MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by 9rx | 2025-07-09 17:49:38+00:00
> Lambda eliminates the operational costs and learning curve for developers by turning any code into a secure, reliable and highly available cloud service with a web accessible end point within seconds.

Yup. "turning any code into a cloud service". In other words: No need to write complicated server-bits that can be easy to screw up. Just write a "function" that accepts inputs and returns outputs and let something else will worry about the rest. Just like CGI (in sprit).

It is great that you were willing to share this as it proves without a doubt that Amazon were thinking about (the concept of) CGI during this time. But perhaps all you've been trying to say, poorly, is that "serverless" is no longer limited to marketing just one thing these days?
by zamadatix | 2025-07-09 17:49:41+00:00
> I have 2012 model year that's probably worth < 20% of what it was new even with reasonable mileage, when I look at used cars less than 5 years old and without a ton of miles

Historically used car prices really did not vary much from 195-2020: https://i.imgur.com/SV1TrRX.png, the insane variance with "used cars < 5 years old" coincides exactly with what I was saying about COVID (geez, it doesn't feel like that was 5 years ago...)

It is always more work than buying new but people without money sitting in the back are generally willing to do a lot of work for what may seem like small price differences.
by apnorton | 2025-07-09 17:49:43+00:00
> There's always an error rate. DocBots are almost certainly wrong more frequently, but they're also almost certainly much much faster than reading the docs.

A lot of the discourse around LLM tooling right now boils down to "it's ok to be a bit wrong if you're wrong quickly" ... and then what follows is an ever-further bounds-pushing on how big "a bit" can be.

The promise of AI is "human-level (or greater)" --- we should only be using AI when it's as accurate (or more accurate) as human-generated docs, but the tech simply isn't there yet.
by rtkwe | 2025-07-09 17:49:46+00:00
It's growing... but from an all time low. Estimates put it at half of their ad revenue pre acquisition. A lot of advertisers did actually leave and seem to have largely stayed away or their CPM numbers are just way way down both of which are pretty bad.

Also X isn't funding Grok, it's a separate B corp with funding of it's own, it's just been tightly integrated into X, so it doesn't really say anything about the money situation at Twitter/X.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/x-report-first-annual-ad-...
by reidrac | 2025-07-09 17:49:56+00:00
The Z80 example in https://github.com/oisee/zvdb-z80/blob/master/ZVDB-Z80-ABAP.... doesn't look correct.

That:

ld ix, 0 ; accumulator

Is bugging me because 1. ix is not used in the function and 2. operations on ix are limited (and slow), can't be used as "accumulator". It is a 16-bit register to access memory as an index (and as extra two 8-bit limited registers if you use undocumented Z80 opcodes).

Besides, why use b register as counter in the loop and use dec and jr when there's djnz for that?

I haven't checked anything else, but that has a bad smell.
by unshavedyak | 2025-07-09 17:50:03+00:00
That's fair, though with an LLM (at least one you're familiar with) you can shape it's behavior. Which is not too different compared to some black box script that i can't control or reason through with a human support. Granted the LLM will have the same stupid black box script, so in both cases it's weaponized stupidity against the consumer.
by babypuncher | 2025-07-09 17:51:26+00:00
Everybody already uses AI, it's being shoved down our throats. You literally cannot use Google or Amazon without AI nonsense popping up. People don't seem too happy about it though. I can't say that these features have improved my Amazon or Google experiences. In fact, in the case of the latter, the experience has only gotten worse as they've injected more AI.
by petre | 2025-07-09 17:52:14+00:00
I just use Ikea's remote because I won't bother to link the light and the rmote through HA and set up scenes. It just works as a remote: on/off/dimmer. I can either pair the thing with the HA ecosystem or the remote, but the remote always works, regardlesif HA is on or not. I have just one set of lights.
by tremon | 2025-07-09 17:53:01+00:00
There's two things that made me switch from tmux to screen:

- persistence of layouts. Screen doesn't remember if you had a split view open, it always opens the current terminal in full screen.

