MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tzs | 2025-07-14 13:54:40+00:00
Some pollutants do have a cooling effect and there are circumstances where purposefully increasing those pollutants could be worth it, but only if we can be sure it is temporary.

The nightmare scenario would be something like we start releasing sulfates into the upper atmosphere to induce cooling to counter the warming from greenhouse gases but do not reduce the growth in greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gases would continue growing and so the amount of sulfates we have to release to counter that also would keep growing.

There are two big problems with that.

#1. The greenhouse gas emissions are a side effect of numerous useful and important activities. People make a lot of money from those activities. They happen unless we make a concerted effort to reduce them.

The sulfite emissions on the other hand would be specifically to counter the effects of greenhouse gases. Whoever is paying for them would be losing money doing this. All it takes is an economic downturn to make budgets tight and funding might go away.

#2. Greenhouse gases can affect climate for a long time. It takes hundreds to thousands of years in the case of CO2 for today's emissions to be no longer affecting the climate.

Sulfates in the upper atmosphere clear out in months to maybe a couple years.

Let's say then we go down the sulfates path, don't reduce greenhouse gas growth and this goes on for decades. Then something stops or disrupts the sulfate releases for a couple years and the sulfites leave the upper atmosphere.

The greenhouse gases are there still there and we rapidly get most of the warming that had been held off for decades by the sulfates.

This would likely be disastrous. Getting all that warming spread over several decades at least gives people time to adapt. Getting it all over a few years would be way to fast for people to deal with.

I think probably the only way purposefully emitting pollutants like this might be acceptable would be after we've got greenhouse gas emissions under control and are on a path we are sure is going to get is to net zero in some specific timeframe, but it will still take a few years to reach peak greenhouse emissions and we've identified a tipping point that we will hit before that. Then maybe countering that with emitting pollutants just until greenhouse gases peak and then come down to where we are below that tipping point might be reasonable.
by Windeycastle | 2025-07-14 13:54:49+00:00
If I could take a guess, then it is for embedded applications.

You could argue though that people should then really do there own memory management, but in the end you might end up just recreating the temp allocator with `@pool` anyway. It's a neat feature. (btw, `@pool` is just a macro from the standard library, no fancy compiler builtin)
by ghc | 2025-07-14 13:54:54+00:00
In a very real sense, I have Django to thank for my entire career. As an undergraduate, my first academic job in a research lab had me building websites to promote the research in a lab. Django was brand new, and I was uninterested in petty concerns like stability and security, so I did everything in Django.

Years later (2009), I got to do interesting work in a cutting edge machine learning lab due to the expertise I developed in Django -- I was accepted into the lab specifically to clean up the mess phd students had made trying to build a complex front end using Django's ORM with physically separate per-user MySQL database servers.

All the things that came after -- being the first full time employee at a machine learning spinout from the lab, getting acquired by a big company and scaling up sensor-driven ML in the real world, quitting to co-found an ML-centered VC fund, starting a (now 10 year old) AI company -- none of it would have happened without Django.
by shagie | 2025-07-14 13:54:58+00:00
I recall getting that book...

One of the challenges with Khamlet is that Klingon originally had no state of being verb - it was part of the word itself rather than a bare "I am {something}". Thus "to be or not to be" was never something that was translatable in the original Klingon language and it had to be updated.

Glancing at Amazon, there appears to be a release of Sunzi's Art of War from 2018.
by perching_aix | 2025-07-14 13:55:13+00:00
> The phosphor still drops off very quickly [0][1][2], roughly within a millisecond.

It's phosphor chemistry dependent. Different color patches on the same glass would decay at different rates even. But yeah, 1 ms is a good lower bound, although when I last researched this, it was definitely the best case scenario for CRTs. I'm fairly sure the ~500 Hz OLEDs that are already floating around are beating the more typical CRTs of old already.

> That’s why you would need a 1000 Hz LCD/OLED screen with really high brightness (and strobing logic) to approximate CRT motion clarity.

At 1000 Hz you wouldn't need the strobing anymore (I believe?), that's the whole point of going that fast. We're kinda getting there btw! Hopefully with HDMI 2.2 out, we'll see something cool.

