MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lisper | 2025-08-31 16:20:02+00:00
> So how many gates are we talking to factor some "cryptographically useful" number?

That is a hard question to answer for two reasons. First, there is no bright line that delineates "cryptographically useful". And second, the exact design of a QC that could do such a calculation is not yet known. It's kind of like trying to estimate how many traditional gates would be needed to build a "semantically useful" neural network back in 1985.

But the answer is almost certainly in the millions.

[UPDATE] There is a third reason this is hard to predict: for quantum error correction, there is a tradeoff between the error rate in the raw qbit and the number of gates needed to build a reliable error-corrected virtual qbit. The lower the error rate in the raw qbit, the fewer gates are needed. And there is no way to know at this point what kind of raw error rates can be achieved.

> Is there some pathway that makes quantum computers useful this century?

This century has 75 years left in it, and that is an eternity in tech-time. 75 years ago the state of the art in classical computers was (I'll be generous here) the Univac [1]. Figuring out how much less powerful it was than a modern computer makes an interesting exercise, especially if you do it in terms of ops/watt. I haven't done the math, but it's many, many, many orders of magnitude. If the same progress can be achieved in quantum computing, then pre-quantum encryption is definitely toast by 2100. And it pretty much took only one breakthrough, the transistor, to achieve the improvement in classical computing that we enjoy today. We still don't have the equivalent of that for QC, but who knows when or if it will happen. Everything seems impossible until someone figures it out for the first time.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I#Technical_description
by natmaka | 2025-08-31 16:20:31+00:00
A typical car battery stores 60 kWh (the average capacity of models is increasing), so, charged during the day using inexpensive renewable electricity (particularly solar), it can power a household during one of the rare winter nights with insufficient wind.

Case in point: France. A household consumes an average of 14 kWh of electricity per day. The capacity of electric cars will exceed 500 GWh before 2035 and 2000 GWh between 2040 and 2050.

Trucks, utility vehicles, and stationary batteries (domestic and industrial) will add to this. Batteries from retired vehicles will increasingly be converted into static batteries before being recycled (see "Redwood Materials" in the US).

In California, when the sun is at its peak (midday), solar power produces up to three-quarters of the electricity. Batteries are charged in the afternoon, when solar electricity is cheap, and released in the evening, when Californians return home. At their peak consumption, around 8 p.m., batteries can supply up to 30% of the state's electricity.
by tomduncalf | 2025-08-31 16:20:59+00:00
This made me google Buzz and it turns out it was recoded by the author and there was an update in 2022. Not sure if it’s still developed. I’m not on a Windows machine so won’t be able to try it easily unfortunately, wish it was open source so it could be ported to Mac

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=590922
by LarryMade2 | 2025-08-31 16:21:43+00:00
I tried it - didn't like it. Had an LLM work on a backup script since I don't use Bash very often. Took a bunch of learning the quirks of bash to get the code working properly.

While I'll say it got me started, it wasn't a snap of the fingers and a quick debug to get something done. Took me quite a while to figure out why something worked but really it didn't (LLM using command line commands where Bash doesn't interpret the results the same).

If its something I know, probably wont use LLM (as it doesn't do my style). If it's something I don't know, might use it to get me started but I expect that's all I'll it for.
by jacquesm | 2025-08-31 16:21:45+00:00
It's not side loading. It is just installing and running. I swear all this 'for your benefit' crap is going to relegate all of our computing hardware to the status of dumb terminal before long.

Note how the term 'side loading' is already weighted against you doing it, it is supposed to make you feel you're doing something that is borderline illegal even if it is still possible and that you are bypassing safeguards that would stop you from doing this stupid thing if you only took the proper route.
by kleiba | 2025-08-31 16:22:00+00:00
I disagree, lots of volunteers have provided tons of high quality information since the inception of the web. Wikipedia is written entirely by people that didn't get any compensation for it. People answer questions on forums for free.

Likewise, a lot of content produced with commercial interest in mind is total garbage (this is e.g. where the term "click-bait" originates from).

