MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by moefh | 2025-07-19 22:16:26+00:00
I don't see how you can divide the octave equally and not end up with equal temperament: that's exactly what equal temperament is!

> Tempered scales are generally EDO with tempering.

That's not historically accurate. EDO wasn't used until very recently (about the middle of the 19th century I think), tempering was used way before that.

For example, the first widely used temperament (which became popular in the Renaissance) was the quarter-comma meantone, which shrinks each fifth (from the natural 3/2) so that the major thirds are perfectly 5/4. The name "quarter-comma" means that the amount of shrinkage is 1/4 of the "syntonic comma", which is the difference you get beteween going up 4 fifths (e.g. C->G->D->A->E) and a major third plus 2 octaves (C->E->E->E). Those final Es can only be the same if you shrink the fifth or stretch the third (or both). What this tempering does is shrink each fifth by 1/4 of the difference (so that going up 4 fifths closes it) and doesn't touch the major third. That means the major thirds are beautiful, and the fifths are a little off. For a chosen key, that is -- everything sounds horrible as soon as you try to change the key too far away from the chosen key.

In the Baroque period a lot of other temperaments were invented, the Werckmeister temperaments were very widely used in (what is today) Germany for example (a lot of people believe Bach had one of these in mind when writing the Well-Tempered Clavier). Those temperaments were also defined by how much each fifth is changed from the "normal" 3/2, but each fifth was to be changed by some different amount in some complicated way.

It was only much later that EDO (12-TET, or "equal temperament") started to be widely used. You can think of it (and people do!) as a "temperament" because it just means you shrink the fifth from the "normal" 3/2 = 1.5 to be instead 2^(7/12) =~ 1.4983, so that going up 12 fifths lands you exactly 7 octaves above (since 2^(7/12)^12 = 2^7). That also means that the octave is divided exactly equally, because going up 12 fifths goes through every one of the 12 notes before going back to the original note.
by pksebben | 2025-07-19 22:17:09+00:00
So we ought to be thankful we're not in NK. Got it. Glad your bar is so high. It's apparent that you're decided but other folks will read this so let's break it down barney style.

The 'third parties' argument is a painful joke, statistically speaking [0 1 2]. You can make all sorts of arguments as to why but the fact is that without support from D or R you can go get fucked.

This raises the question - are there only two opinions? With the obvious answer - of course not. We could say 'well, maybe people fall generally into two camps', but that doesn't really pass muster either, does it? I have friends on both sides of the aisle and I agree with all of them on some things. This is evidenced by the amount of voters registered third party despite the abysmal election numbers [3].

So what's going on here? Well, people are being strategic. We're on first-past-the-post in most places. This means you're typically voting not for what you want but for what you don't want. That is not a system of representation, it's a sports game where the prize is some cosmetic social program changes and not much else.

Mamdani is an excellent example of what this system does to third party candidates. As soon as there's a legitimate threat to the entrenched parties, fundraising spikes massively for the opposition [4].

Not getting a vote under this system wouldn't be more totalitarian, it would be more honest.

0 -https://pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/party-breakdown

1 - https://www.senate.gov/senators/SenatorsRepresentingThirdorM...

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_and_independent_me...

3 - https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-voters-have-a-party-a...

4 - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/nyregion/mamdani-adams-do...
by jcarterwil | 2025-07-19 22:17:11+00:00
Wrote a long-form future cast modeling how the chronic disease epidemic could be solved, framed as a classic market disruption scenario (a la Christensen/Hayek) rather than a top-down policy shift.

The core thesis is that the incumbent healthcare system, optimized for profitable disease management, is being outcompeted by a new, decentralized system built on nutrient density and transparency.

Key disruptive elements explored:

New Tech Stack: How companies like Earth Optics (GPR soil mapping), Miraterra (soil DNA sequencing), and Edacious (nutrient verification) created the data layer for a new food system.

Vertical Disintegration: The commodity ag market splits into separate supply chains for Food, Feed, and Fuel, driven by consumer demand for traceability and quality.

