MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bryanlarsen | 2025-07-12 21:22:16+00:00
When the price is $0, the competitor has to be substantially better for consumers to switch. Bing reached quality comparable to Google, but never noticeably exceeded it. So people didn't switch. OTOH, the switch from Netscape -> IE6 -> Firefox -> Chrome did happen.

But when the price is non-zero, that gives another dimension to compete on, and monopolies without significant barriers are much less common. It looks like good LLM's are going to have a price tag, so a monopoly is going to need a moat.
by eesmith | 2025-07-12 21:23:23+00:00
I've noticed that cancel culture and policing pronouns is far stronger on the right. What Democrat has been canceled as much as Liz Cheney by Republicans? Certainly not the sex pest Andrew Cuomo, heartily supported by the Democratic Party leadership.

What Democratic president has issued an executive order anywhere equivalent to Trump's order requiring pronouns match the gender "at conception", and the anti-scientific claim that gender is a male-female binary?

The right also wants to block books which have nothing to do with gay characters, including “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, “Maus”, “The Handmaid's Tale“, “Of Mice and Men“ and “Brave New World”.
by op00to | 2025-07-12 21:23:43+00:00
Chilling effects are settled doctrine, not hand-waving. SCOTUS struck the CDA (Reno v. ACLU, 1997) and COPA (Ashcroft v. ACLU, 2004) precisely because vague “indecent/harmful” standards plus stiff penalties make rational speakers self-censor. Courts don’t wait for carnage. The predictable chill itself is the constitutional flaw.

We already have hard evidence of chill. Pornhub, one of the few players with the budget to fight, has geoblocked Utah, Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, Montana, and about ten other states. Sixteen in total as of mid-2025 rather than risk strict-liability fines. That’s exit, not “compliance.” Smaller publishers just disappear quietly. Their absence isn’t a data gap, it’s the effect you’re denying.

You flipped the First Amendment burden. For content-based rules, the state must prove narrow tailoring and minimal speech impact under strict scrutiny. Demanding that speakers first produce a body count of shuttered sites inverts that standard and dodges the real constitutional test.

That’s why your “show me shutdowns” line doesn’t work: the shutdowns are already happening, and the law not the speakers has the burden to justify them.
by chris_engel | 2025-07-12 21:24:25+00:00
i've been using llm-based tools like copilot and claude pro (though not cc with opus), and while they can be helpful – e.g. for doc lookups, repetitive stuff, or quick reminders – i rarely get value beyond that. i've honestly never had a model surface a bug or edge case i wouldn’t have spotted myself.

i've tried agent-style workflows in copilot and windsurf (on claude 3.5 and 4), and honestly, they often just get stuck or build themselves into a corner. they don’t seem to reason across structure or long-term architecture in any meaningful way. it might look helpful at first, but what comes out tends to be fragile and usually something i’d refactor immediately.

sure, the model writes fast – but that speed doesn't translate into actual productivity for me unless it’s something dead simple. and if i’m spending a lot of time generating boilerplate, i usually take that as a design smell, not a task i want to automate harder.

so i’m honestly wondering: is cc max really that much better? are those productivity claims based on something fundamentally different? or is it more about tool enthusiasm + selective wins?
by AlienRobot | 2025-07-12 21:25:41+00:00
The only social media app I can stomach is Tumblr, because people share lots of cool photos and art there.

It's weird because on Tumblr you can post posts of any size, place images anywhere you want, edit posts, edit tags afterwards, and all this cool stuff... but no, people WANT to use the character-limited immutable post with embedded hashtags thing for some reason. I don't get it.
by heraldgeezer | 2025-07-12 21:26:54+00:00
Just use Firefox with ublock origin. On Android too. Nightly has tabs on tablet.

At work I use Edge (MS integration w SSO and all). Edge has some nice features like vertical tabs and copilot. (yes, email writing with AI is nice)

We are allowed Chrome and FF so have those too with ublock on FF. Chrome is 3rd choice if a site really needs it and for testing.
by comprev | 2025-07-12 21:27:12+00:00
Private Eye might be humorous but they're also very respected for their journalistic integrity.

They will expose scandals and wrongdoing which many publications would buckle under pressure to stop digging.

No person or business wants be in the crosshairs of Ian Hislop! [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Hislop
by h2zizzle | 2025-07-12 21:27:39+00:00
It's a decent chunk of change for the sole purpose of avoiding ads on a single platform that barely pays the people actually producing the content. If you're looking to access premium content and YouTube Music, it's a slightly better value proposition (but only slightly, because YTM sucks, especially compared to what GPM used to be). For that ~$120 a year, you could buy a bunch of Steam games to occupy the same amount of time as your YT habit. Or you could buy a sub to services like Nebula which actually pay content creators decently. Or you could buy an external hard drive, install yt-dlp, and embrace Talk Like A Pirate Day, Groundhog Day-style.
by eesmith | 2025-07-12 21:28:59+00:00
I point out to self-described "classic liberals" that what they call "cancel culture" was instead described by John Stuart Mill in "On Liberty" as an essential component of liberty:

"We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement."
by perching_aix | 2025-07-12 21:29:05+00:00
> I don’t think that free software is an unserious hyperbole, actually.

