MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Do You Block DigitalOcean?
by sugarpimpdorsey | 2025-07-28 02:46:57+00:00
I have at least half their subnets blacklisted at this point. They seem to host a lot of bot traffic, port scans, and other generally unsavoury characters.

Is this the wrong approach? A losing battle of whack-a-mole?

FWIW I get a not-insignificant amount of malicious traffic from AWS, Azure, and Google but I view these providers as "too big to block" - I can't blacklist large swaths of their IP space without breaking the Internet.
by sdenton4 | 2025-07-28 02:47:14+00:00
All completely correct.

It has been extremely difficult to reintroduce functionally extinct species (ie, regenrate populations in zoos, and then reintroduce them to their original habitat). The animal culture piece is really big.

But probably the biggest issue is that, in almost all cases, the problems that led to extinction in the first place - lack of habitat, poaching, etc - rarely get better with time.
by kelseyfrog | 2025-07-28 02:47:23+00:00
28 years later the US would invade and capture Monterey, CA in the Battle of Monterey[1].

Also, fun fact (I guess), the Old Custom House is the first designated California Historical Landmark[2]. It marks the site where U.S. Commodore John Drake Sloat raised the American flag and declared California part of the United States in 1846.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Monterey

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Custom_House_(Monterey,_Ca...
by IlikeKitties | 2025-07-28 02:47:57+00:00
> Who the hell wants this Internet...?

The under educated, unthinking unwashed masses. Just look at the tea leak. The amount of people that do not care about freedom or privacy on the internet vastly outnumber those that do. And because they do democracy unmasks itself in the digital realm as the tyranny of the unthinking majority.

Weep for the future.
by bell-cot | 2025-07-28 02:48:23+00:00
If the defense contractors figured they could get away with those costs, at higher volume? Hell, yes.

If the U.S. still had it's own (gov't-owned, gov't-operated) production facilities - as, historically, every A List nation has had - to provide honest competition? Hell, no.

History: The not-even-yet-the-U.S.A. set up the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Armory in 1777, to manufacture military ammumition. And the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Yard in 1799.
by impossiblefork | 2025-07-28 02:48:24+00:00
That isn't really possible.

If goods are brought into the US, with tolls paid, and then sold for much more than the assessed value, the goods will probably be seized.

This agreement is certainly exactly as bad as it looks. No one has historically entered into an agreement like this. Not Sweden when it was a tiny country not part of the EU, no country whatsoever.

When a country has been had its goods tariffed the response has always been to counter those tariffs with tariffs on goods with an equal value, so this agreement is completely exceptional.
by godelski | 2025-07-28 02:48:26+00:00
That wasn't my argument? I think you should look at my last paragraph. It starts with "I'm pointing this out because".

> We want the $10 tomorrow.

Previously I didn't state my position. You *assumed* my position. So allow me to tell you what it is: I agree, $10 tomorrow is better

> No rational person can disagree with this

You really should read [1]

Actually, you really should read my whole comment and be careful to not read things my comment doesn't say.

To circle back,

>> miscommunication due to different assumptions about what we want

A corollary to this is "miscommunication [frequently] happens when we make inaccurate assumptions about the position of others". Let's not go putting words in other people's mouths.
by stinkbeetle | 2025-07-28 02:48:31+00:00
> >the old guard of free speech and privacy activists on the internet has long gone, drowned by a sea of unprincipled populist reactionaries

> which is an unnecessary ideological divide if your concern is free speech and privacy;

What do you mean by this, an unnecessary ideological divide?

> too bad the old guard of activists chose sides and alienated additional support for their cause.

What sides did they choose and whose additional support did they alienate?
by makeitdouble | 2025-07-28 02:49:24+00:00
> Intel Ultra 9 185h

The CPU in itself should be pretty good by modern standards: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+Ultra+9+...

> (like even struggles to open Word).

