MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nchmy | 2025-07-27 15:04:40+00:00
Humility and a desire to continually improve is, of course, essential in everything in life. But false humility - eg spending 52 years doing something and refusing to recognize some degree of skill - is just as bad as the lack of it. (I'm not saying the original commenter said this, but rather the people who responded in this vein)

And I say this while thoroughly enjoying a quote by one of the comedy greats, George Carlin, where he was quoted a legendary cellist, Pablo Casals, who kept practicing daily into his 90s, saying "I'm beginning to notice some improvement".

Recognizing your skill while also recognizing (perhaps even immense) potential for improvement are not mutually exclusive.
by rpdillon | 2025-07-27 15:04:49+00:00
I think there is a decent likelihood that the publications and publishers in general will use AI to decrease the reliance on artists and writers. The most obvious outcome here is that we're going to be consuming AI content no matter what. It's just a question of who's going to be getting paid for it.

This is not my idea. It's a concept that Rick Beato pointed out in his videos analyzing music production today and the direction it's going between the artists and the record labels. Everybody wants to be doing less work, and so the argument is really over who gets to control the technology and get paid.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-07-27 15:05:09+00:00
I remember when it was announced that smallpox was eradicated (Yeah, I'm old enough to have a smallpox vaccination scar).

I remember someone moaning about how we had driven a species to extinction.

We're a funny lot, really. I've learned not to take us too seriously; especially the folks that take themselves very seriously.
by dangus | 2025-07-27 15:05:26+00:00
It’s also worth noting that nobody’s going to be shipping Intel binaries in a short 2-5 years so this problem will just go away on its own.

The user base won’t even be there anymore.

This is not just because people will be retiring old Intel systems, it’s also because Apple’s marketshare exploded when the M1 chip came out, so a very large portion of the userbase never owned an Intel Mac.
by theamk | 2025-07-27 15:05:37+00:00
It's not like there are good options out there. USSR showed what state-controlled socialism looks like, and the picture is not pretty. A most damning example is that it was impossible to leave USSR during the most of its existence, and people had to do crazy things like jump off cruise ship and swim many miles [0] just to get out of country.

If I have a choice between being jailed in the country and having VCs drive some companies into the ground, I'd choose the latter every time.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov
by ulf-77723 | 2025-07-27 15:06:01+00:00
Some time ago I read the book Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition by Anita Bean, which does also emphasize on not using antibacterial mouthwash since it removes the beneficial bacteria in the mouth which convert nitrate to nitrite.

I‘m drinking beetroot juice since 3 years now and asked myself if beetroot capsules might be an alternative.
by tootyskooty | 2025-07-27 15:06:09+00:00
No, you don't need to try to keep up with new tools. I would recommend you try the models though, even for a short time every few months. Send them questions or things you're working on, and see how they do. Provide sufficient context.

It's a good approximation to say that all tools are thin wrappers on top of the models, and having a good grasp of what the models can/can't do right now gets you 80% of the way there.
by Jtsummers | 2025-07-27 15:06:10+00:00
> The two I've spoken with since their resignation basically said, "we're definitely getting laid off unless something insane changes with the funding cuts so at least this way we get a severance."

I hope they did the math. The DRP is not a severance, and if they were laid off, they'd have been caught in a RIF and should have received an actual severance.

If there's a RIF, they get a severance of 1 week per year for the first 10 years of work, 2 weeks per year above that, and a bonus percent if over 40. It maxes at 52 weeks pay. If you have 18 years (at least 26 weeks of severance, more if over 40) with the fed, waiting for the RIF was always better than taking DRP unless you were going to retire or quit anyways. Under that, the choice should have been "Will a RIF happen before 30 September - my severance?". If you will get a 4 week severance, then will you get RIF'd before 2 September? If you think the answer is yes, taking the DRP makes sense, if no then the DRP costs you money. The only benefit to taking DRP if you're not going to get RIF'd is if you believe you can get another job before 30 September.

