MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by korse | 2025-07-28 15:21:34+00:00
I don't know anyone who thinks chickens are the path to complete freedom from society. I do know many who feel that chickens and other such measures provide a level of independence from societal structures they wish not to associate with or do not trust.

Having your own infra is similar. You still need electricity, replacement components and perhaps friends with similar ideas that you can trade information/services with over packet radio links but it is certainly better than whoops, no internet for a few days, nothing works, touch grass.

It also is a nice backup in case anyone starts actively censoring (versus the passive self-censoring created by tempting people into walled gardens) the internet where I live. Being able to shitpost over encrypted packet radio and exchange files/news is certainly better than radio silence and state media.
by whartung | 2025-07-28 15:21:50+00:00
Late at night, at a friends house, and his car died, but I need a ride to my car.

So, we took his motorcycle.

We come up to a street light, and it's not sensing us. So, I hop off, run over, press the WALK button, and run back and hop back on. In moments, the light turns green, the WALK sign says WALK and we're on our way.

Inevitably, a couple of blocks later, we're in the same boat.

Being too clever by half, I rinse and repeat -- off the bike, hit the WALK button, run back.

This time, the WALK sign turned on, but the light remained red.

Curses.

We just ran that one.
by rickdeckard | 2025-07-28 15:21:51+00:00
I'd argue that they are not merely an advertising company, they are an "attention facilitating company", taking and curating attention of large groups of users and making it systematically available to other parties, acting as middleman.

You know, like Apple...

> [A] is first and foremost a [B] company. They're going to do whatever makes them the most profit.

This is the definition of any commercial business.
by deepdarkforest | 2025-07-28 15:22:36+00:00
Using LLMs as a critic/red teamer is great in theory, but economically is not that more useful, doesnt save that much time, if anything, it increases the time because you might uncover more errors or think about your work more. Which is amazing if you value quality work and you have learnt to think. Unfortunately, all the VC money is pushing the opposite, using LLMs to just do mediocre work. No point of critiquing anything if your job is to output some slop from bullet points, pass it along to the reader/recipient who also uses LLms to boil your slop down back to bullet points and pass it again etc. Even mentally, it's much more enticing or addicting to use LLMs for everything if you don't' care about the output of your work, and let your brain atrophy.

I also see this in a lot of undergrads i work with. The top 10% is even better with LLMs, they know much more and they are more productive. But the rest have just resulted to turning in clear slop with no care. I still have not read a good solution on how to incentivize/restrict the use of LLms in both academia or at work correctly. Which i suspect is just the old reality of quality work is not desirable by the vast majority, and LLMs are just magnifying this
by gpm | 2025-07-28 15:23:52+00:00
The link __s posted is really more the level where you need to be aware of the sqrt(n) cost, as you scale from one device to another (L1 cache -> L2 cache -> L3 cache -> ram -> SSD -> SSD in another computer in the same datacenter -> SSD in another computer in the same continent...)

As far as I know (and I may just be ignorant), ignoring the very important part of the equation that are caches, it doesn't really matter what row/column you address in RAM, at that level things are dictated by clock speeds.

Caches are obviously very important though, and beyond optimizing the probability of cache hits, on modern CPUs some cores are "closer" than others and thus cache-interactions between them are faster: https://github.com/nviennot/core-to-core-latency And if you optimize based on this you can get speedups, both at the macro level by doing things like scheduling things that talk on "close" cores, and at the micro level by doing things like implementing NUMA aware locking primitives: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3477132.3483557

There's also definitely been CPUs (not sure if this is still a thing) where some cores share memory channels and some cores don't so you can access RAM faster (higher bandwidth) if you spread your access between the two sets of cores instead of staying within one.
by littlestymaar | 2025-07-28 15:23:59+00:00
> Our pediatrician physically inspected him, decided nothing was wrong, but sent him to get an X-ray and CAT scan anyway. It took just an hour and a half because the U.S. has expensive medical equipment just lying around.