Her issue is not the form factor. Is it the RAM ? did she activate all the marketing apps ? Is a bitcoin farmer running in the background ? I don't know, but it's worth looking into it.

For comparison, I have at hand a Surface Pro 8 that should be 3x slower than hers on sheer CPU benchmarks, and I can throw any run of mill task at it (do the taxes with 3~4 word documents, Excel, dozens of tabs in firefox and a call session in the background) and it's fine. It will burn trough battery life within an two or three hours under that load, and yes the fans will be running, but I have no issue of having it crawl when unplugged.
by bluecalm | 2025-07-28 02:49:36+00:00
>>There isn't enough private capital in the EU with the risk tolerance required to take on such a challenge independently.

That can be improved by making traditional investments (real estate, land) less attractive while making investments into businesses more attractive. You just need to change tax incentives by removing capital gain tax and introducing real estate/land value tax (or raising it). Removing red tape would help as well and then making the common market really common.

As it is there is very little incentive to invest in companies here.
by sfpotter | 2025-07-28 02:50:40+00:00
Yeah. All of this is born out of a desire to avoid meshing, for some definition of meshing. I'm on a jag that explicitly meshing or computing topology should be unnecessary for this kind of simulation. People have done contact simulations based on penalty methods or Lagrange multipliers using level set descriptions of domains for quite a while, which just involve integrating over overlapping regions, which shouldn't be that hard to detect... in principle... but I'm not quite there yet.

What I'm saying about level set domains is maybe a bit misleading. I'm not talking about level set methods like you might find in the book by Fedkiw and Osher, per se (but if I found something useful from that literature, I wouldn't hesitate to borrow it...). They are easy to model with and give clean geometry compared to e.g. a B-rep. I'm only interested in messing around with toy and artificial problems at this point, so it isn't much of a limitation. At the same time, given a B-rep, there are a number of ways to get clean level set geometry from them...

By high-order boundary parametrization, I mean: given a implicit surface, how to quickly go to a parametric representation of the boundary which is accurate to many (say, 13+) digits that is relatively space efficient, even in the presence of sharp features in the level set (common for CSG...). This is easy in 2D, harder in 3D...

I guess the subtle point here is that for a finite element simulation, the only thing that really matters is integration. For that, you only need a soup of patches; there's no real need to assemble them into a B-rep or any other kind of mesh. But then if you take a time step, you have to think about converting from parametric back to implicit. I'm trying to figure out if there is some kind of hybrid parametric-implicit data structure that is particularly useful for simulations of this type. Remains to be seen, but there are many fun geometry problems to solve along the way.
by tjwebbnorfolk | 2025-07-28 02:50:44+00:00
We've known for decades that it requires more energy to produce corn ethanol than is delivered in the ethanol produced. A lot of the necessary inputs are petroleum-based. This is not news.

What MIGHT be news is that the environmentalists who have been pushing biofuels as a "green" alternative to oil have finally figured out this basic physical fact.
by washadjeffmad | 2025-07-28 02:50:49+00:00
It seems reversed, that the default is legal eligibility, and that minors should need to prove their status. They're the ones who need policing, after all, not us.

For instance, it's not illegal for me to be served alcohol. If I'm not carded when being sold a drink, nothing illegal has taken place.

If the lawmakers are being cowards and not saying they want to round up and ID all the children from birth until they are eligible to participate in the adult world, that's their battle to fight and not our burden.
by userbinator | 2025-07-28 02:50:50+00:00
How did we lose our way?

They figured out that much of the population is easily manipulated and controlled by exploiting their desire for "safety and security" --- in stark contrast to that classic Franklin quote (yes, I know the context isn't the same, but the words are otherwise a perfect fit for the situation.) It's only a minority of the population; and I'd suspect a smaller minority in the EU than the US; which is willing to argue against it.

