MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by JKCalhoun | 2025-07-14 17:27:34+00:00
I remember seeing an overly simplified lightning detector presented in a book: just an antenna, Neon bulb and a ground wire. I thought it was too simple to work.

Here it is discussed though by someone who tried it (and improved it):

https://www.angelfire.com/oh3/ebjoew/Charged_Cloud_Alert.htm...

(Ha ha, angelfire)
by ctoth | 2025-07-14 17:27:36+00:00
> It can be both, but there's usually no place for differentiation

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 153,927,861 times, shame on me.

The place for differentiation, the place for "oh this is probably fine", the benefit of the doubt is, of course, lost.

Because someone (you? people shaped like you?) who misuse telemetry destroyed trust.

> It can be both

should instead be "it usually is both and you the user have no way to know anyway."
by gs17 | 2025-07-14 17:27:59+00:00
> Checking Comcast's site now, it seems that they now offer "unlimited" data. Interesting, that option wasn't there 6 months ago.

It's been there since they announced the data cap. I thought the unlimited bundled with leasing their higher end hardware came first, but the email from 2016 announcing that our plan was getting the cap mentions being able to pay for unlimited.
by lapcat | 2025-07-14 17:28:10+00:00
> If you select truly at random from the population you're going to pull a lot of people with not a lot in the way of resources, making for a very easy to bribe block, even if you have to repeat the bribes every few years as people shuffle through.

This is incorrect: elected politicians are much easier to bribe, because bribery of them is totally legal via campaign contributions. It's both expected and indeed necessary for politicians to ask for and take large amounts of money from others for their job.

Policing corruption of randomly selected citizens would be much easier, because the expectation is that none of them would be asking for money or accepting money for their jobs. With strict auditing, anything out of the ordinary would be pretty easy to spot. The problem with the current system is that vast transfers of money to legislators are perfectly ordinary.

Also, with random selection, the odds are higher of finding one or more inherently honest and ethical people who will blow the whistle if there's some kind of mass bribery scheme. But our current pay-to-play election system is a mass bribery scheme. Ask any politician how much time they spend fundraising: it's just a crazy % of their time. You may think politicians are lazy because they take so many breaks from legislating, but they're actually taking breaks to go out and fundraise.

Anyway, I think it's a misconception that poorer people are easier to bribe than richer people. It's also a misconception that richer people are "more successful". In my experience, richer people tend to be more obsessed with money. Many average people just want to be happy, have a family, have friends, enjoy life. They are satisfied with what they have. The only purpose of their job is to make it possible for them to go home from their job. Whereas people at the top never seem to be satisfied with what they have and always want more, more, more.
by jermberj | 2025-07-14 17:28:19+00:00
It certainly sounds like you've tried a lot. One approach could be to (and I'm not being facetious) cultivate a mindfulness-in-boredom practice. Seriously. I'm not saying you will initially get onto the treadmill thinking "Boy, I can't wait to be bored." However, over time you might start to crave that time in your head. Alternatively (if that sounds absolutely unappealing), you might try another type of exercise. Running definitely isn't the be all, end all. I wish you luck!
by cesarb | 2025-07-14 17:28:23+00:00
> You have to consider the context the analogy is being applied to.

But that particular reply did not constrain itself to the context. It implied that a forklift lifting 150kg is not interesting at all. Which offends those of us who do appreciate watching heavy machinery do its work. That explains the unavoidable kneejerk replies of "actually, it is [interesting]".
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-07-14 17:28:58+00:00
> I'm one of their customers. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat

This sounds like mine. I'm guessing yours doesn't support IPv6 because most fiber providers don't.

For the router, I already build firewalls so that. I pay $10/mo to escape their cgnat.

I've also alerted them to expect regular haranguing from me about deploying IPv6. Especially since bgp.he.net shows they have a /40 allocated to themselves; it doesn't seem to be used.
by Kim_Bruning | 2025-07-14 17:29:07+00:00
I think different people use these tools differently. I've got mine set up to start in "rubber duck" mode, where I do rubber duck programming, before asking the AI to help me with certain tasks (if at all). Low impact utility scripts? The AI gets let off the leash. Critical core logic? I might do most of the work myself (though having a rubber duck can still be good!)
by alganet | 2025-07-14 17:29:30+00:00
This idea that some developers have some "mental model" and others not is an extraordinary claim, and I don't see extraordinary evidence.