Me neither, considering that doesn't even work grammatically. Very clearly I was referring to "unless you're still using the spying machine" being the unserious hyperbole.

> It really does exist, even though big tech wants you to think it does not.

I must have been continually missing "big tech's" efforts on that front. They do engage in other efforts that go against either the spirit or the proliferation of software freedom, but what you describe I legitimately have not witnessed at all.
by malux85 | 2025-07-12 21:31:15+00:00
Yeah this is the curse of the intermediate developer at work

The junior developer experiences nothing but errors, and struggles to get something over the line

The intermediate developer adopts “reduce errors at all cost” mentality and their parsers are too helpful, they make too many assumptions, and you end up with the Date class type behaviour.

The senior developer knows the deadliness of this, and designs a robust class that behaves consistently and errors early on invalid input.
by CharlesW | 2025-07-12 21:31:28+00:00
In the "cons" column, Brave is still a for-profit and has a bunch of features that continue to give some people the ick. In the "pros" column, there's a bunch of "how to debloat Brave" content showing how to improve the default kitchen-sink confifguration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6cKFliWW6Q
by ben_w | 2025-07-12 21:32:05+00:00
> Global needs should have global support, such that the failure of one hegemony doesn’t fuck up everything for the rest of humanity

While this is true, I suspect that putting the UN in charge of all global matters will cause them to become such a hegemony.

Until we have multiple planets (or equivalents), I think a multi-polar world with multiple superpowers capable and motivated to work on such things is important.

Hopefully the superpowers will keep their fighting to "indirectly", like the USA and the USSR used to.
by heraldgeezer | 2025-07-12 21:32:11+00:00
>You also can't block ads on iPhones, which a majority of the developed world uses. My girlfriend has never watched a YouTube video on something other than an Apple device for example.

People really live like this... ? Like those who watch movies on their phones lmao.

Also, Brave works on iphone -> m.youtube.com adfree :)

Then again I went years not using conditioner and moisturiser for my skin, only deo... We all need tips from people who know better you know. (Im white.)
by mdaniel | 2025-07-12 21:32:19+00:00
Heh, I knew I was going to get in trouble since the CNI could do whatever it likes, but felt safe due to Pods having mostly random identities. But at that second I had forgotten about StatefulSets, which I agree with your linked CNI's opinion would actually be a great candidate for static address assignment

Sorry for the lapse and I'll try to be more careful when using "unconditional" to describe pluggable software
Ask HN: Are there any tools for tracking GPU prices over time?
by jepeake | 2025-07-12 21:32:42+00:00
I'm looking for tools to track GPU prices over time across all of the different clouds and neo-clouds. Time series charts or that kind of thing. Does this exist? It would be useful information to us, & I'd be interested to see how much the prices vary over time and if one cloud remains the cheapest, or if they switch.

If not, would other people find this useful also? Thinking of building & sharing with others.
by dhussoe | 2025-07-12 21:32:49+00:00
> Yet I have to say that if you are correct, the term is no different than eating tide pods or dry swallowing cinnamon. Why tf would anyone impose such an absurd artificial constraint on themselves, on the tool, or on whatever they are trying to build? Good faith question, I promise.

IDK! I don't think Vibe Coding, with the definition that I understand, is a good idea.

But the term comes from here: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

And the key parts are:

> "forget that the code even exists"

> "I don't read the diffs anymore"

I myself am unclear on what the "vibes" that one is giving into actually are. But terms should have meanings and my understanding from reading the original tweet is that "Vibe Coding" means something distinct from "coding using some AI to help".
by jahsome | 2025-07-12 21:32:50+00:00
My point is: the exact same was said of every form of mass communication. Every new form was said to be a herald of the end times, and yet here we are, in many ways stronger than ever.

Im not arguing one way or another, I'm just pointing out a potential fatigue. It's difficult to see how this technology is relatively any more transformative than any of the others.
by mandmandam | 2025-07-12 21:32:55+00:00
> But what feels true, too, is that the DNC hasn’t read it either. Or if they have, they’re not working against it

The DNC are sheepdogs, at best. Their role is to shepherd any sort of leftist energy into safely neutered channels. And science in general has big 'leftist energy'.

The campaign promises: "We'll end corporate donations! We'll end executive orders! We'll copper-fasten Roe! We'll end ICE! We'll stop the illegal forever wars! We'll legalize cannabis!" - have now devolved to, "vote for us and if you're lucky the Gestapo we funded won't raid your house in the middle of the night without a search warrant - or if they do, at least they won't be masked".