Next time you find yourself arguing for something or doing things a certain way, throw in an "it's better for security" or similar phrase with a plausible-sounding argument why, and see how easily it shuts down the opposition. In my experience, many won't even question it.
by FrancoisBosun | 2025-07-28 02:51:16+00:00
In the article, it is mentioned that « we can grant temporary access to cardiac-related data » (paraphrased). This is where it gets difficult: how am I to know that some data is cardiac-related or not? Is it important to share my thyroid levels or not? This is a very difficult problem. I wouldn’t know what to share for medical history.
by ecb_penguin | 2025-07-28 02:51:43+00:00
Depending on your app, yes, you can block DO. You can probably block all of AWS and GCP as well. You can take it further and block all non-residential ASNs.

You'll block some legit traffic, but the majority of normal users will not be affected.

What is the persona of your average user? Average people shopping online? None of them are connecting through weird ASNs.

Someone complaining about a VPN being blocked? It's cost-benefit, tell them tough shit.
by sigismund175 | 2025-07-28 02:52:08+00:00
Vibing coding is when you build and launch a working app in a day — fast, fun, and in the zone. Not vibing is what happens after: getting hacked because you skipped security checks, or receiving an unexpected cloud bill that breaks your budget. Not vibing helps you catch security flaws early so you can keep vibing without the painful surprises.
by anonym29 | 2025-07-28 02:52:10+00:00
I know the general public should never be expected to subsidize enthusiasts, but E85 - available in many places for under $3/gal - has many of the same performance characteristics as $20/gal race gas for performance automotive enthusiasts.

I'm all for the peaceful and orderly dissolution of the entire US federal government, as involuntary taxation under implied threat of violence is theft, but until then, thanks for the deeply discounted race gas, fellow taxpayers!
by mobileturdfctry | 2025-07-28 02:52:23+00:00
This could have some merit. I do question, though, why someone would spend time gaming a system when they could be living their lives and enjoying their families and friends and other things that life has to offer? Could you see yourself doing that? Or perhaps your life is already rich enough that you couldn't imagine wasting your time on something like that? The point is it seems there is a threshold, below which extremism seems to thrive.

I do agree that people with real mental health issues, who only want to see death and destruction of the people and world around them might think it would be fun, but I'd argue that those people wouldn't be very effective at achieving that goal.
by vrilatemypaper | 2025-07-28 02:52:27+00:00
Longer: https://youtu.be/Gu0EemWzZpM

Right after 4 minute mark when it goes away was the most interesting part, because it does look like the color changed to yellow and then autofocus stops having trouble and it disappears slowly, which would be consistent with something flying directly away from the camera potentially, and seems to disappear too slowly to be clouds getting in the way?

https://youtu.be/Gu0EemWzZpM?t=4m0s

Planes should be equipped with external 4K cameras now to supplement the black box, maybe call it a red box (since it’s video). Then they could just upload it and clear it out for the next flight, periodically replacing the media. The cost of doing this and additional fuel required for the weight could be fully offset by selling the data, e.g. to farmers, intelligence, police, pilots, and people that subscribe just to see videos of flights. Or maybe you could stream it.
by lastcoyotes | 2025-07-28 02:52:41+00:00
I would love a set of these! I've seen a few "legos of clothing" ideas out there but I believe this is my favorite execution of it so far. It lends itself to the "gorpcore" style of clothing like Cotopaxi where its blocks of different color. Even with the monochrome examples in your video, I love the texture inherent to its linkage.
by yupyupyups | 2025-07-28 02:52:42+00:00
This has nothing to do with age verification, but everything to do with identifying users on various services. They can compell the providers of said services to give them access to how each, now identified, user is using the service. Since a lot of our lives are digital, this is a major transfer of power from the people to a select few.

A question I have is who voted for this? I sure didn't.
by ern | 2025-07-28 02:52:53+00:00
I don't know how the social engineering happened, beyond what's mentioned in the article as a possibility (calling helpdesks). But there's a ton of corporate information that's widely available for exploitation.

LinkedIn, for example is a goldmine for social engineering, and there's no way to secure a profile from being viewed by logged-in users, even if they are unconnected.