> On a traditional NTSC/PAL CRT, 1 ms is just under 16 lines, but the latest line is already much brighter than the rest.

That doesn't really math for me. NTSC would be 480 visible lines at 60 Hz, and so 480 lines / ~16.6 ms = 28.8 lines/ms (6% of the screen). Note that of course PAL works out to the same number: 576 lines / 20 ms = 28.8 lines/ms (just 5% of the screen here though!).
by acjohnson55 | 2025-07-14 13:55:23+00:00
If there is microbial life in the clouds of Venus, I wonder if there's a pretty good chance of its origin being from Earth. I can imagine one of the major impact events sending a tiny bit of debris into the solar system, and a tiny bit of that getting captured by Venus. Just maybe, microbes being able to survive the journey and resuming metabolism and reproducing in Venus's atmosphere.
by seec | 2025-07-14 13:55:48+00:00
Yes as I suspected you actually have no clue what you are talking about. You are listing stuff like a recipe as if you can just shop around for those things.

Silicon production is an energy intensive process; you need 11-13 kWh per kg of silicon produced. Technically it's a process using electrodes and thus raw electricity so you could source it from renewable. But that's in theory you need large amount of predictable power for a long time and on demand, which is not at all what the renewables have been so far.

Then if you look into aluminum production you will see that it requires carbon electrodes, that are made in ovens continuously heated to up to 1300°C for hours on end (about 20h per anode). They do not shut down those ovens since it takes multiple WEEKS to get to temperature, and they use natural gaz as the fuel. It's not clear if we could even make an alternative using purely raw electricity that would have enough power density. The aluminum production process itself requires megawatts levels of energy, usually you need a 500MW substation. Most plants are built next to a power plant, usually coal or nuclear. At the current 200W/m2 efficient level for solar panel, you would need about 2 500 km2 of solar panel to get that much power.

Glass production also requires a lot of dense energy. It typically uses gaz for heating but maybe they can figure out an industrial process to electrify it, currently not the case anyway. We are talking about megawatts level of energy again and a glass furnace cannot ever be shut down during its 15-20 years lifetime, so it's not like intermittent renewable are an option.

And I'm not talking about the various mining operations, necessary to get the raw stuff which is basically running almost exclusively on fossil fuel (but at least some of it can be transitioned to electric).

So now, I have to say 2 things: - firstly, my question was obviously rhetoric, the answer for anyone who has studied the subject is clearly no. But that requires an understanding that isn't surface level. - secondly you are clearly an arrogant asshole who thinks he knows shit when he clearly doesn't. But I'll let you live in your fantasy world where you can have industrial production with just electricity from solar panels.
by breve | 2025-07-14 13:56:20+00:00
> A court decision ruled that he can call himself a founder.

There was no such decision. They reached a settlement. That was part of the deal.

> He’s not a founder by the strict definition.

He's not a founder by the fact of the matter. He can call himself what he likes but it doesn't change history.

> It doesn’t matter

If this bores you don't get involved. But there's no need to try to stop other people talking about it.
by simpaticoder | 2025-07-14 13:56:37+00:00
Okay, I'll bite: what's so "terrifying" about developing a physical theory of consciousness?

I have to admit having similar reactions to other "profound" questions - for example, does free will exist? To that one I say: As long as weather exists, even deterministic intelligences will be as unpredictable as one with free will. A machine with chaotic inputs will itself be sufficiently chaotic.

Regarding consciousness, I think there is a category error born of (understandable) hubris. It is the conceit that you can carve out "consciousness" from the holistic physical phenomena of "humans" or, more generally, "life". It's kind of a package deal. Humans might (and probably will) make concious machines, but it will forever be an unanswerable philosophical question about whether they "really" are, just as it is with other humans. In the end it's best to "zoom out" and consider the subject in the context of the Fermi paradox - will such an invention help or harm humanity? (Does replacement imply harm? If we are replaced by our children, is that harm?)