N-of-1 Biohacking: A new generation rejects institutional health and uses CGMs and smart rings to drive market demand, forcing CPGs to adapt or die.

The "Upstream Cure": The economic model flips when regenerative ag makes nutrient-dense whole food cheaper and better-tasting than ultra-processed alternatives, collapsing the business model for sick care.

It's a thought experiment on how interlocking, complex systems can be transformed by market-based, technological solutions from the ground up. Curious to hear this community's take on the plausibility of this pathway and the tech involved.
by mirdaki | 2025-07-19 22:17:11+00:00
I can touch on it more. Docker and compose files are great for getting things going, contained, and keeping everything declarative

But I found the more services I used with Docker, the more time it took to update. I didn't want to just update to latest, I wanted to update to specific version, for better rollback. That meant manually checking and updating every single service, bringing each file down, and then back up. It's not entirely unmanageable, but it became enough friction I wasn't updating things consistently. And yes, I could have automated some of that, but never got around to it

NixOS, in addition to the things I mention in the post, is just a two step process to update everything (`nix flake update` and `nixos-rebuild`). That makes updating my OS and every package/service super easy. And provides built in rollback if it fails. Plus I can configure things like my firewall and other security things in NixOS with the same config I do everything else

Also, Nix packages/services provides a lot of the "containerization" benefits. It's reproducible. It doesn't have dependency problems (see this for morehttps://nixos.org/guides/how-nix-works/). And most services use separate users with distinct permissions, giving pretty good security.

It's not that Docker can't do those things. It's that Nix does those things in a way that work really well with how I think
by hoistbypetard | 2025-07-19 22:17:51+00:00
I think the term "supply chain attack" is frequently overused, and if I were feeling cantankerous, I might split hairs and argue that I was framing it more as a "watering hole attack" instead. But I agree that it could also be framed as a "supply chain attack", and you seem to have correctly realized that I was suggesting this was an excellent approach to either attack people using LLMs connected to agentic tooling or to render your gadget incompatible with such usage, if that was your goal.

I do not think it's a particularly good way to assist such users.
by phtrivier | 2025-07-19 22:17:52+00:00
I still hate those articles title with all my heart.

Is there a way to ban lies about cancer vaccines, fusion reactors, and infinite battery storage ?

Sure, okay, people are working on that, and they're making small incremental improvements and that's good for them ; and unfortunately they need to advertise to secure more funding for the later incremental stage of their research. I understand that.

But please stop with the nonsensical "cancer vaccine", "miracle cancer treatment", "cancer breakthrough" etc... This is an insult to everyone who lost a loved one to cancer.

Cause I'll be _really_ happy when a _real_ cure happens (as in, when anyone can go the their doctor, for real, and get a real "cure", and they have no cancer after that, and it's a simple as getting a cure for, well, you know, the diseases that we "cure", and that are definitely not cancer ?)

But this is not today. Today we "deal" with cancer, we "spare" people some time, we squash it a bit and maybe save a couple of years if you have the "lucky" kind of cancer - and that's great, and let's continue doing that.

But enough with the headlines.

Play it like Apple, please.

Tell me about it when I can buy it.
by weinzierl | 2025-07-19 22:18:31+00:00
I remember it roughly like this:

Before the PC era computers were mostly integrated in the keyboard (many 8-bit home computers), the monitor (Apple Lisa) or both (Commodore PET).

Then they became more or less flat boxes on the desktop. Early PC's were like that (the bulky version) but also early workstations like Sun's SPARCstation (the more elegant version). They were meant to put a monitor atop.

Over time the boxes got bigger and louder and the monitors got bigger which made this design impractical. Some people flipped the boxes, put them under their table and the tower was born. Not long and professionally made tower cases appeared.

