bit of light, it's so neat! I remember ~20 years ago the Sidekick (or a similar phone) seemed to be popular in blind communities because it also had settings to significantly speed up TTS, which someone let me listen to once, and it sounded just as foreign as the recording in TFA.
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-07-28 18:31:30+00:00
> Also it was a bit dumb to imagine the computers would crash at 00:00 on Jan 1st 2000, bugs started to happen earlier as it's common to work with dates in the future.

That is why people have the "nothing happened" reaction. There were doomers predicting planes would literally fall out of the sky when the clock rolled over, and other similar Armageddon scenarios. So of course when people were making predictions that strong, everyone notices when things don't even come close to that.
by mrweasel | 2025-07-28 18:31:37+00:00
While I'd agree, the issue with that solution is that validating against government issued identity solutions aren't always free. I don't know if this is the case with the UK digital ID, but the Danish version certainly isn't free to query. The Danish one has, to my knowledge, a solution that would allow you to do an age for a person, without getting any other information, so yes, the browser could do that, but there cryptographic bits ensure that now body messed with the header data is still missing. And again, who's suppose to pay for the API calls if the browser does it, Mozilla, Google, Microsoft... Ladybird?
by moomoo11 | 2025-07-28 18:31:47+00:00
As with anything, complexity becomes the limiting factor.

Anyone can drive. Some even have cars that drive themselves. Very few people can drive Formula 1.

They're also totally different - getting from A to B vs competing on a track.

I think its easier than ever for total n00bs to build software. Its on them to use the same AI that did everything for them to figure out how to scale their software add features, maintainability, testing, and organizational efficiency.

You put the same AI workflows into the hands of someone that was a exceeds expectations tier engineer or someone highly motivated like that, and they'll push it even farther on the most complex systems.

Just need to know the limits, the opportunities, and go wild.
by 9rx | 2025-07-28 18:34:08+00:00
> can be waaaay more profitable

As a corn grower myself, I wouldn't go that far. Ethanol production is really only profitable when corn isn't profitable to grow. In other words, when you have ethanol plants champing at the bit to buy your corn, you are wishing you hadn't grown it in the first place! It can be a profitable crop, but only on the backs of food buyers who are much less price sensitive.

Ethanol does serve as a helpful buffer to step in when corn would be otherwise worthless, where the alternative is to let you see it rot, minimizing the losses — But if you are counting on ethanol to make you rich... Good luck!

Granted, there was that strange period around the early 2010s, in reaction to the early-to-mid 2000s where corn was being left to rot, where the US government was paying ethanol producers to produce ethanol. If you are posting from a time machine from that time, I get what you are saying. But those days are long behind us now.
by AnEro | 2025-07-28 18:34:21+00:00
As someone that has transitioned, I went into it with this opinion but now on year 7 of hormones, It's more complicated. I honestly now align more with the Olympic rulings of time in the hormone ranges of what you're competing under. Where at 5 years I lost all my strength, my bone density has dropped to cis womans (dexa scans). For instance, now I work out 3 times a week, 50 pounds still feels like 'get my body totally involved' heavy, before transitioning not working out it was a non-issue kinda heavy. (transitioned at 23) So its more having the time and atrophy of those muscles gained during that time period, then all that is left is probably an advantage of having a higher rate of fast twitch muscle fibre which probably is with in variance ranges of normal genetic advantages. Which also isn't a nice message to deliver to collage athletes of you have to muscle detox for 3-5 years.
by csours | 2025-07-28 18:35:38+00:00
There are many ways to explain or understand the US election(s) of 2024.

One way to understand the election is a rejection of complexity - political complexity, social complexity, scientific complexity, economic complexity, moral complexity - these are all out of style. People seem very happy to ditch all of these in favor of kayfabe [0].

Of course, an empty narratives doesn't last; but once people get used to an empty narrative, they sometimes just move on to the next one. Just give them a face and a heel - things are much easier to understand that way.

Anyway, I feel like things might stay this way for a while.

It's definitely a real human experience to say "I know MY job is complicated, but that thing over there ought to be simple"

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-07-28 18:36:12+00:00
And with 64-bit pointers in Linux, where you have to enable kernel flags to use anything higher than 48 bits of the address space. All because some very misguided people figured it would be ok to use those bits to store data. You'd think the fact that the processor itself will throw an exception if you use those bits would be a red flag of "don't do that", but you would apparently be wrong.
by darth_avocado | 2025-07-28 18:36:20+00:00
> So we need to ensure we keep cash available

