MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by zer00eyz | 2025-07-21 22:33:22+00:00
Im getting sick of hearing about the "housing problem".

As a percentage, how big do you think the home ownership problem is? Guess: 10? 15?

If I told you that home ownership is un-moveable would you believe me? That the percentage is less that 6 from peak to trough?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

63 percent of US households owned the home they lived in in 1960, we peaked around 2008 at 69 percent and are about 65 today.

Home ownership is functionally an un-moveable number.

But the housing problems, corporate ownership, rent prices, young people can't afford houses....

These things aren't housing problems. They are social ones.

First, we are using housing much differently: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/06/more-than-a-q... -- Lots of us are living alone, including the old. The boomers aren't moving in with the kids, or to homes, or shacking up together (the Golden Girls is a quaint bit of history that does not happen today). This has created a massive amount of pressure on the housing stock we have.

And that Corporate ownership problem: It is hyper local (Atlanta, Phoenix, Tampa are major markets). One would think that these things being a local issue would have local resolutions. Except the biggest predictor of voting is "home ownership" and the biggest predictor of turn out is "anything that harms the price of homes". There is simply no political will locally to change this.

But the bulk of Investor Owned Properties aren't corporate, they are people with 2nd homes. These aren't "places people could live" they are homes in markets that only exist as tourist destinations. The condo in Florida for snow birds, The house at the beach, by the lake or in the mountains for a weekend getaway.

One of the largest factors in run away cost is where the money is. I hate to say this but that older generation that isn't moving in with kids, or shacking up like golden girls... they have ALL the cash. You don't have to believe me but as these people pass things will change and it has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wealth_Transfer

And yes, lack of mobility, the missing middle, zoning (back to that pesky voting things contribute) aren't helping. And so do tenants rights (the parts of these that helped end shared living situations from house mates to boarding houses).

Do we have a housing problem, Yes. The real fixes are going to be unpopular because the facts are in conflict with how people feel
by mattmanser | 2025-07-21 22:34:22+00:00
Generally I see people saying they pay for Claude Max + ChatGPT Pro. So not multiples of 100s, one 100 and some 10s.

It's also all tax deductible if you run your own company, so you're not really spending $100s.

And for tool expenditure it's still pretty cheap.

I used to pay for Visual Studio until I realized I didn't really use the extra features any more. It's a roughly comparable expense. It's not much different from paying for something like Adobe either.
by ArnavAgrawal03 | 2025-07-21 22:35:11+00:00
For HTML, in a lot of cases, using the tags to chunk things better works. However, I've found that when I'm trying to design a page, showing models the actual image of the page leads to way better debugging than just sending the code back.

1 vs I or 0 vs O are valid issues, but in practice - and there's probably selection bias here - we've seen documents with a ton of diagrams and charts (that are much simpler to deal with as images).
by kevinventullo | 2025-07-21 22:35:35+00:00
Thanks for the reply. I am also a no-longer-practicing mathematician :)

I completely agree that a machine-generated formal proof is not the same thing as an illuminating human-generated plain-language proof (and in fact I suspect without further guidance they will be quite different, see my other stream of thought comment). However, I do think machine-generated formal proofs would be interesting for a few reasons:

1. Sometimes the obvious thing is not true!

2. I think the existence or non-existence of a machine-generated proof of a mathematical claim is interesting in its own right. E.g. what kinds of claims are easy versus hard for machines to prove?

3. In principle, I would hope they could at least give a starting point for a proper illuminating proof. E.g. the process of refinement and clarification, which is present today even for human proofs, could become more important, and could itself be machine-assisted.
by gnarzilla_ | 2025-07-21 22:35:37+00:00
Hi HN,

I’ve been working on a minimal blog/site framework called Deadlight. It’s text-first, built entirely on Cloudflare Workers + D1 (SQLite), and comes with:

Markdown support

Built-in auth

Dark/light themes

No backend/server — everything runs on the edge

Under 150KB total size

No build step, no framework, no database to manage. Just deploy and go.

