MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Apreche | 2025-07-21 14:27:00+00:00
Cars are depreciating assets. They can only be maintained and upgraded to a certain extent before they must be replaced.

A public park, a street, a school, these also depreciate, but most of them can not be thrown out and replaced like a car. They require constant maintenance. They also have nearly unlimited capacity for upgrades. The school gym can get new equipment. The street can be repaved. The park can get new landscaping. Wherever you live, the public amenities can always be improved. There is always demand from the residents to make those improvements.

Nobody ever tells their town to uglify the neighborhood. They always ask to beautify it. That means they are always asking to increase demand, and therefore to increase housing prices.
by eviks | 2025-07-21 14:27:03+00:00
> It’s as loud as it is predictable, and the insight you get from first reactions on Social Media is as meaningful as any carnival music.

Poor readability was one of the main insights from the feedback you've so casually dismissed. And it was backed up by screenshots/recordings, which this post have none of besides the usual useless waste of an art filler.

> Readability is a concern.

Oh, wait, so it was actually pretty meaningful insight!
by johnisgood | 2025-07-21 14:27:17+00:00
I have seen it in many different places. At some I had to figure out what they really meant.

My bank is inconsistent, by the way. It uses "1234.00" where the last "00" is the cents. It was "1.234" in the same SMS. In another message (same bank) it uses "12,34". Weird. Although in the last case it might be because it is EUR, not HUF, but they are still very inconsistent.
by maccard | 2025-07-21 14:27:55+00:00
> I'm supposed to, and then there'll be a massive hour+ long check-in queue (which I have to wait in just to show my passport, even if I'm not checking bags, since online check in never seems to work when I need to enter passport info

I’ve flown predominantly with Ryanair 4/5 times a year for over a decade and I have not once had to do this. Anecdotally I e always found their bag drop queues way quicker than other airlines too, even when it’s busy.
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-21 14:28:14+00:00
You're right that "systems competent in language" (either humans or LLMs) are able to accept and understand slightly wrong sequences but generate correct sequences almost all of the time. (Who hasn't made a typo when talking to a chatbot and had the chatbot ignore the type and respond correctly?)

Treating G(t) as a binary function works for linguists who need a paradigm to do "normal science" but Chomsky's theory has not been so useful for building linguistically competent machines so there have to be serious things wrong with that theory.

Still, the vast majority of sequences t are gibberish that is nowhere near being valid. If those gibberish sequences are representable in the embedding space and took up a volume anywhere near the numeric prevalance they have I can only imagine that in a (say) N=3000 embedding space there is something like a manifold that is N=2999 or N=2998 or N=1500 or something inside the flat embedding space -- that structure would be the non-flat embedding you're looking for or be an approximation to it.

It might be that it is not really a manifold or has different dimensionalities in different places or even fractional dimensionalites. For instance you'd hope that would geometrically represent semantics of various sorts as suggested by the graphs here

https://nlp.stanford.edu/projects/glove/ [1]

So I've thought a lot about sympletic spaces in higher dimensions where area has to be conserved over various transformations (the propagator) and maybe this has led me to think about it the totally wrong way -- maybe the flat embedding space doesn't devote a large volume to gibberish because it was never trained to model gibberish strings, which has to have interesting implications if that is true.

Something else I think of is John Wheeler's idea of superspace in quantum gravity where, even though space-time looks like a smooth manifold to us, the correct representation in the quantum theory might be discrete: maybe for points a, b there are the possibilities that: (1) a,b are the same point, (2) a is the future or b, (3) b is the future of a, or (4) a and b are not causally connected. So you have this thing which exists on one level as something basically symbolic but looks like a manifold if you live in it and you're much bigger than the Planck length.

[1] ... which I don't really believe, of course you can project out 20 points out of a 50 dimensional embedding into an N=2 space and have the points land wherever you want!
by rbanffy | 2025-07-21 14:28:31+00:00
We don't have a sense for detecting 3 Tesla magnets because they don't happen in nature. People can see a tarantula, and, depending on the snake, hear it as well.