After 30 September, if they haven't found a new job they won't qualify for UEI since they voluntarily separated (true in most states, there may be some that would give them UEI but I've not heard of one that gives people unemployment for quitting).

Legally, they also have to ask NASA for approval for any second jobs until 30 September. If they don't and take an industry job (say with SpaceX), I wouldn't put it past this administration to fuck with them. The penalties are mostly administrative, but some ethics law violations can involve some steep penalties and prison time.
by ianopolous | 2025-07-27 15:06:15+00:00
You're absolutely right. We need a big push on marketing and PR (Peergos founder here). We are self, grant and customer funded and a not-for-profit so we necessarily need to grow more slowly than a VC backed company, but that lets us keep our incentives aligned with our users. Our aim is absolutely ease of use, there shouldn't be a usability tradeoff for privacy in our view. We do already have some very non-technical users who love it.
by ants_everywhere | 2025-07-27 15:07:12+00:00
> There is no shared protocol for identity, no agreed standard for portable, user-owned data, no common infrastructure for composable interaction.

I've heard this idea in several forms, and it's not what I think most people want.

I don't want to live in a world where everything is trackable to a stable identity. Since the stable identity is ultimately trackable to your socual security number, this is essentially a world in which all of your online activity is trackable to your SSN.

You can see why this is valuable to some people. And if you want to monetize everyone's data it's an important first step.

But it's firmly in the authoritarian camp where everyone is monitored and tracked. And that I think is still contrary to how most people want to live their life.
by perlgeek | 2025-07-27 15:08:03+00:00
Losing stock to wolves and bears was why we used to have shepherds, shepherd dogs, fences etc, at least in Europe.

Eradicating predators created a very convenient, intermittent period where this was less of a necessity, but it also had quite negative externalities.

So the question isn't "is the greater good more important than the people who live there?", but more "is the greater good more important than the convenience of some people who live there?"

This is a question we have to ask ourselves a lot; nobody wants to live near a landfill, a prison, a sewage treatment plant etc, and yet we want them for the greater good.
by supriyo-biswas | 2025-07-27 15:08:10+00:00
Not in this particular case; the point of Wikipedia is to surface objective and factual information (we could debate what "objective/factual" information are, but that's a different issue).

The issue with LLMs is that they try to insert a lot of judgement about the subject matter without quantification or comparison. A lot of this is already covered by Wikipedia's other rules, such as those about weasel words, verifiability etc. but it is useful to have rules that specifically detect AI content, and by proxy, also take out all the bad human writing along with it.

For example, when asked about person X who discovered a method to do Y, a LLM may try to write "As a testament to X's ingenuity, he also discovered method Y, which helps achieve Z in a rapid and effective manner"; it doesn't really matter whether it was written by a LLM as this writing style is unsuited for Wikipedia. Instead, one may have to quantify it by writing "He/she discovered method Y, a method to do Z, which was regarded as an improvement over historical methods such as P and Q", with references to X discovering Y, and research that cites that improvement.

LLMs could adopt that latter writing style and cite references, but the issue there is that a large market that wants to simply use it to decompress their documents to satisfy the intricacies of the social structure they are embedded in. As an example, someone may want to prove to their manager that they produced a well researched report, but since their manager may have to conduct said research in order to know whether it meets their bar and instead use the document length as a proxy. LLMs meet a lot of such use cases and it'd be difficult to take away this "feature".
by dinfinity | 2025-07-27 15:09:31+00:00
I'd like to add: Stretching or some other kind of flexibility improving activities. Muscles moving for half an hour a day doesn't (necessarily) do anything for that (may even make it worse if you're doing heavy stuff).

The effects on quality of life of a bit of flexibility are huge. Back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, "RSI", and so many other ails are often just pretty much permanently cramped muscles negatively affecting ligaments and nerves.
by Liftyee | 2025-07-27 15:09:57+00:00
Curious as I'm not too familiar - if what I've described is basic capitalism, then what is today's system like in the US?

Need to look into the differences so I can be precise when debating these things.

