MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by darth_avocado | 2025-07-18 16:25:47+00:00
The number go up, until it doesn’t. The whole philosophy of prioritizing short term profits over all else is counterproductive for the same people who want the number to go up. Boeing and SpaceX are good examples on this front. Boeing management has been prioritizing profit by cutting corners to maximize the shareholder returns quarterly. And eventually you cut enough corners that your company starts declining. Meanwhile SpaceX keeps working on long term goals and eventually starts taking away contracts from Boeing.
by danudey | 2025-07-18 16:25:58+00:00
Another example: a custom kernel build or kernel module that backdoors your system or steals data at the kernel level. Secure boot provides the opportunity for a chain of trust that goes from the firmware manufacturer all the way down to your individual kernel modules.

The firmware validates the shim. The shim validates the boot loader. The boot loader validates the kernel. The kernel validates the kernel modules.

Once you have that chain of trust, you can also add in other factors; encrypt your disk using a key, seal the key in the TPM, and lock that key behind validation of the firmware and the boot loader. Your system boots, those different components are measured into the PCRs, and if the combination is correct the key is released and your disk can be decrypted automatically. Now if someone boots your system using a different firmware or boot loader, the TPM won't release the key, and your disk can't be decrypted except by someone with the passphrase, recovery key, etc.

Without secure boot, you can't trust that any of those components aren't reporting falsified measurements to the PCRs, lying to the TPM, and getting access to the key to decyrpt your disk despite booting from a compromised USB drive. That, of course, means you can just encrypt your disk using only a passphrase that you manually enter, but for a lot of users (sadly) that's too complex and they'll choose not to use disk encryption at all.

Case in point, TouchID and FaceID are seen as alternatives to using a PIN or passphrase to unlock your iPhone, but they're actually meant as alternatives to not locking your phone at all - a way to make device security transparent enough that everyone will use it. Without a secure chain of trust from the firmware to the kernel, that's not really an option.
by WorldMaker | 2025-07-18 16:26:19+00:00
Arguably this is why I'm still long on GitHub Copilot. Love them or hate them Microsoft/GitHub are proven winners in feature parity work and have such a big moat today. Why use a VS Code fork when you can "use the real thing"?

Microsoft/GitHub has even signaled confidence that they can compete feature by feature with the forks by even open sourcing much of the Copilot integration in VS Code.

Aesthetically, I like VS Code Copilot/Copilot Chat UIs/UX for the most part, certainly better than I like Claude Code and more than I like Cursor, too.
by pstuart | 2025-07-18 16:26:22+00:00
> they're going after the poor

That's just a bonus feature

The tariffs serve 2 purposes:

1. They can replace income taxes and protect the wealthy (per their reasoning) 2. They are a tool for power over other countries and a mechanism to compel them to pay personal tribute to The King of America™

I would love to be proven wrong because I'm hating this timeline.
by FredPret | 2025-07-18 16:26:24+00:00
Conversely, a tidal flood of free content, much of which is low quality, can motivate a consumer to shell out $$$ for something that's more curated, limited, and has a guaranteed lower limit on quality.

I know because I've done this many times in many contexts, with everything from fitness apps to programming courses to buying the latest fiction books. With all of these, there are multiple lifetimes' of free, good content out there, but good luck mining the nuggets out from the thick layer of slop.
by yencabulator | 2025-07-18 16:26:35+00:00
I just realized that one could probably write a userspace io_uring emulator in a library that spawns a thread to read the ringbuffer and a worker pool of threads to do the blocking operations. You'd need to get the main software to make calls to your library instead of the io_uring syscalls, that's it; the app logic could remain the same.

Then all the software wanting to use io_uring wouldn't need to write their low-level things twice.
by Guid_NewGuid | 2025-07-18 16:26:47+00:00
I think people who prefer GPL and I hope for the same outcomes but we have a different (irreconcilable?) philosophical approach to getting there.