But you need to seriously piss off the tarantula for it to engage in a fight with an opponent our size. Most of them are sweet and just want to get on with their tiny lives. They are well aware we are not food. Poisonous snakes, on the other hand, tend to be much less chill. Much like wasps, they seem to enjoy causing pain and suffering.
by freeone3000 | 2025-07-21 14:28:37+00:00
> Only for it to be collected at the gate and put in the hold anyway, meaning we had to wait for it after all. At least they forgot to charge me for the inconvenience, which given the rest of my experience could almost have been considered a mistake from their side.

Having to gate-check can happen with more reputable carriers too, from American Airlines to British Airways. Even if every single bag individually fits, on a full flight, not every bag for everyone can fit at the same time. It happens more often with smaller (and older) planes, which have less cabin space per passenger.
by hansvm | 2025-07-21 14:28:46+00:00
That's mostly true, but we're still finding new and interesting ways MRIs can kill people. E.g., non-magnetic metals are often safe, bit there was that guy who had his brain cooked as a spinal implant was the wrong length and focused the RF energy into his head. The additional protocol we developed is that objects can be certified safe for specific MRIs but not for all of them (and that being certified safe for a bigger machine doesn't say anything about safety in the presence of smaller machines).

Yes, they're pretty safe nowadays, but there's a lot of energy that gets dumped into a human body during an MRI, and I'd bet my last nickel that we haven't found every way that can cause problems.
by crabbone | 2025-07-21 14:29:07+00:00
In Python, there's no requirement that package versions follow the major.minor.patch scheme... Couple years ago the world discovered that one of the packages critical to virtually every Python project on Earth (crypto-something? I forgot what exactly that was) had this same idea about versions: use floating point numbers.

It was a mini-2000 for a day or two. A lot of CI pipelines broke.

----

Oh, yeah, I found them. My heroes: https://cryptography.io/en/latest/api-stability/#versioning

Even after they were told that they made a mess, they still didn't do it right, and had to continue doing it in their own unnecessarily unique way. Sigh
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-21 14:29:12+00:00
You're right that "systems competent in language" (either humans or LLMs) are able to accept and understand slightly wrong sequences but generate correct sequences almost all of the time. (Who hasn't made a typo when talking to a chatbot and had the chatbot ignore the type and respond correctly?)

Treating G(t) as a binary function works for linguists who need a paradigm to do "normal science" but Chomsky's theory has not been so useful for building linguistically competent machines so there have to be serious things wrong with that theory.

Still, the vast majority of sequences t are gibberish that is nowhere near being valid. If those gibberish sequences are representable in the embedding space and took up a volume anywhere near the numeric prevalance they have I can only imagine that in a (say) N=3000 embedding space there is something like a manifold that is N=2999 or N=2998 or N=1500 or something inside the flat embedding space -- that structure would be the non-flat embedding you're looking for or be an approximation to it.

It might be that it is not really a manifold or has different dimensionalities in different places or even fractional dimensionalites. For instance you'd hope that would geometrically represent semantics of various sorts as suggested by the graphs here

https://nlp.stanford.edu/projects/glove/ [1]

So I've thought a lot about sympletic spaces in higher dimensions where area has to be conserved over various transformations (the propagator) and maybe this has led me to think about it the totally wrong way -- maybe the flat embedding space doesn't devote a large volume to gibberish because it was never trained to model gibberish strings, which has to have interesting implications if that is true.

Something else I think of is John Wheeler's idea of superspace in quantum gravity where, even though space-time looks like a smooth manifold to us, the correct representation in the quantum theory might be discrete: maybe for points a, b there are the possibilities that: (1) a,b are the same point, (2) a is the future or b, (3) b is the future of a, or (4) a and b are not causally connected. So you have this thing which exists on one level as something basically symbolic but looks like a manifold if you live in it and you're much bigger than the Planck length.

But to get to that answer of "why do we flatten it?", we're not flattening it deliberately, the "flattening" is done by the neural network and we don't know another way to do it.