It sounds like a good thing, right? "Wow, mental model. I want that, I want to be good and have big brain", which encourages you to believe the bullshit.

The truth is, this paper is irrelevant and a waste of time. It only serves the purpose of creating discussion around the subject. It's not science, it's a cupholder for marketing.
by tempodox | 2025-07-14 17:29:53+00:00
The tragic thing is that you can't do `fgetwc()` on a `FILE *` produced by `fopencookie()` on Linux. glibc will crash your program deliberately as soon as there is a non-ASCII char in that stream (because, reasons?). But it does work with `funopen()` on a BSD, like macOS. I'm using that to read wide characters from UTF-8 streams.
by heckintime | 2025-07-14 17:29:59+00:00
I've been a fan of Django templates and HTMX. I like how I can get interactivity without too much complexity. I do have specific parts of my website that rely on more complex tools, such as Codemirror. Even then, templates work well enough for me, so I haven't found a compelling enough reason to adopt more JS for my website.
by rolandog | 2025-07-14 17:30:02+00:00
I'm all in for some continuous improvement experiments for democracy:

- modest proposal: yes, have X random people in government, but have a Y-month paid training period before they serve for Z years; ALSO ensure their families want for nothing (read, a decent non-luxurious lifestyle), but prohibit receiving money from lobbyists, PACs, gifts, etc... AND, ensure they get reintegrated into society in a nonpolitical field (with some exceptions) by also offering Y-month long paid training in different fields.

The corruption costs reduction would significantly outweigh any increase in payroll and training.
by kavout | 2025-07-14 17:30:06+00:00
We just launched a new suite of real-time AI research agents that automate stock, crypto, ETF, and forex analysis for investors and traders.

What’s different:

Automated buy/sell/hold ratings, technical signals, and news sentiment—no manual research needed

Multi-agent system: each AI agent specializes (fundamental, technical, news, trade spotting, orchestration) and works together

Everything updates with live market data—so you always have up-to-date insights

Key agents:

InvestGPT: Conversational Q&A, routes to other agents

Fundamental Analyst: Scans financials, peer comps, key ratios

Technical Analyst: Pattern detection, trend/momentum signals

News & Sentiment: Real-time market headlines, social buzz, sentiment scores

Buy/Sell Oracle: Aggregates all signals for actionable recommendations

Trade Spotter: Finds unusual activity and high-reward setups

Built for anyone wanting institutional-style, real-time analysis without the grind. Web app is live; API access coming.

Try it at kavout.com.
by vector_spaces | 2025-07-14 17:30:07+00:00
Why not be angry at all of them?

As someone who works with sensitive healthcare data, I can tell you that the mere existence of a dataset doesn't guarantee its misuse, nor it does it absolve anyone who interacts with that data of responsibility for proper stewardship.

Yes, you are right that we should think carefully before creating a sensitive dataset. If we insist on creating such a dataset, the people involved must put in place guardrails for stewardship of those datasets. But the stewards of that data, past, present, and future, also share responsibility.

Of course if the incentive structures don't line up with concern for mitigation of harm to vulnerable people as is the case with law enforcement in the US, then all of that is out the window.

Anyway, what you have written implies that we need not think about accountability for those who misuse of datasets after they are created, which is clearly absurd as I and anyone else familiar with healthcare data can tell you.
by kevincox | 2025-07-14 17:30:08+00:00
I think they are. Maybe not directly as you point out but there are lots of indirect reasons that don't seem that far fetched.

1. Using Apple Maps makes the switching cost to other devices (that don't have Apple Maps) higher.

2. Having more users makes any future monetization more valuable. I understand that there doesn't yet appear to be any direct monetization but I very much expect to see it at some point.

3. Removing traffic from competitors hurts them making their product relatively better the the competitors.
by fellowniusmonk | 2025-07-14 17:30:31+00:00
Emacs has it right though, more right than wrong, they just, as a community, hate humans.