Over time the bulky towers got smaller and we had Midi- and Mini-Towers on the PC side and things like the Sun Ultra 24 or the SGI O2 on the workstation side. These could be put on the table again but this time next to the monitor and not below it.
by psadri | 2025-07-19 22:18:48+00:00
Another approach would be more comfortable travel at today’s speeds (or even slower). Imagine boarding a plane with a luxury hotel like experience. A buffet breakfast, some work/reading in a nice library, followed by some treadmill / stationary bike time, then a shower, lunch, a massage in the spa. Dinner later before a classical concert and finally heading to sleep in a comfy bed. Then wake up and disembark at your destination.
by lukevp | 2025-07-19 22:18:55+00:00
The implication I got from the GP comment is that the U.S. would be reluctant to have CCP manufacturing the processors due to the (proven) risk that they’ll modify and backdoor stuff.

If TSMC over invests in US factories then they could be taken over under imminent domain if Taiwan was no longer independent. So they have to keep a large portion of manufacturing domestic to Taiwan for lessened geopolitical risk.
by pseufaux | 2025-07-19 22:20:02+00:00
It's a bit like when non-JS programmers complain about JavaScript. It's mostly nonsense. That's not to say that JavaScript doesn't have flaws and footguns, but the opinion of novices in the language is not who I am interested in learning from. Python is the same. It has flaws and idiosyncrasies, especially in the standard library (cough cough xml.ElementTree), but the core language is fairly consistent and predictable. Expecting casting functions like bool() to parse strings like JavaScript does makes little sense.
by hollerith | 2025-07-19 22:20:46+00:00
You would start the Jupyter application, then use a browser to go to localhost:8888 :)

To start the application, you would typically use the start menu on Windows or the Dock on MacOS. Alternatively on MacOS you could point the Finder at the /Applications folder, then start the application from the Finder window.

(This is not meant as an endorsement of notebooks.)
by timmytokyo | 2025-07-19 22:20:54+00:00
If using indices is going to be your answer, then it seems to me you should at least contend with the OP's argument that this approach violates the very reason the borrowchecker was introduced in the first place.

From the post:

"The Rust community's whole thing is commitment to compiler-enforced correctness, and they built the borrowchecker on the premise that humans can't be trusted to handle references manually. When the same borrowchecker makes references unworkable, their solution is to... recommend that I manually manage them, with zero safety and zero language support?!? The irony is unreal."
by cultureswitch | 2025-07-19 22:21:01+00:00
What makes you think the regulators didn't predict the outcome?

Of course the business which depend on harvesting data will do anything they can to continue harvesting data. The regulation just makes that require consent. This is good.

If businesses are intent to keep on harvesting data by using dark patterns to obtain "consent", these businesses should either die or change. This is good.
by labrador | 2025-07-19 22:21:41+00:00
Point taken. I wouldn't want to argue with someone's LLM. I guess I'm an outlier in that I would never post LLM output as my own. I write, then I sometimes have an LLM check it because it points out where people might be confused or misinterpret certain phrases.

Edit: I'm 67 so ChatGPT is especially helpful in pointing out where my possible unconscious dinosaur attitudes may be offensive to Millennials and Gen Z.
by theodric | 2025-07-19 22:22:03+00:00
But they were really, really good. An Indigo² Solid Impact R4400SC 250 was my main PC from 1998 until I left the US in late 2003. Built like a tank. Incredibly smooth in operation. Rang rings around my iMac G4, which ended up just sitting on top of the SGI's Trinitron running iTunes. I loved that machine, and I will go retrieve it in a few months.

Now the Fuel, of the final MIPS generation, was hot garbage. Early-2000s PC crap plus SGI does not equal awesome. Fast, but flaky, stuttery, and with too many graphical artifacts for the price. Maybe the V12 was better than the V10. I don't care to find out.
by gonzobonzo | 2025-07-19 22:23:08+00:00
Indeed. Ideally, you don't want to trust other people's summaries of sources, but you want to look at the sources yourself, often with a critical eye. This is one of the things that everyone gets taught in school, everyone's says they agree with, and then just about no one does (and at times, people will outright disparage the idea). Once out of school, tertiary sources get treated as if they're completely reliable.

