MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mlyle | 2025-07-13 23:16:23+00:00
> Replacing the whole system every 20 years still seems really wild to me, especially in worlds where price doesn't fall past the cost of maintenance, because the only wear part is the battery, and batteries are modular.

It may be pessimistic. At the same time, you amortize things based on history.

Things like substations are amortized over 30-40 years. Battery banks don't have the history; a 20 year timeframe seems like a reasonable amortization time. Indeed, if technology improves and costs reduce like people are advocating for here, it'll be thrown away and replaced. If it wears out in ways that don't justify refurbishment, same. And refurbishment/recycling/etc are not well understood processes at scale, yet, nor are future usage patterns well enough understood to know if we will have those resources at the right places.

Again, we could get lucky: batteries could last longer than expected; we could use technologies that are close enough cousins and have a really good time at refurbishment; we could not hit any kind of scaling limitations with battery storage; etc. I agree battery storage is great. And I agree it could be sufficient alone (well, combined with other storage options) if we hit the top third of possible scenarios.

I just am concerned about the other scenarios. I can't rule them out. And if we're going to have insurance against them, it's time to buy it now.

I'd much rather face a future where people say that we wasted a few tens of billions on nuclear power plants than to face a future where people shake their head that we wasted the opportunity to save the climate by foregoing nuclear.
by p2detar | 2025-07-13 23:16:30+00:00
This kind of outlines AI tech, but I'd like to see how a ban will work with players like Microsoft. I think it's close to impossible.

Microsoft's tentacles are so deeply entangled into European business that thinking about imposing a ban on their products and services almost makes me laugh. A ban without preparing for mass migration to alternatives first is going to end in a disaster for European business. I don't see the will to take on such risks. Let's start from there.

edit: typos
by bTal | 2025-07-13 23:16:48+00:00
Thanks — totally agree a lot of companies do end up building custom internal logic systems or rigid approval flows to handle logic.

Tools like Retool are great for internal dashboards and form-based workflows. But they still assume you control the app — the UI, the APIs, the data layer.

VE is intentionally not internal. It rides above — not inside — systems. It enforces logic at the interface level, even on platforms you don’t own (like Amazon, Salesforce, Shopify, etc.).

Where Retool helps you build tools for your team, VE helps you enforce rules and business logic wherever your team already works — including third-party apps, public sites, and vendor portals. You don’t need the source code or API access. You just inject VE.

So instead of “rebuild it in Retool,” you can say:

“Just apply the logic layer to what already exists.”

And because the rules are external, explainable, and versioned (.vlg), non-technical users can safely edit and reason about them, while AI assists when needed.

Happy to go deeper if you're curious
by scarface_74 | 2025-07-13 23:16:51+00:00
> Black people scare me!" But then you have to admit that the two black families that go to your church are not threatening at all....

They are still racist pricks. The ones at church are just the “good ones” who do a good enough job of code switching - ie so the racists say “you’re not like most Black people”.

(yes I’m Black).
by 9x39 | 2025-07-13 23:18:19+00:00
I think of a calorie tracker as a compass as I navigate an overly calorie-dense world that doesn't make us exert ourselves to the point of caloric deficits any longer.

For the aware user, combined with a scale, it helps normalize estimations of calories which can be incredibly deceptive. For example, try getting a group of people to estimate how many calories are in a store-bought muffin or donut, a bowl of nuts, a sweetened coffee drink from a drive-thru, or their typical bowl of a favorite cereal. I'm used to the casual observer's guess being about 1/3 of the true total if you weigh the item and read the label.

So in your scenario, the calorie counter would be a signal that you need to cut portions or cal density if your weight is going in the wrong direction, not unlike how a compass is just a tool if you're lost - you still need to know how to use it.
by 63stack | 2025-07-13 23:18:32+00:00
Okay then my question still stands. You are saying "similar to any other system which needs to reboot", but this is nowhere near similar to something like k8s, which has 1st class support for this. You cordon the node you are about to take off for maintenance, kubernetes automatically redistributes all the workloads to the other nodes, and after you are done you uncordon the node.