I built it because I wanted something between a static site generator and a full CMS — but that could run completely on Cloudflare’s free tier. I also wanted to own my data and deployment without managing a VPS or container.

It’s not perfect, but it works. Setup takes ~5 minutes if you already have a Cloudflare account.

Live demo: https://deadlight.boo

GitHub: https://github.com/gnarzilla/deadlight-bootstrap

Would love feedback from folks here — especially thoughts on edge-first architecture and if you'd want to build on something like this.

Happy to answer questions about Cloudflare Workers/D1 too.
by rstuart4133 | 2025-07-21 22:36:29+00:00
> from Windows to plain Ubuntu

It is unfortunate that Ubuntu still has the mind share it does. I abandoned it a while ago as too unreliable. It is effectively Debian testing (they call it testing for a reason) with proprietary addons that have even less testing than Debian testing.

Originally, Debian making it difficult to get non open source firmware during installation was a reason for using Ubuntu, but now even that justification gone. Meanwhile Ubuntu anti-features like snap accumulate.
by VoidWhisperer | 2025-07-21 22:36:52+00:00
Rochester Institute of Technology had MIPS in their CSCI-250 Concepts of Computer Systems class. I remember debugging my final project for the semester being a bit of a nightmare because it was a much larger MIPS assembly project, and debugging it used gdb if I remember correctly..

Not sure if they still use it as I graduated from there back in 2020
by tasty_freeze | 2025-07-21 22:37:49+00:00
I was born in 1964 in the midwest US, the 7th out of 8 children. The house was a two story brick structure with five bedrooms and two bathrooms. The house was less than 2000 sq ft, but that included a moldy basement with seepage and jackposts all over the place helping support the sagging joists, so the real living space was closer to 2/3 of that, so 1350 sq ft or so.

The house had been built before 1920 when expectations were less grand; those rooms were much smaller than nearly any home I've been in built after 1980. When my grandpa came to visit each summer, it meant all five boys in one room, the two youngest in sleeping bags and occasionally getting stepped on in the middle of the night when one of my older brothers would get up and forget we were there.

There was also no air conditioning, nor ceiling fans. My parents had a box fan in their bedroom window during the summer. It was a big deal when the bedroom I shared with my next older brother got a box fan too; that was in high school.
by nikolayasdf123 | 2025-07-21 22:38:25+00:00
agree. if those websites were like "Google" that literally indexes whole internet, or "New York Times" which is 175 years old, or "Bloomberg" which is biggest financial data provider — then those can be called products. website is just a surface to provide some real value, backed by really good design and execution, marketing and operations.

what we see instead is a myriad of half-backed, useless, un-maintained, poorly-executed, poorly-operated, poorly-designed solutions to non-existent problems, like shooting a gun into the sky and hoping it will land on a target.
by treyfitty | 2025-07-21 22:39:16+00:00
idk… I for one like the fact that Gmail sucks at search to be honest because I (naively?) believe they don’t profile everything in your inbox. For example, if I subscribe to a newsletter about “healthy lifestyle,” it won’t return that newsletter, but return string matches where “healthy” or “home” are relevant. If they profiled the emails for contextual awareness to know what I meant by “healthy living,” I’d be concerned.
X-59: NASA's quiet supersonic test jet rolls
by atlashere | 2025-07-21 22:40:11+00:00
The 99-ft, single-seat X-59 is tuned to turn the window-shaking boom into a soft “thump” while cruising at Mach 1.4. Community flights start next; if the noise data wins over regulators, the 50-year ban on over-land supersonic routes could finally get a rethink.
by kube-system | 2025-07-21 22:41:02+00:00
Literally on the same website as this post you'll find testimonials of companies that use CT scanners to find leaks in cosmetics bottles, and to refine the fit of a deodorant cap.

https://www.lumafield.com/case-studies/loreal

https://www.lumafield.com/case-studies/case-study-enabling-8...
by bryanlarsen | 2025-07-21 22:41:03+00:00
Nuclear has never been particularly affordable. It's always been more expensive than coal or gas, even in France in the 70s-80s and China in the 2010s.