I've found using LLM's to be a good way of getting an idea of where the current historiography of a topic stands, and which sources I should dive into. Conversely, I've been disappointed by the number of Wikipedia editors who become outright hostile when you say that Wikipedia is unreliable and that people often need to dive into the sources to get a better understanding of things. There have been some Wikipedia articles I've come across that have been so unreliable that people who didn't look at other sources would have been greatly mislead.
by simfree | 2025-07-19 22:23:26+00:00
The whole system that supports TSMC will break down in the event of a war.

You can see this with SMIC and their inability to get modern lithography systems from the only leading edge vendor ASML. Sure, you can create your own vendors to replace such companies, but they are unlikely to ever catch up to the leading edge or even be only a generation or two behind the leading edge despite massive investments.

With non-leading edge equipment & processes you have to make compromises like making much larger chips so you can get the same compute in a low power profile. This drives up the initial cost of every device you make and you run into throughput issues like what Huawei has experienced where they cannot produce enough ships to ship their flagship ship phones at a reasonable price and simultaneously keep them in stock.

Instead you get boutique products that sell out practically immediately because there were so few units that were able to be manufactured.
by TMEHpodcast | 2025-07-19 22:23:29+00:00
I’m a space enthusiast, and from what I’ve learned here’s the breakdown: solar systems take millions of years to form. It all starts in a nebula where gas collapses and coalesces into a star and surrounding material. The process is long and complex (and not fully understood), but we know it eventually produces rocky planets, gas giants, and smaller debris.

This new paper reports something exciting, they’ve spotted a moment that signals the beginning of rocky planet formation. In the system HOPS-315, gas has cooled enough for solids to condense, which is when planet formation kicks off. This happens about twice as far from its baby star as Earth is from the Sun.

And of course, ALMA, the telescope that made the discovery, is fantastic at catching solar systems in the act of forming. It was only a matter of time before this stage was observed.
by lanza | 2025-07-19 22:23:44+00:00
Because the usefulness of an AI model is reliably solving a problem, not being able to solve a problem given 10,000 tries.

Claude Code is still only a mildly useful tool because it's horrific beyond a certain breadth of scope. If I asked it to solve the same problem 10,000 times I'm sure I'd get a great answer to significantly more difficult problems, but that doesn't help me as I'm not capable of scaling myself to checking 10,000 answers.
by pksebben | 2025-07-19 22:23:53+00:00
For real. I feel like we need a PSA about how many of us aren't supporters of the opposition just because we don't like 'your guy'.

Ronald Reagan was a trash goblin who destroyed our economy to enrich the wealthy.

So was Bill Clinton.

George Bush was a war criminal who indiscriminately bombed brown people.

So was Obama.

Hillary Clinton was a huckster con artist who worked for her wealthy friends.

So is Trump.

Your dichotomy is a trap. There are no good guys because the system itself is rigged in favor of militaristic capitalist oligarchs, which is the actual problem.
by pyman | 2025-07-19 22:24:25+00:00
I'm worried about this. Companies like Wikipedia spent years trying to get things right, and now suddenly Google and Microsoft (including OpenAI) are using GenAI to generate content that, frankly, can't be trusted because it's often made up.

That's deeply concerning, especially when these two companies control almost all the content we access through their search engines, browsers and LLMs.

This needs to be regulated. These companies should be held accountable for spreading false information or rumours, as it can have unexpected consequences.
by areoform | 2025-07-19 22:24:31+00:00
For the self-described "skeptics," 2 hour travel to anywhere on Earth means that everyone gets to have a donor organ shipped to them within the viability window.

If we could go from SF to Tokyo in 2 hours, it would permanently change geopolitics. Imagine commuting between Shenzhen and SF. One foot in each of the two most innovative cities on Earth.