There's always quality stuff and crap, no matter whether it's been produced for free or not.
by crazygringo | 2025-08-31 16:22:31+00:00
I think what happened is that a lot of people started dismissing all LLM code creation as "vibe coding" because those people were anti-LLM, and so the term itself became an easy umbrella pejorative.

And then, more people saw these critics using "vibe coding" to refer to all LLM code creation, and naturally understood it to mean exactly that. Which means the recent articles we've seen about how good vibe coding starts with a requirements file, then tests that fail, then tests that pass, etc.

Like so many terms that started out being used pejoratively, vibe coding got reclaimed. And it just sounds cool.

Also because we don't really have any other good memorable term for describing code built entirely with LLM's from the ground up, separate from mere autocomplete AI or using LLM's to work on established codebases.
Show HN: Pol/ite – /pol/ but posts are all polite
by maxaw | 2025-08-31 16:22:34+00:00
What woud it be like to read fringe political views forcibly made polite by way of LLM?

System prompt (gemini-2.5-flash-lite): "You are rewriting 4chan posts to be more polite while preserving their original meaning and tone. Don't add unnecessary verbosity; keep it concise. Make sure to preserve formatting including markdown, links and greentext."
by paradox460 | 2025-08-31 16:22:36+00:00
Jujutsu isn't really a git UI, and in some ways it's rather bad at being one (no support for making tags, submodules, or a few other things)

It's a whole new VCS, that just so happens to be backwards compatible with git, and uses git as it's backend

Similar to how git brought us cheap branching over svn, JJ brings cheap rebasing. Conflicts are no longer stop the world operations, and you can rebase, rearrange, and manage commits like never before.

If you've used tools like stacked diffs before, JJ will feel right at home. Making stacked diff PRs is almost trivial in jj
by WXLCKNO | 2025-08-31 16:22:45+00:00
> I now feel weird posting Nice Photos to social media. Who are those for, really?

I have a private Instagram account with ~100 followers of people I actually know.

And I still agree with this although I'm trying hard not to. I'm just trying not to be cynical.

But I hate this feeling of my life experiences seeming like they require external validation.

Am I doing things just so that others know I did them? Is it just a curated feed I can look back on by myself? Social media feels like it steals our lives away from us.
by dragonwriter | 2025-08-31 16:23:03+00:00
> As far as I can tell, the divide is pretty straightforward:

> Cable: nudity

> Broadcast: everything else

This is almost entirely wrong; non-premium cable (which is and was always the vast majority of cable) had and observed essentially the same structure and content rules as broadcast, with ad breaks and no swearing or nudity. Premium cable where each channel or later small branded group of channels is a separate surcharge on top of the broad package tended to have no ad breaks and looser content rules.
by nextos | 2025-08-31 16:23:19+00:00
And Microsoft. Microsoft basically killed Nokia from the inside. Symbian was fairly open in terms of installing applications from wherever you wanted.

And Maemo/MeeGo were basically normal Linux distributions. Right now, SailfishOS is a worthy successor. It runs on a fairly decent number of devices and is quite ready for daily usage. Following the Nokia tradition, offline maps are outstanding. There's also a proprietary Android emulation layer that works really well for most applications, in case that is needed.

SailfishOS and Jolla could challenge the duopoly if a critical mass of developers migrated to the system. Right now, there's a fairly small technical userbase that has nonetheless produced lots of great indie applications. I can't believe I had Linux in my pocket with the N770 in late 2005 and, right now, mainstream options are so locked down.
by mapontosevenths | 2025-08-31 16:23:25+00:00
I've been using an nfc card based thing called brick to add friction and halt doomscrolling.

Essentially I use my normal phone, but lock specific apps. To unlock those apps I must scan the nfc card I keep in my car. That means getting up and going outside.

That tiny bit of added friction has cut my screentime in half and made me more productive, and less stressed.

There are other devices like it now, for example Bloom.
by aeblyve | 2025-08-31 16:23:42+00:00
The smartphone is not a mere commodity but a part of an entire social system of production between banks, telcos, software houses. Alternatives seemingly must come from outside the system... possibly Huawei from China and their HarmonyOS, which happily enough is banned in the US.

