MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by derbOac | 2025-07-20 22:31:30+00:00
Survivorship bias is an important thing to consider, but the weird thing about it is that although sometimes (usually?) people have a blind spot for it, other times I think it gets used as a kind of "just so" explanation for degradation in quality because it's hard to refute.

My experience with clothing kind of suggests it's not just survivorship bias. I once had a pair of pants that lasted maybe 10 years or so with regular washing, each use (yes I know, not ideal, I don't do that anymore), and I had to replace them. When I ordered a new pair, from the same company, same model, I noticed the new ones didn't last nearly as long, maybe 2 years, and seemed thinner. I emailed the company about this, and they acknowledged that they had made the fabric thinner, and even gave me the old and new fabric densities. I think clothing is one area where new brands have come in to partially move the needle back toward quality a teeny weeny bit, but experiences like that, tracking the actual material quality of the same products over time, leads me to conclude it's not always just random survivorship bias.
by torginus | 2025-07-20 22:33:21+00:00
Sorry for the derail, but it sounds like you have a ton of experience with SIMD.

Have you used ISPC, and what are your thoughts on it?

I feel it's a bit ridiculous that in this day and age you have to write SIMD code by hand, as regular compilers suck at auto-vectorizing, especially as this has never been the case with GPU kernels.
by x0x0 | 2025-07-20 22:33:29+00:00
That's an incorrect understanding. It creates a range of requirements for essentially any service with users in the UK if there is UGC or messaging.

Then there are additional requirements applied to 3 classes of services: Category 1, 2A, 2B. The latter have the thresholds as discussed above.

But, as usual, poorly written. eg a "Content Recommendation System" -- if you choose, via any method, to show content to users, you have built a recommendation system. See eg wikimedia's concern that showing a picture of the day on a homepage is a bonafide content recommendation system.

The definition

> (2)In paragraph (1), a “content recommender system” means a system, used by the provider of a regulated user-to-user service in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, that uses algorithms which by means of machine learning or other techniques determines, or otherwise affects, the way in which regulated user-generated content of a user, whether alone or with other content, may be encountered by other users of the service.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/226/regulation/3/ma...

If you in any way display UGC, it's essentially impossible not to do that. Because you pick which UGC to display somehow.
by _dain_ | 2025-07-20 22:33:33+00:00
"extremely bad stuff"

people have literally been jailed for "hate speech" here because they clicked like on a tweet. labour is currently debating an official definition of "islamophobia" which would criminalize stating historical facts like "islam was spread by the sword" and "the grooming gangs are mostly pakistani". the govt put out a superinjunction forbidding anyone (including MPs) from mentioning they spent £7B bringing over afghans allegedly at risk from the taliban, and also criminalizing mention of the gag order itself, and so on recursively. nobody (other than judges and senior ministers) knows how many other such superinjunctions there are.

all this and more is covered by those 17 categories.

on top of this, britain claims global jurisdiction here. think a minute how absurd that is -- any website anywhere that any briton might access is in scope, according to ofcom. and they claim the power to prosecute foreigners for these "crimes" ...
by Panzer04 | 2025-07-20 22:33:55+00:00
Could not agree more.

Have never used a chargeback and wouldn't want that ability in the vast majority of transactions. If I'm buying something on steam I know what I'm getting and they already have a robust refund capability regardless. If there was a good alternative to CC I'd happily use that.

I use cards because they're the defacto standard for online payment, but that's the only reason.

(side note: This issue becomes more obvious with the addition of the afterpays of the world, which charge iirc 7% fees to the merchant but forbid them from surcharging the difference)
by thrownaway561 | 2025-07-20 22:34:43+00:00
I was thinking the same thing. Programmed ColdFusion for over a decade and loved the language, however I moved onto .NET, the PHP and now Rails. ColdFusion was a wonderful language, but the frameworks weren't there and the market share wasn't there either. Ironically enough, one of my clients still uses it for their application and we actually began talks about moving them over to Rails.
by grillitoazul | 2025-07-20 22:36:08+00:00
it should be noted that "The Bitter Lesson" is not a general principle, for example LLMs are not able to sum 1000 digits numbers, but a python program with a few lines can do it. Also we provide tools (algorithms) for LLMs, these examples show that "The Bitter Lesson" is not true beyond a certain context.
by jadamson | 2025-07-20 22:36:17+00:00
Very first question:

> Your online service has links with the UK if:

> UK users are a target market for your service; or

> It has a significant number of UK users

What is "significant"? Is it a percentage or a raw number?