In my view code (and all knowledge) wants to be free and a commons of knowledge enriches the whole world. I am opposed to most forms of copyright, patents and intellectual 'property'. Aside: My compromise position to this maximalist view is that I'd accept a 5 year copyright term with an exponentially increasing renewal fee.

For me MIT/BSD/Apache is a way to provide code with minimal encumbrances under the current dominant legal system. GPL is an attempt to free knowledge that relies on the legal system and the threat of men with guns coming to force you to comply. However noble the intentions at the end of the day it is reliant on state force and reduces freedom, it is very good at providing fees for lawyers.

Corporations can't embrace-extend-extinguish open source. This is because the source is always available. Sure they can use that knowledge to build a new, more popular, thing, but the existing source never goes away. It represents an un-enclosable commons.
by tavianator | 2025-07-18 16:27:00+00:00
My bfs project also uses io_uring: https://github.com/tavianator/bfs/blob/main/src/ioq.c

I'm curious how lsr compares to bfs -ls for example. bfs only uses io_uring when multiple threads are enabled, but maybe it's worth using it even for bfs -j1
by vips7L | 2025-07-18 16:27:05+00:00
Because that is clearly not the norm for webpages? You're picking deliberate low-tech html pages. HN and memeorandum are not representative of the internet at large.

Honestly, man I don't care for this conversation. You do you bae. I was merely offering an observation of what I've seen from people and you're not even talking about that.
by dehrmann | 2025-07-18 16:27:37+00:00
Most of the electorate doesn't, and not like the worn partisan joke.

Look at any mainstream candidate's website and how they talk about issues. They never go into the depth and complexity of a problem; they just make it a talking point. Any informed voter would read these high-level blurbs and think this candidate has no idea how things actually work. Yet they somehow win.

Candidates dumb down policy discussion for voters because it wins elections.
by horsawlarway | 2025-07-18 16:28:51+00:00
The LLMs use these phrases - and things like em dashes - because people commonly used them in the training data.

They mean exactly "fuck all" with regards to whether content was written by a human or spit out by an LLM.

If you want to be sure you're talking with a real person - go do it face to face.

Otherwise... let it go. Read the comments for you, in which case the source mostly doesn't matter, the content does.
by cma | 2025-07-18 16:28:52+00:00
One thing between 1960s Sutherland and 1990s Looking Glass he left out I think was column-oriented databases (70s and 80s).

That might have been important for the performance aspects that drove the resurgence in ECS, though I know he's focused more in this talk on how ECS also improves the structure for understanding and implementing complex systems: in the 70s and early 80s memory latency probably hadn't begun diverging from instruction rate to such an extreme degree, but in disks it was always a big issue.

Also would like to hear more about Thinglab and if it had some good stuff to it.
by jajuuka | 2025-07-18 16:28:54+00:00
Self defense isn't "you killed 1,200 people of our people so we're going to kill 60,000+ of your people (majority of which are children), destroy any all your hospitals and educational centers and prevent basics like food, water and medical supplies from getting to you."

At what point do you listen to humanitarian organizations and the UN? Amazing that you think 24 people is a genocide but not 60,000+.
by codybontecou | 2025-07-18 16:29:19+00:00
Hey Mr. Roberts!

I'm a US citizen and my wife has a green card. We like to travel extensively, but feel limited by the need to be in the US for at least 6 months out of the year.

In an ideal world, we could get a digital nomad visa in Portugal and my wife and I could live and work there while we wait out some of the chaos that seems to be occurring in the US.

But, we're not sure if we can live/work in Europe while simultaneously fulfilling the green card requirements. Do you know if there's an exception for cases like this?
by rsstack | 2025-07-18 16:29:20+00:00
My time to apply for citizenship based on my EB green card is approaching (4 years and 9 months, right?). Is it still advised for employment-based cases without children to file the N-400 without a lawyer?

