MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nyeah | 2025-08-12 16:01:51+00:00
I suspect you didn't read some parts of my comment. I didn't say everyone in the world is always data-limited, I said we normally are where I work. I didn't recommend "sitting back on our laurels." I made very specific recommendations.

The qualifier "normally" already covers "not entirely true". Of course it's not entirely true. It's mostly true for us now. (In fact twenty years ago we used more numerical models than we do now, because we were facing more unsolved problems where the solution was pretty well knowable just by doing more complicated calculations, but without taking more data. Back then, when people started taking lots of data, it was often a total waste of time. But right now, most of those problems seem to be solved. We're facing different problems that seem much harder to model, so we rely more on data. This stage won't be permanent either.)

It's not a sentiment, it's a reality that we have to deal with.
by jackwilsdon | 2025-08-12 16:01:53+00:00
Richard Stallman is pretty much already doing this!

> I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me

https://www.stallman.org/stallman-computing.html#internetuse
by jrecursive | 2025-08-12 16:01:59+00:00
NAL, but IMO it's legal & political maneuvering. DOJ asked Judge Mehta to consider forcing divestiture of Chrome after Google was found to illegally maintained a search monopoly. If it's determined the divestiture is feasible, especially with an existing more-or-less "credible buyer" at the ready, it looks executable. The offer is basically crafted to fit the DOJ/regulator concerns, ie everything is build around "least disruptive": keeping Google the default search engine, etc. Furthermore, just by doing this, they are putting ideas out there about what an "acceptable buyer" is and puts a number to the discussion about "what Chrome is worth". Purely remedies chess and an attempt to own the narrative. Google's going to say no, at least as-is, but this certainly throws a wrench in the works. Lots more moves to be made.
by tracker1 | 2025-08-12 16:02:04+00:00
Definitely all good questions. I've noticed that there seems to be a bit of convergence between Azure DevOps and Github (Enterprise) and am curious how co-mingled the teams or management are at any given level or not.

I'm mixed on the cultural changes at MS and have historically preferred GH's approach. I'm hoping MS moves closer to GH than the reverse. I'm not working with/at either company and don't really have a lot of insights to offer other than observations from the outside.
by rsync | 2025-08-12 16:02:09+00:00
I run a public URL shorter and you are correct:

it is relatively simple and inexpensive to operate and there is no reason it can’t continue operating into the indefinite future.

I disagree with the op on one major point… They suggest that the proper way for a service like this to operate is with a public database of links…

However, when I think of all of the different ways, one might use a shorter, it seems obvious that many links would necessarily be sensitive and/or private.

Therefore, I consider myself to have a dual mandate: privacy of the links created, and a duty, that I have assumed, of running the service for decades.
by dylan604 | 2025-08-12 16:02:18+00:00
Closed loop water systems is a common form of cooling in large/commercial buildings. Typically, a large chiller unit on the roof with the cold water piped throughout the building connected to individual blowers. I've been told it is much more cost efficient.

If that's not how they are using the water, then what are they using it for? Swamp coolers?
by saghm | 2025-08-12 16:03:10+00:00
Without speaking for religions I'm not familiar with, I grew up Catholic, and one of the most important Catholic beliefs is that during Mass, the bread (i.e. "communion" wafers) and wine quite literally transform into the body and blood of Jesus, and that eating and drinking it is a necessary ritual to get into heaven[1], which was a source of controversy even back as far as the Protestant Reformation, with some sects retaining that doctrine and others abandoning it. In a lot of ways, what's considered "normal" or "crazy" in a religion comes to what you're familiar with.

For those not familiar with the bible enough to know what to look for to find the wild stuff, look up the story of Elisha summoning bears out of the first to maul children for calling him bald, or the last two chapters of Daniel (which I think are only in the Catholic bible) where he literally blows up a dragon by feeding it a cake.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the...
by StevenWaterman | 2025-08-12 16:03:11+00:00
Yeah, I think this is exactly it. If something sounds extremely stupid, or if everyone around you says it's extremely stupid, it probably is. If you can't justify it, it's probably because you have failed to find the reason it's stupid, not because it's actually genius.

And the crazy thing is, none of that is fundamentally opposed to rationalism. You can be a rationalist who ascribes value to gut instinct and societal norms. Those are the product of millions of years of pre-training.

I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about the meaning of life. And my conclusions have been pretty crazy. But they sound insane, so until I figure out why they sound insane, I'm not acting on those conclusions. And I'm definitely not surrounding myself with people who take those conclusions seriously.
by sm1100 | 2025-08-12 16:03:21+00:00
I’ve recently experienced a significant increase in my productivity thanks to using multiple AI tools simultaneously . Initially, I relied solely on ChatGPT, but now I’m harnessing the power of Claude, Gemini, Deepseek, Grok and ChatGPT —all at the same time!