I'll click "no" - maybe 5% of my users are from the UK. Great, wizard complete! I don't need to worry...except:

> Please note that this result is indicative only
by nine_k | 2025-07-20 22:36:23+00:00
The question is whether the laws are efficient. Imagine that as a protection from the occasional meteorite, all buildings are mandated to upgrade their roofs to be 1 meter of solid concrete. We cannot allow another random space rock kill another innocent inhabitant.

This, or course, would disproportionately burden smaller buildings, while some larger buildings would have little trouble to comply. Guess who would complain more often. But it, while outwardly insane, would clear small huts off the market, while the owners of large reinforced buildings would be able to reclaim the land, as if by an unintended consequence.

Driving the risk tolerance of a society lower and lower interestingly dovetails with the ease of regulatory capture by large incumbent players, as if by coincidence.
by beejiu | 2025-07-20 22:36:56+00:00
I have no idea what this service is, but clicking around on their site they mention it's 18+, that they don't allow "Child pornography, Sexualized depictions of minors, Heavy gore, Bestiality, Sexual violence".

I don't agree with everything in the Online Safety Act, but if anything needed a risk assessment, it's surely this?
by dangus | 2025-07-20 22:37:02+00:00
It’s really nice to hear the perspective of a Native American. What tribe is your family from?

1. In the hypothetical scenario I outlined, a smaller amount of qualified people come in because of the arbitrary per-country limits.

2. I agree, let’s prioritize Americans. Immigrants create a net positive of jobs and economic activity for native-born American citizens. How many businesses that you patronize or work for would never exist if immigrants didn’t start them? Do you think America would be better off economically and have more jobs if companies like Apple, AT&T, Disney, and Qualcomm didn’t exist? Because those companies wouldn’t exist without immigrants and children of immigrants who founded them. Would you instead prefer a declining population?

3. It sounds like you’re suggesting that we use a comprehensive threat model [1] to decide whether immigrants are allowed in from a country so that their country doesn’t take over this country. As you know we have already failed this mission once by allowing British, Italian, Irish, Spanish, French, and other European immigrants to take over the US and we can’t have it happen again. Next thing you’ll know even the First Lady will be an immigrant who abused visa regulations to become a citizen!

4. It doesn’t seem like the US financial system has much of a problem with foreign ownership of companies in the status quo, so why is this suddenly a problem when it comes to individuals immigrating? No individual human being physically immigrated to the US when Budweiser got bought by a foreign company. The issue is entirely detached from immigration. Of course, once you become a citizen the concern of foreign ownership vanishes by definition since you are no longer foreign.

[1] https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/044/241/ski...
Rethinking "Progress": A Hard Look at Sustainability
by upwardbound2 | 2025-07-20 22:37:18+00:00
We talk a lot about sustainability, usually focusing on things like renewable energy and efficient gadgets. These are fine, but they miss the point. The real problem isn't just how we produce things, but why we produce so much in the first place. We need to rethink the whole idea of "progress."

Consider the obsession with economic growth. It's treated as a universal good, but what does it actually deliver? More stuff, sure, but also more pollution, more inequality, and more stress. Maybe the goal shouldn't be endless expansion, but something else entirely. Maybe we should be aiming for stability, resilience, or even just plain old contentment.

Ultimately, sustainability isn't about finding clever ways to keep the current system running. It's about questioning the system itself. It's about recognizing that endless growth on a finite planet is a fantasy. It's about facing some uncomfortable truths and making some hard choices.
by theluketaylor | 2025-07-20 22:39:20+00:00
With home HVAC, fridges, water heaters, and dryers all using now able to use of dependent on heat pumps I wonder how long it be before we see modular appliances that connect to coolant lines where the temperature differential is supplied by a central high efficiency heat pump.

