MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by stetrain | 2025-08-18 19:11:15+00:00
Home charging in shared parking scenarios is difficult. Municipalities can add curbside chargers and in some places this is fairly common. In a private condo or apartment scenario you'd need the owner or association to agree to install them.

A second option is more slow chargers installed places your car spends a lot of time parked, like offices or transit stations if you park and ride.

A third option is using a fast charger somewhere you go once or twice a week. Like grocery stores, gyms, etc. Costco for example is adding fast chargers to their stores, which should be fast enough for a full charge by the time you actually get in and out of Costco.

Replacing cells in a pack can be difficult. You want all the cells in the pack to have roughly the same capacity and voltage curve, so that you can connect them all together and charge them at the same time.

GM says that their Ultium batteries are segmented into modules, which each module having its own Battery Management System, and that it supports mixing and matching modules of different degradation and even cell chemistry.

But anything that adds complexity to the pack beyond being cells packed in as densely as feasible is going to add costs and reduce maximum energy storage.

I think the long term answer here is that there will eventually be a used and remanufactured battery pack market for popular models, just like you can get a used or remanufactured engine today.
by basfo | 2025-08-18 19:11:44+00:00
The idea of a service is that you pay a monthly fee and can use it during that period. It implies that the vendor has some kind of ongoing or recurring cost, or that they need to continuously provide or produce the service in some way. For example, in software they need to keep the servers running, push updates, and so on. If the service is related to goods, they deliver you a set of products that you’ve subscribed to on a recurring basis.

This new approach, however, often means you need to pay to use something that has already been produced, with its functionality fully available, but locked unless you subscribe. In that case, they are not really providing a service, they’re just holding a feature hostage until you pay. That isn’t a service; it’s basically extortion. If the car were free, I could understand having to pay to unlock it. But needing a subscription just to use my own car at full capacity? That’s dystopian.

I can totally see a TV that refuses to turn on until you’ve paid Samsung, a fridge that stays locked until you cough up more money, or a toilet that only lets you flush twice a day.Unless, of course, you upgrade to premium.
by godelski | 2025-08-18 19:11:54+00:00
When I was in school I had a laundry app (forced to use) that took 8 seconds to load, mostly while it scanned the network for the machines. It also had the rooms out of order in the room listing and no caching so every time you wanted to check the status (assuming it even worked) it took no less than a minute. It usually took less time to physically check, which also had a 100% accuracy.

Fuck this "we don't need to optimize" bullshit. Fuck this "minimum viable product" bullshit. It's just a race to the bottom. No one paper cut is the cause of death, but all of them are when you have a thousand.
by pyman | 2025-08-18 19:12:12+00:00
Test-driven development is back.

Since LLMs rely on patterns learned from large amounts of text, the results are relative. If the training data contained more Rust repos, that could explain why it feels stronger in Rust.

The way AI companies talk about "intelligence" now is shifting. They admit LLMs can't truly reason with the current architecture, so intelligence is being framed as the ability to solve problems using patterns learned from text, not reasoning on their own. That's a big downgrade from the original idea of AI reaching human-level thinking and developing AGI.

Also, my understanding is that since Microsoft invests in Copilot, it doesn't want ChatGPT to get better at coding. Instead, it wants it to get better at being a lawyer.
by chao- | 2025-08-18 19:12:23+00:00
I also cannot figure out from context what part of this is "suicide".

I don't even think it's a note saying your back door is unlocked? As myself and others shared in a sibling comment thread, we have worked at places that implemented robots.txt in order to prevent bots from getting into nearly-infinite tarpits of links that lead to nearly-identical pages.
by _fizz_buzz_ | 2025-08-18 19:12:24+00:00
Obviously, Newton and Leibniz and many other Mathematicians (and other people) understood the chain rule before back propagation. But unfortunately I am very far from a Newton or Leibniz, so it took me a lot longer to grasp why the chain rule is the way it is. And back propagation just made it click for me. I was really just talking about me personally.
by nicoburns | 2025-08-18 19:12:53+00:00
> While it is true that your car might consume more oil, and some other component might need replacing, its range, assuming it has been serviced properly,

Well, until it dies completely (or to the point that servicing it would be more expensive to repair than replace). Then it's range abruptly drops to 0. We won't know for sure until we have more older EVs, but it may well be that EVs last much longer than that at 70-80% range. Which, especially if starting ranges increase, may be a very useful amount of range.
by PaulKeeble | 2025-08-18 19:13:22+00:00
There is also just the situations where cars are parked on the street and the cabling has to get across the public pavement to charge the car. Even though those people can deploy a charger they can't be blocking the pavement. There is a real concern here where the incentives for the individual to pay to deploy charging capabilities in their car parking bay or front garden can't actually do so because of ownership. It needs solving via legislation, a basic default that people can pay to deploy these systems themselves.