How does this look with Incus? Obviously if the workload you are running has some kind of multinode support you can use that, but I'm wondering if Incus a way to do this in some kind of generalized way like k8s?

But I did some more reading, there seems to be support for live migration for VMs, and limited live migration for containers. Moving stopped instances is supported for both VMs and containers.
by Aurornis | 2025-07-13 23:18:32+00:00
> Looking at a bigger picture though, honestly I think we're seeing the end of the raw global Internet for the masses. 20 years ago, it seemed impossible, but here we are.

I feel like I’ve been hearing this for decades. During the initial wave of Napster-era piracy debates a lot of people assumed the end of the free internet was near because corporations wouldn’t allow it.

> It's simply not going to be possible to meaningfully use the Internet unauthenticated and unapproved in a few years.

I will take the opposite of that bet any day. Certain countries like Iran will impose their restrictions, but if you think the average country is going to restrict internet access in only a couple of years I don’t know what to say.
by cyberax | 2025-07-13 23:18:45+00:00
> Remote working is in the same vein as offshoring.

No, they're not.

> You are also re-inforcing my original conclusion that what enables these workers is the very same tech that companies are investing on.

We should get rid of electricity, then.

> If a crisis occours, and the US president goes to Air Force 1, transmits from there, how could you be sure he's not a north korean infiltrator? You can't.

Now you're really reaching.
by crinkly | 2025-07-13 23:19:06+00:00
Standard CxO mentality. “I think the facts about our product might be true but I won’t say it because the shareholders and SEC will hang me when they find out it’s bullshit.” Then defer to next monkey in circus. By which time the tech press, which seems to have a serious problem with literacy and honesty (gotta get those clicks) extrapolates it for them. Then analysts summarise those things as projections. Urgh.

The other tactic is saying two unrelated things in a sentence and hoping you think it’s causal, not a fuck up and some marketing at the same time.
by bxparks | 2025-07-13 23:19:13+00:00
Can you explain why you wrote '23pc' instead of using the '23%' that was used in the article? It is confusing to me.

I had never seen 'pc' used as a short hand for percent (%) until recently in an article (can't remember where), where they used 'pc' repeatedly. Unfortunately the article was also talking about the 'pence' of money, so I found it impossible to figure out from context whether they were talking about a 'pence' or a 'percent'.

In the US, I have seen 'pct' used instead of '%', but not too frequently. I had never seen 'pc' used until recently.
by Amezarak | 2025-07-13 23:19:42+00:00
Polling can’t even accurately figure out if people are going to vote R or D two weeks from the poll. Color me skeptical that public opinion polling in anything more complex is more accurate and not simply used to itself shape public perception and opinion.

Even polling “experts” like Silver regularly make huge misses on binary questions (his Florida bet) let alone stuff like the Selzer poll. It’s really hard to take any complex issue polling seriously. It’s a tough sell to convince me that sure, these binary choice election polls with a verifiable result (the election) are wrong, but totally unverifiable public opinion polling with possibly framed questions represent reality.
by paulpauper | 2025-07-13 23:20:14+00:00
The drugs do not reduce mortality much or even at all. Such drugs may improve quality of life though. Except for severe obesity, 40+ BMI, life expectancy is not lowered much in men and even less in women in the setting of obesity. It's just that being obese makes all sorts of markers worse, yet people do not die much sooner. It's more about improving quality of life.
by add-sub-mul-div | 2025-07-13 23:20:55+00:00
> If AI is a threat to software engineering, I wouldn't expect many software engineers to actively accelerate that trend.

There are two strong forces at play. Employees generally want to put in the least amount of effort possible and go home at 5. Employers want to save money and pay for fewer employees. AI creates a strong symbiosis here and both sides are focused on a short term win.
by sandspar | 2025-07-13 23:20:57+00:00
Thanks for the caution! That's good advice.

