MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tpmoney | 2025-07-09 22:42:37+00:00
> IMHO it is just one more example of how PCs have become content consumption devices rather than outlets for creation.

I would argue it’s more of an example of a part of an industry dying because the reality never lived up to the expectations and the individual costs being prohibitive to getting there. As the artwork computers were cable of got better, we weren’t as happy with the quality of image you get from standard printer paper and an inkjet. The difference between photo paper and regular paper in the same printer is night and day, but most people never saw that and most people didn’t want to spend the money that photo paper cost for printing out a single birthday card. Especially when it’s was a 50/50 crapshoot whether your print heads were clogged or would clog half way through and ruin the first print. Add into that the cost of all the ink that was wasted to clean the print heads and the chance that you would just plain be out of a color and unable to print anyway and I think most people just decided the aggravation wasn’t worth the novelty of Clip Art Dog #23 telling you happy birthday.

And then once the internet really took off, who wanted to give a clip art card printed on printer paper when you could send someone a “jibjab” custom e-card with funny animations of your faces?
by hyperadvanced | 2025-07-09 22:42:40+00:00
Storage tech exists right now but it’s not super widespread or reliable (mostly in the “what do I get for my dollar” - you can store power all you want but making your investment back is a little harder). Degradation has proved to be worse than anticipated. Industrial application of Li batteries has been repeatedly hamstrung by supply chain, demand, tariff, etc. problems. New battery chemistry would really be the breakthrough here, anything cheaper and better than lithium
by root_axis | 2025-07-09 22:42:43+00:00
Believe what you like - Elon's right-wing political agenda is well documented and well known, even among the right wing.

It's similar regarding his endorsing antisemitism and racism. However, I understand that people on the right don't believe anything is racist or antisemitic unless it's something the Democrats are doing or saying, so I can at least accept that as the standard talking point.

It's not surprising that you also believe what is unequivocally a Nazi salute is "my heart goes out to you". I know you don't agree, but there's no discussion to be had about what is clearly apparent to the naked eye.

As far as the censorship goes, just google something like "elon musk silences critics" for many examples. You can save yourself the time to explain why it's all fake news and lies, I get it, but even some right-wingers have faced censorship from Elon, funny how even they suddenly agree with all the crazy liars when the leopard bites their face.

Anyway, we're operating in a fundamentally different reality. No point in discussing this further, but feel free to reply and I will read it. Have a great day.
by darqis | 2025-07-09 22:42:50+00:00
I don't understand why no one or barely anyone is using graphql. It's the evolution of all that REST crap.

query ($name: String!) { greeting(where: {name: $name}) { response } }

or

mutation ($input: CreatePostInput!) { createPost(input: $input) { id createTime title content tags { id slug name } } }

and so on, instead of having to manually glue together responses and relations.

It's literally SQL over the wire without needed to write SQL.

The payload is JSON, the response is JSON. EZ.
by const_cast | 2025-07-09 22:43:12+00:00
The older init systems were incredibly frail and often did not work. The reason is because Bash, as much as we all love it, is actually super mega ass. It's very bug-prone and actually one of the least portable languages ever invented, in practice. Because you can't, or shouldn't, call to any other binary from within Bash, otherwise you risk your portability. Now your script won't work the same on other platforms, or even the same platform with slightly different configuration.

But um... yeah... calling to other binaries is the entire ethos of Bash. It's a shell, that's supposed to be all it does. Even getting a "true" value should be a call to another binary.

Unit files, despite being a bespoke format for one singular program, are actually more portable. Like, WAY more portable.
by refulgentis | 2025-07-09 22:43:54+00:00
I am very strongly opinionated on this, but am aware this isn't a very serious matter most of the time. Imagine my tongue in cheek, and a smile, i.e. I'm open to discussion:

Oklab is a nightmare in practice - it's not linked to any perceptual color space, but it has the sheen of such in colloquial discussion. It's a singular matmul that is supposed to emulate CAM16 as best as it can.