The problem with that is there are a number of ways to prevent you from holding cash as well. Bank regulations around how much money you can withdraw/access, scrutiny around how much money you can carry to an airport, asset forfeiture without due process etc. all allow governments to coerce you into whatever they want. Cash is not necessarily a solution either.
by runarberg | 2025-07-28 18:36:31+00:00
What is also disappointing what goes unflagged in these threads. Early in the genocide, whenever I called it a genocide I got my post [flagged][dead], that happens less often now. But it is clear by now that anyone who engages in genocide denalism at this point has an extreme and hateful opinion which shouldn’t be allowed anywhere (including a tech forum). And yet frequently I come across these hateful posts which are left unflagged for days. I think this is a failure in moderation.
by LakshyAAAgrawal | 2025-07-28 18:37:30+00:00
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly adapted to downstream tasks via reinforcement learning (RL) methods like Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), which often require thousands of rollouts to learn new tasks. We argue that the interpretable nature of language can often provide a much richer learning medium for LLMs, compared with policy gradients derived from sparse, scalar rewards. To test this, we introduce GEPA (Genetic-Pareto), a prompt optimizer that thoroughly incorporates natural language reflection to learn high-level rules from trial and error. Given any AI system containing one or more LLM prompts, GEPA samples system-level trajectories (e.g., reasoning, tool calls, and tool outputs) and reflects on them in natural language to diagnose problems, propose and test prompt updates, and combine complementary lessons from the Pareto frontier of its own attempts. As a result of GEPA's design, it can often turn even just a few rollouts into a large quality gain. Across four tasks, GEPA outperforms GRPO by 10% on average and by up to 20%, while using up to 35x fewer rollouts. GEPA also outperforms the leading prompt optimizer, MIPROv2, by over 10% across two LLMs, and demonstrates promising results as an inference-time search strategy for code optimization.
Claude Code new limits – Important updates to your Max account usage limits
by ivanvas | 2025-07-28 18:37:43+00:00
Hi there,

Next month, we're introducing new weekly rate limits for Claude subscribers, affecting less than 5% of users based on current usage patterns.

Claude Code, especially as part of our subscription bundle, has seen unprecedented growth. At the same time, we’ve identified policy violations like account sharing and reselling access—and advanced usage patterns like running Claude 24/7 in the background—that are impacting system capacity for all. Our new rate limits address these issues and provide a more equitable experience for all users.

What’s changing:

Starting August 28, we're introducing weekly usage limits alongside our existing 5-hour limits:

Current: Usage limit that resets every 5 hours (no change) New: Overall weekly limit that resets every 7 days New: Claude Opus 4 weekly limit that resets every 7 days As we learn more about how developers use Claude Code, we may adjust usage limits to better serve our community.

What this means for you:

Most users won't notice any difference. The weekly limits are designed to support typical daily use across your projects. Most Max 20x users can expect 240-480 hours of Sonnet 4 and 24-40 hours of Opus 4 within their weekly rate limits. Heavy Opus users with large codebases or those running multiple Claude Code instances in parallel will hit their limits sooner. If you do reach a weekly usage limit, you’ll have the option to purchase more usage at standard API rates to continue working without interruption. This is completely optional. You can manage or cancel your subscription anytime in Settings.

We take these decisions seriously. We're committed to supporting long-running use cases through other options in the future, but until then, weekly limits will help us maintain reliable service for everyone. Max 20x subscribers can purchase additional usage at standard API rates if needed.

We also recognize that during this same period, users have encountered several reliability and performance issues. We've been working to fix these as quickly as possible and will continue addressing any remaining issues over the coming days and weeks.

–The Anthropic Team
by nyrikki | 2025-07-28 18:37:52+00:00
The problem with TDD is that people assumed it was writing a specification, or directly tried to map it directly to post-hoc testing and metrics.

TDD at its core is defining expected inputs and mapping those to expected outputs at the unit of work level, e.g. function, class etc.

While UAT and domain informed what those inputs=outputs are, avoiding trying to write a broader spec that that is what many people struggle with when learning TDD.

Avoiding writing behavior or acceptance tests, and focusing on the unit of implementation tests is the whole point.

But it is challenging for many to get that to click. It should help you find ambiguous requirements, not develop a spec.
by MisterTea | 2025-07-28 18:38:22+00:00
> What about the "obviously not a kid" types?

In my high school drivers ed there was a kid who looked like he was in his 20's with a full thick beard, stocky muscular build, deep voice. I thought he got left back a bunch but turns out he was my age - 16. So "obviously not a kid" doesn't really work and potentially puts people at risk.
by Pensacola | 2025-07-28 18:38:31+00:00
<Kids also love tactility, and the more your 2D app can feel like a real physical object the better.>

All of a sudden, this delightful article about a dad creating a toy for his kids now reads like a big-tobacco eyes-only internal memo: How to hook a kid on a screen when they should be interacting with real world physical objects.
by oldandboring | 2025-07-28 18:38:32+00:00
> The way they can afford to make it cheap for people who can't pay is by charging high prices for insured Americans

This is a hugely underappreciated aspect of why the cost of health care, including insurance premiums, is so high in the US. Well-meaning folks have called for decades for the US to transition to single-payer, citing the overall lower cost experienced in other countries as a primary motivator. Meanwhile, US companies remain the global leaders in the development of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. That development is often subsidized by US taxpayers and the remainder is largely recovered from US patients because the single-payer systems in other countries often impose price controls that largely don't exist in the US.