- screen's default hotkey ^A clashes with ssh's escape key. Yes, these are configurable but having to re-populate the same config file is like a papercut every time to access a new system.

Defaults matter, especially if you work across many different systems (and from different customers). At some point, it just becomes easier to learn the defaults than to (over-)optimize to your ideal workflow.
by toast0 | 2025-07-09 17:53:05+00:00
I don't generally want or need my application server to serve static files, but I may want to serve them on the same hostname (or maybe I don't).

There's potential benefits for the httpd to manage specifics of client connections as well: If I'm using a single threaded process per request execution model, keep-alive connections really ruin that. Similarly with client transfer-encoding requests, does my application server need to know about that. Does my application server need to understand http/2 or http/3?

You could certainly do a reverse proxy and use HTTP instead of FastCGI as the protocol between the client facing httpd and the application server... although then you miss out on some speciality things like X-Sendfile to accelerate sending of files from the application server without actually transferring them through sockets to the httpd. You could add that to an http proxy too, I suppose.
by Sohcahtoa82 | 2025-07-09 17:53:07+00:00
> The vision of API that is self discoverable and that works with a generic client is not practical in most cases. [..] Fielding's paper doesn't provide a complete recipe for building self-discoverable APIs. It is an architecture, but the details of how clients should really discover the endpoints and determine what these endpoints are doing is left out of the paper. To make truly discoverable API you need to specify protocol for endpoints discovery, operations descriptions, help messages etc. Then you need clients that understand your specification, so it is not really a generic client

You said what I've thought about REST better than I could have put it.

A true implementation of a REST client is simply not possible. Any client needs to know what all those URLs are going to do. If you suddenly add a new action (like /cansofspam/123/frobnicate), a client won't know what to do with it. The client will need to be updated to add frobnication functionality, or else it just ignores it. At best, it could present a "Frobnicate" button.

This really is why nobody has implemented a REST server or client that actually conforms to Fielding's paper. It's just not realistic to have a client that can truly self-discover an API without being written to know what APIs to expect.
by pinkmuffinere | 2025-07-09 17:53:24+00:00
My personal pet peeve is comparisons like this, which aren’t inflation-adjusted. Is this a higher real valuation than the any other company in existence so far? From the information provided, it is unclear.

Edit: scrolling through the entries in the Wikipedia page here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...), it seems likely that this is the highest valuation in real terms (ie, adjusted for inflation)
by jchw | 2025-07-09 17:53:26+00:00
> It does support the thesis that Amazon was attempting to prevent customers from realizing that what they were offering was basically CGI on a big load-balanced server farm, by claiming that it was something radically new that you couldn't get before, but their value proposition is still just the value proposition of shared CGI hosting. On a big load-balanced server farm. Which, to be perfectly fair, probably was bigger than anyone else's.

I loathe to be of service defending Amazon's marketing BS, but I think you're saying the selling point of AWS Lambda is that it's "like CGI", and that serverless functions are substantially equivalent to CGI. I disagree. The programming model of serverless functions is definitely substantially equivalent to CGI, but the selling point of serverless functions isn't the "functions" part, it's the "serverless" part. It would've had the exact same draw and could've even had a very similar programming model (The Lambda SDK makes your applications look like a typical request handling server, probably for development purposes) and ran multi-request servers under the hood and as long as it had the same billing and management most people would've been happy with it. The thing that unites Fargate and Lambda in being "serverless" is the specific way they're abstracting infrastructure.