It reminds me of the initial state of color extraction I walked into at Google, where they were using HSL -- that is more obviously wrong, but I submit they suffer from the same exact issue: their verbiage is close enough to actual verbiage that they obfuscate discussion, and prevent people from working with the actual perceptual spaces, where all of a sudden a ton of problems just...go away.

</end rant>

In practice, quantizers are all slow enough at multimegapixel that I downscale - significantly, IIRC I used 96x96 or 112x112. IIRC you could convert all 16M of RGB to CAM16 and L* in 6 seconds, in debug mode, in Dart, transpiled to Javascript in 2021, so I try to advocate for doing things with a proper color space as much as possible, the perf just doesn't matter.

EDIT: Also, I should point out that my goal was to get a completely dynamic color system built, which required mathematically guaranteeing a given contrast ratio for two given lightness values, no matter hue and chroma, so trying to use pseudo-perceptual-lightness would have been enough to completely prevent that.

I do still think it's bad in general, i.e. if it was people doing effects on images in realtime, a couple weeks ago I finally got past what I had internally at Google, and was able to use appearance modeling (i.e. the AM in CAM-16) to do an exquisite UI whose colors change based on the lighting naturally. https://x.com/jpohhhh/status/1937698857879515450
by indigodaddy | 2025-07-09 22:44:04+00:00
Fantastic addition! If you require a non-read-only DB state, this seems way better alternative than having to add a persistent storage+sqlite, et al to your fly instance.

My current fly use case is just an sqlite that never gets written to/changed thru the site (so it just sits within the docker image itself) (and updates from an authoritative remote source daily), but should I have a project that requires a non-read-only DB state, will definitely try this out. If they could figure out something similar to the managed pgsql, but sqlite instead, I'd probably use the hell out of that too!

All that being said, the pricing is extremely out of reach for a personal/hobbyist use case (just fine for small business/enterprise+ though of course). A single database also seems quite the limitation. Once Fly can leap past that hurdle, will they include more than one database in the same monthly pricing?
by prmoustache | 2025-07-09 22:45:09+00:00
I don't know, when I installed a linux distro with xfce on her laptop after he hdd died it took my partner months to realize she wasn't using windows.

I mean she only figured out libreoffice was installed instead of the pirated copy of office she used to run and complained the menus were different. Little she knew that a more recent version of Office would too have different menus/items placement anyway.
by jMyles | 2025-07-09 22:45:27+00:00
At risk of saying something utterly predictable (and thus, unnecessary) - and indeed, a sibling comment has already made such a prediction:

* It really seems like matrix is superior in every way to both of these.

It is much easier to backup, restore, and change devices (one of the chief complaints about both Signal and WhatsApp of course), has more cognizable (and yet less intrusive!) information displayed about the cryptological situation for any given chat, and is much more flexible. Also, it has clients which are just as stable (at least that's my experience with Element on both linux and android).

My only complaint about the current generation of Element clients is that there is, unless I'm missing something, no way to globally search across all saved chats. Which is really a blocker sometimes when using it for work.

But yeah, at the risk of sounding like I'm blinding emitting the cliche response of "why no my favorite app?!", I really think it's time to ask why we're always using and recommending signal rather than matrix.
by d4mi3n | 2025-07-09 22:45:44+00:00
In my (limited) experience with Clojure and other functional languages, this is usually true under situations where:

1. You’re mapping or reducing some dataset

2. Your iteration logic does not branch a lot

3. You can express your transformation logic using higher order functions (e.g. mapping a reduction operation across a multidimensional array)

Some domains have a log of this style of work—finance comes to mind—others do not. I suspect this is why I’ve personally seen a lot more of Clojure in finance circles than I have in other industries.
by Kwpolska | 2025-07-09 22:45:51+00:00
> However, given that you can report messages to Meta for violating the terms of use, they clearly do have mechanisms to read messages.