So, no. We're not going to get much help from the guys that 'failed' [0] to stop a rapist insurrectionist con-man from taking the Presidency, and it's really pretty silly to have any hope in them whatsoever.

0 - https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-of-the-mafia-s...
by ccorcos | 2025-07-12 21:32:59+00:00
Side story regarding roads: I was recently in Shelter Cove, CA and was thinking that the is road probably exceeds the entire economic value of the town… Why is this road even here? It turns out, they used to harvest tan oak bark for the tannins to tan leather in the late 1800s which was a huge industry back then. Lots of logging roads out there since then… Free markets do build a lot of roads!

Insurance companies have the right incentive but they don’t need to be the ones building it. Safer cars get cheaper insurance, so there’s clear market pressure there without insurance companies having to build their own cars…

Pollution, kinds that suffer the “tragedy of the common”, are a good example where regulation is necessary to prevent a race to the bottom. But that’s a pretty simple and straightforward thing to democratically vote on without government spending.

I think the solution is fairly simple: private companies build these capabilities and offer them as a service. The idea that there won’t be a marketplace for this service seems misguided too. Adversarial militaries will want their own systems, likely contracted out to private companies, which will likely offer civilian use around the world…
by jay_kyburz | 2025-07-12 21:33:24+00:00
I don't feel as strongly about privacy because "community" is what holds civilisation together.

Its nice to have a little space, and to have your own thoughts and opinions, but not at the expense of civilisation.

People should not be able to use privacy to evade responsibility or debts.

We always need to balance freedoms with responsibility.

Final thought is that this is precisely why government and politics is not a joke and needs to be taken seriously. We need small transparent governments we can trust and that are a held accountable.

If you don't trust your government, you've got bigger problems than your privacy.
by tolerance | 2025-07-12 21:33:34+00:00
I know, or at least I figured that's what you meant.

I'm not a proponent of the discipline per say, and maybe because of this, my impression that the entire field of psychology is meant to partially address the real-word, tangible effects of things that do not cause apparent physical harm is naive.

If I'm accustomed to women getting indiscriminately reamed and pinned and prodded at my own discretion—even casually—I am at a detriment.

I'm going to leave out a more accessible or agreeable example because I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you can come up one on your own.

I don't mean to be condescending, but I want to assume that you're arguing in good faith.

Have you, or any one who you know, seen something disgusting, vile or immoral that didn't cause physical harm but had a negative consequence on how you feel about yourself or the world around you?

Why are we quick to champion the value of the "good" things that don't offer any material benefit (i.e., physically, financially, socially) but criticizing the "bad" requires graphs and groups and variables and peer reviews?

I know, and I figure that you know too. "Good" and "bad" exist in quotations marks and only count among the people who don't need them to use them with each other.
by dotnetcarpenter | 2025-07-12 21:33:52+00:00
I'm from Denmark were we use the long scale. I didn't know a long scale form existed in English! It happens quite often that a billion, in English, gets translated to a billion in Danish, which is off by 999 billion and, of course, should have been a milliard. ;-)

If it happens in Spanish, it probably happens in most of Europe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44509534
by ModernMech | 2025-07-12 21:34:18+00:00
It depends what your investment strategy is. If your goal is to be a rising tide that lifts all boats, then government spending is a good idea. But some people would rather all boats not be lifted. They'd just like to lift some boats, but sink others. Still, other people would prefer to sink as many boats as possible while being in control of the remaining boats that float. For people who fit into those later categories, government spending is not a good ROI.

As Timothy Snyder put it, authoritarian political capital is based on creating a "reservoir of fear" that the authoritarian can draw upon whenever he needs legitimacy or a mandate to enact cruel and inhumane policies. The reservoir of fear is created by making groups desperate, and you don't make them desperate by meeting their needs through funding government assistance programs.

Instead what you do as an authoritarian is you "other" and arrest their neighbors, take away their health care, allow their homes to be flooded, take away their information channels, prevent them from going to school, make sure they're unemployed, make food more scarce... make them desperate enough, blame their desperation on the "others" and they'll be happy to enact whatever cruelties you ask them to on the "others" if they think it'll lessen their misery, or at the very least bring more misery to the "others".
by genewitch | 2025-07-12 21:35:45+00:00
I'd rather listen to a literal board certified addiction medicine specialist than some rando on the internet that links an article about "a meth user for 20 years that just quit!" and an article that talks about how the prefrontal cortex somehow magically allows people to opt out of addiction in their mid-20s.

Several "hard" drugs interfere with the brain, especially if the drug use begins when the brain is still plastic. Another thing, why does Louisiana have more opioid prescriptions than citizens? I guess these "addicts" don't count.