New metaphors: "What trim level of capitalism have we got?" "`class ImperfectCapitalism implements Capitalism`" "RNG capitalism modifiers"
by Lord-Jobo | 2025-07-27 15:10:20+00:00
> Sounds less like a hot take than a false dichotomy? The only choice is one of two non-specific analogies?

It's several assumptions deep to get to that kind of statement which is even more.... Interesting.

First, you have to assume that all federal agencies are the same, so if one needs to be smaller or more efficient, clearly they all need to be. Or if you have experience with one agency, others must be the same. And that your personal experience is representative. This is hilarious for a category so broad that it includes homeland security and NASA.

Secondly, you have to get very reductive about the direction of these agencies. Big agencies? "Well we HAVE to do SOMETHING!" When of course "just leave it alone, go after the actually expensive and wasteful things in our economy like health insurance or the military" is ignored.

Thirdly you need to assume that anyone involved with actually managing this process gives a single shit about the issue at hand. And they don't. Nobody who gave a shit about efficiency, the size/budget of federal agencies, or the power of the federal government would vote to +265% the budget of ICE. that's year over year, by the way. Nor would they approve the largest deficit increase ever moved through congress.

These people are jangling keys in front of your face and taking the money out of your wallet. And by discussing these cuts in good faith at all, we are reaching for the keys.
by thisislife2 | 2025-07-27 15:10:29+00:00
Pakistani military is famous for its claim that the people of our region don't have the "temperament" for democracy. Sometimes I am amazed how far we indians have managed to tenaciously hold on to our democratic values, when one considers all our internal differences and our immediate neighbours. Recent e.g. - Bangladesh: while the western media paints the recent revolution there as a "democratic" movement against an autocrat, like the Maidan revolution, if you look deeper you find there is nothing really democratic about it; the Awami League, a popular national party, has been banned as apparently "democracy" for such "democratic revolutionaries" means allowing right-wing parties to participate in the elections while holding elections without an opposition.
by jesuslop | 2025-07-27 15:10:41+00:00
This has the perfect qoutation for the well known fact of the Galileo->Lorentz group overthrow from an indisputable source:

"The theory of relativity introduced mathematical beauty to an unprecedented extent into the description of Nature. The restricted theory { 1905 } changed our ideas of space and time in a way that may be summarised by stating that the group of transformations to which the space-time continuum is subject must be changed from the Galilean group to the Lorentz group. The latter group is a much more beautiful thing than the former - in fact, the former would be called mathematically a degenerate special case of the latter { c->∞ }. The general theory of relativity { 1915 } involved another step of a rather similar character" { diffeomorphism group/category }. I came to think lately that much of the basic groups in physics, Lorentz and gauge, have all more or less rotatory features.
by i000 | 2025-07-27 15:10:41+00:00
Thank you for the response! My key recommendation is to unbundle. At one point we have been told "It got 35% more expensive, but it does so much more now it supports Python" - we didn't ask for Python. To effectively use Connect with private packages you need this other full-blown institutional Package Manager license, 99% of your users will not need. Also per-named-user pricing (rather than per active seat) is so aggressive. A user uses a shiny app once in a year, still need a full per year license.... I feel Posit is one of the most agressive companies in terms of upselling, while positioning as this benevolent PBC / Open-Source institution - just go full Oracle at least we will know where things stand.
by belter | 2025-07-27 15:10:41+00:00
I agree the evidence points to the Captain, but the report did not provide the full text of the pilots interaction. The timestamps shows they were cut, one after the other, but within the same second as max vspeed. Doubt humans can have that precision.

>> The switches are not software controlled.

That is what unethical people, like Captain Steeeve - Who changed his "accident clear cause" story four times since the accident - keep saying.

But on the 787, fuel switches are part of the electronic cockpit interface and toggling one sends a command via AIMS to the Engine Interface Unit, then over AFDX to the FADEC. The FADEC actuates the spar and engine fuel shutoff valves who are both electrically controlled with no mechanical linkage.