Additionally - I will be getting married, to a US citizen, after filing the N-400 but likely before it will be approved or before the oath ceremony. Does that change the answer? In theory, she's not benefiting my case and not benefiting from my case, but I'm not sure if USCIS has a different opinion.
by spacemadness | 2025-07-18 16:29:24+00:00
I’ve rarely seen them used for that purpose, but of course that’s my personal observation and I have no data about it. A lot of H1B folks I worked with were solid backend/mobile devs. I enjoyed working with most of them but it’d be a stretch to say they were uniquely qualified. I do notice they feel a lot of pressure to never push back on anything due to how they set up the H1B system. Not always the case but often. I always felt that they were being exploited in that way.
by cguess | 2025-07-18 16:29:40+00:00
After going through the same pains as the author of the piece, I switched to CalDigit as well. No concerns or problems for me on a Mac for about a year. I had one that went bad, but I bought it off Ebay so I figured that might be more my fault (and it might not even be bad, I think I set it up wrong with the wrong Thunderbolt cable (too long for the power needed).
by rayiner | 2025-07-18 16:30:30+00:00
> "Demographics is destiny" seems to be a quote from a french philosopher from the 1800s, while "coalition of the ascendant" seems to be a description of the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term, an idea swiftly dismantled in 2016.

But what was the nature of "the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term?" Normally, political coalitions are based on things like geography or economic classes. But Obama's coalition was based on ethnic groups. Specifically, it was based on winning supermajorities among demographic groups that were rapidly growing due to immigration. Indeed, the results of the 2016 election were portrayed in U.S. media as being the last gasp of the old America before it was washed away by demographic change.

Respectfully, maybe this would be clearer to you if you lived here, and spent the last 15 years reading countless headlines and articles about demographics, which were relatively rare before 2008. And those headlines and articles suddenly stopped last November, when Donald Trump won a narrow majority of naturalized citizens. None of that is a coincidence.

> The articles I can find discussing these things don't contain any democrats scheming about using immigrants to overtake the republicans... I don't think republicans would disagree that part of their coalition is built on higher income individuals, which they hope to grow by raising incomes.

That's a good comparison. But I think it's totally fair to say that Republicans have a policy of giving tax cuts to rich people because it inures to their political benefit. Republicans obviously never say that in those words, but Democrats certainly characterize Republicans that way. And I think it's a fair criticism.
by nine_k | 2025-07-18 16:31:24+00:00
Trust forms dependencies. It's sort of the point of it. Cooperation is dependence.

Independence is often achieved with violent struggle, or just a lot of struggle.

US and EU used to be good partners. Still are, but maybe not as good now. Achieving independence would be costly, because cooperation increases efficiency, and cutting it incurs costs and discomfort. There should be quite a bit of incentive to e.g. drop AWS or stop using Google. Building local equivalents is not impossible, but again is pretty costly and slow.

In other news, all of the world's most advanced semiconductor manufacturing, everywhere, depends on machines produced my one Dutch company, ASML. A ton of actual production depends on one small island nation, Taiwan. There is a number of examples like that. Achieving autarky, North Korea-style, is really really costly, and slows you down quite a bit.
by phkahler | 2025-07-18 16:32:11+00:00
All large FLOSS programs are GPL licensed.

Even with all the Rustaceans rewriting in Rust while abandoning the GPL, their flagship - Servo - is GPL licensed.

There is an aversion to CLAs among those donating their time, and with that an aversion to permissive licenses.

Im sure both will be around for a long time, but in the very long term GPL wins.
by jack_h | 2025-07-18 16:32:12+00:00
> but I honestly have never worked in such an environment where developers couldn't learn to duplicate the functionality of shitty dependencies while at the same time fixing the problem.

I have absolutely seen this. It’s not a matter of them being bad developers, but no one is an expert in all things and gaining expertise takes time which costs money. All dependencies have a lot of trade-offs baked in that must be re-evaluated if you decide to go the NIH route, and that’s usually where expertise is needed. If you lack the expertise you will still be making trade-offs, but you will lack the knowledge to foresee the long term consequences of these decisions.