Data and data collections should have app-tributes, apps shouldn't have data.

The problem with most operating systems is that they need to model space time and minds as first class but they don't.

I've been using my own personal OS for years now that I call imtropy, once your abstraction maps to reality everything becomes easier to reason about.

The simple fact is most people and programmers are stuck in logic and rationality when they should think a layer deeper, coherence is all that matters.
by o11c | 2025-07-14 17:31:28+00:00
Have you considered making your lexer operate in push mode instead?

This does mean you have to worry about partial tokens ... but if you limit yourself to feeding full lines that mostly goes away.

Besides, for reasonable-size workloads, "read the whole file ahead of time" is usually a win. The only time it's tempting not to do so is for REPLs.
by ceejayoz | 2025-07-14 17:31:44+00:00
The Nazis actually openly considered deportation before settling on the Final Solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

The Holocaust involved quite a bit of large-scale deportation to concentration camps.

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/how-and-why/how/deport...

> In the autumn of 1941, approximately 338,000 Jews remained in Greater Germany. Until this point, Hitler had been reluctant to deport Jews in the German Reich until the war was over because of a fear of resistance and retaliation from the German population. But, in the autumn of 1941, key Nazi figures contributed to mounting pressure on Hitler to deport the German Jews. This pressure culminated in Hitler ordering the deportation of all Jews still in the Greater German Reich and Protectorate between 15-17 September 1941.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-07-14 17:31:56+00:00
If you take the DEI component out for a moment, the problem is these people believe they’re special, not lucky. Anything that challenges that belief system, or attempts to change the landscape in a way that would disempower them, will be seen as tyranny. You’re challenging their identity head on. Who would Thiel, Musk, or Andreesen be without their wealth? Run of the mill citizens you might not give a second thought of. Very similar to fundamentalist religious belief systems.

“I am special, look at me. I will remain special. I won’t allow you to stop me from being special.” broadly speaking.

(this is not to say skill and effort are not needed to become very wealthy and powerful, but most of it is luck, based on the evidence)
by baikondev | 2025-07-14 17:31:57+00:00
I built Baikon, a logic-first DSL for creating AI agents using clean, readable flows.

Instead of wiring together Python classes or YAML configs, you just write:

flow assistant: when user says "hello" -> call greet_user

function greet_user: say "Hi {user_name}, I’m your assistant."

1. Human-readable syntax 2. Built-in variable and state support 3. Async-capable CLI engine 4. GPT/Claude prompt-friendly 5. Lightweight and open-source

GitHub: https://github.com/baikondev/baikon Website: https://baikon.dev Discord: https://discord.gg/xN4nXt5Z X: https://twitter.com/BaikonDev producthunt.com/@baikon_dev

Would love feedback, contributions, or ideas from other AI builders.
by alnwlsn | 2025-07-14 17:31:58+00:00
On the '65 beetle we have, I always heard that the main culprit wasn't the fuel lines themselves, but the brass flange for the fuel hose being a (not great) press-fit into the zinc carburetor. And that's after the fuel pump, so if that flange comes out the loose end of the hose sprays gasoline all over the engine. It's not uncommon to tie that end of the hose on with some safety wire, just in case.
by int_19h | 2025-07-14 17:32:11+00:00
The fundamental problem with any purportedly meritocratic arrangement is that you need someone to define the evaluation criteria for what "merit" is, and then someone else to administer the examination. Both are vulnerabilities in the system that lead to formation of a "merit caste" (which sets and enforces standards that favor its members) in the long run, as evidenced by historical examples of states that tried explicit meritocracy.
by rsynnott | 2025-07-14 17:32:21+00:00
I mean, Rogan is, at the very least, ah, weirdly gullible about Russian propaganda talking points.