Amazon could've and could still launch something like CloudCGI if they wanted to, and if it used the same model as Lambda I'm sure it'd be successful. If I had to guess why they didn't, the less cynical answer is that they just felt it was outdated and wanted to make something new and shiny with a nice developer experience. The more cynical answer is probably truer, because vendor lock-in. Even if they did launch something like "CloudCGI" though, it would still be a very big departure from anything people called "CGI hosting".
by mathgradthrow | 2025-07-09 17:53:28+00:00
I can't read substack on my phone, so I can't see the article, but the correct statement that is closest to what you have written is just that d is any real number satisfying this inequality. We define a subset U of AxBxR by

U={(a,b,x):x>|a-b|^2}

and then were looking for the infimum of (the image of) U under the third coordinate function

d(a,b,x)=x
by mindslight | 2025-07-09 17:54:15+00:00
> consistent-net.rules nailed it to a mac address on first boot

fails even harder for

> put in a live-CD to debug something and your network devices are suddenly weird

I don't know that there is really any good answer here. Just methods that break in ways you're used to, and methods that break in ways you aren't. I appreciate the attempt at static naming based on hardware connection, even if the realities of how these things are presented by the bios make the results an inscrutable mess.

Maybe pure enx would have been better? But that looks like crap for even the simple cases, and fails if you swap out a piece of hardware or start doing weird things with MAC addresses.
by gmd63 | 2025-07-09 17:54:28+00:00
I don't buy that argument. The issue is companies deliberately built complexity on top of their existing systems to make it harder to cancel. The added complexity that costs a lot of money to fix is a result of their unfair and deceptive practices.

An enormous amount of deadweight loss would be returned to the economy if they simply implemented a much simpler design of click to cancel and avoided the unfair and deceptive practices in the first place.
by InitialLastName | 2025-07-09 17:54:41+00:00
Deep deep minority. I'm similar to you, in that every dollar going in or out gets tracked and categorized, but due to a medical emergency I recently started helping an elderly family member with their finances (logistically, not monetarily) and was astounded that they just can't identify what the destination is for half (by value) of the money going out of their bank account (we're working on it...).
by arandomusername | 2025-07-09 17:54:41+00:00
Elon is not far right by any metric. Nick is. Nick isn't an extreme trump supporter, he even advocated for not voting for him in 2024.

Elon thinks racism is based? Same Elon that wants millions of indians with H1-B visas? Is that the far right view?

> is generally supportive of Nazi talking points which he is wont to retweet.

Like what?

> That's literally systematic censorship. The fact that you so flippantly dismiss it says a lot about your intellectual honesty on the topic.

Censoring competitor platforms is the least of my concerns when it comes to censorship. I am much more concerned about opposing views being silenced.
by freejazz | 2025-07-09 17:54:47+00:00
I don't think anyone has any interest in "debating" you. Personally, I don't get into arguments with people who do not seem connected to reality. There is no point in it. That seems like the sort of thing a 12 year old would do. You'd probably find more purchase with your arguments at an adolescent playground anyway.

>I simply don't see the destructiveness and failure that many people, here on this site and elsewhere have ranted about with Musk buying Twitter.

Did you not see Grok yesterday? Or the general proliferation of disgusting racism all over X since Musk took over? No? Oh well. Hence, my point about reality.
by pimlottc | 2025-07-09 17:54:50+00:00
Similar to this, the Munch Museum in Oslo has three variations of "The Scream" on rotation, with only one of them shown each day [0]. So you're always guaranteed to be able to see it in some form, but you'll have go to multiple days if you want to see them all.

0: https://www.munch.no/en/The-Scream/where-can-i-see-the-screa...
by ronstark | 2025-07-09 17:55:21+00:00
Hi HN,

I’m building Prompt Quest, a growing collection of interactive AI simulations that help you practice real-world decision-making in business, money, leadership self development and more...

Instead of watching endless tutorials or courses, you play through scenarios like managing a team for the first time, navigating an economic crisis, or building an investment portfolio.

These simulations run entirely through your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, etc). You’re not reading theory, you’re making choices, seeing consequences, and learning by doing.

Here’s a free one you can try right now (no signup required): https://promptquest.co/first-time-manager-simulation-free

It’s designed for first-time managers to practice things like delegation, conflict, and team dynamics.

Prompt Quest is still early. I’m currently: - Writing more simulations (retirement planning, business growth, FIRE, etc.) - Exploring ways to let creators publish their own simulations - Collecting feedback from early users (you!)