Here's how much it cost to build nuclear in France during its golden age: https://ifp.org/nuclear-power-plant-construction-costs. Adjust for inflation and draw your own conclusion.

China's nuclear costs are more opaque, but are estimated at $3B per GW. Again, not competitive.
by rawgabbit | 2025-07-21 22:41:07+00:00
It is her chance to dress up. She packs ten different outfits…

I can handle the FrecciaRossa and SNAV with all that the luggage. Can’t do it on local bus or train. I was pleasantly surprised by Rome’s buses. Now I tap my credit card. No more having to go to a local shop to buy a ticket or pay by cash.
by camgunz | 2025-07-21 22:41:14+00:00
> Yes, but my point is, trying to silence the speech of others is part of free speech, and you and your sources have said so. So criticizing the absolutist for not being a consistent absolutist, when you don't even believe in any simple consistent rule, is petty.

What bananas sophistry is this? All this person is saying is that contemporarily free speech absolutists tend to be hypocrites. Surely you aren't arguing that those supporting any limit on speech can't call out hypocrisy amongst free speech absolutists. Wouldn't this also be you limiting their speech? Are we incepting deeper and deeper into some kind of ironic morass of hypocrisy?
by MostlyStable | 2025-07-21 22:42:14+00:00
Is the pricing paying for access to models, or is it expected that users must have their own subscriptions/API access to OpenAI/Anthropic/whichever model providers?

If the former, is there a non-paid option for people to bring their own model access? If the latter, what is the subscription pricing paying for? I am in favor of subscriptions for on-going services/costs, but in the absence of on-going costs, I'd prefer a pay-once option.
by cptskippy | 2025-07-21 22:43:34+00:00
"It works in California" means that it is potentially viable elsewhere. As others have pointed out: California is not the sunniest, not the simplest roads, most consistent weather, or the most favorable regulatory environment.

If it works in California then it will probably work elsewhere. AND more importantly, if it doesn't work in California then it's probably not going to work anywhere else.
by miffy900 | 2025-07-21 22:44:47+00:00
Actually it wasn't too long ago, in the early-2010's, that Microsoft was promoting SharePoint for internet sites; I think at one point some Europoean car manufacturer (BMW? Ferrari?) had their global marketing site on SharePoint. Of course that didn't last long, as Microsoft licensed it at a crazy price ($40k per site or something like that).
by foxglacier | 2025-07-21 22:45:08+00:00
There's a balance between best possible healthcare for all individuals and full blown eugenics. Neither extreme is very good, so yea it's worth at least trying to understand the consequences.

In the extreme of too much healthcare for too long, we'll breed humans into being dependent on it. That's a risk because if we somehow stop being able to provide that healthcare, we might die out. On the other hand, maybe we'll always be able to provide that healthcare and we'll become superior in some way as a consequence. This probably already happened with the technology of clothes, cooking, and houses. We depend on those because we're hopeless at digesting raw food and staying warm at night, whereas animals without those technologies are burdened by things like permanent fur coats and more expensive digestive systems, or having to slow down in the cold.

That's general healthcare. The issue here is different - "bad" genes are probably actually good at the population level so do we really want to get rid of them?

I'm not much of a luddite but I really don't think we should manually eliminate any "bad" genes from the gene pool. That's like trying to improve the environment by exterminating some troublesome species without realizing the indirect benefits it provides. Do you also call protecting endangered and apparently useless species a religious like fear of disruption of some higher balance?
by atonse | 2025-07-21 22:45:19+00:00
Is this just a result of a strong market since most of their “wealth” is in stocks, driving up the perceived gap and resulting in such shocking sounding stats?