In any event, it's all above my pay-grade, so to speak. For what it's worth, I tend to think that a) life is common in the universe, b) intelligent life very uncommon, and c) humanity got some really serious help from the cosmos/won a few lotteries. We got a moon the exact same angular size as the sun, allowing us to e.g. verify general relativity with ease. We got an atmosphere that let us see the stars clearly, and still breathe. We got a 3rd gen star and planet with a nice mix of light and heavy elements, and plenty of energy runway in the sun. We got abiogenesis (~common) and eukaryotic cells (~uncommon). We got some timely 99% extinctions (but not 100%) to clear the path for us, and which coincidentally left vast energy resources underground for us to bootstrap out of the middle ages. We got a celestial moat, almost impossible to cross (special relativity speed limits; thermodynamic limits) for all but the most advanced (and therefore presumably wisest) civilizations, keeping us safe from colonization. The latter is a bit of a golden cage, and I consider getting out of that cage the highest civilizational goal possible.

Within this picture, AI can fit in in many places, with positive and negative effects. I have to admit that I do not like the trend I see in humanity to become unmoored from the physical world, to venture out unarmed with critical thinking skills, like lambs to the slaughter in the barbaric free-for-all that is the modern info-sphere, who's ulimtate goals are the same as they ever were: money and power. The chance of a stupid self-own like nuclear war, autonomous AI weapons, bio-warfare, or catastrophic global climate change are still all too likely, and getting more likely as intelligent, balanced minds are selected against. We can't do anything about a caldera explosion or a nearby supernova, or even being stuck in-system while the sun burns out, but we can and should avoid shooting ourselves while playing with daddy's gun.
by alnwlsn | 2025-07-14 13:56:53+00:00
This reminds me of burning scrap VW engine blocks or transmission cases. It can be done on an ordinary wood camp fire. You'll probably want to cut up the scrap into more manageable chunks rather than go for the whole thing at once. Then, toss a few into the hottest part of the fire. For about a half hour, nothing will happen. Then, the chunks will begin to melt, forming puddles onto the bed of coals, where they will ignite.

It is interesting that the pools of liquid metal burn quite slowly in the middle of the regular fire; you will only get a bright orange flame rather than the spectacle promised. Maybe only 5x as bright as a normal fire. But, if you scoop some up onto a stick (a long piece of steel angle iron is recommended) and pull it out of the fire into open air, it will burn with the brilliant white flame with which you are generally familiar.

For the finale, plunge the end of the stick into a large bucket of water, where you will observe the magnesium blob continue to burn while submerged for several seconds. Do not attempt to do this the opposite way by dumping the bucket onto the fire; an explosion will result instead. In fact, keep all moisture away from the fire in general. If you need to put the fire out for any reason, too bad.

After the fire burns itself out, the next day you might find some solidified blobs of unburnt magnesium. Be sure to remove all of these so you do not have an unexpected experience the next time you have a fire there. I have quite a nice piece where the magnesium flowed around a stick, but did not ignite.

This comment comes with the obvious disclaimer that nobody anywhere should try this for any reason, especially not the reason of fun.
by randerson | 2025-07-14 13:57:29+00:00
I dined at a fine dining restaurant in the Bay area that had obviously Googled my name in advance, and found a semi-famous person who shares my name. As I arrived the maitre'd said some things that made no sense, like she hoped the conference I was in town for was going well. But she looked visibly confused, and as a waiter walked me to my table I could see them huddling and glancing at me. Later on I searched and found that my namesake was in fact in town.
by jfengel | 2025-07-14 13:57:30+00:00
You're right; there are limits to that excuse.

In the case of North Korea, my excuse is "I haven't put the time into it because it's a small country on the other end of the earth -- nuclear armed, but without effective delivery devices and massively outgunned. I wasn't prepared to give a lot more detail in the context of an interview that isn't about geopolitics. If you want me to research I can."
by p0w3n3d | 2025-07-14 13:58:22+00:00
First of all.

We must not agree that all the market will be taken by one engine (i.e. Chromium)

Sadly there's no incentive for this, of course we have Firefox (still, right?) but it may perish because of underfunding for example. We used to have opera, IE, those engines are lost.