The switch itself doesn’t cut fuel, it initiates a command interpreted and executed by software. Additionally, software logic can override or block the command based on conditions like fire, overspeed, or sensor faults so its software-controlled end-to-end.

A faulty sensor could trigger even if so far evidence points to the Captain.

"Understanding the Boeing 787 Fuel Control Switch: Function, Operation, and Safety Mechanisms" - https://aeropeep.com/boeing-787-fuel-control-switch-explaine...

"How do the fuel cutoff switches on the Boeing 787 work?" - https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/110938/how-do-t...

"Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC)" - https://skybrary.aero/articles/full-authority-digital-engine...

"Full authority digital engine controls have no form of manual override available, placing full authority over the operating parameters of the engine in the hands of the computer.

- If a total FADEC failure occurs, the engine fails.

- Upon total FADEC failure, pilots have no manual controls for engine restart, throttle, or other functions."
by tonyarkles | 2025-07-27 15:10:43+00:00
> Unlike the Lycomings and Continentals the engine wasn’t designed in the 1950s.

Rotax 912? :D

I've spent a lot of time getting familiar with that engine over the last two years as part of a large UAS programme. Every time I have to do integration work with it (electrical or CAN) I end up having an even-deeper appreciation of how thoughtful the engineering behind it is.

Edit: also, since people below brought up 100LL... I also deeply appreciate that it runs fine on plain ol' premium mogas. Both because I'd rather not expose my self to tetraethyl lead all the time and because it's really convenient to be able to just load up a few jerry cans on my way out to the field while getting fuel for my truck.
Other Silicon Valley drama we have forgotten
by foundress | 2025-07-27 15:10:48+00:00
Silicon Valley loves a blockbuster deal, but some of its best stories come from the ones that slip away. Windsurf was hours from a three‑billion‑dollar sale to OpenAI when Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot clauses threatened to scoop up its tech. The talks froze, Google pounced with a two‑point‑four‑billion “reverse acquihire,” Cognition grabbed the rest, and a company doubling revenue every few months was split in just three days.

A decade earlier Tesla nearly vanished into Google. In 2013, with cash burning fast, Elon Musk asked Larry Page to buy the automaker for six billion dollars plus five in guarantees. Model S sales spiked at the last minute, Musk tore up the term sheet, and Tesla drove off on its own.

Microsoft’s forty‑four‑billion bid for Yahoo in 2008 ended the same way. Steve Ballmer sweetened his offer, Jerry Yang wanted more, and a side flirtation with Google sealed the breakup. Microsoft walked, Yahoo drifted, and Bing learned to fight solo.

In 2009 Steve Jobs called Dropbox a mere feature, offered a nine‑figure exit, and was politely shown the door. Dropbox stayed independent, iCloud arrived later, and “Dropbox me” became common slang.

Today regulators can kill a romance faster than ego. Adobe and Figma spent fifteen months courting before scrapping their twenty‑billion merger when Europe and the UK signaled a veto. The companies issued a brisk joint statement and returned to competing.
by yorwba | 2025-07-27 15:10:57+00:00
Peer review is a way to distribute the work of identifying which papers are potentially worth reading. If you're starting from an individual paper and then ask yourself whether it was peer reviewed or not, you're doing it wrong. If you really need to know, read it yourself and accept that you might just be wasting your time.

If you want to mostly read papers that have already been reviewed, start with people or organizations you trust to review papers in an area you're interested in and read what they recommend. That could be on a personal blog or through publishing a traditional journal, the difference doesn't matter much.
by DaveZale | 2025-07-27 15:11:10+00:00
Well it's good to see the Rest of World stepping up with air drops of food, and a pipeline for water.

It's just the US and that best friend and ally that are being unspeakably, persistently cruel. Hey the vast majority American people do NOT support this. This is a gift of casino mogul Adelson's widow who helped put someone in the WH for one reason only.
by lhl | 2025-07-27 15:12:10+00:00
Slimbook (Spanish OEM) basically sells the same ODM designs as Tuxedo and is an option. They have a few cobranded (KDE etc) versions that contribute to the development teams.