Because it has the X-ray equipment, they have make a return on investment on it, and that's why they end up doing useless tests. Those are even harmful by the way, as X-rays are ionizing reaction, and useless CT scans are actually responsible for a non-negligible fraction of cancer in the US.

The reason why european countries don't run more CT scans isn't that they lack equipment, it's because the risk/benefit isn't good for cases like your son.

> In another example, my wife’s grandmother had a stroke at 87. They medevacced her out of her house in rural Oregon to Portland. Then the doctors wanted to do a bunch of expensive procedures until she passed away a few days later. She was a lovely lady, but no European country would’ve greenlit these procedures on an 87 year old woman who had a quarter of her long missing due to lung cancer in her 60s.

This is wrong. If we're sharing anecdotes let me tell you about my 97yo grand dad who's been admitted thrice in ER this year in France, and received what would have amounted to almost $100k of medical bills in the US. (He's OK now, but at this age you never fully recover to your previous state, so every trip to the hospital is a step down).

> The more you drill down into health indicators to distinguish the effect of medical care from other factors, the less it seems like US outcomes are worse. US overall indicators, like life expectancy, are worse. But those factor in many things that have nothing to do with the health system, such as homicide, car accidents, demographic, obesity, etc.

This is true, it explains a good fraction of the life expectancy difference, but it's irrelevant to the fact that the US pays twice are much for similar healthcare.
by p0w3n3d | 2025-07-28 15:24:05+00:00
I must be honest with you, as far as I am pro net-neutrality, I can observe people using internet irresponsibly. As the internet stood up to allow sharing of science publications, now mostly shared is the pornographic type of content. When Tim Berners-Lee was thinking about people sending themselves a book he probably (we still may ask him) haven't predicted people sending boob/dick pics. As the content technical level lowers, amount of people sharing their stupidity increases. Meanwhile other irresponsible people give phones to their children (I am amongst them) hoping the children won't go into the bad places and trusting in freedom.

Currently my kids got already out of my hand, and I really wonder how could I filter the content that goes to them. Internet became something else, so maybe I won't install a VPN to their phones and they won't be able to see the most horrible things anymore.
by jjkaczor | 2025-07-28 15:24:07+00:00
Naw - the internet enables "long-tail" content - but I say this as a person who occasionally writes VERY long "blog-posts" that are technically KB/how-to, magazine article length...

Yes, AI will scrape it and regurgitate it - but over-time it will reach people who need to know - plus it is also helpful for oneself...
by ben_w | 2025-07-28 15:24:39+00:00
IMO, the wheels fell off decades before I was born.

The peak of the empire was around WW1, where the victory was immediately followed by Irish home rule, and Churchill(!) putting the UK military into austerity to save money, which is how it came to be that evacuating from Dunkirk involved a lot of civilian ships, amongst other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Year_Rule

WW2 was a Pyrrhic victory. Not that Westminster collectively realised the nation's weakness until the Suez Crisis and the Wind of Change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(speech)

I'm not sure the people of the UK have yet fully internalised this decline, given the things said and written during the Brexit process. Perhaps social media really did make it all worse, but it's been authoritarian, chauvinistic (both internationally with imperialism and domestically via the aristocracy), and theocratic, ever since Harold Godwinson may or may not have taken an arrow to the eyeball.
by anonym29 | 2025-07-28 15:24:53+00:00
It has an octane equivalent of 105-110, and an even stronger anti-knock index, you can add a ton of timing.

It also lets the engine run cooler despite burning hotter precisely because of those evap characterisics.

That's not to say there are no downsides. It's less energy dense so you need larger injectors or a higher duty cycle, you get less mileage, it's extremely hygroscopic, it has different corrosive properties, and a different stoich ratio so most vehicles need some amount of modifications and tuning to properly utilize it.

But all in all, it's wildly economical alternative to traditional high performance fuel.
by dragontamer | 2025-07-28 15:25:01+00:00
> Wait until after the AI bubble bursts to start to get good realistic useful products instead of investor's bait.

