MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by asadotzler | 2025-07-24 20:46:07+00:00
I too am in the wilderness and Starlink is my only broadband, but I was smart enough to keep my 1.5Mbps WISP connection (radio mounted 170' up one of my redwoods) so I'm still in good shape for basic communication, even some streaming and videoconferencing, though those aren't great this morning.

Also, after my Starlink terminal rebooted a few times on its own over the last hour or so, things are looking good again.
by darkteflon | 2025-07-24 20:46:10+00:00
Lots of informative comments in the thread about how carrying with a chambered round reduces the time and complexity to getting a shot off.

I have limited knowledge of guns. I understood that they had a physical safety switch that had to be manipulated before the firearm could be used. Is that the case? If so, is the safety left off when people are carrying with a round chambered? Or have I misunderstood the purpose of the safety?
by jellyotsiro | 2025-07-24 20:46:11+00:00
that means a lot thanks! and your feedback would be golden, lmk how it goes.

I suggest to watch this quickstart: https://youtu.be/5019k3Bi8Wo?si=3mMcp1Zd5C3Z0Rso

Yes, I am building solo + claude code haha
by giantg2 | 2025-07-24 20:46:13+00:00
Interesting... I would have thought that maybe the military variant with the manual safety would be immune to this issue. It seems the manual safety is only a trigger block and not an additional or positive stiker block. It seems this offers no additional safety beyond keeping the trigger guard clear. So much for the military's insistence on a manual safety. Was there really any data showing the units using Glocks had issues related to a lack of manual safety? Sig added one, but clearly it was an afterthought.
by kelnos | 2025-07-24 20:46:19+00:00
> You left out the key word in that sentence, which should have appeared after “vastly”. I assume you mean easier, but in fact that’s not true for a lot of people.

Not sure I agree with that. I think it's probably true that adopting even a minimal exercise regimen is easier than adjusting diet, for most people.

But actually turning that new exercise regimen into a calorie deficit is significantly harder. Not only do you have to exercise probably quite a bit per week to get you into a deficit, you have to actively work to not eat more. If you start an exercise regimen, I guarantee you're going to be hungrier, and unless you're very strict with yourself, you can easily eat enough extra to wipe out most or all of the new calorie "savings".
by harmmonica | 2025-07-24 20:46:29+00:00
I'm not sure downvotes are the right way for folks to disagree with you though I'm thinking some folks think you're trolling. But I'll assume you aren't trolling and since I asked you to reply to my question I thought I would just clarify: I wasn't suggesting that you stick people in harm's way in order to decrease crime (that would very much be the tail wagging the dog). What I was saying is that when increased numbers of people are on the street research has shown that crime decreases as a result. It's not that someone's holding a gun to the head of the new people who show up on the street. It's that those new people choose, of their own volition, to be on the street because something (investment, the government, other residents) made the street more desirable to be on and a byproduct of that increase of people is a decrease in crime (because there are literally more eyeballs watching the street (not watching for crime or to deter crime, but because criminals aren't as likely to commit crime when there are more witnesses)).
by ffsm8 | 2025-07-24 20:46:30+00:00
It's not even centered on the US. I personally think the Internet just desensitized us all.

Reasons for that are easy to come up, imo chief among them being web2.0 (social media) and the ever increasing degree with which people exaggerate everything just to get a reaction.

Under that context, what's a little skirt chasing compared to what people usually say about the politicians? And how are you gonna remember he did something a few months ago, when so many more extreme things have happened since?

Really, I feel like social media will be considered the most destructive force to society in 20-50 yrs
by constantcrying | 2025-07-24 20:47:18+00:00
>but I am here to say that its a lot more complicated than "get rid of the drugs, and people won't be homeless".

The only reason it is not as easy as that is, because it is very, very hard to get rid of the drugs. But if that was accomplished and mentally ill people were properly institutionalized, then homelessness would become a non-issue.

>If it were that easy, then Reagan's War On Drugs would've actually, you know, worked.

