MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lotsofpulp | 2025-07-11 14:16:04+00:00
While they definitely had or have organizational problems (which organization does not?), it seems quite hyperbolic to state

>decline of everything else

They were still pumping out very usable AirPods/Apple TV/Watch/Phone/Macbook Airs/Air Tags.

Siri sucks (always has), and they have had some big misses, but the stuff that 90% of the population uses 90% of the time chugs along perfectly fine.
by matthewdgreen | 2025-07-11 14:16:15+00:00
I visited in 2007 and 2024 and the weird is still there, but some of the “this place is at the absolute cutting edge of cool and tech and weird” is gone. The most disappointing thing was seeing how much of the cutting edge “PC” and electronics culture was gone from Akihabara (presumably it all went to Shenzhen) and how everything sold there is just older gaming systems (did not stop us from purchasing a beautiful Nintendo Famicom.) I’m sure there are some interesting things happening that will be cool in a decade, but it’s definitely a slightly different place.
by dathinab | 2025-07-11 14:16:18+00:00
Honestly whatever kind of DB you are speaking about always be wary of "niche/side features" which don't fit it's core design goals, they tend to have unexpected limitations.

listen/notify isn't necessary a replacement for redis or other pub/sub systems, redis pub/sub and similar isn't necessary a replacement for idk. Kafka or similar queue/messaging system

but a lot of companies have (for modern standards) surprisingly small amounts of data, very even a increase by 2,3,4x still isn't that big. In that case listen/notify and similar might just work fine :shrug:

also same is true the other way around, depending on you application you can go redis only, as long as you data volume stays small enough and needs for transactional/sync are reasonable simple enough (with watch+exec, NX,XX options etc. and maybe some redis side lua scripts you can do quite a lot for data synchronization). Issue with that is that stylistically redis data sync/transaction code is often much more similar to writing atomic data-structures then to SQL transactions, and even for SQL transactions there is a trend of devs severely overestimating what they provide, so often you are better of not touching on it when you can avoid it, also BTW. redis has something very similar to sqlite or Notify where "basically" (oversimplified by a lot) there is only one set of writes done at a time ;) (and then afterwards distributed to replicas), just that outside of some micro lua scripts you don't really run much logic outside of some NX, XX checks etc. so it's not blocking much and it's "more or less" all just in memory not touching a WAL (again oversimplified).
by kimos | 2025-07-11 14:16:39+00:00
I signed up and I no longer use most other websites. I only use Kagi for basic searches, where I want to get to a destination and not get information.

Perplexity “does the googling for me” and summarizes or seeks for me. No more skimming and synthesizing. No more crafting search queries and comparing. Ask a question, no matter how obscure or specific, and it fetches the real time answer.

Honestly not much has ever so drastically changed how I use the internet.
by askonomm | 2025-07-11 14:16:43+00:00
That's why I call it United States of Corporations. A world in which people bow down to companies as their overlords, defend them fiercely, at the expense of personal freedom, financial ability, and general life quality. Could also bring parallels to a religion in which its followers commit sacrifices for their deity, and to the point that if there's somewhere that does things differently, like EU, they get upset and want them to stop doing things differently, because there is only one true deity in this world (corporations).
by barrell | 2025-07-11 14:16:47+00:00
> It seems like it'd be harder to parse than an imperative index-based solution, but I'm not sure. Do you find it easy to immediately grok?

These examples are incredibly easy to grok. It takes me a lot longer to grok any index based solution ;-) Especially handling nils, missing indices, checking bounds... you quickly get buried in obvious issues that aren't a concern in clojure.

If it's more complicated, I use comments like the first example. I would say that when grokking more complicated loops, you definitely read it slower on a per character basis, but as I've stated elsewhere I don't think you're grokking the functionality any slower.

> What's the nested loop in the first solution that you've avoided? The `reduce`? the `count`?

Correct, reduce is a loop

> `conj` feels very Lispy (I mean in contrast to Clojure, not C++) .. Isn't it going to have to run down the list every time to add an item?