That’s not a reasonable assumption IMO. The report API most likely takes the message your phone has decrypted (so that you can read it) and sends it over to Meta. This doesn’t break end-to-end encryption. Neither does me copying the message from a friend and posting it on Twitter.
by tcfhgj | 2025-07-09 22:47:07+00:00
Why the world isn't already using Signal is why Signal is the wrong tool to switch to.

The world will neither like the same messenger nor will it make the switch at the same time.

So you need to give people the choice to choose an app they like without needing to convince their social network to do the same (potentially x-times, because you are not their only contact).

This is why you should switch to a messaging standard such as Matrix, not a centralized messenger.
by pklausler | 2025-07-09 22:47:58+00:00
s/had/has/

In the flang-new compiler, which builds a parse tree for the whole source file before processing any declarations, it was necessary to parse such things as statement functions initially so that further specification statements could follow them. Later, if it turns out that the function name is an array or regular function returning a pointer, the parse tree gets patched up in place and the statement becomes the first executable statement.
by mattdesl | 2025-07-09 22:48:27+00:00
I’ve done some color quantization tests with HyAB and OKLab on this same image. A couple notes:

- what works well for this image might not work well for other images! I learned the hard way after lots of testing on this image, only to find things that did not generalize well.

- parametrizing the AB plane weight is pretty useful for color quantization; I’ve found some images will be best with more weight given to colour, and other images need more weight given to tone. OKLab creator suggests a factor of 2 in deltaEOK[1] but again this is something that should be adjustable IMHO..

- there’s another interesting and efficient color space (poorly named) sUCS and sCAM[2] that boasts impressive results in their paper for tasks like this. Although I’ve found it not much better for my needs than OKLab in my brief tests[3] (and note, both color spaces are derived using CIEDE2000)

[1] https://github.com/color-js/color.js/blob/9d812464aa318a9b47...

[2] https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-32-3-3100&id=5...

[3] https://x.com/mattdesl/status/1902699888057446670
by avhception | 2025-07-09 22:48:40+00:00
When I was a kid, we would always hatch a plan on what to do with the rest of the day while we were still at school. As soon as the bell rang, we hurried home to catch something to eat and then it was off to the woods to build that fortress or whatever. If there was no school, we'd call the house phones of our friends until we had a plan cooked up. And every day without fail we didn't want to go home. So much stuff to do!

Now, watching the kids my friends have - they won't even leave the house if their parents didn't plan a playdate and brought them there. Something is completely off.
by spauldo | 2025-07-09 22:49:49+00:00
That's pretty typical. Every element of an SVG is an object with a bunch of properties that can be manipulated and scripted and whatnot. It's great for a lot of things, but it's a lot more resource intensive than "dump this set of pixels onto the screen here" like GIF does or even "perform this set of drawing commands" like HTML canvas does.
by tclancy | 2025-07-09 22:50:11+00:00
Really? While I don’t do it, the alternative is having a kid come home with a scrawled phone number that may or may not be right along with a vague recollection of the name of the parent I am supposed to be calling. Things are a little less akward in our life but it may be because we are closer to what OP describes as grandparents I suppose.

I get the idea, but I would suggest the reaction to an attempt at lubricating social interaction as “cringe” is part of the issue OP is describing.
by ImPostingOnHN | 2025-07-09 22:50:21+00:00
> our governments have contingency plans to prevent serious adversaries from attaining real power

What makes you think the current usa government would view violent, racist, genocidal people or AI or robots as adversaries rather than allies? That is a super bold assumption, given:

Only a few weeks ago, the leader of that government was allied with elmu, the exact person responsible for the content this article describes;

Only a few weeks before that, the leader of that government employed elmu to execute on a signature policy effort (DOGE);

The alliance weakened not because of any disagreement on violence, racism, or genocide, but because they disagreed on which of them should benefit more from government handouts in the most recent budget.

> I'm asking you to explain how a functional government would allow humanoid or non-humanoid robots to possess enough sapience to interact with humans in public.