I am not defending inequality but how is stock-based wealth taking away from lower income workers? Is it a taxation issue?

Does the number of billionaires impact the overall cost of living of a whole metro area? If so, how?

I don’t quite understand the comparison. Genuinely asking.
by immibis | 2025-07-21 22:45:25+00:00
It depends what you count as political reasons. Plausible bullshit could be generated to support the idea that arrest for any particular crime is political, or just as easily, to oppose that idea.

I draw the bar for "political arrest" at somewhere like "arrested for opposing the incumbent in an election". I don't think "arrested for saying it's time to gas the muslims" - which is the sort of thing happening in the UK and getting counted in these numbers - should be called "political arrest". That's just called committing a crime. That would only become a "political arrest" if gassing the muslims was a politically acceptable viewpoint, equal in value to not gassing them.
by cptskippy | 2025-07-21 22:45:38+00:00
> It's interesting to me that you'd go the hassle of hosting your own SharePoint on prem, but leave it internet facing.

Once upon a time Microsoft marketed it as, and a lot of Orgs adopted SharePoint as their Intranet. With SharePoint 2019 being sunset, a lot of Orgs are scrambling to implement replacements.
by zahlman | 2025-07-21 22:46:27+00:00
There is no copy on write and no pass by reference.

Python is "pass by value", according to the original, pedantic sense of the term, but the values themselves have reference semantics (something that was apparently not contemplated by the people coming up with such terminology — even though Lisp also works that way). Every kind of object in Python is passed the same way. But a better term is "pass by assignment": passing a parameter to an argument works the same way as assigning a value to a variable. And the semantic distinctions you describe as nonexistent are in fact easy to demonstrate.

The model is easy to explain, and common in modern programming languages. It is the same as non-primitive types in Java (Java arrays also have these reference semantics, even for primitive element types, but they also have other oddities that arguably put them in a third category), or class instances (as opposed to struct instances, which have value semantics) in C# (although C# also allows both of these things to be passed by reference).

The pre-allocated integer objects are a performance optimization, nothing to do with semantics.

The model is useful for programming, because it's correct. We know that Python does not pass by reference because you cannot affect a caller's local variable, and thus cannot write a "swap" function. We know that Python copies the references around, rather than cloning objects, because you still can modify the object named by a caller's local variable. We know that no copy-on-write occurs because we can trivially set up examples that share objects (including common gotchas like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/240178).
by kube-system | 2025-07-21 22:46:35+00:00
It's also common to not put protection on the end of an 18650, which is probably a big reason we don't see more of these in user-serviceable devices. Even if you ship a device with a protected cell, the inherent implication of an 18650 socket is that someone is going to buy a cell from somewhere else and stick it in there. (and maybe throw a few in their junk drawer along with some loose change and rusty silverware)
by zamadatix | 2025-07-21 22:46:56+00:00
Regarding the comparison likely because the data source only gave homicides per ride and didn't come with the corresponding information to convert that into homicides per person year of use. The choice of 500 is a bit of an arbitrary example of what the latter might look like (~2x per workday).

What they really want to compare is per equivalent trip in the city (same mileage, same path, same time) but that's a bit impossible to do directly. Showing the number for going to work and back every day for a year is 1/10th that of traffic deaths in NYC as a whole gets the same idea across despite the lack of precise data anyways.
by immibis | 2025-07-21 22:47:05+00:00
Except, in some countries, it is a crime. Why do you think it's not one? Are you familiar with UK law?

In Germany there are even stricter laws. Insulting someone is a crime, even if the things you say are factually true.

And then you have repressive dictatorships, like the UAE, USA and China, where you can't disagree with the government on anything. It's definitely a crime there, to say the president looks like Winnie the Pooh.
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-07-21 22:47:19+00:00
> In the 1800s, it was commonplace to have 8 children. Did they all lived in huge houses?