Otherwise at this point I believe the Framework laptops have pretty solid Linux support and is a good option if you're ok w/ so-so battery life.
by cyphar | 2025-07-27 15:12:28+00:00
Yes, 3.11 > 3.10 > 3.9 > 3.8 > ... > 3.2 > 3.1 > 3.0 > 2.999999 in basically every versioning system I've seen.

The algorithm is very simple -- you treat each component as a separate number and the newest version is the one which has the earliest left-most component with a numerically larger value. The rules are bit more complicated for suffixes (3.1-beta, 4.5~rc7, 14.2+devel) but stuff like SemVer has formal specs describing a similar algorithm for version comparisons (though SemVer has some subtle differences to the scheme used by most distro package mangers -- at least this is definitely the case for RPM).

I can see the argument for 3.05 == 3.5 > 3.1 (05 is a number that is equivalent to 5 and is larger than 1), and think that makes more sense than 3.05 < 3.1 (I guess that would mean 3.05 == 3.0.5 < 3.1? That's more than a bit fruity...) but I would personally prefer the packaging system reject such versions. Otherwise you need to make up rules for other nonsense like 3.-1 < 3.0 (??!). Of course, I suspect RPM would accept them all.

FWIW, I work at a Linux distribution company (SUSE) and have had to deal with these corners cases a lot.
by Yoric | 2025-07-27 15:12:43+00:00
Please do not give us other FP users a bad name :)

Python is high level insofar as it's very far from the metal, and insofar as you can define quite sophisticated abstractions. Would I use Python to write a compiler or sophisticated graph algorithms? Probably not if I had any choice in the matter. But it has proven to be a great language for experimenters in numerical analysis, data science, machine learning, etc. who don't care (and don't want to care) about how the machine works.
by microtonal | 2025-07-27 15:13:51+00:00
Yep. I think pretty much every youngster gets some basic education (besides getting years of physics in high-school): disarm the group/fuse, double check with a power tester, make sure you are not causing any shorts. I don't know anyone who calls an electrician for replacing a light fitting, a power outlet, or light switches.

Besides that some European countries have required for decades that new houses/apartment have central residual-current circuit breakers for the whole house (unlike the US where as far as I understand they are only required in certain areas and are often in the socket and not centralized).
by perihelions | 2025-07-27 15:14:13+00:00
SLS doesn't serve any actual NASA needs. It's fake make-work. Case in point: Congress expressly ordered NASA to launch Europa Clipper on SLS, to make it appear that SLS was indispensable to core NASA science missions. But, due to design flaws, SLS turned out to be technically incapable of launching Clipper at all. So they backtracked and allowed free-market competition to compete for the Clipper launch. Which it did: a very, very cheap Falcon Heavy launched it instead.

Which it was capable of doing all along—Congress and NASA lied about this, misled the public, to make it appear that their jobs-creating, pork-barrel project was serving some genuine need NASA had. It wasn't! They had alternatives all along—they were pretending they didn't.

When you read about these things, you have to know all the actors you're getting information from, and what motives they have to mislead you.

There's not a single real mission in NASA's budget, or conceivable future budget, that needs an SLS—full stop. Sole exception being the moon project, which was created with the express purpose of finding a problem SLS would be the only answer for (and even that's now in doubt, what with Starship).
by kmoser | 2025-07-27 15:14:25+00:00
It seems you're conflating "easy to write complex software" with "easy to learn how to program." Just because you're using a language/environment that offers more powerful, high-level features doesn't mean you're learning more. If anything, being forced to learn the low-level stuff probably gives you a deeper understanding of programming, even if your output is lower in the beginning.
by bananapub | 2025-07-27 15:14:27+00:00
I am endlessly fascinated by how almost the entire American elite has just accepted the federal government being couped and at least four years of just self-dealing, corruption, theft and all of policy being driven by whatever idiotic childish whims one senile old man has, completely unrestrained by congress or courts or advisors.

are they just this pathetic? or do they largely see this as personally beneficial?