Although I do think that AI fits the pattern of "real big thing".

In general, cultural diffusion progresses in three stages: from insiders to money people to the public.

For example, great artists are recognized first by fellow artists and critics, then by art auctions, then by the broader public.

AI seems to be following a similar trajectory. AGI is felt first by insiders (AI researchers), then by money people (politicians and business leaders - we are here) then by the public (I'm guessing soon).
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-07-13 23:21:07+00:00
I would say it's both. A high market rate for labor pushes CoL up (because people have lots of money to spend), but a high CoL also pushes the market rate for labor up (because you can't get anyone to work for you if you don't pay them enough to make ends meet). Trying to decide which one is the root cause is a classic chicken-and-egg problem.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-07-13 23:21:09+00:00
孔子過泰山側，有婦人哭於墓者而哀，夫子式而聽之。使子貢問之曰：「子之哭也，壹似重有憂者。」而曰：「然，昔者吾舅死於虎，吾夫又死焉，今吾子又死焉。」夫子曰：「何為不去也？」曰：「無苛政。」夫子曰：「小子識之，苛政猛於虎也。」

https://ctext.org/liji/tan-gong-ii#n9720
by spankibalt | 2025-07-13 23:21:22+00:00
I indulge in daily notes but make and organize them (mostly) topically. Dates are obfuscated, "discreete" if you will; they are, or can always be made, visible if so desired.

The notion of "not asking the same question twice" is laughable to anyone who interrogates different structures based on the same parameter(s), e. g. for comparative purposes. And daily notetaking based on a date-based organization principle is of course widely applicable, e. g. for (project) diaries, "to-be-sorted" infodumps, etc.

But then again, I find most programmer's notions of notetaking to be quite tedious, often bordering on the literally void. ;)
by alganet | 2025-07-13 23:21:36+00:00
> Yet, when I step outside into the streets of New York City to grab a coffee or meet a friend for lunch, it feels downright tranquil.

I think you're in for a surprise in the next few decades.

EDIT: what am I even saying? The article comes from an UK media outlet, they should fully know by now that toxic behavior in the real world cannot be separated from media exposure. This is uncanny.

> The contrast between the online world and my daily reality has only gotten more jarring.

One or two generations immersed in primarily online activity will change your opinion about how safe the real world is from toxic behavior.

> In a paper I recently published [...]

Paywalled.

> we paid people a few dollars to unfollow the most divisive political accounts on X

For a psychology study, I fail to see how you considered the full mechanism of incentives behind their choice. If the paper was open, I would look for a control group in the study. Was there even one?

> Platforms could easily redesign their algorithms to stop promoting the most outrageous voices.

No, they can't. If you are putting your hope on that prospect, I think you are insane. It's not even about will, it cannot be done.
by casenmgreen | 2025-07-13 23:22:17+00:00
North Korea would never, in a million billion years, either accept peace, or actually honour it. NK is a hideously oppressive, violent, dictatorship, which would invade SK in a microsecond if it thought it could get away with it.

I think it astounding - staggering - to point the finger here at USA.

If you were not a long term, serious poster, I would think you were a fake account.
by folkrav | 2025-07-13 23:23:57+00:00
How? Do these 5 companies even operate in the same places? Around here we have DoorDash, Uber Eats, and that’s pretty much it. We have SkipTheDishes, which was present before the other two outside urban areas, but I don’t even bother talking about them, most restaurants in the area have switched away from them. The other alternatives just never existed outside highly urban areas or have simply been pushed out by the bigger players. Where are the effects of this highly competitive market, exactly?
by ta8645 | 2025-07-13 23:24:07+00:00
No, it's not fundamentally flawed. It _may_ be flawed, but just because you imagine that the available videos are somehow skewed in one way or the other, does not mean that you're correct.