No, vectors are closer to hash-maps than lists. There are two main sequential collections in clojure, lists and vectors. Lists are O(n) to append, vectors are O(1). Lists ore O(1) to prepend, I'm not actually sure the perf characteristics of prepending to a vector.

> My outstanding concerns are what I think are the constant coercion to lists/vectors.

There is only one coercion from a vector to a list in the code (the first time `rest` is called on the input vector). That's if your input was a vector to begin with. Chances are it will be a list. Also, I'm not sure it's even technically coercion in the computer science sense.

> You also in effect know the result's size, but your runtime/compiler doesn't know that. So you aren't preallocating `memo` and it feels .. wrong

This is not a concern in JavaScript (it always preallocates a bunch of memory for every vector IIRC) and I'm not sure the Java implications, but given the performance people get out of clojure I'm sure it's not an issue ;-)

> The current way of dealing with array is always a bit unwieldy in Clojure. And everything coerced to lists. Working with vectors, with mapv filterv etc is helpful, but they don't have random access so it's not always the solution you want.

I can count on one hand the number of times I use nth in my project. To me it's crazy that people build solutions based on random access XD

That being said random access in O(1) on vectors, including those returned from filterv and mapv (technically O(log32n))
by brainless | 2025-07-11 14:17:07+00:00
I am on the fence with these topics because I have years of fear drilled into me. These topics are a taboo and I have rarely ever tried anything at all. The experiences did not ruin me, they made me more curious about my brain in a positive way. But the social taboo lingers.

What surprises me the most is that we have accepted sugar, alcohol, cigarettes and a ton of mass manufactured food which are harming us. I am struggling with high blood glucose for 12 years. Yet, the substance which I can grow in my* own backyard and may actually not be as harmful is just brainwashed out of my limits.

edits: you to me
by vinhatson | 2025-07-11 14:17:22+00:00
This work introduces the Linear Observation Entanglement Hypothesis (LOEH), a novel quantum framework to explain the measurement problem, grounded in observer-space-time entanglement and cosmic randomness. The manuscript proposes the entanglement function Φ(Oᵢ, Sₜ, t) and presents five core axioms outlining the foundation of LOEH.
by sgarland | 2025-07-11 14:17:31+00:00
Disagree; these issues come up when people use more advanced features of DBs without having the requisite DB expertise on staff. I’ll give OP that Postgres’ docs do not mention this gotcha (and props to them for drilling down to source code!), but by and large, these issues are from people operating via tech blogs.

The DB is - or should be - the source of truth for your application. Also, since practically everyone is using cloud RDBMS with (usually) networked storage, the latency is atrocious. Given those, it seems silly to rely on an application to react to and direct changes to related data.

For example, if you want to soft-delete customer data while maintaining the ability to hard-delete, then instead of having an is_deleted and/or deleted_at column, have a duplicate table or tables, and an AFTER DELETE trigger on the originals that move the tuples to the other tables.

Or if you want to have get_or_create without multiple round trips (and you don’t have Postgres’ MERGE … RETURNING), you can easily accomplish this with a stored procedure.

Using database features shouldn’t be seen as verboten or outdated. What should be discouraged is not treating things like stored procedures and triggers as code. They absolutely should be in VCS, should go the same review process as anything else, and should be well-documented.
by rollcat | 2025-07-11 14:17:42+00:00
I hate to be the that OpenBSD guy, but "the people who do the work are the ones to decide how it's done". Yes, people are paid to maintain OpenZFS, but so far nobody is ready to pay for (or volunteer to) meet your bar.

Side note: OpenZFS already has an extensive test suite. Merely hitting a code branch wouldn't have caught this one.
by IAmBroom | 2025-07-11 14:17:52+00:00
As a European you're an outsider looking in, telling us what our American experiences are.

Consider that your POV might not be objective fact.

Edit: As one counterpoint fact, in my city there are 2nd-generation Italian-Americans who speak English with an accent. Born in American hospitals, raised in our public schools, and don't have the local American accent. "There's nothing Italian about them" is overreaching.
by Synaesthesia | 2025-07-11 14:17:53+00:00
My initial.reactiom to his book on ADHD was similar, I couldn't believe that it could all be reduced to trauma.