Would love your thoughts, especially on: - Is this useful to you? - What kinds of simulations would you want? - Would you pay for access to a library of them?

Thanks in advance Ron
by stavros | 2025-07-09 17:56:23+00:00
It wasn't in a loop really, it was more "I have this issue" "OK I know exactly why, wait" $3 later "it's still there" "OK I know exactly why, it's a different reason, wait", repeat until $35 is gone and I quit.

I would have much appreciated if it could throw its hands up and say it doesn't know.
by sunny9911 | 2025-07-09 17:56:35+00:00
This is really cool! It let me upload my documents and create a custom GPT. Now, anyone I share the link with can ask questions and get answers based only on what I’ve uploaded.

It’s like having a private assistant that only knows what I’ve written. Setup took some to and fro between ChatGPT and Bookshelf. I also love how it gives citations from the document so I can double check. Till now, it has not hallucinated. Great job bookshelf team.
by Analemma_ | 2025-07-09 17:57:09+00:00
The fact that this shitty application with a hardcoded OAI key also uses Supabase pairs perfectly with yesterday's story about Supabase's MCP implementation being impossible to actually secure and their engineer showing up in the comments going "the latest release probably won't leak data, hopefully, maybe". Just an endless fractal of shit, brought you by the AI future.

Oh well. At least there will probably be good money in cleaning up after these bozos.
by 0cf8612b2e1e | 2025-07-09 17:57:20+00:00
It also helps that the other launchers are terrible. There must be some hidden complexity of which I am unaware, because I do not understand. As a rule, slow to launch, memory hogs, unresponsive, etc.

This for a local application that has a library of…10k items in the entire store? The inventory could comfortably be processed inside Excel and yet the launchers struggle.
by gnabgib | 2025-07-09 17:57:41+00:00
Nikumaroro was also searched in 2019 by Robert Ballard (and not found): Famed oceanographer searches for Amelia Earhart’s plane https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-world/2019/08/02/...

There's also the 2024 find that was a (convincing) plane shaped rock near Howland Island: They thought they’d found Amelia Earhart’s plane. Instead, the search continues https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/21/science/amelia-earhart-pl...
by joot82 | 2025-07-09 17:57:51+00:00
She was mainly brought on to fix relationships with advertisers, they were just pulling out that time because of rampant nazi and hate speech (by users) on the platform, after they fired the content moderation teams. I think she did what she could over the last 2 years and some of the ad revenue came back, but after the latest MechaHitler escapades I guess she got some texts from people...
by standardUser | 2025-07-09 17:58:10+00:00
If you follow this stuff enough, you know that any court worth it's salt can come up with justifications for any ruling it wants, that they are often dissenting opinions (statistically much less so in this, the most conservative court in the country), and that another, totally unrelated technicality will sometimes be 'discovered' by a subsequent court in subsequent appeals. I mean just look at the absurd acrobatics going on in the SC these days.

But I love the IDEA of then justice system you're pretending exists.
by margalabargala | 2025-07-09 17:58:30+00:00
That's a really uncharitable way to read that.

A "critical look" from a US magazine would explore how, with solar power clearly being the future, the US has abdicated its energy dominance to another country. It would discuss the potential ramifications of us not owning our energy infrastructure supply chain the way we do with oil/gas, and what might be done about that.

The New Yorker is a US magazine. From the US perspective, yes, it is "good" when we do it and "bad" when China does it in a way that could negatively impact us.
by 0cf8612b2e1e | 2025-07-09 17:59:07+00:00
Big boon of the gaming backlog- I never need to buy AAA games at full price. I have more than enough entertainment, I can ignore new games for a year where they will suddenly be half the price, possibly fixed some bugs, etc.

My maximum new game price is $20 and I would need a compelling argument to break it.
by Nasrudith | 2025-07-09 17:59:43+00:00
The simplest way to put I can think of is a silly set of two hypotheticals.

Imagine mer-people or aliens existed and started armed raiding marine shipping. That would be would be a hostile act of war. Declaring war on the mer-people would be a shame but justifiable in self-defense.