[1] ... which I don't really believe, of course you can project out 20 points out of a 50 dimensional embedding into an N=2 space and have the points land wherever you want!
by Akranazon | 2025-07-21 14:29:44+00:00
> When prices actually go down, builders get nervous, lenders get cautious, financing dries up, and projects disappear.

I think this is putting the cart before the horse. The entire reason that building/lending/etc should exist, it's raison d'être, is to make housing more affordable. If that is achieved - mission accomplished? I don't care about these parties otherwise.
by stpedgwdgfhgdd | 2025-07-21 14:30:13+00:00
As a CC user I can say there there are at least two reasons why CC dominates.

One, it is very good except for its prise. Because of the cost, I tried Codex, but after a few simple questions I gave up. Nowhere close to CC when it comes to tool usage. Gemini cli asked for a Cloud project id, no idea what is meant with this. Cursor is not an option because I think long term they can’t compete with the integration that Anthropic can offer.

Second, CC offers capabilities you will learn as power user, in that sense it is like a game; addictive.
by lukaslalinsky | 2025-07-21 14:30:16+00:00
I was one of the early adopters of GitHub Copilot and generally a proponent of AI assisted coding. I've recently tried "vibe coding" and oh my god, the experience couldn't be more different to what I was used to. It feels like a super expensive machine, making all kinds of mistakes and charging me for all of them. So many trial and error attempts. I ask it to do X, it conveniently does a lot of work around it, but in the end X does not work, so it just comments it out as a minor issue. It requires so much micro management, that I don't really see the purpose. Much easier and faster to just write the code myself and let it help me in that process. With agents, I feel like I'm the one helping it get a job done. I honestly can't imagine trusting this with any kind of production process.
by tsunamifury | 2025-07-21 14:30:45+00:00
This was tried the 60s in the us and uk, which gave rise to the ghettos torn down in the 2000s. There is little appetite on any side to re do that

It’s amazing how little history people seem to remember or know. I think people might be open to trying again if you could address what went wrong last time (extreme crime and poverty traps)
by benreesman | 2025-07-21 14:31:15+00:00
There's a fundamental tension between "conservative desktop-origin mass appeal Linux distribution" and "extreme performance hardware accelerated numerics coprocessor". In the places where a mass market need is obvious (local LLM) solutions are emerging with vibrant and diverve back end options (gguf).

I think its OK to install stuff to get extreme scientific compute performance.

I use NixOS BTW.
by unlikelytomato | 2025-07-21 14:31:29+00:00
The research on optimal protein for athletes is pretty well established. I weigh all of my food and track every macro. If I ate the recommended amount of protein from plant sources, I would be grossly overweight from the additional carb and fat calories. I try plants based every year or so. It just doesn't work for my body. Not to mention the dramatic IBS-like symptoms I get even after forcing it for weeks on end to "adapt" to plant only. I switch back to my old diet and all my issues disappear in about 72 hours. After 15 attempts, I will probably try again, but it's not looking good. Maybe someday when I stop all athletic endeavors it will work out for me
by broken-kebab | 2025-07-21 14:31:30+00:00
Having no details about your misadventure I cannot be a judge for the case, I just can say for my need (sending money to family members) it always worked well. Though you definitely need a practical experience (even if you're techie) to get it right. Not sure it would work well for a travel cause you have to measure reputations, and assess concomitant risks which is hard to do when you aren't a part of community, don't speak language, and can't read omens so to say. However, as a counterexample, my colleague who visited Argentina some years ago got scammed at usual exchange, and robbed 10 minutes later (which she believes to be connected events) so maybe having cash is not necessary better in some places where foreigner is a game to hunt.
by wowczarek | 2025-07-21 14:32:09+00:00
I did this in embedded some 20+ years ago, I was working on a project where the microcontroller didn't have enough resources to do much CGI and store much more than a few kilobytes, so a big dashboard with tens of temperature gauges and other things was all done as a combination of serving XML data and a single, small XSLT file and the rest was all in the browser. Fun times indeed.
by IAmBroom | 2025-07-21 14:32:26+00:00
My unwavering belief is that laws are not, and never have been, about "justice". The government is interested in its own survival, from the individual (reelection, lifetime monarchy, etc.) to the complete entity (both parties in the US almost invariably increase the government size).