Or any sufficiently hard-boiled alternative from the inside. IMO things like custom ROMs lack sufficient vertical organization and that is why they're not so relevant (but at that point, you're basically constructing something much like a corporation once again, if not an entire society stemming out of it).
by smitty1e | 2025-08-31 16:23:50+00:00
> OP was referring to regulations rather than debt or entitlements.

One can clearly offer these differentiations, but it's all so much Utopian Progressivism that has simply not withstood the test of time, if we're being honest about the debt.

But honesty scales like Utopian Progressivism, so expect continued ignoring of the problem until the economy 'splodes and the "experts" stand around looking aghast.
by jennyholzer | 2025-08-31 16:24:06+00:00
Are there "central concepts" in the Jujutsu design?

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around what specific details would cause me to choose Jujutsu over Git, in particular because of Git's industry standard status.

I think this is a very interesting concept, but I think it could go farther with some more targeted marketing along these lines. Of course, if Git power users are not Jujutsu's intended audience, then this comment may be irrelvant.

I think one of Git's great weaknesses is its unfriendliness to newcomers (jargon, deep features, lack of discoverability, lack of accessible GUI frontends), so there's probably a lot of potential for a VC solution that is easier for a newcomer to jump into.
by jsnell | 2025-08-31 16:24:08+00:00
It's a business with odd scaling.

You can find examples of national papers of record having successful subscription models for text content. If you're only subscribing to one paper, it'll be one of those. And you can find 1-5 person outfits with strong personal brands (often built in other media) and a loyal following, who specially want a given person's take on things and want to read everything they write. Basically financials that resemble the "1000 true fans" model.

But between those extremes it is a lot harder to make subscriptions work.
by paradox460 | 2025-08-31 16:24:10+00:00
I've been enjoying JJ recently, after giving it another try. I'd tried it when it was new, and the sharp corners were still a bit too sharp for my liking.

JJ seems to be part of a new "era" of tooling that's just really good. I mused about this a bit in a blog post:

https://pdx.su/blog/2025-08-13-the-quiet-software-tooling-re...
by gruez | 2025-08-31 16:24:16+00:00
>IoT sensors

The average person has no need for "IoT sensors", whatever that means.

>thermostats

Seems unlikely given that most HVAC systems in north america operates off 24V wires, so you'd to add some sort of electrical relay switch on top for it to work. That alone is going to kill most of the savings. Moreover is your heating system really something you want to DIY? Sure, it's all fun and games to spend an entire weekend setting up your own home surveillance system from repurposed phones, because if it fails nothing really bad happens. A thermostat is something that you don't want randomly failing because your phone decided to randomly bootloop or turn into a spicy pillow.

>home intercoms

Most people would just use their phones

>mobile data modems

What's wrong with tethering off your phone? Why bring an extra device?

>smart TV dongles

Assuming your phone even supports 4K output in non-mirroring mode (you really want to watch TV shows in 1080 x 2400 that your phone's screen runs at?), this seems like a suboptimal solution given that you'll need a usb-c hub for it to work, and will be missing niceties like supporting a TV remote. All of this hassle, just to save $30 for a fire TV, or $100 for a SBC.
by koverstreet | 2025-08-31 16:24:18+00:00
Linus isn't my boss, though.

Am I paid by him or the Linux foundation? No.

Has he ever contributed to bcachefs in any way, is he in any way responsible for making sure that it works properly? No.

The only sense in which he has authority is that he can decide whether or not to pull it into his tree, but that's a two way relationship.
by EthanHeilman | 2025-08-31 16:24:28+00:00
You brought up gate noise, there has been quite a bit of progress on that problem.

> so we should totally be able to factor 21 (or larger numbers)…. When?

Just because we solve one problem doesn't imply all the problems in QC are also instantly solved. I guess it does if you assume noise is the only problem and once is it solved the engineering is trivial. That is not the case. Even assuming all foundational problems have been solved, figuring out how actually engineer and also mass produce large numbers of gates, will take a while.