Putting aside whether the government in question is indeed "functional", which seems like an open subjective question:

A government that embraces violent racists who employ genocidal rhetoric, would find nearly irresistible the prospect of violent, racist, genocidal AI and robots that help track and eliminate political adversaries.
by afiori | 2025-07-09 22:50:22+00:00
Rest is a structured description of how html/http/web work sorta. An example of a non rest aspect of how a webpage works is how the favicon is by default fetched by a well known url, or how cookies use a magic list of domains to decide if two origins are similar enough or not.

Other than things like this the browser makes very little assumptions about how a website works, it just loads what the html tells it to load and shows the content to the user. Imagine the alternative where browser by default assumed that special pages example.com/login and example.com/logout existed and would sometimes navigate you there by themselves (like with a prompt "do you want to login?")

If you wanted to design a new improved html alternative from scratch you likely would want the same properties.

The issue with Rest API is that most of what we call API are not websites and most of their clients are not browser but servers or the JavaScript in the browser where IDs are generally more useful than links.

REST is incredibly successful, html is rest, CSS is rest, even JavaScript itself is rest, but we do not call APIs that return html/CSS/js/media APIs we call them websites
by roenxi | 2025-07-09 22:50:43+00:00
> But you cannot produce any food in soils around it for thousand years.

Is that actually based on some sort of science though, or is it the same woolly thinking as the linear-no-threshold modelling that was popular around the time of Chernobyl? What are the actual risks here and how does it compare to low exercise or the typical amount of air pollution in a large city?
Show HN: A protocol for LLM client to render UI components
by ericlmtn | 2025-07-09 22:50:57+00:00
Much like how servers used to render HTML, LMUI is a protocol that guides LLM apps/clients to render specified components. I'm not sure if anyone's already built an existing protocol, but I really think pure text is killing the potential of LLM clients, especially with how much more interactivity MCP's have brought for us to play with existing services. Improving the UI/UX should be a next step in LLM applications. PR/feedback is very welcome.
by upofadown | 2025-07-09 22:51:11+00:00
>Crucially, it's run by a nonprofit organisation...

Sure, but for all we know it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA. See Crypto AG[1].

>...if we all start to do this, it will mean more people are on Signal, hopefully gradually making it more attractive to move across!

Signal is controlled by a single entity and is not federated. So it is only a matter of time before things fall apart. So it is not a good idea to promote it as some sort of messaging standard.

I mean, Signal is OK and is a fine replacement for Whatsapp, but all these rabid expressions of Signal fandom are starting to get annoying.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
by probablypower | 2025-07-09 22:51:38+00:00
> The storage tech exists and is in practice right now, no advancements needed.

The existence of the tech isn't the issue, it is the logistics, cost and practicality of building it at grid scale. If you try to calculate how many batteries you'd need to store the equivalent energy of a hydro reservoir, or one hour of a nuclear plant, then try to estimate the land required, you'd quickly discover how intractable the issue is.
by kubectl_h | 2025-07-09 22:51:44+00:00
I'm a dev that jumped to devops and one of my pet peeves will always be the lengths devops engineers go to avoid using a real programming language. Instead of interacting with all these APIs through python, ruby, lua, go, whatever they would rather build hodgepodge systems in bash, coreutils, curl (or wget. or both!) and jq (which is the worst). Or in the case of helm, just creating a half yaml/half Go SDK for generating YAML.

Even the helm infrastructure that I work in is completely wrapped in custom shell scripts that call all sorts of other commands to populate helm variables.

But yeah it's silly that helm templates require all sorts of {{ indent | 4 }} type incantations when the final YAML output is just sent through some kind of toJSON anyway.
by roblh | 2025-07-09 22:52:06+00:00
RawTherapee is great in most ways, except that all of the curves for adjusting anything have absolutely catastrophically bad handling. It's so amazing having access to the Lab colour adjustments but the sliders are abysmal, impossible to make any kind of precise adjustments, impossible to reset an individual slider/point back to it's default placement, impossible to undo the last action without resetting the entire widget to its default state. It's unusable, and I'm convinced that the popularity of it would skyrocket if they'd finally just sit down and address that it's miserable to use. I would drop lightroom in a heartbeat if they made them even a little bit better.