That seems like a bad plan. Investor money is here right now and after the burst there will be no investors for months to years.

If you want to establish a business, now is better than later. Even if we magically can time a bubble burst exactly, it's a question of now vs 5 years from now. That's a lot of lost time.
by 9rx | 2025-07-28 15:25:10+00:00
Not to mention using up excess corn that we don't have room to store (predicting corn yield is hard), which is why the whole corn-based ethanol thing got going.

But in normal human fashion we took what is a decent idea at limited scale and thought we could make it an even better idea if we scaled it up to ridiculous proportions. And in normal human fashion, instead of realizing our mistake in not applying some moderation, now we're convinced that what is a bad idea at ridiculous proportions must be eliminated entirely...
by foldr | 2025-07-28 15:27:19+00:00
It seems to be an outlier because news coverage in English-speaking media tends to report on the UK more than other European countries, for various reasons.

It’s super easy to find examples if you look for them. In fact, this example from Spain is far worse than any of the examples you’re likely to find in the UK:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/18/student-cassan...

The thing is, it’s not an important part of a certain unmentionable person’s political strategy to portray Spain as an authoritarian hellhole. So you won’t hear nearly as much about cases like this.
by imtringued | 2025-07-28 15:27:22+00:00
There is actually a crisis of messed up kids and young adults and access to porn is related to it, but in the opposite way. The thing that is messing up boys and girls is anti-male puritanism that condemns male sexuality as inherently degrading and evil.

As girls grow up and become women, they become disinterested in men, due to the perceived danger. When boys grow up they become avoidant men who are scared of approaching and asking out women, due to the perceived risk of ridicule, shaming and legal action. This prevents the formation of stable marriages, which then culminates in low birth rates.
by jamesblonde | 2025-07-28 15:27:26+00:00
In Stockholm, we have 2 sets of sensors dug :

1. induction coil sensor dug in road at the traffic light

2. radar sensor at 100-200m from the traffic light

It feels like magic because if you hit sensor (2) and there are no other competing cars, the traffic light changes for you and you don't have to slow down.

This is the best solution. In Dublin, they only have sensor (1) and it feels really slow in comparison. You keep having to stop and start.
by graemep | 2025-07-28 15:28:13+00:00
The Online Safety Act has a reach and consequences than restricting access to porn. As has been mentioned on HN many times it is causing forums to shut down, and people to move to social media instead. It is causing forums in other countries to shut out British users. It is essentially making UGC something only businesses, especially the tech giants, can do. Even with porn age verification is a concern.
by qsort | 2025-07-28 15:28:17+00:00
> The top 10% is even better with LLMs, they know much more and they are more productive. But the rest have just resulted to turning in clear slop with no care.

This is interesting, I'm noticing something similar (even taking LLMs out of the equation). I don't teach, but I've been coaching students for math competitions, and I feel like there's a pattern where the top few% is significantly stronger than, say, 10 years ago, but the median is weaker. Not sure why, or whether this is even real to begin with.
by Denvercoder9 | 2025-07-28 15:28:27+00:00
> They have broken the userspace ABI for lots of libraries again.

If the old ABI used a 32-bit time_t, breaking the ABI was inevitable. Changing the package name prevents problems by signaling the incompatibility proactively, instead of resulting in hard-to-debug crashes due to structure/parameter mismatches.
by vidarh | 2025-07-28 15:28:36+00:00
The UK pays less per capita towards the NHS than most similar-income countries do.

And, it's very much a "public-private" health system. E.g. all GP's and most dentists are private businesses, paid for by the NHS to varying degree, but also with many providing private services.

The NHS uses an extensive network of private providers, including (when sufficient funding is provided) to drive down waiting lists. I've personally had a procedure carried out at a private hospital at the NHS's expense.

The NHS has many problems, but at the root of a whole lot of them is that the NHS needs a funding increase of 20%-30% to get to similar levels of funding per capita as similarly wealthy countries.