Charging on public infrastructure ought to get there in time but the really big benefit of electric cars comes when it charges at home on cheap electricity and the only time you worry about charging it at all is when you do a long trip and you have to charge it at the half way point for 30 minutes.
by fragmede | 2025-08-18 19:13:25+00:00
https://youtu.be/HOoRnv3lA0k is staged to some degree, the question is how much. Even if I have to train it and do an annoying amount of setup work to train it so it works in my home, as opposed to their office, there's a price point where the company selling the robots just includes having a human technician come into your home to train the robot as part of the purchase process.
by Atlas667 | 2025-08-18 19:13:31+00:00
> The form of capitalism that existed when Marx wrote his thing, stopped being used in most places around the Great Depression era.

The type of capitalism Marx described is alive and well.

It exists in the undeveloped parts of the world, and it is maintained through force by many capitalist blocks and their allies. People around the world are kept exploited because their economies eventually tie into ours, and their exploitation makes us "competitive". Just because its not you and your kids toiling all day doesn't mean there aren't any.

And it was like that here too, it was only undone through force by socialists, that's why you're allowed to work 8 hours a day only, we have a minimum wage, and children aren't working in factories.

This didn't happen by the graciousness of profiteers, it happened through the threat posed by the masses, people were killed on American streets for this. Don't ever forget that. That's how they rewrite history.

Don't think it can't arise again, it evidently is... slowly.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-08-18 19:14:17+00:00
Don't forget the video piracy thread had a lot of justification to the effect of 'the people that work on these shows/movies don't get paid enough anyways, so it's ok for me to pirate'. Wait, so you think they should get paid more for their work, this what they do is worth being paid for, just not by you? Weirdest flex.
by neogodless | 2025-08-18 19:15:02+00:00
It's true we can't shake mainstream obsession with range, but I also think most people are a bit hesitant to take their 175,000 mile gasoline cars on long road trips. Not because of range, but because it just might break.

So old EVs can be just like old gas cars - used around town rather than for long road trips.
by kypro | 2025-08-18 19:15:14+00:00
I've always found it rather crazy that the power of backpropagation and artificial neural networks was doubted by AI researchers for so long. It's really only since the early 2010s that researchers started to take the field seriously. This is despite the core algorithm (backpropagation) being known for decades.

I remember when I learnt about artificial neural networks at university in the late 00s my professors were really sceptical of them, rightly explaining that they become hard to train as you added more hidden layers.

See, what makes backpropagation and artificial neural networks work are all of the small optimisations and algorithm improvements that were added on top of backpropagation. Without these improvements it's too computationally inefficient to be practical and you have to contend with issues like exploding gradients.

I think Geoffrey Hinton has noted a few times that for people like him who have been working on artificial neural networks for years it's quite surprising that today neural networks just work because for years it was so hard to get them to do anything. In this sense while backpropagation is the foundational algorithm, it's not sufficient on it's own. It was the many improvements that were made on top of backpropagation that actually make artificial neural networks work and take off in the 2010s when some of the core components of modern neural networks started to fall into place.

I remember when I first learnt about neural networks I thought maybe coupling them with some kind of evolutionary approach might be what was needed to make them work. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing of course, but I spent so many nights experimenting with neural networks. I just loved the idea of an artificial "neural network" being able to learn a new problem and spit out an answer. The biggest regret of my life was coming out of university and going into web development because there were basically no AI jobs back then, and no such thing as an AI startup. If you wanted to do AI back then you basically had to be a researcher which didn't interest me at the time.
by connicpu | 2025-08-18 19:15:14+00:00
At my last apartment before I moved into a home where I did have the ability to install a charger, they had 4 EV chargering spots in the parking garage. I believe residents just had to pay the normal residential electricity rate to use them, they were standard commercial level 2 chargers like the kind you see in public parking lots.

All this to say, if the demand is there then shared parking structures will install them. I live in a city with a fairly high percentage of EVs, but it will continue to spread.
by foxyv | 2025-08-18 19:15:17+00:00
Chicago is one of the few exceptions to this rule in the United States. New build suburban housing looks like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4041926,-111.559976,3a,75y,8...

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.5705053,-98.2668855,3a,75y,3...
by shadowgovt | 2025-08-18 19:15:44+00:00
It's true. I call authoring SQL "holographic programming" because any change I want to make frequently implies a change to the top and bottom of the query too; there's almost never a localized change.

