MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by leke | 2025-07-17 04:10:08+00:00
It was quite strange to read this title this morning as my 15 year old daughter just received her iPhone 13 mini yesterday from Swappie. She too was complaining that the android phones are too big for her little hands.

I tried all my reasoning skills to persuade her to stick with android, but ultimately she nagged me into getting a second hand one that is still way too expensive in my opinion.

Well it looks like she is right and this is popular opinion. Perhaps small Android phones not selling well is a marketing problem. I've never seen one advertised with size being a selling point.
by MrJohz | 2025-07-17 04:12:58+00:00
It's a case of Pareto. Parsing the git file format is relatively simple, but handling all the weird states a Git repo can be in and doing the correct things to those files in each state is a lot harder. And then adding the network protocol on top of that makes directly reproducing Git quite difficult.

I know JJ used to use Git2 for a lot of network operations like pushing and pulling, but ran into too many issues with SSH handling that they've since switched to directly invoking the Git binary for those operations.
by Dwedit | 2025-07-17 04:13:00+00:00
I just tested out what happens when you cut off half of a JXL file for two different cases, one in Modular mode, one in VARDCT mode. (The files used were very small, 16KB for the whole file, 8KB for the half file, 10KB for the 5/8 file)

For the Modular file, it failed to partially decode it. This was supposed to be a major feature of FLIF, and it's not working here at all.

For the VARDCT file, it made the top 2/3 clear (looking like a low quality but full resolution image), while the bottom 1/3 was extremely blurry (as if it only had the DC values for the blocks). When I gave it 5/8 of the file, the whole image looked full resolution with no bad blurring, but was still low quality. But roughly the same quality level than what the image would have been if it had been saved at that size.

So it does work for VARDCT files (and you must use the -p switch when saving it), you just need to give it enough bytes. No clue what's going on with the Modular file though.
by mdaniel | 2025-07-17 04:13:03+00:00
"Just work" is certainly subjective, but the introspection in all the JetBrains products are what make them ferocious. If one has never heard of all the 18 quadrillion lint tools before, you can immediately get value from opening a file in PyCharm and having it point out the ways it is going to fail on you, including one of my favorite tricks that no VSCode+lint horseshit has ever thought about trying:

import re import sys if re.match(r"[A-Za-z}", sys.stdin): print("ok")

PyCharm will spot that error immediately, no insaneo configuration required

PyCharm Professional also gets into the SQL side of things:

with connect(":memory:") as conn: c = conn.cursor() c.execute("SELECT * FROM oops WHERE NAME IN ('alpha, 'beta')")

instantly spotted, no configuration required

I was going to be cute and use json.loads as an example, but it seems somewhere along the way they botched the fact that the first argument to json.loads is a fucking JSON string. But, it does allow showcasing that you can have PyCharm syntax check the "inner" language of any string literal you'd like via their language injection annotations:

import json # language=json bogus = """{"this is subtly wrong"; true}""" json.loads(bogus) # and the same with tomllib: import tomllib # language=toml bogus = """ [alpha] beta = []onoz """ tomllib.loads(bogus) # or, if you have some tricky internal stuff def do_the_thing( # language=sql s: str ): with connect(something) as conn: c = conn.cursor() c.execute(s) do_the_thing("SELECT * FROM oops WHERE NAME IN ('alpha, 'beta')") # ^^^ also gets syntax checked because it knows the first arg is SQL
by ghushn3 | 2025-07-17 04:13:49+00:00
I tend to agree, as an autistic person. And a lot of autistic people hold the belief that, "My autism is not a problem, your expectations that I behave like you do are the problem."

If I need to move a little differently, or not hold eye contact when I speak, the fact that I get made fun of is the problem. If we just accepted, "hey, some people are like that" more, I think we'd have a lot fewer problems.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-07-17 04:14:00+00:00
There is a housing shortage of between 3.5M and 12M units; there will be no bust for at least the next decade, as housing production rate dropped substantially after the 2008 global financial crisis and did not recover.