The UK spends about as much per capita on the NHS, providing universal care, as the US does on just Medicare and Medicaid.
by larodi | 2025-07-28 15:28:51+00:00
sooner or later we get a NRAM - neural ram as extension which is basically this neuromorphic lattice that can be wired on the very low level, perhaps also photonic level, and then the whole AI thing trains/lives in it.

IBM experimenting in this direction or at least they claim to here https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/neuromorphic-computing

there is another CPU which was recently featured which has again a lattice which is sort of FPGA but very fast, where different modules are loaded with some tasks, and each marble pumps data to some other, where the orchestrator decides how and what goes in each of these.
by blargwill | 2025-07-28 15:28:54+00:00
This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently! My friends group all seem burnt out by the direction social media is going, with what you're building seeming like a better return to the norm. Will follow along to see your progress!

One thing that kept tripping me up when thinking about this was pricing - everyone is so conditioned to think that social media is free that this will be a huge hill to overcome. Your pricing, although I think if done right feels very fair, instinctively makes me recoil a bit.
by sofixa | 2025-07-28 15:28:58+00:00
> It is the largest party in Parliament and it difficult to argue that 30-45% (depending on elections) of the French are "far right": They are not.

Objectively, they are. And another 30% are for centre/centre-right/right.

> MODEM is centre (I mean it's Bayrou's party, so as centre as can be!

They are more and more leaning centre-right to right as can be seen by their policymaking (prioritising business over people and ecology, e.g. by refusing to even discuss reducing government aids/tax cuts towards businessess, but instead proposing to cut public holidays).

> There has been, and still is, a rather insidious narrative in France and Europe that labels anyone against the current level of immigration... as "far right" to shut them down

> The only result is to make those parties get more and more votes as people's concerns are ignored

It's funny, because the minister of the interior has been very strongly anti-immigration for quite some time now. And anti-immigration laws have been passed, with support for RN. How is that "ignoring people's concerns". And it's always funny how the people most voting for RN are either from disadvantaged post-industrial areas, where there are few migrants, or from rich posh areas, where there are few migrants (other than rich foreigners buying property). RN are just successfully blending the message and advertising migrants as the single big thing that will "solve" all issues, regardless of how factually incorrect that is. While stealing public money to enrich themselves.
by spacebanana7 | 2025-07-28 15:29:10+00:00
This cat and mouse game applies to OP's first category of sites that want to comply for fear of the British government, but not the second category of sites that actively don't want to comply. Let's refer to the second category as deliberately non-compliant.

The UK instructs ISPs to block access to deliberately non-compliant sites, however users want to make connections to the sites and those sites want to receive connections to those users. VPNs will be effective in allowing access to non-compliant sites as long as ISPs can't identify the VPN traffic.

Of course, the British ISPs can initiate the tactics used by China to identify and block illegal traffic. However there are limits to this. Unlike Chinese users, British internet users regularly make connections to international servers so various bridging techniques are possible. Like VPNs, proxies or even Remote Desktop.
by rickdeckard | 2025-07-28 15:30:04+00:00
Sorry, you're right. I stand corrected, Samsung discontinued their own RCS-Service in January 2025. Yet the point stands, Google doesn't restrict usage of alternative RCS-services on its devices, Apple does.

> again, Google forcing its services into operator hands

Frankly no. Carriers tried to make RCS work and failed for many years. I was involved in so many meetings, individual projects, interoperability testfests, just to make all the crazy "flavors" of RCS required from different operators work with each other. Each of the large carriers thought he could do RCS better than the next one, destroying simplicity, reliability, interoperability.

Many of them rolled out their own RCS-service initially, with flaky UX and ridiculous limitations making it weaker than WhatsApp at that time.