This is a bit of segue from where we were. To brings us more in line with the topic: In the early 20th century, large and extended families lived in commonly built row housing.

Their roomier accommodations were one piece of communities that were more affordable and an overall better fit for larger groups & families (than modern housing and communities).
by throwawayffffas | 2025-07-21 22:47:36+00:00
Phones now days don't have a lot of ferrous stuff in them they are pretty much all battery, copper, silicon, glass, plastic and maybe aluminum. Your keys probably have more steel on them than your phone.

People have gone in MRIs with phones with no adverse effects, except maybe damaged speakers. It's more likely that the MRI is going to damage the electronics than it will physically rip it off you.

It's all about the amount of ferrous material involved. It can take your keys of your pocket, but I doubt you can't peel them of it.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-07-21 22:47:53+00:00
Europe and the UK have instant SEPA credits and debits, no? That's 41 countries within the single instant payment system.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/instant_pa...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PYMNTS-Rea...
by OutOfHere | 2025-07-21 22:48:29+00:00
The comment suggesting torture (via the xkcd link) is also a very big IF. There is no proof of the existence of torture for such routine investigations.

The article notes:

> if a person is found to be in possession or control of any books of account, or other documents and information maintained digitally, on computer systems, or stored electronically, then they must provide the designated income tax officer “reasonable technical and other assistance (including access code, by whatever name called) as may be necessary” to enable the officer to inspect “any information, electronic records and communication or data contained in or available on such computer systems”.

> “In most of the cases of search operation the taxpayers do not share the password/login credential of online forums/portals/e-mail accounts, etc.

The article does not note what will happen when the defendant does not share the info. It is the best interest of the defendant to not share the info. Going forward, it is very possible that the defendant will incur a small fine for non-compliance instead of a big fine for tax evasion, so it's still a favorable outcome. There is no proof of torture or even imprisonment.
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-07-21 22:48:30+00:00
I have one like that. I have the email first.last@gmail.com, and I have a very uncommon last name. Lo and behold, Google let some dude in Australia who happens to share my name sign up with firstlast@gmail.com. According to the docs the two should be equivalent, so they shouldn't have let him sign up, but they did... and now I get his email all the time. I have gotten job offers, bills from medical offices, even one follow up email from his therapist. And lots and lots of ads, of course. I have tried to let people know (when it's a real person contacting me) to let this guy know about the email situation, but either they don't reach out to him or he doesn't care. At this point I just delete all the emails meant for him without reading them, and figure if he misses out on a job offer or something... I tried my best.

Still, bizarre that the situation was allowed to occur in the first place by Google. Clearly they need to beef up their account creation checks a bit.
by zahlman | 2025-07-21 22:48:55+00:00
> I think “everything is by reference” is a better model for programming than “you need to learn which objects are by reference and which are by value”.

The model is: everything is a reference (more accurately, has reference semantics); and is passed by assignment ("value", in older, cruder terms).

> but if it weren’t for bad design like `+=` that wouldn’t be necessary. A object would be mutable if-and-only-if it supported mutating methods.

`+=` is implemented by `__iadd__` where available (which is expected to be mutating) and by `__add__` as a fallback (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2347265). The re-assignment of the result is necessary to make the fallback work. Reference for your "major wtf" is https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9172263.
by pixl97 | 2025-07-21 22:48:59+00:00
>Builders buy larger plots and then use it to make multiple houses.

Most people that had their house built decades ago don't realize the requirements for things like runoff control in modern subdivisions. In the past your water was someone else's problem, which as populations grew lead to some people getting screwed when flood waters reached new heights because of all the new impermeable land. Water impounding and runoff control are very hard to build by an individual unless they have a large chunk of land (which acts as the sink). Any dense new SFH typically ends up in a MUD that provides all the utilities and water controls and this is insanely expensive unless distributed across a large number of units.

If we want to control housing prices it won't be by building more SFH. It will be by building more dense style housing.