You might wonder how I manage this. The answer is TantyAI ! This incredible platform allows me to prompt all these AIs simultaneously, making it super easy to compare their responses without the hassle of switching between them.

This has not only saved me a ton of time but also enabled me to complete tasks much faster.

Have any of you experimented with using multiple AIs for your projects? I’d love to hear your experiences!
by xscott | 2025-08-12 16:03:31+00:00
> Here are the UK exceptions to copyright.

I assumed you were in the US, where companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are located. If they're breaking UK laws, you should appeal to your government to enforce those laws in your territory, or ban access to them, or whatever you think is relevant.

> [...] so your claim that it doesn't explicitly ban it is a red herring.

Why should I care about your laws any more than any other country I don't live in?
by za_creature | 2025-08-12 16:04:07+00:00
> When you know what you are doing with C pointers, the compiler just doesn't get in the way.

Tell me you use -fno-strict-aliasing without telling me.

Fwiw, I agree with you and we're in good[citation needed] company: https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-btrfs@vger.kernel.org/msg...
by sunshowers | 2025-08-12 16:04:17+00:00
I don't disagree, but to steelman the case for (neo)rationalism: one of its fundamental contributions is that Bayes' theorem is extraordinarily important as a guide to reality, perhaps at the same level as the second law of thermodynamics; and that it is dramatically undervalued by larger society. I think that is all basically correct.

(I call it neorationalism because it is philosophically unrelated to the more traditional rationalism of Spinoza and Descartes.)
by BryantD | 2025-08-12 16:04:22+00:00
I went to a Waldorf school and I’d recommend being really wary. The woo is sort of background noise, and if you’ve raised your kid well they’ll be fine. But the quality of the academics may not be good at all. For example, when I was ready for calculus my school didn’t have anyone who knew how to teach it so they stuck me and the other bright kid in a classroom with a textbook and told us to figure it out. As a side effect of not being challenged, I didn’t have good study habits going into college, which hurt me a lot.

If you’re talking about grade school, interview whoever is gonna be your kids teacher for the next X years and make sure they seem sane. If you’re talking about high school, give a really critical look at the class schedule.

Waldorf schools can vary a lot in this regard so you may not encounter the same problems I did, but it’s good to be cautious.
by jennyholzer | 2025-08-12 16:04:22+00:00
speech is heavily, heavily restricted in the united states, in particular on American social media platforms.

there are a massive number of subjects which cannot be spoken about on social media without risking massive deboosting and the blacklisting of your accounts.

this censorship is directed by "former" CIA agents working at all major American social media companies. In other words, this is direct government censorship of private citizens' speech.
by glenstein | 2025-08-12 16:04:48+00:00
Right and to your point, I would say you can distinguish (1) "objective" in the sense of relying on mind-independent data from (2) absolute knowledge, which treats subjects like closed conversations. And you can make similar caveats for "rational".

You can be rational and objective about a given topic without it meaning that the conversation is closed, or that all knowledge has been found. So I'm certainly not a fan of cult dynamics, but I think it's easy to throw an unfair charge at these groups, that their interest in the topic necessitates an absolutist disposition.
by nicce | 2025-08-12 16:04:59+00:00
Bit off-topic - macOS has excellent built-in dictionary. Just select the word in any app, press Ctrl+Command+D and it opens it. It even guesses most incorrect words correctly. Also translation available if it exist for current keyboard locales.

E.g.

> No entries for "typoglycemia", did you mean "hypoglycemia"?
by jszymborski | 2025-08-12 16:05:07+00:00
I think it's pretty easy to make an argument against URL shorteners, but I think it's a bit harder to defend killing existing short links. Stop new links from being minted, keep up a "Report Abuse" page, maybe even scan the existing DB for Google Login look-alikes. The upkeep is as much or less than responsibly running a URL short link site in the first place.

Instead, they're just disappearing _all_* goo.gl short links. The overwhelming majority of which are benign links made by users who were promised a super stable URL link shortening service backed by the Google brand.

*edit: Not all, but nearly.
by fuzztester | 2025-08-12 16:05:13+00:00
>The big omission here is anything Python

wxPython and PyQt are some options. PySide too. There are some other less-known ones too. I've not tried Kivy. There is also tkinter which comes built-in with Python.

IIRC, the Dropbox GUI client app was done with wxPython on both Linux and Windows.
by pjc50 | 2025-08-12 16:05:24+00:00
I agree. Apparently the UK average daily water usage is ~140l, so "fix leaks" dwarfs all the others.

If you're irrigating your garden, that's also going to be a big one, but quite often you get a hosepipe ban in the dry season anyway.