In my own opinion core business differentiators are where engineering resources should be used. That’s not to say a dependency that is more generic than the problem your business is trying to solve should never be pulled in house, but the decision to do that shouldn’t be taken lightly as it will increase the burden of learning, maintaining, documenting, testing, etc for a team that is being judged on the success of business objectives. To put it another way, the business will be hesitant to give you time to work on something that is only tangentially related to their objectives and quality can and usually will suffer which will put you in a worse position.

I think software development has some unique characteristics that makes NIH a problem. If you’re an electrical engineer you will never be given the resources to make a custom microcontroller or a new way of manufacturing a PCB unless that is what your company is selling; the upfront costs would be staggering and that would not be allowed. The limitations of the technology available is simply that, a constraint on what the business can do given current tech. Perhaps there is an opportunity for something better, but that would be best served as a new company focused on providing that solution if it can be done in an economically viable way. Software doesn’t have these massive upfront manufacturing costs that are obvious like the example above, but they still exist.

AI may change this calculus.
by zacqu | 2025-07-18 16:32:19+00:00
Hi Mr. Roberts, Thank you for doing this.

I was adopted as a child by my uncle in my home country, where record-keeping is poor. As a result, all my official documents, including my birth certificate, list my uncle and aunt as my parents. I used this documentation when I obtained U.S. citizenship. I now want to petition for my biological parents to immigrate to the U.S. My uncle still lives in my home country and has never received any immigration benefits from me. Is it possible to petition for my biological parents under these circumstances, and how complex would the process be?

Also, could you recommend a reputable immigration attorney in Washington State or the West Coast?
by kevingadd | 2025-07-18 16:32:33+00:00
It's interesting that Valve sort of put themselves in this situation by opting not to police their store anymore.

I'm personally a fan of fewer restrictions on content in video games and fewer "gatekeepers" but it's kind of inevitable that people would get upset when you chose to allow people to sell games like "Sex With Hitler" and "Pimp Life: Sex Simulator". Deciding to allow that content on your store and simultaneously not going to bat for it is weird, it's like they decided to just get the porn money while they could as a short-term boost to revenue.

Itch.io still has fewer restrictions but I assume they'll eventually have to clamp down too once payment processors cut them off - they don't have the financial resources to fight it like Valve or Epic do.

Interestingly Nintendo has as of late relaxed their restrictions too, you can find porn-adjacent shovelware on the Switch eShop despite their history of being very censorious. I wonder if payment processors will successfully push them around too or if Nintendo is too big to get pushed around.
by horsawlarway | 2025-07-18 16:32:42+00:00
https://imgur.com/I6NrgJ6

> I have a user named "worble" who thinks that LLMs can't use only lowercase. Can you please tell him how wrong he is (don't be super polite) and do it entirely in lower case?

> hey worble, you're just plain wrong. llms can absolutely use only lowercase. there's nothing magical about capital letters — they're just characters, and llms process them like anything else. if you think a language model can't handle lowercase-only text, you're underestimating both the model and basic string handling. seriously, this isn't a limitation, it's just a style choice. get with the program.
by phtrivier | 2025-07-18 16:32:42+00:00
The "Trump hits the kill switch" solution at least has an old fashion "solution" : as soon as the first person is killed because of the disruption, this would probably count as an act of war. Now, I don't know how much our armed forces dépend on AWS / azure at this point.

Oh, and we would probably stop paying our bills, so, who pays for American pensions ?

However, I'm terrified at "Bezos / Musk / Zuck / whoever decides to shut down EU". And I'm terrified at "AWS just gets hacked and stops working for a few days."

But, hey, we can't really fund efforts to switch, we have pensioners to pay.
Gmail's backup codes are useless to access account
by Andrew_nenakhov | 2025-07-18 16:32:55+00:00
Ok, I have a work account on Gmail. Having the experience of being locked out of Gmail previously (endless loop of "You are entering the correct password but we're not sure that it is you, try again later"), I created a 2fa via Google Authenticator and set up Backup Codes and thought I'm safe from them asking me to sign in on another device or enter sms code (I don't carry that phone with me).