Imagine instead they were decrypting communications and using it to decipher and view our content. The other would basically be acceptable as part of a first contact protocol and exploration as it involves trying to figure out the basics of communication protocols of an 'alien' species. Declaring war on them in response would be a vastly disproportionate act of aggression for violating laws that they had no way of knowing they were subject to and literally could not possibly know.
by mixedbit | 2025-07-09 17:59:47+00:00
What I don't get from this and some other comments in this thread, is that the argument seems to be that REST is practical, every web page is actually a REST app, it has one entry point, all the actions are discoverable by the user from this entry point, application specific JavaScript code is allowed by REST architecture. But then, why are there so many articles and posts (also by Fielding) that complain that people claim do be doing REST, but are actually not doing it?

In all these discussion, I didn't see an article that would actually show an example of a successful application that does REST properly, all elements of it.
by pragmatic | 2025-07-09 18:00:33+00:00
Loonix users: We hate windows

Loonix developers: Now Loonix is windows

Loonix users: booo

… several hours later

Loonix users: yaaaay

/s

I remember running Linux servers for the first time and couldn’t believe there wasn’t a straight forward way to get something to run on startup. Ask glue and duct tape and non portable.

Don’t get me started on the Python situation.

I assume it’s much better now.

With the clown services U hadn’t had to run bare Linux in a long time.
by ethagnawl | 2025-07-09 18:00:54+00:00
I learned the hard way that they also bill annually by default. As soon as my family's week long trial was up, they billed me for an entire year. Yes, it's on me for not reading the T&C (I was hastily trying to find an activity for my kid which was somewhat constructive ...) but I just don't understand this race-to-the-bottom/rent-seeking behavior. There was once a possibility that I'd renew our membership and recommend it to other families because we got so much out of the service but that's not happening now -- quite the opposite, in fact.
by kibwen | 2025-07-09 18:01:22+00:00
> Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), processed by Ember’s US Electricity Data Explorer, shows that in the 12 months ending April 2025, solar generated 83.1 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, compared to 81.6 TWh from natural gas.

I thought this was going to be the usual headline bait-and-switch where it would be revealed to only be the top source of electricity for like two hours around noon on a single Saturday, but I'm happy to have been wrong here.
by Animats | 2025-07-09 18:02:56+00:00
Nice. It's definitely an optimization problem. But you have to look at numerical error.

I had to do a lot of work on GJK convex hull distance back in the late 1990s. It's a optimization problem with special cases.

Closest points are vertex vs vertex, vertex vs edge, vertex vs face, edge vs edge, edge vs face, and face vs face. The last three can have non-unique solutions. Finding the closest vertices is easy but not sufficient. When you use this in a physics engine, objects settle into contact, usually into the non-unique solution space. Consider a cube on a cube. Or a small cube sitting on a big cube. That will settle into face vs face, with no unique closest points.

A second problem is what to do about flat polygon surfaces. If you tesselate, a rectangular face becomes two coplanar triangles. This can make GJK loop. If you don't tesselate, no polygon in floating point is truly flat. This can make GJK loop. Polyhedra with a minimum break angle between faces, something most convex hullers can generate, are needed.

Running unit tests of random complex polyhedra will not often hit the hard cases. A physics engine will. The late Prof. Steven Cameron at Oxford figured out solutions to this in the 1990s.[1] I'd discovered that his approach would occasionally loop. A safe termination condition on this is tough. He eventually came up with one. I had a brute force approach that detected a loop.

There's been some recent work on approximate convex decomposition, where some overlap is allowed between the convex hulls whose union represents the original solid. True convex decomposition tends to generate annoying geometry around smaller concave features, like doors and windows. Approximate convex decomposition produces cleaner geometry.[2] But you have to start with clean watertight geometry (a "simplex") or this algorithm runs into trouble.

[1] https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/stephen.cameron/distances/

[2] https://github.com/SarahWeiii/CoACD