I've really come around to that theory though and I think he's very wise.

We need to take a close look at the way we are living our lives under capitalism, the decisions we're forced to.make, and the way we treat our children.
by placardloop | 2025-07-11 14:18:18+00:00
This is like someone in 1800 saying “at the end of the day you still have transportation needs and it’s hard if not impossible to beat horses and carriages in terms of cost”.

Literally just do a google search. There are advancements every day that improve upon evaporative cooling to make it use less and less water and energy, and alternative methods other than evaporative cooling.
by morngn | 2025-07-11 14:18:32+00:00
I think cognitive dissonance explains much of it. Assuming Altman isn’t a sociopath (not unheard of in CEOs) he must feel awful about himself on some level. He may be many things, but he is certainly not naive about the impact ai will have on labor and need for ubi. The mind flips from the uncomfortable feeling of “I’m getting rich by destroying society as we know it” to “I am going to save the world with my super important ai innovations!”

Cognitive dissonance drives a lot “save the world” energy. People have undeserved wealth they might feel bad about, given prevailing moral traditions, if they weren’t so busy fighting for justice or saving the planet or something that allows them to feel more like a super hero than just another sinful human.
by allturtles | 2025-07-11 14:18:39+00:00
It was definitely farm fields growing crops, you can look in Google Earth and see for yourself.

Edit: Anywhere in the Midwest where there is a large expanse of flat ground will almost always be growing crops or have a town built on it. Undeveloped land is almost all hilly and forested or floodplain, nowhere where you could put a data center.
by breppp | 2025-07-11 14:18:41+00:00
> Are you six years old? Approval of slavery or torture used to be mainstream opinions

And also disapproval of cannibalism is a mainstream opinion, that doesn't change the fact that popularity of an opinion does not make it wrong or immoral just like it doesn't make it right or moral

> You have deeply misunderstood his criticisms

So please explain how am I mistaken in your opinion
by nyarlathotep_ | 2025-07-11 14:18:56+00:00
Indeed--the "invisible stuff" ABS/ECU/electronic throttle etc in cars, pacemakers, software in airliners. I imagine things that run on RTOSes fall in this category.

There's a whole world of software stuff that just isn't discussed in public forums/places where you'd usually find information on the internet, unfortunately.
by greenie_beans | 2025-07-11 14:18:57+00:00
land value tax is a regressive tax on middle class homeowners that would ultimately benefit the wealthy. bc middle class single family homeowners would not be able to afford the tax increase or afford the construction to fully utilize the property, which would force them to sell to investors who could afford it.

terrible idea.

not to mention the political debates/decisions over what constitutes "fully utilized". what about public parks? urban agriculture? so many exceptions.

this would be a nightmare policy to retrofit. maybe a good idea if we had started there first, but we didn't.

it's also an ignorant diagnosis of the issue. land values and speculation is not the issue in my location (burlington, vermont) where we have a housing crisis. there are not many vacant lots (i'm guessing maybe a dozen in the entire municipality).

it's just an overly simplified solution to a complex problem.

here is what i believe to be the superior solution: https://www.npr.org/2024/10/07/nx-s1-5119633/housing-crisis-...
by pastage | 2025-07-11 14:18:57+00:00
IMHO. Apple were the first to make it useful. Because the iPhone was always online and the browser window was limited. Active Desktop aimed for the technological stars and was just buggy and slow as a result, it was cool but too flaky to be used.

Symbian I just never had an Phone expensive enough to use like that.

In the end none of them really worked out I guess.
by RHSeeger | 2025-07-11 14:19:14+00:00
> A company that uses scam tactics to grab money from people has basically admitted that they don’t believe they can succeed in an open marketplace of goods and services.

It's exactly the opposite of that. The fact that scare/scam tactics work is why we add rules to reduce the "openness" of the market. As we find things that companies do that are detrimental to people/society as whole, we add laws and regulations to prevent them from doing that. That is moving _away_ from an open market... to the benefit of society.
by n4r9 | 2025-07-11 14:19:17+00:00
You're right. For substance additions the cause could be something like a toxic relationship or job stress.