Nonsense. The war on drugs failed to get rid of the drugs.
by wrp | 2025-07-24 20:47:28+00:00
People reason that if a skill is important, people need to become good at it, and becoming good requires starting early in life. This reasoning isn't valid for computer use, and I have an anecdote to illustrate why.

When the internet was yet fairly new, I was assigned to teach basic computer use to a class of Saudi Arabian soldiers. Many of these guys were fresh out of the desert, some even still adjusting to the idea of wearing shoes. They had no idea what to do when placed in front of a computer. Imagine if your dog got up on its hind legs, rested its paws on the keyboard, and poked its nose at the screen. To cut the story short, I led them through this and that and by the end of a month, they certainly couldn't touch-type, but they were designing their own web pages. They were so enthusiastic that they were sneaking into the lab after hours (evidently to search online for pics of naked ladies).

My point is that computer interfaces are designed to be simple and intuitive, so you don't need an early start to practice like you do with a highly complex task like playing a musical instrument. There is really no developmental benefit to early screen use.
by jfengel | 2025-07-24 20:47:44+00:00
The list of people who were close friends with him, but said nothing, is extremely long. That is indeed fucked up, but it's not a crime.

Actually participating in child rape is a crime.

If we get a full list, we will have to have a good hard look at a lot of people we otherwise respected. But actual crimes will take precedence.
by lxgr | 2025-07-24 20:48:12+00:00
They still have tons of ground-based infrastructure that has all the regular failure modes. I suspect the satellites also route IP traffic statically, and they only do so to a fixed set of ground gateways all operated by Starlink (compared to e.g. Iridium, which makes in-space switching decisions and can at least continue ongoing phone calls between two devices without actually needing a reachable ground gateway).

National telcos manage to take themselves out countrywide from time to time too, so I'd assume the same usual suspects apply: Routing problems, botched global configuration changes etc.

If anything, due to centralization, ubiquitous and effectively free connectivity, and centralization/automation of configuration changes, the blast radius of any given error or malicious action has probably been steadily increasing over the years.
by martinvonz | 2025-07-24 20:48:25+00:00
I don't know why you think jj makes you produce many little commits. Are you thinking about the automatic snapshotting of the working copy? That amends (replaces) your previous commit, so you won't end up with a long chain of commits.

It's probably easiest to understand by just trying it. It can be used with regular Git repos.
by wavemode | 2025-07-24 20:50:00+00:00
> It ultimately resulted in a loop counter overflowing, which recomputed the same thing a billion of time (but always the same!). So the visible effect was a request would randomly take 3 min instead of 100ms.

This means that multiple goroutines were writing to the same local variable. I've never worked on a Go team where code that is structured in such a way would be considered normal or pass code review without good justification.
by Kirby64 | 2025-07-24 20:50:45+00:00
> Incidentally, the terms "bulking" and "cutting" come from bodybuilders taking steroids.

Since when? Are you sure you don't mean 'blast' and 'cruise', which specifically has connotations of steroid usage?

> When you're not cycling anabolic steroids against metabolic stimulants like Clenbuterol, it really doesn't apply.

Why wouldn't it apply?
by aerostable_slug | 2025-07-24 20:50:57+00:00
The manual safety primarily stops the weapon from firing if the trigger is inadvertently pressed. In these cases, the trigger was allegedly not being pressed when the pistol discharged.

Aside from the manual safety (which is optional on this specific model of pistol), there are a number of passive safeties that normally must be overcome for the weapon to fire. Something appears to be failing in such a manner that the pistols are firing without being commanded to -- the trigger is not being inadvertently pressed, so the manual safety does not seem to be involved.
by lovich | 2025-07-24 20:52:10+00:00
Has it been worth it in a while? This is a legitimate question as I am on the east coast and wonder if it differs from the west coast environment.