(typically, union workers go on unemployment during slow periods; this includes electrical linemen/journeymen, automotive, pipe fitters, etc based on first hand conversations with union tradespeople in my examples)

Housing Supply and Housing Affordability - https://www.nber.org/papers/w33694 - April 2025

The Housing Industry Never Recovered From the Great Recession - https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-housi... - December 11, 2024

APM Marketplace: In an uncertain housing market, home builders face a range of challenges - https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/11/26/in-an-uncertain... - November 26, 2024

U.S. Housing Shortage: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once - https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives... - October 31st, 2022

Fannie Mae: The U.S. Housing Shortage from a Local Perspective - https://www.fanniemae.com/media/45106/display - October 2022
by somenameforme | 2025-07-17 04:16:03+00:00
> the English Empire may have collapsed but that's mostly because Britain just got bored of it. There's no traditional collapse for the breakup of the British Empire

I completely agree with the point you're making, but this part is simply incorrect. The British Empire essentially bankrupted itself during WW2, and much of its empire was made up of money losing territories. This led them to start 'liberating' these territories en masse which essentially signaled the end of the British Empire.
by overfeed | 2025-07-17 04:18:13+00:00
I remember Steve Jobs berating phablets as "the Hummer of phones" and dissing 7-inch Android tablets as too small, and disparagingly saying users would need to "file down their fingers" to use them - without considering how much smaller Apple users' fingers would need to be to use 3.5-inch iPhones.

I also remember the viral, doctored image showing the reachability of phone screens which "proved" that 3.5 inches was the "ideal" phone size.
by donohoe | 2025-07-17 04:18:39+00:00
I try to stay away from negative takes here, so I’ll keep this as constructive as I can:

It’s surprising to see the author frame what seems like a basic consequence of their actions as some kind of profound realization. I get that personal growth stories can be valuable, but this one reads more like a confession of obliviousness than a reflection with insight.

And then they posted it here for attention.
by thelastgallon | 2025-07-17 04:20:48+00:00
First, real estate in US designed to be the sink for excess money globally gained by nefarious means, sell and make the money clean.

Second, all the prep work before actual construction costs the same regardless of the size of the home. Its profitable for builders to build large homes (cheaper per square foot) and sell them at a premium.

Third, zoning laws that make anything thats not a SFH mostly illegal to build.

Fourth, manufactured homes are illegal in most areas.

Finally, The building codes are localized to each county, there is no federal/state building code.

As long as these perverse incentives exist, costs are not going to come down.
by ghushn3 | 2025-07-17 04:22:04+00:00
They might share a lot or might share nothing. Autism is an umbrella diagnosis over a wide range of behaviors and support needs. Diagnostically, it currently has a 1-3 scale across two broad support areas, with one being low support needs and 3 being high support needs. (From the DSM.)

That said, the reasons for autism are not well understood, and there may be many different root causes that lead to the umbrella diagnosis.

Additionally, experiences vary widely -- some autistic folks do not ever feel hungry and must be reminded to eat (or build support systems for it). Others do not ever feel full and must be reminded to not eat (or build support systems for it). Interoception (the perception of your body's internal signals) is impaired for many autistic folks.

Some of us experience misophonia, and get extreme fight or flight responses to audio signals -- personally, I get extremely agitated if I hear someone eating with their mouth open. (To be clear, it's not annoyance. It's fear/anger/hate/danger sense.)
by wltr | 2025-07-17 04:23:18+00:00
Arch Linux is an eternal OS, it can migrate through different hardware and there are people who never reinstall it (you don’t need to) for, say, a decade. Mine is half a decade at least, and went through three laptops. The last one was (Intel) MacBook Pro dying on me (the keys), and I just rsynced my system onto another MacBook (booted with Arch install) via ssh. Took me an hour or two in the background. I left my home and returned to a working laptop that needed a few tiny changes in configs here and there.
by QAkICoU7IDNkpFu | 2025-07-17 04:24:02+00:00
I was using Xperia XZ1 compact (4.6") and then moved to Vivo X70 pro+ (6.9") and it's so much easier for the eyes and typing. Yes, it's not the most convenient thing to carry around but I'd rather have less eye strain and typos.