So what I think about the EU directive is that it basically allows one company (Google) take over the whole market. Because what we have to choose between is MS Edge (Chromium), Chrome (Chromium), Vivaldi (Chromium) and other Chromium based forks. And I forgot about Firefox which is the margin atm.

I didn't want to say that Apple should allow other engines. What I wanted to say is that I'm scared that once iOS allows installation of chrome, there will become only one engine in the world and THIS will be THE MONOPOLY we don't want to have.
by ecb_penguin | 2025-07-14 13:58:38+00:00
I think you've seriously confused the US and Europe.

> You fill out forms and make calls and get letters and all this bullshit.

No I don't? I log into my hospital health system, click a button to schedule a specialist, pick a time, and then submit.

"In 2023, the average waiting time was lowest in the U.S. and Switzerland (28 days), while it was highest in Spain (77 days) and France (63 days)." - https://www.statista.com/chart/33079/average-waiting-times-f...

> Meanwhile, I can just book stuff online instantly now that I live in europe.

That's how it works here too, lol. Are you comparing 1980s US vs 2020s Europe??? You know we have computers here in the US now...
by dfxm12 | 2025-07-14 13:58:44+00:00
You've completely missed the point. I'll break it down.

When you break a law, it doesn't magically summon an LEO and judge to catch you in the act and give you the proper penalty, so words in a code is not a deterrent. The deterrent is knowing someone will hunt you down, getting thrown in jail, it's fines that hurt your bottom line.

Yes, our society places a premium on policing break ins very harshly. Police have huge budgets for street crime & judges have harsh penalties available to them. White collar crime, like financial crime or breaking what little privacy protections is on the books? Not so much... So, again, you can't just make a law. You also have to have groups empowered to enforce the law and dole out punishments heavy enough to act as a deterrent.
by floatrock | 2025-07-14 13:58:46+00:00
The guy is a pitmaster, not a web designer.

This is a case of read the book, not the cover. The site is wealth of information on how to do all sorts of low-and-slow BBQ, both on techniques and the science behind what's going on. Pop a beer, try his Memphis Dust rub recipe, and just turn off your urge to rebuild everything in whatever flavor of javascript du jour. This isn't meant to be that kind of post.
by fryz | 2025-07-14 13:59:20+00:00
This is one of those joyful concepts you learn about as a homeowner, especially on older homes.

If you have plumbing that's done in different metal materials (copper, steel, lead, etc.) and any of your pipes touch, you have to perform regular maintenance and apply a dielectric grease (another one of those single-use materials that you have to buy and store away) or your pipes could corrode and cause a ton of damage.
by raxxorraxor | 2025-07-14 13:59:39+00:00
Well, you probably would disregard some fancy asset loader and instead just statically include some files instead.

Or if you need to do some pathing and your quickest solution is some breadth first search.

Perhaps it isn't "bad code", but still a bad solution that could quickly be implemented and be solved by a lot of computing power.

Of course you may use ready-to-use modules that provide such features as well..., but it may be prohibited by competion rules, I don't know...
by jchw | 2025-07-14 13:59:52+00:00
Honestly, how many projects with "Code of Conducts" actually use or follow them? Maybe if you're a big CNCF project or something like that, but the average GitHub project just adds one because GitHub told them to. If they were actually more about enforcing community standards and not about social signaling they'd probably just be called "contributing rules" or something boring and nondescript like how Internet rules always have been.

In other words, the point of this dance is to check a box. I mean literally, GitHub will check a box in Insights -> Community Standards when you add one.
by TeMPOraL | 2025-07-14 13:59:58+00:00
Huh, that's an interesting tidbit.

> The Simplified Spelling Board was announced on March 11, 1906, with Andrew Carnegie funding the organization, to be headquartered in New York City.

Some big names here.

> The New York Times noted that Carnegie was convinced that "English might be made the world language of the future"

He wasn't wrong.

> and an influence leading to universal peace,

That's still to be seen.

> but that this role was obstructed by its "contradictory and difficult spelling".

Well now.