As the article pointed out, going from 15 to 21 requires a 100x increase in gates.

As the article that you posted under says:

"Because of the large cost of quantum factoring numbers (that aren’t 15), factoring isn’t yet a good benchmark for tracking the progress of quantum computers. If you want to stay abreast of progress in quantum computing, you should be paying attention to the arrival quantum error correction (such as surface codes getting more reliable as their size is increased) and to architectures solving core scaling challenges (such as lost neutral atoms being continuously replaced)."
by qumefox | 2025-08-31 16:24:34+00:00
This is not poor advice. It's what's required to land a job in this market if you've already exhausted your network. If you can land a position using your network, yeah, that's definitely going to be a better/easier route, but when your network is also unemployed/not hiring at all/involve fields you're not suitable for, spray and pray is the only way you're going to get something now days. Though i'm hesitant to back the AI usage, and personally haven't resorted to it.
by natmaka | 2025-08-31 16:24:36+00:00
> the cap is 700 million euro

According to the French nuclear industry itself a major accident on one reactor may cost more than 430 billion euro (2013). Source (French): https://www.irsn.fr/savoir-comprendre/crise/cout-economique-...

Biz as usual... https://sites.google.com/view/electricitedefrance/accueil#h....
by drob518 | 2025-08-31 16:24:42+00:00
I wouldn’t go as far as “pretty awful,” but yes, it’s a keystroke more to manipulate two sequential forms instead of one. And yes, there is a slight indentation advantage when the test and the conditional code won’t fit on the same line. It’s easy enough to use “do” when the conditional clause has multiple forms, however. Personally, I’ll take those trade offs for the reduction in clutter.
by hippo22 | 2025-08-31 16:25:01+00:00
The worsening of the distribution of wealth is exactly the problem. Productivity is increasing faster than wages. That means labor is losing out on economic gains. Your argument is that labor should just accept this because “at least they’re better off than before.”

Imagine you invest $1000 in the stock market and the market is growing at 10%. But when you open your brokerage account, you see only 5% growth, and it turns out someone has been pocketing the difference. When you confront this person, they say: don’t be angry, you’re still better off than you were before. You would be right to be angry and you would be right to demand policies that force this person to give you your fair share.
by nchmy | 2025-08-31 16:25:41+00:00
here's a few links that you might find useful. But it would be worth exploring the other recent hn discussions on the topic - i and other unabashed evangelists have shared a lot.

A great "Megamerge" workflow

https://v5.chriskrycho.com/journal/jujutsu-megamerges-and-jj...

https://ofcr.se/jujutsu-merge-workflow

And an absolutely fantastic TUI that wraps jj cli. Might be the best TUI ive ever used, and consistently getting better.

https://github.com/idursun/jjui
by MabajanMbjnovch | 2025-08-31 16:25:54+00:00
Hey HN, author here.

My approach is based on a philosophical thesis: thinking is the spontaneous and logical evolution of complexity through generalization. The manuscript describes an effective algorithm that implements this idea. I call it a thinking algorithm.

A word of warning: this is a purely "philosophical" algorithm. There are no experiments or proofs, just the motivation and the description. The goal was to build a different kind of animal, not another sophisticated parrot. And at the very end, there's an optional bit of pseudo-constructive, Leibniz-style philosophy of consciousness.

Hope you find it interesting.
by like_any_other | 2025-08-31 16:26:52+00:00
We should be asking the opposite question - is it possible to give control over our computers to a handful of corporations and government, and remain safe from tyranny. Try starting a new political party, or even climbing up the ranks of an existing one, when the establishment knows every wrong opinion or indiscretion, of you and your associates, from when you were a toddler onward.
by jacquesm | 2025-08-31 16:26:55+00:00
> It brings me endless joy that this view forced them into a course of action that cost them so dearly, and so quickly.

Yes, you fit right in. Think about what you just wrote.

> Whatever else you think about him, he's an incredibly gifted politician, while Harris is a terrible one.

He's a gifted agitator, he's not a gifted politician. A gifted politician knows how to govern, and build consensus, Trump is completely clueless (or hiding it remarkably well). His main shticks are division and destruction, not unification and creation.