Cars already have heat scavenging that can move heat from where it's being created through losses to places where it's valuable, like the cabin or battery pre-heating. Especially in cold climates it feels like homes should be next.
by foldr | 2025-07-20 22:39:28+00:00
I’m afraid this is nonsense. Elected officials aren’t irrelevant. The majority of them support this legislation and that is why it got enough votes to become law. You don’t have to like it (I’m not a huge fan either), but it’s a perfectly straightforward case of a popular policy becoming law via the democratic process. A process that’s notoriously imperfect and not guaranteed to yield the best outcome in all cases.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this law must have come about by sinister machinations just because you don’t think it’s a good law.
by jaybrendansmith | 2025-07-20 22:39:28+00:00
Look, in theory you're fine. In practice, the nationalists are dismantling the scientific research required to study climate change (which is happening, because, you know, carbon heating the atmosphere is basic physics). They are claiming that tax cuts and austerity improve the economy, which is not only counter to economics but has been proven wrong over 50 years. And don't get me started on pollution, healthcare, and sexuality. All of these may be studied but are being actively defunded, because they are perceived as leftist for some reason. Without getting moralistic, I can tell you that my children's future is getting worse every day because of this science denialism. As Yogi Berra once said "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
by concinds | 2025-07-20 22:39:29+00:00
If popular goods disobey safety regulations, it was bound to catch authorities' attention at some point. But:

> they're just a middleman charging an unreasonable fee for importing Chinese-made products

Doesn't most of our economy feel like a scam?

It seems inevitable, when dominant economic frameworks treat consumption as something which must be endlessly stimulated (at ever-increasing prices), instead of stimulating production, forcing cutthroat competition in areas where there is currently little, and letting the unprofitable rent-seekers and parasites get flushed out.
by NBJack | 2025-07-20 22:39:34+00:00
Great. That's how it always starts when we 'listen' to the AI. First, we make a few adjustments to the menu. Next, we get told there's a dancing floor, and now we have to install that. A few steps later? Automated factory for killer robots (with a jukebox).

I should probably admire the AI for showing a lot of restraint on its first steps to global domination and/or wiping out humanity.
by Saline9515 | 2025-07-20 22:40:03+00:00
1. If most UP foods are hyper-palatable and this is the problem (not for instance, the fact that most have very high glycemic indexes, among other things), then it's fair to use UP as a proxy. It's fair to say that, when addressing obesity, it's better to avoid UP foods as they are too palatable for our archaic body.

Besides the study doesn't studies obesity (it is a control), but depression, which isn't linked to food being palatable or not.

2. Sugar is itself a highly processed food. HFCS contains more fructose, which saturates faster the intestine's absorption capacity.

Sugar is mostly derived from beetroot and sugar cane. Of course you can get diabetes from fruits or sugar beets alone, that said it's much harder than from eating UP foods.
by mistrial9 | 2025-07-20 22:40:08+00:00
ok so "funny" but historically, it has been worse. Like the legend of a warrior King in a region towards modern Hungary.. the school teachers would be ordered to stop work when the King and his military advisors rode on the main road for inspection. All the teachers were required to stop and clean the litter by the road as the King passed by. Perhaps the implication is -- if you do not have my military protection, then your school would be burned by invaders? actually not wrong in some places, but can you blame that scene on "capitalism" ? Want to guess the expenses of the armor and servants for the King and their party? probably more coins than were spent on teachers, who were paid in farm produce and exchange services?
by madaxe_again | 2025-07-20 22:40:12+00:00
The delta of 1.3C is critical there - peltier cooling drops precipitously in efficiency as the delta increases, and struggles to hit a COP of even 1 in real world scenarios. Their figure works out at about 6.5% Carnot efficiency, whereas a normal heat pump is usually nearer 45% over a much broader range of temperatures, as you can separate the hot and cold sides completely. Not so with a peltier wafer.