Google didn't start this mess, and didn't force itself into this matter. But yes, they ended it by acquiring Jibe and unifying the platform.
by Arkhaine_kupo | 2025-07-28 15:30:15+00:00
> It's a valid topic for discussion

not on a thread about vpn useage

> The current situation regarding small boats is not sustainable

the current situation regarding small boats is the inevitable conclusion to a badly implemented brexit policy and a negligent tory party rule over 13 years. Startmer took 5 months in power to talk to France and have them agree to tackle it on their side of the water. Also no brexit, no boats. The anti immigration chest thumpers caused the problem and then scurried like rats. Farage was impossible to be found the year after brexit won, dude aws the face and suddenly wanted to part of the "glory"
by wongarsu | 2025-07-28 15:30:18+00:00
Social Media used to be better when you actually had a connection to the other person. Nowadays it's mostly anonymous or parasocial. All social media sites have drifted to influencer content (TikTok, Meta, Youtube) or to moving the identity of the other person to the background (reddit, HN). The inbetween of early social media with smaller groups of people who know each other has gotten very rare

The other factor is that everyone now knows how powerful social media can be. Remember when we had positive movements like Occupy Wallstreet, the Arab Spring and Anonymous Hacktivism all facilitated by social media? That doesn't happen anymore. Small things like getting traction for a petition still work, but anything that questions existing structures has no chance of succeeding anymore. Instead social media is overrun by bots that simulate broad consensus on many issues
by areoform | 2025-07-28 15:30:28+00:00
As the other user said, people have been warning about new forms of media since the invention of writing. It has always been in vogue to be a nay sayer.

But social media is different. For most forms of media, TV, movies, books, radio etc. You had some degree of agency and choice over what you consumed. You couldn't set what a channel or station was playing, but you could change the channel.

You don't choose what you see on social media. You see what an algorithm thinks is most likely to keep you hooked / going.

Our brains only know what's real based on what's in front of it. You can acknowledge something is rage bait, but as you process it, you will still feel some degree of anger / discomfort. You can acknowledge that something is a cherry picked example, designed to tug the sensibilities of users, but it will still tug on your sensitivities.

And so sure enough, as you keep getting rage baited, concern trolled into algorithmic oblivion, it changes your gestalt. Your worldview shifts to one where those are data points, and it starts distorting your perception of reality.

Garbage In. Garbage Out.

Other people have said that it's like electricity consumption. No. This is very much like tobacco. I don't use social media. Even though I get paid to post to it.
by specproc | 2025-07-28 15:30:32+00:00
Messing around with an old laptop and my nephew's machine recently gave me a stark reminder of how bad Windows has gotten.

Horrendous install process, just clicking no to hundreds of "features" I don't want, interspersed by patronising, uninformative messages like "chillax, we're just setting things up for you". And when you're done, you're bombarded by notifications, visual clutter. My poor eight-year-old nephew had a stock-ticker on the task bar! A totally overwhelming, ugly and hostile interface.

On the old laptop, I installed Windows to do the firmware update (a thousand curses on manufacturers that don't provide the option to flash from Linux), and moved straight to install EndeavorOS.

The experience was night and day. Simple, clear and informative install with clear, well-explained choices. Fast. On completion, I've got a clean, empty DE, ready to be tweaked to my liking. Oh, and it's free, as is all the software I'm using on it.

This is Arch, there are memes about Arch being hard. Unbelievable how much easier and more pleasant getting Arch up and running is than Windows these days. Microsoft have crippled their UX with horrendous junk.

The only reason anyone really needs Windows is if they're running one of about four pieces of software for professional reasons.

Win11 is peak enshitification, such a big opening for Linux at the moment. Non-technical parent needs a computer, give them Linux; child, ditto. All most users need is a browser these days. No reason most people need that Microsoft shit in their lives.
by resource_waste | 2025-07-28 15:31:23+00:00
I looked it up, and you are taking about a 5 year outdated version. I'm not opposed to trying it, I just would prefer to spend my time not messing around.

The other wrench is that we arent just using Catia, we are using Visual Studio and communicating via COM to make macros, Visual Studio is nice because it has an integrated COM debugger.

I got another... I need to run a Catia license server too.

Just to clarify, Fedora is the greatest OS of all time. I would love to use it 100% of the time. Windows is utter trash in comparison.