As I stated, if it was simply one source of the videos, with one agenda, then perhaps you'd have a stronger argument. But in fact, that are many more people who are interested in the videos that expose police corruption, and they tend to be more circulated than the others. That is the benefit of the FOIA; as citizens we can get access to police body cam videos, when anyone alleges that there has been malfeasance in a given case.
by mips_avatar | 2025-07-13 23:25:18+00:00
I think the bear case for Azure is they're now just a GPU service provider for OpenAI. This is a business, but it's not a great business. None of their AI products are industry leaders, and nobody would pick copilot if given a choice. Microsoft can't reuse their Teams bundling strategy because the unit costs of copilot are so high. Like for real where is the actually functional powerpoint or excel agent? It's not coming because these products are so sclerotic that there's no interface inside of these codebases for a current gen AI agent to use and provide customer value. Microsoft made it's bed by chasing the next shiny object and having a culture of crushing individual employee agency years ago. Executives might think that layoffs can instill innovation through fear and grind, but that is so misguided.
by 9x39 | 2025-07-13 23:25:25+00:00
>Most people are moderate on most issues. That's just statistics...and it's actually backed up by all sorts of polling.

When you zoom in on a small area, sure. But globally? Pick a card and you'd have to squint to say most people are moderate on most issues.

Examples:

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2015/11/18/global-support...

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/global-divide-...

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes...
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-07-13 23:25:35+00:00
> I keep seeing this line as if people think CEOs shouldn't exist or aren't worth their compensation.

Yes indeed. There is no CEO in existence worth 30 of the employees that work under them. It's certainly true that good and bad CEOs exist, and that a good CEO can be a force multiplier that deserves higher compensation. But 30x (and often more!!) is an insane overinflated view of CEOs' worth to the company. The only reason they get away with it is that they are hired by the board of directors, which is.. other CEOs. So a good old boys' club is keeping salaries high completely divorced from any actual value provided.
by mlyle | 2025-07-13 23:26:09+00:00
> How are device owners being prohibited from anything?

I think a lot of us are wary of a world where we have limited selections of software stacks that we can run and do essential things. At some point, we don't own the devices anymore.

I like that Apple is a benevolent overlord, for now.

But I like to be able to run software that I control and participate in the world, and that has alternated between being somewhat harder and prohibitively so. Lockdown of devices (chain of trust, mandatory signed binaries, limitations of device drivers, bootloaders that won’t unlock) makes it increasingly difficult to experiment, repair, or even trust the tools we rely on, and is viewed as a prerequisite for many of these solutions.

--

(I appreciate the alternatives are really hard, and that there are substantial potential downsides creating pressure towards these types of solutions, above and beyond the desires to lock down marketplaces and capture rents).
by carlosjobim | 2025-07-13 23:26:11+00:00
Who has argued that taking the middle position is correct? Taking in information from differing sources is on the other hand correct, because then you can make an informed decision on your own position.

Believing that your position or your side's position is always correct and not bothering with other perspectives is the first step to becoming ignorant.

The second step is to believe that everybody who isn't explicitly of the same opinion as you must be some kind of shill or agent or infiltrator is the second step.
by add-sub-mul-div | 2025-07-13 23:26:16+00:00
> 1. Prompt Engineering: From Zero to Hero (promptz2h.com) 12 points by blackpc 6 hours ago

> 2. .NET: From Zero to Hero (dotnetz2h.com) 4 points by blackpc 12 hours ago

> 3. Python: From Zero to Hero (pythonz2h.com) 4 points by blackpc 17 hours ago

> 4. AI-Powered Financial Companion (pomegra.io) 3 points by blackpc 1 day ago

> 5. Python: From Zero to Hero (pythonz2h.com) 2 points by blackpc 5 days ago

> 6. ReactJS from Zero to Hero Free Online Book (reactz2h.com) 2 points by blackpc 5 days ago

If I wanted this low quality garbage why wouldn't I just generate it myself?
by blibble | 2025-07-13 23:26:27+00:00
I don't see the attraction of these apps either

the food arrives lukewarm, in a smaller portions and costs more

in addition their widespread use hurts the restaurants you like

and drives down wages for society, because the only people who can live on what they pay out to the drivers are illegal immigrants paying zero tax (with the state paying for room and board)

it's all negatives
by Aurornis | 2025-07-13 23:27:21+00:00
> People who want to misuse the medication are going to be the ones most willing and able to jump through the bureaucratic hoops

This thinking seems correct to people who grew up knowing about the dark web, Silk Road, and who believe they could access any substance they want if they wanted it.