What they’ve done here is add a point of failure, use additional materials as well as a traditional heat pump, and called it “AI” and “eco friendly”.

Never have I seen more prime VC bait.
by viraptor | 2025-07-20 22:40:15+00:00
You're missing the point. All instructions can be simplified to short integer operations, then all integer operations are just networks of gates, then all gates can be replaced with AND/OR/NOT, or even just NAND. That's why you can SAT solve program equivalence. See SMT2 programs using BV theory for example.

Also of course all instructions are MOV anyway. https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator
by rcxdude | 2025-07-20 22:40:15+00:00
TDP went up. TECs are extremely inefficient, and have limits on how much heat they can pump in a given area anyway. a 10W chip, you can maybe get away with, and it might be a meaningful improvement compared to the other cooling tech available at the time, if you don't mind the power usage. with a 100W chip, you have no chance.

(You can see a demo here where LTT try it, and they, after dumping 500W into the cooler, can get the CPU to a vaguely reasonable temperature, until they actually load it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWrqyQWfhrs)
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-07-20 22:40:28+00:00
> you should never have a website at all because you never know what laws you might be contravening

Or, again, ensure compliance in the jurisdictions where you have paying customers. And if another jurisdiction presents ambiguity, block it and carry on. I'm not worried about my work violating North Korean law because I have no intention of ever being subject to it.
by majormajor | 2025-07-20 22:41:08+00:00
Java wasn't particularly responsible for that. And non-GC languages didn't even become obsolete - they're so relevant that they're one of the buzziest new-language-development areas.

It didn't displace C-family languages on desktop OSes. There was a brief wave of Java-first desktop apps and people generally hated the UI toolkits and lack of first-party-feel and they went away.

And on the server, it was just one of many non-C things like Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. Java became a standard "our dynamic language is too slow, port it to something else" destination but honestly the interpreted languages did more for killing C/C++ from a perspective of "CPUs are fast enough, and we're not CPU bound usually, just write in whatever's easiest."

And now we have a whole wave of "rewrite something off of the JVM, or off of Go, or off of some other GC'd language in Rust" projects because "just let the CPU use the spare cycles to GC has never been fully realized.
by userbinator | 2025-07-20 22:41:30+00:00
Likely high speed compressors --- the oldest hermetic systems used an induction motor running at 1800 RPM, then later they went to 3600 RPM, and now they're running on a VFD that possibly goes much faster. By making it pump faster, they can use a smaller compressor and reduce costs, at the expense of longevity and noise.
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-20 22:41:58+00:00
I'm astonished though that people sell ero fan manga from popular series at Komiket, like Sailor Moon (you know... "I'm Usagi Tsukino, I'm 14 years old") [1]

[1] though there was the episode that didn't get released in the US where she used a magical item to transform herself into an adult so she could go in a bar and get a drink
by rambambram | 2025-07-20 22:42:11+00:00
I have to agree with you. Completely.

On one hand I think it's a shame and I do miss feeds on certain (big) websites, but on the other it makes me appreciate the small web or indie web or just open web more.

Feels like rehab after two decades of 'social media'. But the open web is the ultimate form of social media itself, if you'd ask me. I plea for a name change of RSS to Really Social Sites. I already started calling it like that in my own software.
by WorldWideWebb | 2025-07-20 22:42:24+00:00
Just making sure you’re aware of the size of California and New York. Yes - has a small chunk of very affluent residents, but also huge populations, loads of people living well below the poverty line, high percentage of undocumented workers (also likely living below the poverty line), and a huge mix of both urban and rural populations. Those rankings don’t strike me at all as odd.
by pseudo0 | 2025-07-20 22:42:44+00:00
Yeah just interpret 3000+ pages of policy documents and if you screw it up, OFCOM can fine you 18 million pounds and hold you criminally liable. Their "simple guide" is 70 pages long and has numerous links to additional policy documents that have more details on how to interpret the law. Any sane company is going to hire UK legal counsel to deal with this, which is easily going to cost five or six figures. And that doesn't include the cost of adding additional technical mitigations to justify a lower risk assessment, or the ongoing compliance cost for services that aren't low-risk. So the rational move for any company that has minimal UK revenue is to just IP ban the country, like Iran or North Korea.
by phire | 2025-07-20 22:42:57+00:00
The SST project was basically a government project. They even had both Boeing, Lockheed and North American submitting competing design proposals.