At least in my anecdotal experience, everytime I’ve entertained a startups offer in the past decade it’s been either something like engineer #1, 3% equity and no you cannot see the cap table or other agreements with investors, or something like 10k units at 25 a share when we’re on series z, and you lose them if you leave, and you can’t sell for 6 months if you leave, and the investors have priority on payment if we sell for less than our valuation and yadda yadda yadda.

I mentally just valued the equity as 0 in the compensation with all those limitations on liquidating them and never understood why anyone joined a startup
by sshine | 2025-07-24 20:53:00+00:00
> enormous barrier to the adoption of new programming languages, because no new code will be written in them, therefore LLMs will never learn to write the code

Let’s see.

I’ve vibe-coded some apps with TypeScript and react, not knowing react at all, because I thought it’s the most exemplified framework online.

But I came to a point where my app was too buggy and diverged, and being unable to debug it, I refactored it to Vue, since I personally know it better.

My point is that just because there’s more training data, the quietly is not necessarily excellent; I ended up with a mixture of conflicting idioms seasoned react developers would have frowned upon.

Picking a less exemplified language and supplementing with more of your knowledge of the language might yield better results. E.g. while the AI can’t write better Rust on its own, I don’t mind contributing with Rust code myself more often.
by giantg2 | 2025-07-24 20:53:35+00:00
Most newer handguns don't have manual safeties. The ones that do should be carried with it on. If you carry with it off, you won't have the muscle memory to switch it off in the event it is accidentally engaged. Basically, if it has the safety, you should be doing the motion for disengaging it regardless of it's starting position. Some people still choose to carry with it off. You get into all sorts of odd stuff the more you look into it, such as MARSOC rubber-banding their 1911 grip safeties.

Some additional context here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675889
by kristianp | 2025-07-24 20:53:54+00:00
One problem I have with major version upgrades of Linux distributions is the number of changes to different programs/systems. Every 18 months I have to learn how to do a number of things differently. Program x disappears, you are told you have to use y now. Linux has been around for decades at this point. Something that old should be considered mature and not need major changes.

Do we really need a new major version of gtk/qt or a different firewall program, when all those things have existed for many years?
by xoa | 2025-07-24 20:54:02+00:00
Yes, very good you're capable of a simplistic wikipedia search. Now I'd like you to try thinking about the paragraph you just linked for a moment: is "Hawaii", the "300 streetlights", "numerous burglar alarms", and a "microwave link" in the atmosphere (and on the ground, or indeed literally the ground) or in Earth orbit? If you read further, you'll find that the mechanism of generation involves the interaction of the gamma ray emissions with the atmosphere and Earth's magnetic field, that at 500km+ the effect are is reduced, and then find that in your example of Starfish Prime the primary damage to the satellites it affected was not due to EMP at all but rather because the test created radiation belts that damaged solar panels as satellites passed through. This would reduce design lifetime but isn't an immediate killer of everything. You'd need far more then a couple of nukes.

Of course, purposefully detonating nuclear weapons to create large scale NEMP effects might well still disrupt Starlink to the degree that it'd effect any piece of ground electronics, because the ground effects would be far, far worse. The satellite constellation could be ok enough to still be functional at reduced capacity, but if terminals and ground stations get toasted that's not immediately helpful. But that directly leads, again, to the fact that you're talking about LAUNCHING A NUCLEAR WAR ON THE ENTIRE WORLD here. No internet is going to be doing very well!

So yes: Starlink is pretty darn robust.
by gspencley | 2025-07-24 20:54:05+00:00
That's an interesting thought experiment. Counter-anecdote: My grandmother has been using computers in some capacity or another since the 1980s. And she is still, by most definitions, completely and utterly "computer illiterate."

Her biggest blocker is that she's terrified of making a mistake and breaking something. She would never dare explore a settings menu and tweak things just to find out what is or is not possible. So she calls her relatives to help her with the most basic of task ... and this has been going on for 40-50 years of her life.

I wonder if she had been introduced to computers younger in life if that fear of breaking things could have been overcome and replaced by a curiosity and enthusiasm to explore the digital space.