So if you are looking to bring about hardship and chaos you did the right thing by voting for him.
by dmortin | 2025-08-31 16:27:31+00:00
> Luckily, there's tons of information on the web provided not by commercial entities but by volunteers

The question is: is there content which is useful, but not provided by volunteers? We see more and more content behind paywalls, and it is a loss for many people who can't pay, because they won't be able to access the same content for free supported by ads.

So the result is poor people are going to lose access to certain contents, while well to do people will still have access.
by margor | 2025-08-31 16:27:58+00:00
I have to add my 5 cents to that because I've experienced something I've not seen anyone else experience and I think it might be worth to share it with others that might struggle with the same.

I had various neurological issues for the past 10 years, some of them common like visual migraine auras, GAD, panic attacks, and some of the less known and frankly hard to describe - visual snow, poor night vision, problems with adapting to light/dark places, constant fatigue, over stimulation (pins and needles over the whole body when overheating, as an example). On top of that, ADHD and I was really afraid of any and all kinds of medication, especially mind altering ones.

At one moment, I was in a really bad shape and place mentally and I decided to get professional help and start medicating, as I felt nothing else can help me anymore. And believe me, I did try all kinds of therapies, exercising (how do you do it with constant fatigue?), mindfulness and meditation (closing eyes when stressed was horrible experience for me!), nothing helped.

Look, you can tell me it's placebo or whatever, but I started on SNRIs and later on stimulants for ADHD. It took me _2 weeks_, to cure 80% of my neurological issues. It was almost like someone flipped a light switch in my nervous system. I still can't fully believe it or even try to understand, but my theory is that I've been genetically destined to have these problems, and "just trying hard enough" was not enough and would've never been enough.

SNRIs cured my neurological issues, and stimulants like Ritalin gave me willpower to start making positive changes and for the first time - start making habits. I believe, at least in my case, it would've been impossible without medication, or it would take me half my life to get to a place where I would've felt comfortable with myself and my problems. I believe my life is too short to fight with all of these issues alone, and I'm really glad I did start that.

tl;dr: medication gave me my life back, not just from ADHD but from variety of other issues, that ADHD just exacerbated. Please do try medication, it's not a one way door and we humans don't have infinite willpower to deal with all the issues on their own.
by OfflineSergio | 2025-08-31 16:28:16+00:00
I'm Working on WithAudio https://desktop.with.audio A one time payment - text to speech app with text highlighting and exporting audio capabilities. I mostly use it as an enhanced reading solution because helps me read better when I enable text highlighting.

Its not a subscription based product because it works locally.

my current technical challenges:

- parsing text out of various document formats to a consistent format is not easy. Don’t make start on PDFs!

- I'd like to support more platforms specially non pc ones but at the same time I think I should force myself to spend time on marketing.

my non technical challenge:

- Not spending time on dev and tech work as I keep being pushed towards my comfort zone.

- Product has been fairly succesfull in amount of sales considering the amount of marketing was done (just some random Reddit posts and a couple of HN comments). But figuring out larger or more consistent solutions is definitely challenge.

- Finding larger audience -> ive been trying to reach out to microinfluencers and bloggers or app reviewers to see if I can setup partnerships with them or not. Haven’t been very successful in even getting them get back to me. To initiate the chat.

- Finding more consistent marketing solutions -> been playing with ADs in different platforms with minimal budgets.

Any feedback, comment or thought is really appreciated.
by RaftPeople | 2025-08-31 16:28:35+00:00
> I don't see the problem. Okay, so we need to support multiple addresses for orders. We can add a relationship table between the Orders and ShippingAddresses tables

Which items ship to each of those locations and in which quantities?

What is the status of each of those sub-orders in the fulfillment process?

Should the orders actually ship to those addresses or should the cartons just be packed and marked for those locations for cross-docking and the shipments should be split across some number of regional DC's based on proximity to the final address?

Many things need to be updated in the DB schema+code. And if you think this isn't a very good example, it's a real life example of orders for large retailers.