As soon as I put my smartphone away I realise I'm confronted with challenging feelings: the fear of engaging with the people around me, worrying what they're thinking, looking stupid if I'm not doing anything, or just plain boredom. So it's "avoiding psychological difficulty" that is the fundamental factor.
by 1718627440 | 2025-07-11 14:19:25+00:00
I got also bitten by this. While IMAP would allow for syncing, most MUAs don't have a local mailbox. Instead they have a cache and the offline mode means to put as much as possible in to the cache. But if you want an actual local mail storage, you will eventually have merge conflicts, because how do you deal with a message that is present locally and was on the server, but is no longer? Do you assume the user wants it deleted, or that it should be reuploaded to the server? Either way will be wrong. (Also if you reupload, it will get a new UID, so another MUA will again reupload it, i.e. you will get a copy per MUA.)

So if you want a mailbox sync tool, use a proper program for that like mbsync/isync. (But this can't cope with cross mailbox moves besides (not) propagating them.)
by isodev | 2025-07-11 14:20:06+00:00
It’s a good start. But then people want push notifications, Sign in with Apple, to pay with card but they have an iPhone etc - so many points Apple makes a lot harder than they should be. Eventually, it’s economically better to just suck it up and make an app.

Do you know why QRCodes are by far the most popular banking system? Because, Apple didn’t like it if apps use NFC for payments that’s not Apple Pay. There was a time BLE beacons had to be iBeacons too etc. it’s really decades of pressure in all kinds of ways.
by PaulRobinson | 2025-07-11 14:20:06+00:00
I suggest you keep an eye on what's being published in Private Eye and Computer Weekly if you have access to those where you are. They're holding feet to the fire on all these points.

One thing I would say is that if somebody is convicted in the UK, it's acceptable legally and culturally to call them by the crime they committed.

The problem is that in this case the Post Office had unique legal powers, and was being run by people who did not want to "harm the brand" by admitting they had made mistakes, so kept digging.

There is also a fundamental flaw in how the courts - and the Post Office prosecutors - were instructed to think about the evidence in common law.

Bizarrely, it was not (and may still not), be an acceptable defense to say that computer records are wrong. They are assumed correct in UK courts. IT systems were legally considered infallible, and if your evidence contradicts an IT systems evidence, you were considered a liar by the court, and a jury might be instructed accordingly.

Yes, that's awful. Yes, it's ruined lives.

But also, I think all involved have realised pointing fingers at one or two individuals to blame hasn't really helped fix things. Like an air accident, you have to have several things go wrong and compound errors to get into this amount of trouble, normally. There were systemic failing across procurement, implementation, governance, investigations, prosecutions, within the justice system and beyond.

I already know people who have worked for Fujitsu in the UK are not exactly shouting about it. And yet, they're still getting awarded contracts before the compensation has been paid out...
by Asafp | 2025-07-11 14:20:32+00:00
You think I live under a rock? I probably know more than you. I wrote facts, while you talk about "capturing a feeling". This is a top comment for the same reason people think AIPAC controls the USA or why the expulsion of Jews from Spain happened [1]. The fact that Netanyahu is disliked around the world (and even by me and many of my friends) does not change the nature of Israel being a democracy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain
by hollywood_court | 2025-07-11 14:21:09+00:00
I know you're looking for an argument here.

But I talk about it the same way any reasonably educated person talks about it.

I know racism and discrimination are alive and well here in the US and elsewhere. I have witnessed it myself many times. My mother was a career long LEO in the south. While I was growing up, I heard her and her fellow LEOs discussing how they would treat black people differently numerous times.

The first time I flew home to the states after six years, I brought my black girlfriend with me. Together, she and I saw/heard things that I still think about to this day.

I wore a tool belt and was a blue collar guy for the first ~20 years of my career. I heard racist stuff and saw discrimination pretty much every day of my career.