Also I think China makes 3-4" android phones but they're mostly a joke spec wise
by tzs | 2025-07-17 04:24:04+00:00
All but the opening is behind a paywall, but the author is an Associate Professor in Book and Publishing Studies, University of Reading, and has an article on the university’s research blog that looks like it may cover some of the same material:

https://research.reading.ac.uk/research-blog/2022/10/28/the-...

There is more on the club here, including a list of all their book choices:

https://research.reading.ac.uk/thebooksociety/
by eviks | 2025-07-17 04:24:33+00:00
> The issue isn’t simply whether or not ITA worked – the problem is that no one really knows. For all its scale and ambition, the experiment was never followed by a national longitudinal study.

Indeed, another tale of pure waste. How many of the opposite experiments are there? Is there at least 1 perfectly set up non-trivial experiment that added definitive knowledge in this sphere?
by devmor | 2025-07-17 04:25:49+00:00
Well said.

I am not autistic personally but working in tech and being into field-associated hobbies, I have a much more autism-dense social circle than the average person. This was awkward for me at first because it felt like I was either constantly irritated or being irritating to others by following my standard learned social conventions.

Once I changed my expectations to clarify and verify intent instead of derive and assume intent from others, this immediately stopped. Applying the same changes in social interaction with people who are not on the spectrum has actually felt like it leads to less misunderstandings and hurt feelings as well. I’m left wondering if the parts of human interaction that created these standards that autistic people find so frustrating might not even exist anymore and the rest of us have been upholding conventions that ultimately make life harder for us, just because we were taught to do so.
by abruzzi | 2025-07-17 04:26:03+00:00
i have a 13 mini. Its beat up, battery life is getting worse (even though I rarely use it) and both cameras are smashed (in my pocket during a motorcycle accident), but I look at all the options now and figure I'll just keep using this one. I'd rather be using an iPhone 4, but I need some stuff that that one didn't have to work with a glucose monitor.
by kentonv | 2025-07-17 04:27:24+00:00
> To me, it only makes sense if the put method creates a cache only in the datacenter where the Worker was invoked. Put and delete need to be related, in my opinion.

That is, in fact, how it works. cache.put() only writes to the local datacenter's cache. If delete() were global, it would be inconsistent with put().

> Now I'm curious: what's the point of clearing the cache contents in the datacenter where the Worker was invoked? I can't think of any use for this method.

Say you read the cache entry but you find, based on its content, that it is no longer valid. You would then want to delete it, to save the cost of reading it again later.
by spauldo | 2025-07-17 04:27:25+00:00
Just FYI, my copy's 1500 miles away from me at the moment, so I can't give you page numbers and can only rely on my recollection of the book.

Your scenario would indeed be a "backup" for the species, but only in the very, very long term. It only works if we have a self-sustaining off-planet presence large enough to survive a complete separation from Earth. Most of the book goes into detail about what we still need to develop even to have a permanent presence in space (as in, you don't rotate people out every few months), much less a self-sustaining one.

We haven't done large-scale agriculture in space. We haven't developed methods of processing extra-terrestrial resources. We haven't seen what different gravity conditions does to children or pregnant women. We don't have solutions for the conditions people develop in zero-g, and we don't know if 1/3g or 1/6g causes those same conditions. We can't completely recycle our waste into food, water, and air without a steady supply of consumables from Earth. We don't know how to effectively deal with lunar regolith and we haven't done the engineering to keep the poisons in Martian soil out of the habitat. We haven't even developed the habitat!