I know it's a different space, but as a counterexample, FabFilter makes audio plugins that are the gold standard for that kind of interface and it isn't even close. Anybody making an interface for interacting with points on a curve should sit down with the free demo of FabFilters Pro-Q3 for just a few minutes to experience what's actually possible and how it should feel.
by bentocorp | 2025-07-09 22:52:38+00:00
Thanks for the question.

As I noted it took 7 years to actually get any substantial Google traffic – if I was to start again I would potentially change some of what I've written to be more effective or focus on different topics earlier.

However my approach is always to write what will be useful and interesting for humans, if Google search also finds it relevant then that's a bonus. I never write just for machines... as I think that's a long term losing strategy.
by bpt3 | 2025-07-09 22:52:40+00:00
I might put this on a plaque.

I realize this sounds harsh, but I assume anyone who is pushing for developers to basically take on all the shit work of a tech lead stuck managing a bunch of incompetent developers is not an actual developer, and is either an incompetent one who hopes LLMs will cover for them or someone looking to reduce their dependency on developers.

Fortunately for me, I think we'll be well into the Matrix before my job can be done adequately by AI so I have the luxury of using it as a tool here and there where it makes sense rather than spending most of my time trying to avoid the damage a firehose of hallucinations will do to my codebase.
by const_cast | 2025-07-09 22:53:20+00:00
> It is always interesting seeing the mostly blind loyalty that Valve seems to get for no real clear reason.

Trust, it's trust. Valve has continuously proven to be good-faith actors who work with the gaming community on mutual goals. See: everything they've done for gaming on Linux.

The reason it feels very out of place is because pretty much every company on Earth has eroded any modicum of trust they have. Or, um, had.

Really, all it takes is a few bad decisions for Valve to fall out of favor. They just haven't made those decisions yet and we're all praying they don't.
by antonymoose | 2025-07-09 22:54:55+00:00
I’ll endorse this heavily.

We bought into a nice suburban community. Good schools, low crime, the dream.

No one knows any neighbors. Kids rarely play with one another intra-neighborhood despite a very healthy blend of age ranges. In fact, I’ve loosely associate with exactly one neighbor in the three years. We went out of our way to try and meet neighbors our first month. Most treated us as if we head too many heads on our shoulders.

Despite a heavy presence of children, no one here celebrate Halloween despite it being a beloved night growing up around here. Our first year we invested heavily in decorations and spent hundreds on the King size candy bars.

Society feels… dead compared to me as an early 90s child.
by AngryData | 2025-07-09 22:54:59+00:00
Theoretically yes, but you seriously complicate the storage of nuclear materials when you start packing it all together and trying to create heat or keep it at any elevated temperature for harvesting heat. That is basically the entire concept of a nuclear reactor, except now its either a random mash of nuclear stuff unless you spend a ton of money categorizing and actively monitoring the state of all the material put in, but with a less robust cooling system than an actual nuke plant and far lower output.

With the expenses involved with all of that, it would probably be better to just build multiple geothermal plants instead and you don't have to worry about nuclear materials at all for similar power output.

To me the only 2 economically feasible strategies I see with high level nuclear waste is recycling with some sort of breeder reactor program, or dumping it in a deep stable hole that is trapped away from any water tables on the order of 100,000 years or more, by which point it will just be a uniquely rich and and diverse nuclear mineral deposit.

With a breeder reactor though and all the supporting nuclear reprocessing facilities, even though it would be a lot of work and money, it would be recovering the vast majority of potential energy from previously mined and refined nuclear materials that you are talking about recovering heat from, and in a far more controlled manner that allows us to just chuck the material into pretty much any other reactor without any significant modifications.