C++ has this issue too due to the split between header declarations and implementations. Change a function name? You're updating it in the implementation file, and the header file, and then you can start wondering if there are callers that need to be updated also. Then you add in templates and the situation becomes even more fun (does this code live in a .cc file? An .h file? Oh, is your firm one of the ones that does .hh files and/or .hpp files also? Have fun with that).
by hombre_fatal | 2025-08-18 19:16:02+00:00
Good point. I remember Facebook doing obfuscation just to hide the word "sponsored" long ago just so you couldn't easily hide its ads.

That said, they put up a fight in the browser because user interventions (browser plugins, greasemonkey scripts, ad blockers) are viable in the browser but not in native apps.

Though this is also why they want to force you to use their app, and I'm not sure how to incentivize apps to even exist as websites. It feels like a dying fluke that places like Reddit even maintain a web frontend for their app.
Show HN: Open-source Next.js project management app
by maxim-fin | 2025-08-18 19:16:12+00:00
I made open-source (MIT) project management (kanban) app with version and project controls, cards filtering and search.

I plan to implement WIP limits and email notification for the approching deadlines. What else would be usefull to add?

- GitHub repo: https://github.com/Antibody/Completics - Free working kanban app: https://www.completics.co
by agentcoops | 2025-08-18 19:16:24+00:00
I share your concern for the livelihood of authors (and your skepticism regarding the naiveté that often surrounds pro-piracy rhetoric), but I don't think that's fair to the question here. Unlike in the case of music or film, most users are not just trying to get the latest NY Times best-selling novel. The percent of books made accessible through these services that are tied to an author's income through consumer sales is negligible. Most specialist literature, whether in the natural sciences or the humanities, is priced under the assumption that university libraries are the ones making the purchase, often more or less automatically. Yet even and perhaps especially in the US (I know nothing of the library culture in certain sanctioned countries), it's increasingly rare that university libraries have open stacks for non-students and there are incredibly few public libraries that actually provide access to scholarly works, past or present -- New York Public Library and the Library of Congress in DC are the ones I've used personally, but I'm sure there are a handful of others.

Moreover, however many countless AI companies now buying and pulping copies of every book in existence seems to be really changing the used book market. Prices are going up dramatically and before this year it was very rare to not find a single copy in the world of whatever old book one desired.

As someone who spends a disproportionate amount on books and shares your concern for not making life even more difficult for authors, these services going away would be a tremendous regression.
by Sharlin | 2025-08-18 19:16:40+00:00
AFAICS bidirectionality just means "has type inference" [1]. But I'm not sure how useful the term is because just about every language has some small degree of type inference – even in C you don't have to annotate every (sub)expression with its type! Resolving the type of the term `2 + 2` in C is a form of type inference.

C++, C#, and Java have slightly more bidirectionality, as they allow inferring the type of a variable based on its initializer. Function overloading (ad-hoc polymorphism) is also a form of bidirectional type checking.

Rust requires that all function signatures be fully annotated with the exception of lifetimes (mostly for the reasons of clarity and API stability). Function-local type inference is strong, but not fully bidirectional.

[1] https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/bidirectional+typechecking
by Wowfunhappy | 2025-08-18 19:17:19+00:00
> Am I an exception?

Yes, I think you're an exception, sorry.

We will never have real data on this. But simply on its face, I find it extremely hard to believe that most consumers have a strong enough moral compass to go out of their way to buy something they already have access to. Maybe they will for a tiny handful of special books that they want hard copies of, or authors they really like, but not for most media they consume.

This type of system also becomes a popularity contest for creators; you are supporting the people you like as opposed to whose work you want to read. If an author says something you disagree with, it's easy to just read their work without paying them. I'm not against consumer boycotts, but it should generally come with a sacrifice on both sides--for consumers, that means missing out on the product or service.

You are free to feel however you want about this. I can certainly see the immense societal value of making things accessible to more people. But I flat out don't believe the "piracy doesn't lead to lost sales" shtick, of course it does.
by brookst | 2025-08-18 19:17:58+00:00
So you’re a PM for a word processor. You have a giant backlog.

Users want to load and edit PDFs. Finnish has been rendering right to left for months, but the easy fix will break Hebrew. The engineers say a new rendering engine is critical or these things will just get worse. Sales team says they’re blocked on a significant contract because the version tracking system allows unaudited “clear history” operations. Reddit is going berserk because the icon you used (and paid for!) for the new “illuminated text mode” turns out to be stolen from a Lithuanian sports team.