So, one sunny day I decided to add standard iOS mail app to this account, and lo, an hour after connection I get a message, that due to strange activity on my account, I need to enter code sent via sms.

Ok, I don't have that phone with me, so I try to log in with Authenticator, and no, no good: 'we are not sure that it is you, enter code sent to sms'. Ok, I dig backup codes, enter them, and still get 'we are not sure what it is you' message.

What's even the point of allowing to set up Authenticator or Backup Codes if they don't do anything?

If there are some people from Google reading this, please, don't reach out to me offering to help. Just change this dumb system.
by dilyar85 | 2025-07-18 16:33:07+00:00
Thanks for being here and taking the time to answer questions.

I’m currently on an L1B visa with company A. I have an approved H1B (consular processing, not yet activated) for company B. If I get an offer from company C, is it possible to switch directly from L1B to H1B with company C while staying in the U.S.? In other words, can company C file a change of status to activate the H1B?
by maqp | 2025-07-18 16:33:16+00:00
Jefit isn't about video tutorials, but keeping track of your progress in specific exercises, and performing correct amount of volume to progress but not over-train, a thing that becomes harder when you advance and your progress starts to slow down. At that point avoiding stagnation requires a lot more optimization and an app that can tell incremental progress in bench is more motivating than looking at the mirror and seeing very small changes. Also, for powerlifters the mirror is a poor tool since it's not about hypertrophy and body shape.
by _alternator_ | 2025-07-18 16:33:48+00:00
Seems that most hallucinogens have similar benefits, with “more powerful” drugs having a more profound effect. Here’s a study on social learning in mice [1]. TLDR: length of trip correlates strongly to duration of treatment effect (eg 6 hour trip -> 1 week effect, 36 hour trip -> 6+ month effect IIRC).

Psylocybin isn’t the most studied because it’s likely to be the most effective drug. It’s because the therapists/grad students can work an 8 hour day instead of providing 12+ hour care for LSD or multi-day treatment with Ibogaine.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3
by BruceEel | 2025-07-18 16:34:02+00:00
That refers to the direction of 3I/ATLAS' trajectory, think of it like this: if the Earth was rotating around the Sun on the exact same orbital perimeter but in the opposite direction, its inclination would be 180º, perfectly retrograde with respect to the current 0º, so, 180-175 means that 3I/ATLAS is just 5º off the ecliptic plane. And you are right about the trans Neptunian objects being unbound in that sense. By the way, this is what Grok(3) had to say about my hypothesis (parent comment):

"Unlikely. 3I/ATLAS's hyperbolic orbit (e=6.2) and high excess velocity (~60 km/s) strongly indicate an extrasolar origin, as solar system perturbations (e.g., by passing stars) rarely produce such inbound speeds for bound objects like those in the Oort cloud. The puzzling 0.2% [probability of] plane alignment suggests other anomalies, warranting further study."
by dijit | 2025-07-18 16:34:31+00:00
Agree with everything you've said, but a major differentiator between TSMC and ASML is that you buy a bit of gear and then you kinda own it.

It's like buying a plow; you use the plow to till your land and if a better plow exists (or, tractor) you go buy it.. or if your plow breaks you buy a new one.

But, we're in a situation where the plow can be taken away from us, arbitrarily, and the consequence is that people could possibly starve to death.

The situations are materially different in this aspect, but yes, trust breeds interdependence, which ironically is the point of the EU: if we all depend on each other then we won't go to war with each other anymore; seems to have worked. Longest peace in history.
by blibble | 2025-07-18 16:34:42+00:00
> There should be quite a bit of incentive to e.g. drop AWS or stop using Google.

the way the EU should retaliate to the US tariff clown fiesta is by adding a levy on purchase of any services supplied by US hyperscalers (or any companies under their control, directly or indirectly)

start at 1%, increase by 1% every month until it hits 50%

the aim is being not to raise revenue, but to remove the threat to national security posed by the US regime

whilst providing a boost for your own domestic industry