Law is like that joke that parents don't want fairness; they want silence. The law wants a cooperative public, and will do (first) the minimum necessary to achieve that ("I'm tough on crime!!!"), and (second) whatever is in its own interest (speed traps, licensing as revenue, etc.).

Only with a cooperative public can the government afford to pursue survival and growth. If bread and circuses are enough, you'll get circuses and bread! If not, maybe public regulation and security theater is needed.

I'm not saying all politics is heartlessly unconcerned with the common good, but that the public's perception of the common good is more important to the law.
by wat10000 | 2025-07-21 14:32:28+00:00
Lots of "why don't they..." comments here.

This is international news, which means that this kind of event is extremely rare. People are often pretty dumb, and magnetic metal is common, so that means that the existing precautions are very effective. There's probably room for improvement, but there isn't some blisteringly obvious thing that's been overlooked that would save many lives.
by incomingpain | 2025-07-21 14:33:08+00:00
>I'm going to say this in a not nice way: that's a you problem.

I always prefer this.

>I'm not saying that you should switch to Arch Linux,

Especially when you Arch isnt supported at all by any version and quite likely to not even work as a video card. Manjaro also not supported.

>ut there is a wide gap between RHEL and Debian based distributions and a continuously rolling distribution. There are distributions that update weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.

RHEL seems to be up to date, the RHEL from May is well supported. I have tested out Alma as vms, but ive never used even fedora or centos in ages.
by crazygringo | 2025-07-21 14:33:30+00:00
> The author is concerned that builders will stop building when prices fall, but that's rational. Suppliers should respond to changes in prices.

Exactly this. Once you've built enough new housing and so the price has dropped to the point where it's not economical to build anymore, you're done. It's mission accomplished. The goal was achieved.

But the whole point is that you have to actually build all that housing to get there. Which is what we want. The author seems to be deeply confused about basic economic principles.
by Workaccount2 | 2025-07-21 14:33:54+00:00
Taylor Swift (and other super stars) don't play shows in 99% of American municipalities.

Companies want top talent for their workforce. They naturally will set up shop where they have easiest access to this talent (hence why you get industry hubs in different locales). The companies move to the spots for workers, and the works move to those spots for the jobs.
by Forgeties79 | 2025-07-21 14:34:12+00:00
With bigger appliance purchases like that the way often/should (clearly not always) work is they should be more robust and effective. A cheap drier needs to be babysat or it becomes a fire hazard. It also can just door a poor job of drying your stuff.

I have the cheapest Costco drier. It’s fine, but I do have to keep an eye on it.
by orwin | 2025-07-21 14:34:20+00:00
I think this is the plan here. I don't know if I agree or disagree with it yet, but basically what I think will happen if the investigation find proof of active partisanship in the algorithm (or just boosting Elons tweets):

Criminal intent probably won't be found (or without enough evidence), so this investigation won't result in a lawsuit. However, depending on the findings Twitter might have to be considered as a publisher, not as an hosting platform, and this would make twitter liable for published user content.

Once Twitter is considered as a publisher, all hell break loose for other algorithm-based social media companies.
by wizee | 2025-07-21 14:34:31+00:00
On my M4 Max MacBook Pro, with MLX, I get around 70-100 tokens/sec for Qwen 3 30B-A3B (depending on context size), and around 40-50 tokens/sec for Qwen 3 14B. Of course they’re not as good as the latest big models (open or closed), but they’re still pretty decent for STEM tasks, and reasonably fast for me.

I have 128 GB RAM on my laptop, and regularly run multiple multiple VMs and several heavy applications and many browser tabs alongside LLMs like Qwen 3 30B-A3B.

Of course there’s room for hardware to get better, but the Apple M4 Max is a pretty good platform running local LLMs performantly on a laptop.
by xattt | 2025-07-21 14:34:44+00:00
Both can be true. We learn to fear and respect modern technology because of training and reinforcement that might occur as part of learning.