Someone with a water meter should try these measures and see if they notice a difference; I bet they don't. The data center one is of course unmeasureable by the individual.
by imtringued | 2025-08-12 16:06:24+00:00
Your argument is bullshit. There is no content filter on this planet that will prevent children from seeing blocked content. The children that know how to circumvent the protections will circumvent them. The providers of blocked content will figure out a way around them too.

Content filters only affect law abiding users and providers. The hallmark of an effective policy is to make it as easy as possible to comply with it. Setting a header is pretty damn easy to implement and enforce by the government. It also displays trust in law abiding citizen, who will comply with the law, because they know that it serves their best interests, rather than being shoved down their throats against their will.

The alternative will have exactly the same or - far more likely - worse results, because the cost of verifying every user's age is far too high to be implemented by the vast majority of sites on the internet. It's more likely that when law abiding citizens are faced with laws that are impossible to implement that they just throw up their hands up and close up shop or move somewhere else.

In the second scenario their services might still be accessible in the UK and need to be blocked by the UK government, the online safety act achieves essentially nothing in this scenario.
by tialaramex | 2025-08-12 16:06:28+00:00
Unlike C++ and (until Martin's work is moved to the actual language ISO document rather than separate) C the Rust language actually has a definition for how provenance is supposed to work.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/ptr/index.html#provenance

The definition isn't deemed complete because of aliasing. AIUI The definition we have is adequate if you're OK with treating all edge cases for "Is this an alias?" as "Yes" but eventually Rust will also need to carefully nail down all those edge cases so that you can tread closer without falling off.
by AndrewKemendo | 2025-08-12 16:06:36+00:00
He came to the US Air Force Academy every year to give the incoming freshman class his lecture.

This was mandatory and went on for years.

I distinctly remember he sat in a folding chair next to an overhead projector and used what looked like 20 year old laminate slides (this was in the early 2000s) to go through his pitch.

Is he still doing that at other schools? He must be too old at this point.
by xp84 | 2025-08-12 16:06:48+00:00
I would argue that this is a pretty destructive choice though. Like kids/parenting or not (and even for blessed families without problems it’s always hard work), they’re inherently part of being a biological creature. Of course, individuals can opt out, but if everyone opts out, we are all dead.

It’s sad that some people think that’s a good outcome, just because they’re squeamish about diaper changing or dealing with snotty nosed, annoying children. Those people tend to forget that they were once diaper-wearing, snotty nosed, annoying children.

Clearly, the ability to have all the pleasure and none of the responsibility is a very powerful thing. It seems kind of cruel that we have given that to ourselves as a species, if in fact it hacks our brain so much that we decide to kill off our species because Netflix or TikTok is so much more satisfying and easy than having to actually raise a child.
by BizarroLand | 2025-08-12 16:06:59+00:00
It's not about the air. Its about our fundamental squishyness.

At 10g, a 150lb man would weigh 1,500 lbs. His heart isn't strong enough to move blood that suddenly weighs 90lbs/gallon that also has to push other blood that also weighs that same amount. His blood vessels, paper thin and easily torn under normal weight, suddenly have 10 times the amount of pressure to resist.

He's fine for a few moments, jet pilots experience short bursts of 10g during flights quite often, occasionally more.

Might pass out after 10-20 seconds, but after 10 minutes, his brain, starved of oxygen and squished under its own weight, ceases to function. His heart or his blood vessels rip and tear from the strain, and his body falls apart inside of its own skin.

It's not pretty, but it would probably be a fairly painless way to go.

Getting back to your question, his ability to breathe is not relevant under those situations. The absence of oxygen would accelerate his demise no more than it would under any other situation.
by beepbopboopp | 2025-08-12 16:07:04+00:00
These are consumer products that are basically commodities to all but the largest power users. If you loved their product than this approach should make you ecstatic as its the only way they'll be able to survive as an independent.

OpenAi literally retired all their models to the anger of the likes of people like you because they know this is all basically a race for the most familiar consumer assistant on a monthly subscription.
by handoflixue | 2025-08-12 16:07:21+00:00
https://www.lesswrong.com/highlights this is the ostensible "Core Highlights", curated by major members of the community, and I believe Eliezer would endorse it.

If you don't get anything out of reading the list itself, then you're probably not going to get anything out of the rest of the community either.

If you poke around and find a few neat ideas there, you'll probably find a few other neat ideas.

For some people, though, this is "wait, holy shit, you can just DO that? And it WORKS?", in which case probably read all of this but then also go find a few other sources to counter-balance it.