The smaller our world becomes, the more peaceful it becomes.
by ofalkaed | 2025-07-19 22:25:03+00:00
To offer something better than this mess and correct. Fretted instruments are tehnically unequally tempered do to the physics the string, the fret board is EDO but in fretting the string we stretch it and raise its pitch. Fretted instruments use various compensation tricks to lessen this effect but most notes are off from both 12EDO and 12TET, we get the open string and the 12th fret but the rest are off by varying amounts.
by phtrivier | 2025-07-19 22:25:10+00:00
But the title "inadvertently" forgets to mention that the "universal cancer vaccine" is not universal, not a vaccine, and does not cure cancer unless you're a rodent.

So, of course it gets to the HN front page, because the title is so catchy !

I guess the only way to make it go to the front page faster would have be to label the article : "MIT alumni-founded, Standford-based, YC-funded startup creates universal cancer vaccine with AI, in Rust"
by Terr_ | 2025-07-19 22:25:15+00:00
I am personally aware. Yet why do you believe people declaring chanting "life begins at conception" do not make preventing miscarriages into a part of their national political platform the same way as criminalizing abortion?

That's like someone who says "cows are people" and wants the death penalty for hamburgers, but they're a-OK with dairy farms and leather.

It shows that even the proponents of the slogan don't actually believe it.
by mrb | 2025-07-19 22:25:25+00:00
"The smallest gate was built with an AFM out ~7 atoms; that's about 8 orders of magnitude smaller than a transistor"

I was thrown off by your statement, so here are some numbers: a modern chip like Nvidia's GH100 manufactured at a 5 nm process is 80 billion gates in 814 mm². That means a gate is 100 nm wide which is the width of 500 silicon atoms. On a 2D area that's 250k atoms. I don't know the thickness but assuming it's also 500 atoms then a gate has a volume of 125 million atoms.

So I guess you get your "8 orders of magnitude" difference if you compare the three-dimensional volume (7 atoms vs 125 million). But on one dimension it's only 2 orders of magnitude (7 atoms vs 500). And the semiconductor industry measures progress on one dimension so to me the "2 orders of magnitude" seems the more relevant comparison to make.
by redwall_hp | 2025-07-19 22:26:14+00:00
Yes. The cycle has completed and the old new things are new again. But they're still too new and unproven for the React-embroiled companies to switch just yet.

HTMX is basically a framework for AJAX that lets you more quickly set up interactions in the markup instead of having to write scripts to manipulate the DOM yourself. It also tells on sending HTML fragments over the asynchronous request instead of JSON that has to be "rendered."
by cultureswitch | 2025-07-19 22:27:30+00:00
To be fair, anyone who genuinely likes React is probably insane?

Plenty of great projects are developed by people working at Meta. Doesn't change the fact that the company as a whole should be split in at least 6 parts, and at least two thirds of these parts should be regulated to death. And when it comes to activities that do not improve anyone's life such as advertisement and data collection, I do mean literally regulated into bankruptcy.
by leptons | 2025-07-19 22:28:36+00:00
American corporations are what created "Silicon Valley" in the first place. America is not slow, and it's definitely not "too big to fail" as the current administration is trying to make it fail, but that is an aside.

I think America doesn't manufacture semiconductors because it is a very unclean process, full of nasty chemicals. It's expensive to make semiconductors and deal with the clean-up. There are less environmental restrictions and cheaper labor in other parts of the world.

There are a bunch of Superfund sites around Mountain View, CA that serve as a reminder about the US Semiconductor industry - Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, National Semiconductor, Monolithic Memories, and Raytheon to name a few.

Nobody in the U.S. really wants that in their back yard. Of course we've seen the same kind of thing from fracking, and everything else that rightly should be regulated or banned.

What happens now with a defunded and purposefully dysfunctional EPA is anyone's guess. Maybe manufacturers will exploit the political climate to further destroy the environment to make a few more million or billion dollars.
by archon1410 | 2025-07-19 22:29:27+00:00
My disdain is for the fact that hundreds of millions of Indians cannot access higher education in their native language, and instead of simply learning a foreign language as a subject like the rest of world, they have the bear the burden[1] of learning things in a foreign language which they have to simultaneously learn. I have disdain for the people responsible for this mess. I do not have any disdain for any language-speaking class, specially not one which I might be part of.

[1]https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/4/2168