The book speaks to me because I work for an engineering company and I know how much time and money it takes for even simple projects when there are lives on the line. The book doesn't say we can't colonize space, only that we have a lot of work ahead of us before we can successfully pull it off.
by bauruine | 2025-07-17 04:27:44+00:00
The root servers aren't the problem. They are heavily anycasted and i'm sure there are many in .nz. If that was the issue you could simply serve the root zone yourself, at least some of them allow axfr. [0] This info is also easy cacheable, they have big TTLs and you only have to do it once for each tld. The authoritative name server of the domain you want to access on the other hand are often just in the US or Europe and are the main issue.

Edit: How to serve the root zone locally with unbound. https://old.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/s43o8j/where_does_u...

[0] dig axfr . @k.root-servers.net
by northhnbesthn | 2025-07-17 04:28:59+00:00
A non-insignificant portion of HNers found jobs during one of the last 3-4 economic downturns. They seem to happen frequently.

In truth it’s always a crisis mode. Build your networks and demonstrate value and competence such that when people leave your company they’ll regret not having you on their team. This is the right way to stay employed once you land your first gig.
by jsemrau | 2025-07-17 04:29:28+00:00
It's not unprecedented, but I question if it is the right move while the industry is experiencing unprecedented growth.

"The Global Data Center Chip Market size is expected to be worth around USD 57.9 Billion by 2033, from USD 14.3 Billion in 2023, growing at a CAGR of 15.0% during the forecast period from 2024 to 2033."

https://market.us/report/data-center-chip-market/
by pi_22by7 | 2025-07-17 04:29:31+00:00
So it did the same work that a sitemap does? Interesting.

Or maybe more like the opposite: robots.txt told bots what not to touch, while sitemaps point them to what should be indexed. I didn’t realize its original purpose was to manage duplicate content penalties though. That adds a lot of historical context to how we think about SEO controls today.
by kensey | 2025-07-17 04:29:54+00:00
What people currently refer to as "generative AI" is statistical output generation. It cannot do anything but statistically generate output. You can, should you so choose, feed its output to a system with actual operational capabilities -- and people are of course starting to do this with LLMs, in the form of MCPs (and other things before the MCP concept came along), but that's not new. Automation systems (including automation systems with feedback and machine-learning capabilities) have been put in control of various things for decades. (Sometimes people even referred to them in anthropomorphic terms, despite them being relatively simple.) Designing those systems and their interconnects to not do dangerous things is basic safety engineering. It's not a special discipline that is new or unique to working with LLMs, and all the messianic mysticism around "AI safety" is just obscuring (at this point, one presumes intentionally) that basic fact. Just as with those earlier automation and control systems, if you actually hook up a statistical text generator to an operational mechanism, you should put safeguards on the mechanism to stop it from doing (or design it to inherently lack the ability to do) costly or risky things, much as you might have a throttle limiter on a machine where overspeed commanded by computer control would be damaging -- but not because the control system has "misaligned values".

Nobody talks about a malfunctioning thermostat that makes a room too cold being "misaligned with human values" or a miscalibrated thermometer exhibiting "deception", even though both of those can carry very real risks to, or mislead, humans depending on what they control or relying on them being accurate. (Just ask the 737 MAX engineers about software taking improper actions based on faulty inputs -- the MAX's MCAS was not malicious, it was poorly-engineered.)

As to the last point, the burden of proof is not to prove a nonliving thing does not have mind or will -- it's the other way around. People without a programming background back in the day also regularly described ELIZA as "insightful" or "friendly" or other such anthropomorphic attributes, but nobody with even rudimentary knowledge of how it worked said "well, prove ELIZA isn't exhibiting free will".

Christopher Strachey's commentary on the ability of the computers of his day to do things like write simple "love letters" seems almost tailor-made for the current LLM hype:

"...with no explanation of the way in which they work, these programs can very easily give the impression that computers can 'think.' They are, of course, the most spectacular examples and ones which are easily understood by laymen. As a consequence they get much more publicity -- and generally very inaccurate publicity at that -- than perhaps they deserve."
by AdieuToLogic | 2025-07-17 04:31:00+00:00
> A well-trained LLM that lacks any malevolent data, may well be better than a human psychopath who happens to have therapy credentials.