And then there was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Tenet_Media_investigation

Like, Russia is at least interested in, and spending significant money on, such influence operations. Who knows. But honestly, would it be _that_ shocking, under the circumstances?
by secabeen | 2025-07-14 17:32:29+00:00
The simplicity of EVs is one of their big strengths! Compare all the cooling, transmission, lubrication and fuel systems of an ICE car to the simple Electric Motor of an EV. Vastly simpler. As an end user, I see it to, my EV has no scheduled maintenance, whereas the ICE wants me to take it to the dealer every 20k miles.
by NathanKP | 2025-07-14 17:32:30+00:00
Realistically, none of the models can function fully autonomously at this point. You still need a skilled human at the helm. However, AI tools definitely change how the human works. I find that I spend a lot less time thinking about easy things, and a lot more time thinking about hard things.

Basically, the AI fast forwards through the easy stuff and I just spend all day jumping directly from hard problem to hard problem.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-07-14 17:32:53+00:00
> Conflating "police reform" and "defund the police" is disingenuous

In New York they were one and the same. The latter simply representing the most extreme expression of the former.

I remember dropping into a leftist conference in Philadelphia years ago where several folks who would become the face of post-Covid police reform were there, including Boudin. At the end of the day they all conceded that their goal was abolishing this, that and the other thing.
by driverdan | 2025-07-14 17:32:55+00:00
It doesn't make sense to power any vehicle with onboard solar. There are no electric RVs yet because the batteries required to have any amount of range are cost prohibitive and heavy.

I put 1800W on my RV and that's covering the roof end to end. I'd guess it'd be enough for something like 1-2 miles a day on an electric drive train, assuming you don't use power for anything else.
by jasim | 2025-07-14 17:33:12+00:00
I think this post is a response to some new file format initiatives, based on the criticism that the Parquet file format is showing its age.

One of the arguments is that there is no standardized way to extend Parquet with new kinds of metadata (like statistical summaries, HyperLogLog etc.)

This post was written by the DataFusion folks, who have shown a clever way to do this without breaking backward compatibility with existing readers.

They have inserted arbitrary data between footer and data pages, which other readers will ignore. But query engines like DataFusion can exploit it. They embed a new index to the .parquet file, and use that to improve query performance.

In this specific instance, they add an index with all the distinct values of a column. Then they extend the DataFusion query engine to exploit that so that queries like `WHERE nation = 'Singapore'` can use that index to figure out whether the value exists in that .parquet file without having to scan the data pages (which is already optimized because there is a min-max filter to avoid scanning the entire dataset).

Also in general this is a really good deep dive into columnar data storage.
by jruohonen | 2025-07-14 17:33:44+00:00
Each to their own in this debate, but I find the arguments about "too many papers" dubious, given that many problems many people work on have no prior building blocks. To this end, Hannah's comment seems good:

> "Hannah Hope, the open research lead at the Wellcome Trust, said in general, research that was good enough to fund should be published [...]"

Though, she has some weird attachment to funding, which too is often a similar lottery. That said, her subsequent take is more to the point:

"'I’m sure peer review does lead to improvement in research. Is it always worth the time that goes into it? I think it's something that we should be questioning as a field, and whether peer review happens in the current format on everything,' she said."

In other words, maybe it would indeed be better if people would decide themselves what to read, value, and cite. On average, I would also argue that a sample from arXiv is of better quality than a sample from a commercial, "peer reviewed" repository, supposedly because the former largely lacks incentives for fraud, gamification, and the like. The same goes for the prestige game. Repositories like arXiv also facilitate the perspective of communication, which has also been raised here frequently.

Ref.:

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/04/09/peer-review-h...
by hinterlands | 2025-07-14 17:33:53+00:00
Because what's the headline you're going to get out of it?