They were also originally targeting the transcontinental market, so it would have exclusively flown over land, so the sonic boom issue was way more devastating.

They actually ran tests, flying supersonic military aircraft over Oklahoma City for months to see how regular supersonic booms would affect the public.

The public outcry was a large part of the reason why congress cancelled the SST project in 1971, long before 1973. They then immediately introduced the supersonic overflight ban to hinder operation of Concorde.
by skissane | 2025-07-20 22:43:38+00:00
From what I understand, it is just giving people access to AI models with minimal censorship - so illegal content [0] is still disallowed, but otherwise you can do what you want. And I’m sure a lot of that will be sexual material, but that’s more about the nature of the market demand for uncensored AI than anything inherent to the offering in itself

[0] “law” here isn’t just laws made by governments, but also regulations made by e.g. Visa and Mastercard
by RandomBacon | 2025-07-20 22:44:14+00:00
Having lived in Honolulu for several years, I'm quite surprised that Hawaii is last on the list for "financial distress".

Although maybe they're just better at leaving within their means, which is very hard when salaries are low and things are very expensive. The way of life there is generally healthier, so perhaps people don't need to do as much "retail therapy" or other terrible financial ideas.

I wonder how that list correlates to a happiness ranking. I think Hawaii was at the top of the list last time I heard a year or two ago.
by bodyfour | 2025-07-20 22:44:19+00:00
Indeed, that was the way it originally worked in all UNIXes: https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc...

It was a then-important optimization to do the most common operations with macros since calling a function for every getc()/putc() would have slowed I/O down too much.

That's why there is also fgetc()/fputc() -- they're the same as getc()/putc() but they're always defined as functions so calling them generated less code at the callsite at the expense of always requiring a function call. A classic speed-vs-space tradeoff.

But, yeah, it was a mistake that it originally used a "char" to store the file descriptor. Back then it was typical to limit processes to 20 open files ( https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/Researc... ) so a "char" I'm sure felt like plenty.
by stavros | 2025-07-20 22:45:26+00:00
Oh, it's Numan. If your friend has a different experience with us than what I describe, please email me and I'll look into it (email in profile or just username at Numan.com).

As far as I know, though, you can move to us from another pharmacy even with a BMI of < 25, as maintenance has different criteria than new prescription.

I'm not a clinician, though, so I may be wrong. If you want to email me, I can ask the clinicians and tell you for sure.
by nickpsecurity | 2025-07-20 22:46:22+00:00
I don't know if I read that one. I remembet r reading "Intuition at Work" and "Emotional Intelligence."

One pointed out military drills are built on the theory I shared. Martial arts and sports use "muscle memory" the same way. The workplace book applied the concept to design a series of realistic scenarios for specific duties that trained the intuition of employees.

I think there's overwhelming, anecdotal evidence of the examples I just gave. Maybe empirical in science but I haven't looked at that for military, sports, etc. I still build on it regularly, like programming practice.

I'm curious if you saw scientific counter-evidence to that or a different set of claims in the book you referenced. Just because the studies might only disagree with a subset of the claims. We might also find the mechanisms are different than what the other, two books said.
by rambambram | 2025-07-20 22:47:00+00:00
Nice, thanks!

I think OPML is underrated and the combination of RSS (Really Social Sites) and OPML (Other People's Meaningful Links) could give the open web a resurrection as the social media of choice for curious people.

Right now, I'm working on integrating more and more OPML functionality into my RSS software. I envision a quick way of exploring and discovering new links/feeds from sites/feeds that I already follow.