Consider the “Things I Won’t Work With” column. There is a healthy degree of respect for various compounds that’s learned with experience. This is similar to the way that (properly trained) electricians work with electricity, and nuclear plant techs work around radioactive material.
by someone_19 | 2025-07-21 14:34:48+00:00
Look at vectors or hash maps. This is a perfect example of the Rust philosophy. Namely, writing complex low-level abstractions that offer a convenient and reliable high-level API.

It uses unsafe, but few people understand what it really is. Rust has clear invariants (for example, that a pointer to T always points to an existing and valid T) that are enforced by the compiler. Using unsafe code is shifting the enforcement of these invariants from the compiler to the programmer. The advantage compared to C is that unsafe code is limited to undefined blocks that are easy to test.

The data structure you describe should be done exactly this way. And it is not a task for the average programmer.
by DonHopkins | 2025-07-21 14:34:52+00:00
My impression of XSLT is that there were representatives from every different programming language paradigm on the XSLT standard committee, and each one of them was able to get just enough of what was special about their own paradigm into the standard to showcase it while sabotaging the others and making them all look foolish, but not enough to actually get any work done or lord forbid synergistically dovetail together into a unified whole.

The only way I was ever able to get anything done with XLST was to use Microsoft's script extensions to drop down into JavaScript and just solve the problem with a few lines of code. And that begs the question of why am I not just solving this problem with a few lines of JavaScript code instead of inviting XSLT to the party?

More on XML, XSLT, SGML, DSSSL, and the DDJ interview "A Triumph of Simplicity: James Clark on Markup Languages and XML":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33728303
by gruez | 2025-07-21 14:35:28+00:00
>X are simultaneously saying they've not been made aware of the allegations

You're trying to imply there's some contradiction between the three statements, but there really isn't. For one, X never claimed "they've not been made aware of the allegations". The exact wording used in the article was "it “remains in the dark” about the specific allegations", which is different than not being aware of the allegations at all. Moreover it's not contradictory to deny allegations that you're not aware of the specifics about. For instance, if someone accused you of saying a racist thing, but didn't reference a specific incident, it'd be pretty reasonable to both claim you're "in the dark about the specific allegations", and to deny it. It'd also be reasonable to claim it's politically motivated, if for instance it was coming from someone you had beef with.
by kindkang2024 | 2025-07-21 14:35:36+00:00
> and I do not want to be a fright

> those of such skill rule humanity through armies of hundreds of thousands whose entire lives are embroiled in “schizophrenia” far more terrifying as it is true, there is an actor among us capable of possessing ourselves and others as though the poltergeist.

That does seem truly frightening. However, I do not believe it is true, nor am I aware of any valid proof that would make me believe it (though I'm certainly open to it.).

I prefer to think that humans have all kinds of wills, and each will tries to gain power to manifest itself. All wills try to compete for power, and only the fittest ones can survive and thrive in the long run. In my opinion, the wills of 'love' are the fittest and are what could save us if we needs saving. This is much like how genes are the unit of evolution in biology, while wills are the unit of evolution in human society.

That said, it belongs to a different conversation. Still, it’s been a pleasure exchanging thoughts.
by incomingpain | 2025-07-21 14:35:57+00:00
>There's a fundamental tension between "conservative desktop-origin mass appeal Linux distribution" and "extreme performance hardware accelerated numerics coprocessor". In the places where a mass market need is obvious (local LLM) solutions are emerging with vibrant and diverve back end options (gguf).

/me urgently awaits devstral 2507 on ollama

>I use NixOS BTW.

As a desktop environment? Tell me more! Please!
by cpgxiii | 2025-07-21 14:36:10+00:00
AMD officially supports precisely three Linux platforms for current ROCm:

1. Ubuntu 24.04.4 with kernel 6.11

2. Ubuntu 22.04.5 with kernel 6.8

3. RHEL 9.6 with kernel 5.14

Anything else, like your preferred rolling release distribution, is entirely on your own.