It is not accurate for the majority of the population. For the average person, misuse of drugs isn’t a calculated decision. It’s one of convenience and opportunity.

> In 1920, 1970, and now, heroin was legal, illegal with minimal enforcement, and illegal with harsh enforcement (except in SF), and the same percentage of the population was addicted at each time.

This is a very misleading statistic for multiple reasons, as if it was engineered for the purpose of obscuring the problem.

Why pick 3 separate dates and limit only to 1 drug? There is a massive opioid epidemic that was fueled by increased availability of different forms of opioids beyond heroin. In the 1920s and 1970s they didn’t have OxyContin being diverted, Fentanyl flowing into drug distribution networks, or even Kratom products available at the local gas station. The availability and convenience of these different opioids has unquestionably increased opioid addictions.

Even more recently, the widespread legalization of marijuana has led to an increase in the number of daily users and the doses that people consume, even thought the libertarian arguments maintained that no such thing would happen.

At this point I can’t buy any arguments that claim that availability of drugs has no impact on misuse or addiction.
by camgunz | 2025-07-13 23:28:20+00:00
Skipping to the end here: if you're inside a Python thread and you're making your own event loop, something has gone badly. Maybe you made a bad choice (using threads inside an async task instead of an executor), maybe you have some legacy nightmare dependency thing to deal with, but multiple event loops, let alone nested event loops, are suboptimal from a resource usage standpoint.
by ashwinsundar | 2025-07-13 23:28:45+00:00
The point of code review imo is to have a human-in-the-loop actually read the code and decide if it makes sense, in the broader context of the application. That means the human knows things that a linter, formatter, automated test-suite, or even AI agent doesn't know about.

If a computer is doing code review, then it's not a code review. It's an automated check. Even if it's done by AI
by fasterik | 2025-07-13 23:30:09+00:00
Where does the article mention barriers to entry? My reading is that that the consolidation is due to venture capital moving investment to other areas. Anyone who wants to start a new food delivery app is still free to do so, as long as they can find funding.

This is the definition of competition according to Wikipedia: "Competition is a scenario where different economic firms are in contention to obtain goods that are limited by varying the elements of the marketing mix: price, product, promotion and place."

Yes, sounds like competition to me. Network effects are not anti-competitive.
by physix | 2025-07-13 23:30:10+00:00
I'd really like to know which use cases work and which don't. And when folks say they use agentic AI to churn through tokens to automate virtually the entire SDLC, are they just cherry picking the situations that turned out well, or do they really have prompting and workflow approaches that indeed increase their productivity 10-fold? Or, as you mention, is it possibly a niche area which works well?

My personal experience the past five months has been very mixed. If I "let 'er rip" it's mostly junk I need to refactor or redo by micro-managing the AI. At the moment, at least for what I do, AI is like a fantastic calculator that speeds up your work, but where you still should be pushing the buttons.
by timr | 2025-07-13 23:30:14+00:00
OK, the first link was about free speech, and the third was about "support for authoritarianism". Of all the issues you could possibly cherry-pick, those are amongst the ones where I'd expect the most extreme polarization (Survey people if they like ice cream and puppies, and hate murder, while you're at it.)

As for the second one (about homosexuality), the article tells a fairly nuanced story about polarization across countries, with rising overall support, and a lot of countries...in the middle. That bar chart mid-way down the article looks exactly like what I'd expect.

> When you zoom in on a small area, sure. But globally?

Yes. The bigger the population, the more I expect to see a bell curve. Central limit theorem.