I'm not sure what part of my original comment would make you feel like making your comment, but I'm sorry I couldn't offend you further.
by agnishom | 2025-07-11 14:21:17+00:00
I am not sure I understand the argument the author is making. Is this what they are saying? [Overtourism is bad for small businesses because it encourages them to cater to tourists, and therefore to chase global trends rather than to serve the taste of the local community]

I am sure many of them would be a little upset, but I don't understand how this counts as "hurting" small businesses?
by MangoToupe | 2025-07-11 14:21:24+00:00
> Democrats, while apparently not as entertaining, just want to make life a little more fair for everyday people who don't want to be cheated, shot or robbed.

It's hard to say they want to do anything as a party based purely on their actions over the last forty years or so. Some of them—sure, but as a party they seemed determined to do nothing that might endear them to voters.

Sadly, "at least we're not republicans" seems to be a very effective route to staying in power.
by mike_hearn | 2025-07-11 14:21:29+00:00
IIRC one issue was that every time someone advanced the theory something was wrong with Horizon, the Post Office kept claiming that nobody else was experiencing any issues. They also lied under oath, claiming no bugs that could cause such situations were known. Given this most the of defence lawyers abandoned that line of inquiry (they were nothing special, seeing as village postmasters aren't rich).
by mauvehaus | 2025-07-11 14:21:34+00:00
Out of curiosity: who does make a table saw with a decent guard in the non-industrial price range? Even Powermatic and SawStop ship with guards that suck.

For the record, mine is a Unisaw from the late '70s. I've got an original Delta sliding table for it that greatly improves dealing with any wide pieces, but it's definitely not the equal of a Felder, for example.

I would be hard pressed to justify the space for a euro-style slider. I usually have the sliding table off unless I am doing a job that requires it because of the floor space it takes up.
by dghf | 2025-07-11 14:21:45+00:00
Not irrelevant at all. The case of the relative pronoun is determined by its role in the relative clause, not by the role of the relative clause in the sentence as a whole.

See:

- H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage

- Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage

- Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words

who are unanimous on this point.
by TechDebtDevin | 2025-07-11 14:21:52+00:00
Its also important to understand the most of the successes sang by 12 step evangalists are coming from the <5% it works on.

Im not against it but it simply is not the only cure for addiction. In fact its provenly a very bad program for the 95% that cant hang.

Much better CBT and medical interventions out there and millions of people are told every year to ignore them because of 12 step evangalist.

If the west had the answer to addiction in the form of 12 step, we probably wouldnt have the highest rates of addiction in the world and is probably a sign of societal trauma that no amount of meetings is going to help.
by 9rx | 2025-07-11 14:22:13+00:00
> Maybe you can find some exceptions.

Including Ken Thompson's very own[1]. Fair enough that in the olden days there was a clearer distinction made, but even the man who (co-)created C changed his mind on that later because that is how the term has evolved. Now, in normal conversation, if you call `int x;` a statement, nobody is going to struggle to understand what you mean. Are you still living in the 1970s? If so, I admittedly missed that. My assumption was that this discussion is taking place in 2025 with the words of its time.

[1] https://go.dev/ref/spec#Statements
by sgarland | 2025-07-11 14:22:40+00:00
Every company I’ve been at that relied on application code to handle referential integrity had orphaned rows, and incidents related to data errors or the absurd pipelines they had built to recreate what FK constraints and triggers already do.

RDBMS are extremely well-tested pieces of software that do their job incredibly well. To think that you could do better, or even equally as well, is hubris. If you want to trade those guarantees for “velocity” go right ahead, but you also need to take into account the inevitable incidents and recoveries that will occur.
by fallinghawks | 2025-07-11 14:23:01+00:00
I completely agree with the "You're all American, period" sentiment, but I suspect you haven't had the lovely experience of being asked "Where are you from" and have your <American location> repeatedly not accepted, usually by the phrase "No, where are you really from," as if it's entirely impossible for me to have been born here.

Were I white, the first question would be unlikely to be asked in the first place, its answer automatically accepted, and if the enquirer had poor language skills, it would immediately be qualified with "I meant, What's your heritage" or "Where is your family from."

There may be self segregation but some are doing the segregation for us.