I'm surprised more employers don't closely audit their employees profiles.
by frahs | 2025-07-28 02:53:03+00:00
I'm unconvinced -- Certainly this will happen gradually, and there will be widespread public support for a solution. It's not to hard to imagine making online reviews or "high quality content" require verification tied to some per-citizen identification code (or asymmetric key). Maybe this makes it harder post anonymously on the internet, but at the very least we won't have the issue of proving identity.

Just wish we had a competent government to handle the upcoming transition. But even an incompetent one can have smart employees under it, and can give them the funding they need to accomplish this.
by in_cahoots | 2025-07-28 02:53:58+00:00
I read the whole article and I still don't see how Big Ag misled anyone. I may be misunderstanding, but it seems that the author is trying to differentiate between growing corn for food vs growing the same corn for ethanol. I assume the entire reason the lobby exists is that farmers want to grow corn for food and ethanol. But the researcher lost interest before proving anything around there. Maybe ethanol is actually worse, but I didn't see any evidence in this article.

Instead, this article is a master class in the red herring fallacy. Every person on the 'wrong' side of the issue has their sordid past and connections exposed, whether it's their association with Wall Street or the fact that they're a sex offender. Nevermind the science, the author just assumes that because the reader (presumably) has a certain political persuasion denigrating the other side will serve as a convincing argument.
by kamaal | 2025-07-28 02:54:01+00:00
>>Humans writing the test first and LLM writing the code is much better than the reverse.

Isn't that logic programming/Prolog?

You basically write the sequence of conditions(i.e tests in our lingo) that have to be true, and the compiler(now AI) generates code for your.

Perhaps there has to be a relook on how Logic programming can be done in the modern era to make this more seamless.
by Nevermark | 2025-07-28 02:54:10+00:00
The vast majority of code isn't the general case. Very few practical applications legitimately intend to execute halt-undecidable code for instance.

But if the language itself strongly obfuscates (or makes it difficult or impossible to express/guarantee) reliable relationships, you miss out on all the desired, and leveragable, certainty that you still intend.
by defrost | 2025-07-28 02:54:15+00:00
Trace amounts of thorium and uranium are literally everywhere on the land surface of the planet.

This is moot sans the "source that you quoted" and some stats and studies.

For interest, Australia: https://www.ga.gov.au/bigobj/GA13928.pdf

India, Mali, Fiji, Africa, Americas, etc have similar trace amounts across their surfaces that are detectable from an aircraft 80m above ground level traveling at 70 m/second.

"Radiation: it's everywhere"
by kindkang2024 | 2025-07-28 02:54:20+00:00
I’m one of those who use it—mainly because it’s cheap, as others have mentioned. I wish Cursor offered a more generous limit so I wouldn’t need another paid subscription. But it won’t. So Trae comes in — fulfilling that need and sealing the deal. This is what we call competition: it brings more freedom and helps everyone get what they want. Kudos to the competition!

I'm not defending Trae’s telemetry — just pointing out the hard truth about why pricing works and why many people care less about privacy concerns (all because there are no better alternatives for them, considering the price.)

By the way, for those who care more about pricing($7.5/M) — here you go: https://www.trae.ai/. It’s still not as good as Cursor overall (just my personal opinion), but it’s quite capable now and is evolving fast — they even changed their logo in a very short time. Maybe someday it could be as competitive as Cursor — or even more so.
by enjeyw | 2025-07-28 02:55:52+00:00
Yeah this is something I'm a little worried about - right now it's not extremely difficult to just take an AI generated essay and then just tweak the essay until it passes.

My first pass approximation is to make the assessment of whether the essay is AI generated or not accessible only to teachers. I may need to also rate-limit the checks, so people can't brute force it to gather data on what passess.
by nickmade | 2025-07-28 02:56:20+00:00
I'm making small improvements to things that I use daily with the help of AI (mainly using Claude Projects in the browser).