Knowing that most of your users only start the app when their OS forces a reboot… just how much priority does startup time get?
by wakawaka28 | 2025-08-18 19:18:06+00:00
>No amount of commenters screaming “YEAH BUT YOURE A SOFTWARE ENGINEER YOU CAN BUY EGGS” will make me buy eggs again until I view the cost as fair for my budget.

Again, you can afford it easily. You chose a bad example. Eggs are still practically the cheapest source of protein, besides beans. Are you trying to seriously make us think you're reduced to eating beans every day as a software engineer?

The reason I'm pushing you on this issue is that quite a few very well-off people seem to be trying to jump on the "woe is me" bandwagon. You are not poor and probably won't be any time soon. You may not be able to afford the lifestyle you want, but pretending to be poorer than you are because you think it's cool or something is asinine.

>I never stated eggs as the reason I would stop paying my student loans. In fact the list is much longer than the single item of eggs.

Yeah, I know. But throwing eggs in there and expecting us to take it seriously is kind of crazy. You probably can afford most of the things on the list, or will be able to in the future.

>The trend will go, if everyone stops paying their loans to prioritize other costs than that is what the “market” wants to be unburdened from student loans.

If these people in on the "trend" like over-entitled software engineers actually make money, it will be taken directly out of their paychecks. Unless you think quitting your job and living under a bridge is preferable to repaying what you promised to pay, and profitted from, you are going to stay in the system.

>I also didn’t get ANY money for free. That money went to the university charging overpriced tuition. I wasn’t spending it on overpriced eggs. It has nothing to do with free-money and everything to do with using money to burden people and calling it “education”.

It is free if you don't repay it. You want it free if you seek to not repay it. You chose to borrow for tuition, and that investment did in fact pay off for you. Stop whining about the economy that affects everyone, and pay what you owe.
by stetrain | 2025-08-18 19:18:55+00:00
Some things will still add up. Someone who might be shopping in the price range for a used car with 100,000 miles might also see a car with 200,000 miles that needs brakes (probably for the first time in an EV's life), shocks, bushings, CV joints, A/C service, or possibly corrosion repair/mitigation in some climates, might choose to trade or scrap over spending those repair costs.

Also there becomes a crossover point of residual value where a car involved in an accident becomes cheaper to total than to repair, which is probably what takes a lot of cars off the road.

That mileage may stretch longer if the important parts of an average EV drivetrain can run without major service for significantly longer than the average ICE drivetrain, which seems like a likely possibility.
by conductr | 2025-08-18 19:19:36+00:00
Everyone had problems that winter. It was pretty universally felt. How you recover from it is where your economic status changes your experience. If you are under insured or can’t come up with your insurance deductible you’re pretty screwed but we can’t solve all the worlds problems with this alone.

So my general albeit cold sounding response is “Doesn’t matter.” We should have the expectation that it’s owner responsibility first. After that, we can devise subsidies and such to ensure everyone can retrofit their house. There’s a ton of levers to work with once you admit that the grid and power transmission isn’t some god like thing that never fails

You can’t hinder progress because someone can’t afford it. They maybe did have the money if it meant a few bucks a month on their bill, but they were never told this risk existed, we all thought we lived in a modern enough country that we would never be without power for an entire week. But we also have never seen freezing temperatures for a solid week either, not in anyone I knows lifetime including some 90 year olds.

Once I know the problem exists, I’d rather spend the $2k and have a solution at hand than take on the full system costs of winterizing/prepping for a once in a century(?) snow storm. That would perpetually make my energy cost go up by 10% or more. It’s the smarter solution with better ROI if people DIY the contingency.
by Animats | 2025-08-18 19:19:41+00:00
Not so much any more.[1] US used vehicle exports are down at least 2/3 since 2008. China is making so many cheap new cars that used US cars are no longer needed.

Most scrapped cars in the US are chopped up into little pieces, run through a separator for steel, aluminum, and everything else, and end up at a steel mill to be made into new steel. In Silicon Valley, the chopping and initial separation plant is at the Port of Redwood City.

[1] https://www.trade.gov/data-visualization/used-vehicle-trade-...
by qalmakka | 2025-08-18 19:19:44+00:00
A. I'm neither vegan nor vegetarian B. I don't mean _now_, I mean in the previous few centuries. People in Italy, Greece, ... couldn't afford to eat meat more than a few times a year (if they were lucky), and mostly ate vegetables, a bit of cheese, lots of bread, pulses and porridge. This is why most recipes aren't really focused on "good" cuts of meat, but mince, offal, bad cuts, .. and lots of vegetables. My grandma was born a peasant in the 1920's and literally ate meat for Christmas and that was it.