(In particular, probably 90% of the useful insights already exist elsewhere in philosophy, and often more rigorously discussed - LessWrong will teach you the skeleton, the general sense of "what rationality can do", but you need to go elsewhere if you want to actually build up the muscles)
by uecker | 2025-08-12 16:07:41+00:00
Historically, the reason was was often niche architectures. But sometimes certain behavior dies out and we can make semantics more strict. For example, two's complement is now a requirement for C. Still, we did not make signed overflow defined. The reasons are optimization and - maybe surprising for some - safety. UB can be used to insert the compile-time checks we need to make things safe, but often we can not currently require everyone to do this. At the same time, making things defined may make things worse. For example, finding wraparound bugs in unsigned arithmetic - though well-defined - is a difficult and serious problem. For signed overflow, you use a compiler flag and this is not exploitable anymore (could still be a DoS).
by Lio | 2025-08-12 16:07:41+00:00
> The only people moaning about this are the ones ashamed of jerking off. Just own it, and this issue goes away. Who cares if a random company has your mug shot to do an age estimation, they know you jerk off, so what?

Sorry but that misses the point. This isn't about porn or being embarrased about it. It's about having to present identification to gain access many different types of site.

We now have the situation where a site, any kind doesn't have to be porn, can look legitimate and ask for required personal identifcation but actually be a run fraudsters.

You might personally have an issue identifying sites like that many adults will and once they're handed over a copy of their passport or drivers licence they are in for a lot of trouble.
by mooreds | 2025-08-12 16:08:40+00:00
> the more common/sane thing is cheaper unit pricing as you hit scale.

Depends on the provider's business model.

Many devtools want to make it trivial to get started, and zero/low prices facilitate that. They know that once you are set up with the tool, the barrier to moving is high. They also know that devs are tinkerers who may take a free product discovered on their free time and introduce it to a workplace who will pay for it.

But someone has to pay for all those free users/plans (they aren't using zero resources). With this business model, the payer is the person/org with some level of success who is forced up into a more expensive plan.

This is a valid strategy for two reasons:

- such users/orgs are less likely to move because they already have working code using the system and moving introduces risk

- if they have high levels of traffic, they may (not certainly, but may) be a profit making enterprise and will do the cold hard calculus of "it costs me $50/100 GB but would take a dev N hours to move and will have X opportunity cost" and decide to keep paying

The successful "labor of love" project is an unfortunate casualty.
by potatolicious | 2025-08-12 16:08:46+00:00
Yeah, a lot of the comments here are really just addressing cults writ large and opposed to why this one was particularly successful.

A significant part of this is the intersection of the cult with money and status - this stuff really took off once prominent SV personalities became associated with it, and got turbocharged when it started intersecting with the angel/incubator/VC scene, when there was implicit money involved.

It's unusually successful because -- for a time at least -- there was status (and maybe money) in carrying water for it.
by LegionMammal978 | 2025-08-12 16:08:58+00:00
> I don't understand why someone would want to hold on nostalgically to restrictions we no longer face.

On the other hand, I don't understand why someone would want to shoehorn all possible forms of control flow into "everything is a function object that can receive argument values that are substituted into parameter variables". I could just as easily say that all programs are a special case of cellular automata or string-rewriting systems or whatever other Turing tarpit.

You call imperative mutation "contorting your brain", but you always have to keep close track of which variables change and which stay the same, even if you shove them into function parameters. Local immutability comes at the cost of disguising which variables may have their values replaced over the course of the execution.

> What you'd want to do is define combinators that encapsulate the specific pattern of computation you want to implement.

Yes, I agree that control-flow combinators are a good model for many forms of programming. But they are mostly orthogonal to the broader imperative vs. functional style for sequential control flow, except for the historical factor of older imperative languages having poor support for capturing values into closures.

> I know of one major use case where you'd want to use tail recursion directly: state machines and interpreters. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43076088 for an example of the latter. See https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lambda:_The_Ultimate_GOTO for an example of the former.

I can accept that direct threading makes contingent sense in that Python case, given current implementations. It seems to mostly be an unfortunate limitation that the compilers have poor handling of dispatch loops. (Indeed, the author still had to use special implementation-specific contortions to get the compiler to generate acceptable register handling.)

But otherwise, I'd generally prefer structured programming, whether it be with imperative statements or with control-flow combinators, over the totally unstructured control flow offered by bare tail calls.
by Lammy | 2025-08-12 16:09:13+00:00
> If anyone needs a new wallpaper for the week.

Neat. That spot on Route 12/121† is one of my favorite places to take people when they visit the Bay Area. My pic from a few months ago: https://i.imgur.com/e2jbdkx.jpeg

One thing that puzzles me though is how the story is always told that Charles O'Rear was on his way from Napa to San Francisco, i.e. westbound on the highway, but having been there it feels like it could only have been the other way around due to the angle of the POV compared to the road and the fact that when you're eastbound there's a big left-hand curve which commands your sightline to the left so it's easy to keep looking past the road and straight into Bliss: https://www.vintag.es/2022/08/bliss.html

†That particular stretch of road is both: https://cahighways.org/ROUTE012.html https://cahighways.org/ROUTE121.html