Do you have some kind of angle, here? "complete BS" is a bit combative, for this forum.

I would suggest that an "addict" is someone who can't "just quit" because they "want to."
by browningstreet | 2025-07-12 21:36:21+00:00
Totally agree.

The Rosie O’Donnell thing today is another demonstration of his commitment to iterating against norms. He’ll push and push until he finds a front that collapses in his favor. The whole idea of the unassailable rights of citizens will continue to be tested. The Democrats need a “no F’ing way” line to hold. An American born citizen should be an easy line to defend. We’ll see what kind of pushback surfaces.
by sensanaty | 2025-07-12 21:36:25+00:00
> Firefox is different enough from Chrome that it's a big jump for people who are used to Chrome

I find this notion completely baffling. I use Chrome, Firefox and Safari more or less daily cause I test in all 3, and other than Safari feeling clunkier and in general less power-user friendly, I can barely tell the difference between the 3, especially between chrome and FF (well, other than uBlock working better in FF anyways).
by rstat1 | 2025-07-12 21:37:06+00:00
>> I feel like, to say that, you haven't tried helping many older adults — or even middle-aged adults — use technology.

I have actually. And do so pretty regularly.

But the comment I was replying to was presumably not about older adults, and more so about younger parents of minor children, whom I wouldn't normally class as "older adults", and for the most part I would think know basic skills like using a search engine and/or Youtube (or some other video sharing app)
by galangalalgol | 2025-07-12 21:37:33+00:00
The only time I've used anything but firefox for the last. Well probably since netscape honestly? I am so old. Is to get the in flight entertainment to work on american, but firefox has worked for that for a few years now. People say chrome is faster and in the early 2000s I might have agreed, but now I really don't understand why anyone not on a mac or iphone isn't using Firefox. It is great.
by tolerance | 2025-07-12 21:37:46+00:00
Who is your generation and how do you think they turned out.

No, save it (don't save it, this is rhetorical), because apparently every generation is screwed up in their own way that begets the ills of the next.

And if we happen to be cohorts (which I suspect we may be), then I think we made out as worse as any.

And is it wrong to assume that there isn't any difference between either kinds of footage? That one goads the other in either direction?
by toss1 | 2025-07-12 21:38:13+00:00
They want them to grow up in their privileged bubble, and that is all. They literally DGAF if the rest of of us, i.e., the NPCs, all starve. Does anyone think Russian oligarchs care about the Russian peasants or "meat cans" they send to the Ukranian front? And they've already got their bunkers in New Zealand, Hawaii, or wherever if it all goes really sideways. Musk, Theil, Vance, and the rest of them care about us less than the NPSs in their FPS games, and we should regard them exactly the same way.
by thdhhghgbhy | 2025-07-12 21:38:29+00:00
But you have user defined effects don't you? E.g say I define an effect ReadsFromDB, it doesn't necessarily do what it says on the tin, and there is no way a compiler can check that it does. It could read from the db, and send some rockets into space. So a consequence of that is that these "effect systems" just amount to giving names to blocks of code. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
by Bender | 2025-07-12 21:39:11+00:00
It's been a while for me. Try to find a local specialty shop with a very good reputation that carries children's toys and collectables. Local because you can feel and inspect the toy and you are dealing with someone face-to-face. If you have a facebook group for your local community they will have ideas. Yelp may also have some suggestions despite being heavily gamed. Read the negative reviews. Local shops will cost more than online but it may be worth it in my opinion.

If there is a Children's Hospital near you they usually have unique things in their gift shop also pricey but worth it.
by stego-tech | 2025-07-12 21:39:16+00:00
The article is, in fact, correct.

Community standards vary by community, both physically and digitally. The community standards of a rural town in Utah or ChristianDating.net are likely to be wildly different than the community standards of a major city on the coastlines or PornHub users. This wrinkle is exactly why there's renewed efforts to define what obscenity legally is [1], so that it's inclusive of as much "porn" as possible.

Additionally, you're conveniently ignoring what the author spends most of their piece decrying: the fact that these laws permit "ambulance chasing" attorneys to sue across state lines. That's the real issue, especially given the fact that some state laws can allow civil action to lead to prison time for conviction. Even ignoring the potential outcomes however, these lawsuits are instantly bankrupting for a majority of Americans, and the laws so (intentionally) broadly written that even genuinely innocent parties are likely to fork over money to make it go away given the cost of mounting a defense.

Put simply: obscenity lacks a firm legal definition, the definition of porn is nebulous and variable from person to person, and these laws are written to maximize harm to a maximal population size. The intent is to criminalize as many undesirables as possible, and the current administration and political parties have been transparent that anyone not rich, white, straight, Christian, and cisgendered male are emphatically undesirable.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/167...