I created a simple Hacker News Redesign extension to make my mobile browsing experience better (larger touch targets, prettier UI and texts). https://apps.apple.com/us/app/y-redesign-for-hacker-news/id6...

I made a widget that better shows my work shifts (I work nights and the default calendar app displays overnights as two days in the zoomed out monthly view, so this improves upon that and also counts how many shifts I've completed in a month while looking nice too). https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-next-shift-widget/id674063...

I wrote a simple MacOS app that lets me drag and drop screenshots then choose between a variety of "device frames" to create a consistent style and speed up my workflow.

And now I'm working on some plug-ins for open source apps that I use. Generally just doing small things to improve my workflow and enjoyment with my hobbies.
by refulgentis | 2025-07-28 02:56:30+00:00
This really captures something important about how power operates across different eras you're drawing from some heavy hitting historical precedents.

I'm curious about the full sweep of political philosophy (Magna Carta through UDHR), it feels like it has something to inform us about people problems vs. technical problems.

That final image about seasons changing is quite evocative, really drives home the cyclical nature of these power struggles. A technical standard cannot prevent blood shorn for man's freedom.
by Xixi | 2025-07-28 02:56:56+00:00
I've been building AltStack.jp, a curated directory of Japanese digital services (cloud hosting, registrars, email providers, and more) all operated in Japan, by Japanese companies.

It’s aimed at people who want to be less dependent on foreign platforms, especially with the current shift away from globalization.

Still early days: only about 20% of the planned categories are up so far.

[1] https://altstack.jp/en/
by sothatsit | 2025-07-28 02:57:00+00:00
AI building complex visualisations for you on-the-fly seems like a great use-case.

For example, if you are debugging memory leaks in a specific code path, you could get AI to write a visualisation of all the memory allocations and frees under that code path to help you identify the problem. This opens up an interesting new direction where building visualisations to debug specific problems is probably becoming viable.

This idea reminds me of Jonathan Blow's recent talk at LambdaConf. In it, he shows a tool he made to visualise his programs in different ways to help with identifying potential problems. I could imagine AI being good at building these. The talk: https://youtu.be/IdpD5QIVOKQ?si=roTcCcHHMqCPzqSh&t=1108
by babycommando | 2025-07-28 02:59:19+00:00
Thats neat actually, will take a look into how viable it can be. Bubbletea (and lipgloss) are like CSS for the terminal, you do the styling, calculate margins, manage responsive things wich is quite cool already. I believe what you mean is totally doable, just that I'm not much of a mouse user myself - it slows me down. Thanks for the feedback.
by SilverElfin | 2025-07-28 03:03:14+00:00
I can’t read due to paywall. But are Gazans also done with Islamism? After all, Hamas’s worst beliefs and practices are all rooted in the Islamic supremacist views they took on from the Quran. I think rejecting a single party like Hamas but sticking with the underlying ideas would just mean that not much is changing.
by ThunderSizzle | 2025-07-28 03:04:36+00:00
As in, a developer would write something in e.g. gherkin, and AI would automatically create the matching unit tests and the production code?

That would be interesting. Of course, gherkin tends to just be transpiled into generated code that is customized for the particular test, so I'm not sure how AI can really abstract it away too much.
by boredemployee | 2025-07-28 03:05:17+00:00
tangential question: are there still any IRC servers and (small) channels with cool people? I recently lost a virtual friend I had talked to for over 20 years, all thanks to some random mIRC channel back in the day. he ran the server with a bunch of ppl for so long. so sad. i really miss the times when we could have fun with just plain text.
by lunarcave | 2025-07-28 03:05:34+00:00
I've had a notion that LLMs can read Typescript types much better, than JSON schema types.

So, I've been tinkering around with a library that can generate schemas for structured JSON outputs, according to a Typescript-like custom schema definition: https://github.com/nadeesha/structlm

So far, I've been seeing promising results with accuracy on-par or better, but using 20-40% less tokens than JSON schemas.