I'm also open the possibility that this fear is a personality trait and impacts her in other areas of life as well. We are just trading anecdotes after all ;)
by genocidicbunny | 2025-07-24 20:54:32+00:00
> FWIW, I hear there could be issues with (too much) iron especially for men.

Too much iron can cause serious systemic issues, especially for the liver, and yes, men tend to have worse symptoms for the simple reason that one of the treatments for high iron is bloodletting. Unlike women, men don't have a natural built in mechanism to do so regularly.
by godelski | 2025-07-24 20:54:47+00:00
I think other than the title being a bit misleading, the paper is good. I say misleading because they replace Layer Normalization with a tanh function, which still bounds the range to [-1,1]. Plenty of people would call that normalization (an unfortunately overloaded term).

While the result isn't too surprising it has a good ablation study and helps build confidence in the mechanism. It's simple and quick to implement, but I don't find that a disadvantage. Arguably this is not novel, but sometimes it is worth revisiting things when the rest of the environment has changed and I think the study being thorough makes it useful to the community.

The project page is here[0] which will give you a very quick understanding of the paper.

[0] https://jiachenzhu.github.io/DyT/
by arghwhat | 2025-07-24 20:55:26+00:00
The part of Reddit I go to is roughly equal parts memes, serious discussions and derailed threads.

Here I feel like I just lost the first part, so 50/50 between serious discussions and derailed threads.

Either is moderated to be without anything eye-gouging (again, comparing HN to specific subreddits that would carry similar content, and not reddit as a whole).

Sure, some individuals might prefer things this way, but it's definitely not objectively better as the general attitude towards reddit and against any humor seems to suggest.
by vborovikov | 2025-07-24 20:55:38+00:00
Source generators hide too many details from the user.

I prefer to have the generated code to be the part of the code repo. That's why I use code templates instead of source generators. But a properly constructed ID type has a non-trivial amount of code: https://github.com/vborovikov/pwsh/blob/main/Templates/ItemT...
by FollowingTheDao | 2025-07-24 20:55:44+00:00
I was browsing Reddit and X and a lot of people saying that their base stations couldn’t even find a satellite. I find that pretty odd and can’t make sense out of it if it was simply a network problem.

You would expect to be able to at least connect to a satellite unless the satellite has no Internet connection so it does not make itself available to be connected to you.

Anyone have any deeper knowledge about this for the curious?
Google admits system failure but claims "technical impossibility" to fix it
by CBlakeley | 2025-07-24 20:55:51+00:00
Google's system cancelled my active 12-month Gemini Advanced trial without warning when I redeemed a separate YouTube Premium promotion. The interesting part is the response: System failure confirmed by Google staff:

Grace: System "should have warned" about consequences Justine: "Warning system didn't work as it should have in your case" Multiple reps acknowledged this was system failure, not policy compliance

Customer service remediation response: Van: "We don't have a way to provide temporary access to Gemini Advanced or Pro features" This creates an absurd situation where Google can acknowledge their system failed a customer, but claims technical impossibility to remediate their own acknowledged failure. They routinely issue promotional codes and trial access, so the technical capability clearly exists. It seems like a fundamental breakdown in customer service methodology - staff can admit fault but have no protocol for remediation when systems fail customers. Has anyone else encountered this pattern where companies acknowledge system failures but claim inability to fix them?
by StrangeDoctor | 2025-07-24 20:56:07+00:00
Almost all “normal” damage is and should be repaired online with zfs. Those offline repairs meant the hardware controller had no idea how to interact with filesystem directly, probably for the best. Level of abstraction purists don’t like this aspect of zfs.

If something particularly bad happened, or you tried being really “clever”, you can get into a rare situation of not being able to import the pool or have it import in read only mode. There are tools to help repair that kind of metadata damage. Then proceed with the normal online repair if needed.
by tgv | 2025-07-24 20:56:30+00:00
It doesn't matter how you organize thoughts, it's about how other people read your text, and AI has fucked up our perceptions.