Interesting that in this scenario, the LLM is presented in its assumed general case condition and the human is presented in the pathological one. Furthermore, there already exists an example of an LLM intentionally made (retrained?) to exhibit pathological behavior:

"Grok praises Hitler, gives credit to Musk for removing 'woke filters'"[0]

> And it may also be better than nothing at all for someone who is unable to reach a human therapist for one reason or another.

Here is a counterargument to "anything is better than nothing" the article posits:

The New York Times, Futurism, and 404 Media reported cases of users developing delusions after ChatGPT validated conspiracy theories, including one man who was told he should increase his ketamine intake to "escape" a simulation.

> Where for years I heard many people making the same mistake you're making, of saying that silicon could never demonstrate the flair and creativity of human chess players; that turned out to be false.

Chess is a game with specific rules, complex enough to make optimal strategy exhaustive searches infeasible due to exponential cost, yet it exists in a provably correct mathematical domain.

Therapy shares nothing with this other than the time it might take a person to become an expert.

0 - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/grok-praises-hit...
by protocolture | 2025-07-17 04:32:16+00:00
>You don't see pants coming in one size with the advice "wear a belt".

Great example. Because people who are shorter than average tend to have to get pants taken up, and people who are vastly taller than average tend to go to specialty stores.

The average height of pants is largely dictated by what the market will permit, requiring people to make adjustments or leave the market. Having a 2d matrix of height and width defined pant sizes is too complex for the market to bother with.

Technology is worse, anything that requires tooling is done the least number of times possible. While small phone enjoyers are disadvantaged, they arent disadvantaged enough to force them out of the market. Larger tooling is easier to make and caters to all other preferences.
by sombragris | 2025-07-17 04:33:29+00:00
Very interesting tidbits on the history of Arial.

My line of work often makes me share editable word processor documents with clients. I love Helvetica, but I have a strong dislike of Arial. In fact if I could choose I would use something similar to Frutiger or Myriad as a sans-serif. But when I have to prepare such documents with a sans-serif font, I always use Arial, because it looks decent enough, and everyone is almost guaranteed to have it. Nothing shiny, but a good workhorse.
by burner420042 | 2025-07-17 04:33:46+00:00
It's hard for me to be specific about this but I've worked for 2 cloud FAANGs and whatever the management culture was like at Intel, whenever I work with ex-Intel management... their behavior and perspective just really rubbed me wrong. None went to work because they liked what they did. What was worse is you could feel it. They had a smell; not Tech, no imagination.
by southernplaces7 | 2025-07-17 04:34:34+00:00
>Nabeel Quereshi has an amazing post called Reflections on Palantir, where he ruminates on what made Palantir special.

I clicked that other story just to see what that author said about his time at that company. The fundamental urge is to slap some bloody sense into him, because the only thing amazing about the article is just how obtuse it is.

Under all the glowy, wide-eyed applause for many aspects of how Palantir operates, he's not really internalizing just what kind of parasitic, corporate/government surveillance monster he was working for.

To put it simply, he speaks as if he were a useful idiot, praising selectively, glossing around a very serious moral swamp with mealy-mouthed categorizations about what's cool and not cool, ideological whitewash and generally failing to see the fucking forest for the trees. Palantir and its kind represent a disgusting possibility for the future of how society is managed by increasingly autocratic government tendencies and their hustling corporate allies. And I can think of no more chilling a notion than just what that management could entail for hundreds of millions of people under the guise of supposedly fighting all kinds of ambiguous or outright invented "bad actors"

With OpenAI, you get a lot of corporate mendacity and the usual stew of trying to game the rules for the company's own favor. However, underneath this is a product that's largely used by ordinary people for doing fairly ordinary things, even if many of them contribute to the burial of culture in the cheapest auto-generated sludge imaginable.

With Palantir, the fruits of the labor are... squarely something else entirely.