If the headline is "Mark Zuckerberg is amassing your data and you know it's for evil", it's an easy sell. If it's "there's an ecosystem of little-known companies that sell transaction, location and lifestyle data to marketers, journalists, PIs, and police departments alike", it's not exactly the kind of a message that spurs people to action. And yeah, the newspaper that would be breaking the news is a customer too.
by cogman10 | 2025-07-14 17:34:02+00:00
My favorite LLM moment. I wrote some code, asked the LLM "Find any bugs or problems with this code" and of course what it did was hyperfocus on an out of date comment (that I didn't write). Since the problem no longer existed identified in the comment, the LLM just spat out like 100 lines of garbage to refactor the code.
by ujkhsjkdhf234 | 2025-07-14 17:34:11+00:00
Despite being near universally hated externally, data brokering is a boring industry and is seen as very mundane and routine. They don't attract the type of engineers that have a strong moral stance and will go rogue and blow the whistle. They attract the middle age suburbanite just trying to get through the day and make a living.
by bunderbunder | 2025-07-14 17:34:13+00:00
Thanks for the response, you make some very points. Sorry, I had missed your response on the original post. I don't know if it was there yet, or because for some reason their blog is configured to only show the first two comments by default. :/ Either way, my bad.

I think my bias as someone who spends too much time looking at social science papers is that the protocol allows for spillover effects that, to me, imply that the results must be interpreted much more cautiously than a lot of people are doing. (And then on top of that I'm trying to be hyper-cautious and skeptical when I see a paper whose conclusions align with my biases on this topic.)

Granted, that sort of thing is my complaint about basically every study on developer productivity when using LLMs that I've seen so far. So I appreciate how difficult this is to study in practice.
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-07-14 17:34:25+00:00
>I was responding to a specific aspect regarding population and labor

Like which example are you referring to? Be specific. Because you haven't provided any reproducible arguments or specific facts to support your opinion, and I gave you a real life example that disproves your hypothetical one.

>I am not an expert on Europe

You don't need to be one to argue on this, if you have other arguments that can be substantiated with proof or facts to disprove mine.

>I would like to say, though, that starting with a conclusion and working backwards from it is a really terrible way to proceed with a hypothesis.

I'm not starting from the conclusion, I just picked the best real life example at my disposal that contradicts your point and chose to narrate it from that end, but it doesn't change the start condition or the outcome, it's still the same no mater from which way you look at it.
by wellpast | 2025-07-14 17:35:09+00:00
The fact that the devs thought the AI saved them time is no surprise to me… at least at this point in my career.

Developers (people?) in general for some reason just simply cannot see time. It’s why so many people don’t believe in estimation.

What I don’t understand is why. Is this like a general human brain limitation (like not being able to visualize four dimensions, or how some folks don’t have an internal monologue)?

Or is this more psychodynamic or emotional?

It’s been super clear and interesting to me how developers I work with want to believe AI (code generation) is saving them time when it’s clearly obviously not.

Is it just the hope that one day it will? Is it fetishization of AI?

Why in an industry that so requires clarity of thinking and expression (computer processors don’t like ambiguity), can we be so bad at talking about, thinking about… time?

Don’t get me started on the static type enthusiasts who think their strong type system (another seeming fetish) is saving them time.
by drak0n1c | 2025-07-14 17:35:12+00:00
While I wouldn't put it that way, I definitely agree that local device technical obstacles are the best conduit for learning as a youth. As a kid and young teen during the 1995-2005 era there were a lot of hoops to figure out and jump through as a gamer with Mac and then Windows ME. There were no video guides or wikis - just print manuals and text forums. Needing to upgrade the family computer RAM from 128 mb to 512 mb to get WoW above 2-3 FPS was a formative experience.

One could say the same of server/cloud obstacles, but because those systems are afar and opaque, it's easy to be content copy-pasting scripts. And there is less sense of progression and ownership since it doesn't involve building up your own environment.
by WorldPeas | 2025-07-14 17:35:20+00:00
It is sad that gm essentially sold their entire "skateboard" platform they abandoned to SAIC, who now functionally own Cadillac/Buick. For all those who claim this was some kind of deception, it wasn't. Years of myopia, from the Motorola corvette to the EV-1 to the abandoned skateboard to the squandered volt and neglected bolt, GM is like Polaroid. They stopped being a "car" company and became an "engine" company, like how Polaroid stopped being a "camera" company and was a "chemical" company. This could shape up to be like JVC and its former parent, RCA, would the US gov bail them out again?

https://www.jalopnik.com/chevy-and-motorola-teamed-up-on-a-c...

https://carnewschina.com/2022/03/06/the-big-read-saic-6-6-th...

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3308575...