First your praise the talk. That sounds AI like. LLMs are trained in the annoying American way of starting with something positive, even if it's irrelevant, or isn't meant. You're probably somewhat conditioned to do the same. But in this forum, those comments are not encouraged. The upvote button should be enough to express that.

The rest reads like a summary, also an LLM feature, but nobody asked for a summary, and you're not announcing that you want to give one. It sets the reader up for some conclusion or evaluation, which never comes.

There's no personal thought, except for the praise, anecdote, criticism, or supplementary information. If all you wanted was to recommend the talk to people, I think an effective way to do would be something like

> I liked the talk. So much that I didn't know about the history of OOP, or how ECS (Entity Component System) could have been a competitor. Recommended, but it's a bit long though.

Not that that will get you a lot of upvotes (which shouldn't be a goal anyway), but it expresses someone's reflection on the link, which others can understand as support for their decision to check the link, or not.

AI has fucked up our perception. That's not your fault, of course, but you can try to skirt around it. But not everybody has to write every opinion everywhere. It's fine if your communication doesn't always fall on fertile ground. You don't have to apologize or blame the spectrum. Some people have better ways with words than others.
by IAmGraydon | 2025-07-24 20:56:32+00:00
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the US has higher greenhouse gas emissions per capita than both countries you mentioned. Also, in terms of just total greenhouse gasses, the US also emits more than India and is only outpaced by China.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...
by kazinator | 2025-07-24 20:56:38+00:00
If they were forking that JVM in order to offer it as a development tool to a broad developer base, then such an optimization might be worth keeping.

Someone out there might have an application in which they are serializing large numbers of large integers.

The case for abandoning it is not as strong, since you don't know who is doing what.

It's a guessing game in programming language run-times and compilers: "will anyone need this improvement?" You have room to invent "yes" vibes. :)
by smcleod | 2025-07-24 20:57:24+00:00
My thinking is that across software development as an industry we have significant subscription fatigue. Obviously for hosted services there are ongoing costs involved - and regardless businesses should be paying people for their work, however individuals working on their own hobby projects and learning that often can't afford or prioritise the spend are the very people you want being advocates for your products within the commercial space. I think the middle ground for a lot of this subscription fatigue is to offer self hosted versions at no cost for non-commercial, personal use.
by ninetyninenine | 2025-07-24 20:57:37+00:00
>Which is pretty much my problem with it: this sort of thing can be fun, feels intellectually stimulating. But the added power doesn't make coding easier or make the code more sound.

In practice nobody goes too crazy with it. You have a problem with a feature almost nobody uses. It's there and Range<N> is like the upper bound of complexity I've seen in production but that is literally extremely rare as well.

There is no "temptation" of coding complex logic in it at all as the language doesn't promote these features at all. It's just available if needed. It's not well known but typescript types can be easily used to be 1 to 1 with any hindley milner variant. It's the reputational baggage of JS and frontend that keeps this fact from being well known.

In short: Typescript is more powerful then hindley milner, a subset of it has one to one parity with it, the parts that are more powerful then hindley milner aren't popular and used that widely nor does the flow of the language itself promote there usage. The feature is just there if you need it.

If you want a language where you do this stuff in practice take a look at Idris. That language has these features built into the language AND it's an ML style language like haskell.
by l72 | 2025-07-24 20:57:50+00:00
Terrible window management is a huge reason I will not use Mac OS or Windows. I immediately lose so much productivity. I am coming up on my 30th year of using Linux, and I can't imagine moving to an OS with such limited window capabilities. No sloppy mouse focus? No always on top? No sticky windows? No marking windows as utility windows to skip alt-tab?

I watch my colleagues on Mac OS and Windows during peer programming, and am flabbergasted as they fumble around trying to find the right window.

I am interacting with my computers interface for 10+ hours every single day. I do not stare at a single application, but am constantly jumping between windows and tasks. The one size fits all approach is the same as the lowest common denominator approach, and it hinders people who need to do real work.