It's interesting to scroll through the list of proposed changes; 100+ years later, many of them seem to be the default/correct spelling, but just as many look wrong, even when following the same transformation rules. E.g.: "brasen" -> "brazen" vs. "surprise" -> "surprize".

Thanks for linking this!
by snarf21 | 2025-07-14 14:00:37+00:00
Dieting is hard and we still under emphasize the mental and emotional aspects of it. I've found that the easier to "be good" at dieting during the 30 minutes of weekly grocery shopping then during every hour of every day at the house. I try hard to just never buy things that I'm likely to overeat or are super calorie dense because I know I can't eat potato chips responsibly.
by skeeter2020 | 2025-07-14 14:01:05+00:00
This is too simple of a take. The vast majority of prostitutes are not adult, willing, un-coerced independent contractors who take a short-term engagement. The money is made by the drug-supplying pimps and organizations that groom minors or prey on people who have no other way to support their habit. This is not moral and very different from the theoretical concept of prostitution.
by teekert | 2025-07-14 14:01:19+00:00
I once saw this movie where several UK English words were compared to US English and US came of very “simplified”. Ie, pavement “Side walk” (because walk on the side). And several things like Lorry and Hauler all becoming “truck”. I guess it was very cherry picked (I can’t find it now sadly).

Ah well, I once read an argument for “EU English”. If it’s anything like my Dunglish (Dutch-English “What talk you about”) it would indeed be simplified.
by morsch | 2025-07-14 14:01:21+00:00
It's true even if you don't consider EVs. People buy more SUVs, for one thing, but a 2025 VW Golf is also larger and heavier than a 2005 Golf, which is larger and heavier than a 1985 Golf.

Compact cars in 2025 are the size mid size cars used to be a couple of decades ago.

Meanwhile, the average family size is getting smaller and smaller and the average occupancy is ever closer to 1.
by IAmBroom | 2025-07-14 14:01:37+00:00
No. The "scientific institutions" were mostly wrong.

"Science" is a philosophical methodology, and is neither right nor wrong. However, using science tends to produce highly reliable outcomes (which are implicit in the very nature of the method, but that's a different issue).

Scientists are often very wrong. Lamarck was a very wrong biological theorist. Schottky was very right about tunneling electrons, but a rabid racist.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-07-14 14:01:43+00:00
It would be difficult for two warships to collide without some of the material in one warship touching some of the material in the other one.

But there is no matter at an event horizon. That's just an imaginary line in space. It's opaque, but not solid.

If the black holes were moving fast enough, it should be possible for their event horizons to cross and then uncross, although that would immediately raise the question of what would happen to matter in the zone of overlap. Perhaps "fast enough" would exceed the speed of light?
by swores | 2025-07-14 14:02:22+00:00
I think it's a bit misleading to call Safari a "high margin product" based on that logic, considering they could have made even more profit by not making it at all and just charge Google the exact same money to let them ship Chrome as the default iOS browser... (I mean an actual Chrome browser, not the Chrome skin of a WebKit browser that Google currently has to settle for.)

I'm not saying I'd prefer that scenario, just that it would have been a feasible choice for Apple and as such their Safari costs are actually profit losing not profit generating (other than potentially indirectly, if Apple is correct that limiting devices to their own browser engine improves the product and therefore aids device sales, but I don't think anyone would argue that's significant enough to call it their biggest profit driver).
by pavel_lishin | 2025-07-14 14:02:46+00:00
The word "habitable" in that sentence should be surrounded by very, very large quotes.

There is a zone with Earth-like temperature and pressure, but the atmosphere is still poisonous & corrosive, I think. It's someplace we could probably put a human settlement, but it wouldn't be easy and would probably be as fun to maintain as the ISS.
by slightwinder | 2025-07-14 14:02:56+00:00
That's not economical. A human mission to another planet is far too expensive and risky for the little advertising it would deliver. They could do that already on earth, send people to the north/south-poles, or even send them to the moon.. This would all be cheaper and still have similar effects.

But the mindset is probably not wrong. Maybe Jeff Bezos can rent his dick-rocket to Red Bull, so people can spacediving the atmosphere. The necessary security-tech they have to build, will probably very beneficial for actual astronauts later.