(This is not meant to argue against single-payer in the US. All things being equal, a single-payer system would likely solve many more problems than it would cause. I'm just pointing out what many before me already have about how Americans disproportionately subsidize the development of the healthcare the rest of the world benefits from).
by johnnyanmac | 2025-07-28 18:39:15+00:00
In my eyes, they already traversed it and can explain why it's very similar to an old idea. They don't must see an old idea woth lipstick on it and instantly jump on it for the sake of trying something new.

As of now, this same mentality is used to push AI into everywhere. Not only is the intent bad, but the tech doesn't even work. That's not "resisting change". That's experimenting and realizing the hype was just that.

>This was put in my first comment with severe intent, that many seemed to have missed.

The comment itself definitely reveals more than a light suggestion.
by cjbgkagh | 2025-07-28 18:40:23+00:00
This mirrors my experience of the UK. A dysfunctional country whose wheels were slowly falling off and now not so slowly. I’m generally pro devolution but in the UKs case their political class is so god awful that giving them more power didn’t seem to be a good idea.

I left for greener pastures a long time ago and subsequently all of my friends and anyone I knew of any talent has also left, it feels weird visiting a place I once called home and not being able to see friends.
by speak_plainly | 2025-07-28 18:40:26+00:00
Banning pornography alone hasn’t moved the needle on fertility in China. However, in places like Tianmen, where broader pro-natalist strategies were implemented, including porn bans, there’s evidence those multi-pronged efforts had measurable impact.

What’s less clear is the claim that pornography is inherently harmful to children’s development or wellbeing, the research is mixed at best. And the justification that age-gating websites and apps is purely about safety remains deeply unconvincing.

So then either this effort is misguided, a hollow gesture for optics, or a small piece of a broader agenda that hasn’t been made explicit. It just seems to me that this is creating a lot of chaos for a hollow gesture.
by flyinghamster | 2025-07-28 18:41:21+00:00
> I'm not into retro gaming (they are unforgiving and often not very fun) and I can't think of anything else to do with it. I've thought about some basic home automation tasks, but these old machines draw so much power it feels bad.

That's what dissuaded me from ever attempting to resurrect overly-old hardware, although at least a KIM-1 isn't going to be a power hog. On the other hand, something like a PDP-11/70 would suck down a ridiculous amount of juice for much less computing power than a modern microcontroller.

Then there's the whole parts problem. Tracking down boards and components that will never be made again is another nightmare. Emulators make far more sense when you don't want to be your own component-level repair tech.
by Const-me | 2025-07-28 18:41:22+00:00
For the sending side, a small buffer (which should implement a flush method called after serializing the complete message) indeed helps amortize costs of system calls. However, a buffer large enough for 1GB messages will waste too much memory. Without such buffer on the sender side, it’s impossible to prepend every message with the length: you don’t know the length of a serialized messages until the entire message is serialized.

With streamed serialization, the receiver doesn’t know when the message will end. This generally means you can’t optimize LEB128 decoding by testing high bits of 10 bytes at once.

For example, let’s say the message is a long sequence of strings. Serialized into a sequence of pairs [ length, payload ] length is var.int, payload is an array of UTF8 bytes of that length, and the message is terminated with a zero-length string.

You can’t implement data parallel LEB128 decoder for the length field in that message by testing multiple bytes at once because it may consume bytes past the end of the message. A decoder for MKV variable integers only needs 1-2 read calls to decode even large numbers, because just the first byte contains the encoded length of the var.int.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-07-28 18:42:20+00:00
>So you seem to be agreeing with GP that while you may not think it should be banned, you find it comparable to things that are widely recognized as "generally not good for people".

That's up for debate on what's "good for people". But I don't mind proper, formal laws from lawmakers restricting access of that's the will of that region. I will note that trying to restrict porn in the US has traditionally been difficult die to the first amendment.

My main point was: credit card is not a lawmaker. It should be as dumb a pipe as my ISP.
by tracker1 | 2025-07-28 18:42:23+00:00
> especially since CBS had *accurately* described Trump's claims as "completely without merit."

Apparently the court felt differently if it didn't dismiss the case. The statement above is opinion, not fact as written.

Personally, I'm more opposed to further media consolidation as it stands. The current status quo is already leading to too few, excessively large media conglomerates. Without access to communications between the FCC and Skydance/Paramount, it's impossible to say what was or was not communicated or implied. Making the entire story a biased speculation, "completely without merit."
by scubbo | 2025-07-28 18:42:52+00:00
Read on in my comment for the more important point about fragmentation. Average non-technical users won't - and shouldn't have to - accept having to switch between different Tailnets to access different instances of similar apps hosted by different people. Heck, most average users would bounce off of the idea of having to install and use Tailscale in the first place.

(I use Tailscale myself for accessing my own private applications while on the go - but I don't believe it's a practical solution for generic widespread access)