MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by brettgriffin | 2025-08-03 01:37:23+00:00
M&A deals are analyzed pretty closely and there (usually) has to be a convincing argument that it is economically or strategically accretive to the acquirer. It's easy to call them all morons from afar, but I think it just highlights how difficult it is to pull off successfully. And when it is successful, it's always an obvious no-brainer in retrospect.

Anecdotally, I know someone that spent two years intentionally sabotaging an M&A deal that would replace his internal product and team in a company. He and his colleagues were successful and everyone thinks the acquirer was a dumbass for doing it, but with more knowledge about the misaligned incentives it starts to become more clear.
by hungmung | 2025-08-03 01:37:35+00:00
> It is a known fact that the vast majority of truck owners rarely ever use the truck bed.

Just want to point out that big pickups are really about the hauling capacity, it's not like their beds are much bigger than a modern Ford Ranger. An F250 can safely pull 10 tons, and a dually F450 can pull 20t. Usually you aren't towing...but when you need to haul nontrivial loads you need a big truck.
by alwillis | 2025-08-03 01:37:57+00:00
I had no issues dropping a demo 100-row spreadsheet into Claude and was able to ask questions. This particular spreadsheet was in the old-school .xsl format, and only Claude just dealt with it.

ChatGPT accepted it but said it couldn't do anything with it because it was too old. Perplexity wouldn't even accept it.

Once I converted to .xlsx, it worked fine in all of them.

Not only did Claude not complain about the old format, it wrote a short JavaScript program it used to do the analysis, which you could download and use.

Get an MCP for your spreadsheet [1], which would enable any LLM that supports MCP to do more sophisticated functions.

I asked Claude what it can do with spreadsheets; here's what came back:

Claude can perform a wide variety of tasks with spreadsheets! Here are the main categories of what I can do: ## Data Analysis & Statistics - Calculate averages, medians, standard deviations, and other statistical measures - Find correlations between different columns - Identify outliers and anomalies in the data - Group data by categories and analyze patterns - Perform trend analysis over time periods ## Data Cleaning & Processing - Remove duplicates and handle missing values - Standardize formats (dates, phone numbers, addresses) - Split or combine columns - Filter and sort data based on multiple criteria - Validate data quality and identify inconsistencies ## Visualizations & Charts - Create interactive charts (bar, line, pie, scatter plots, histograms) - Build dashboards with multiple visualizations - Generate heatmaps and other specialized chart types - Create geographic visualizations if location data is present ## Business Intelligence - Calculate key performance indicators (KPIs) - Perform financial analysis (profit margins, growth rates, etc.) - Analyze sales data, customer segments, or inventory - Create summary reports and executive dashboards - Compare performance across different time periods or categories ## Advanced Analysis - Build predictive models for forecasting - Perform cohort analysis for customer behavior - Calculate conversion rates and funnel analysis - Cross-tabulate data to find relationships - Generate pivot table-style summaries ## Data Transformation - Convert between different file formats - Restructure data (pivot/unpivot operations) - Merge data from multiple sheets or sources - Create calculated fields and derived metrics - Export processed data in various formats ## Automation & Workflows - Create step-by-step data processing workflows - Generate code that you can reuse for similar analyses - Build templates for recurring reports - Set up automated calculations and formulas Would you like me to demonstrate any of these capabilities with your current spreadsheet, or do you have a specific analysis goal in mind?

[1]: https://www.pulsemcp.com/servers?q=spreadsheet
by FollowingTheDao | 2025-08-03 01:38:39+00:00
This is the biggest misunderstanding. Light is always a wave. It is never a proton. Light becomes a proton when we measure it. Everything is a wave, and nothing is a particle ever.

Waves are just probabilities and the human quantum computer brain collapses those probabilities in an orchestrated reductive capacity to create a certainty out of a probability.
by bobmcnamara | 2025-08-03 01:39:45+00:00
The violations are listed by their specific ECCNs, which you can lookup here: https://www.bis.gov/regulations/ear/interactive-commerce-con...

"These exports or reexports included the following transactions between 2015 and 2020:

a) Ten (10) sales and exports of EDA hardware, including items classified under ECCN 3B991b.2.c;

b) Seventeen (17) sales and exports or reexports of EDA software, including items classified under ECCN 3D991 or designated EAR99;

c) Seven (7) sales and exports or reexports of semiconductor design technology, specifically IP, including items classified under ECCN 3E991; and

d) Twenty-Two (22) loans and exports of EDA hardware, including items classified under ECCN 3B991b.2.c and items designated EAR99 "
by cosmic_cheese | 2025-08-03 01:39:46+00:00
The people I know who drive trucks are doing things where constant small bits of damage are inevitable. Think kicked up gravel, tree branches scraping against the body, unintentionally bumping up against the truck with equipment, etc. Damage is frequent enough that it’s one of the reasons they find buying a new truck difficult to justify and would rather buy something that’s got some visible wear and tear on it already.
by godelski | 2025-08-03 01:40:52+00:00
> As for your question, I don't see what it proves.

The author made a claim

I showed the claim was false

The author bases his argument on this and similar claims. Showing his claim is false says he's argument doesn't hold

> and is only incorrect by a broad characterization

I don't know of I'd really call a single item an "edge case" so much as generalization.

But I do know I'd answer that question differently given your reframing.
by roenxi | 2025-08-03 01:44:08+00:00
> I find the embankment metaphor confusing, but to play along: I don't have the option of engineering a margin of safety because I only have one brick. Is it worth me lugging it to the riverside?

Yes. You should put the brick where the engineer tells you too, and at the end of it you will observe there are more bricks than were strictly needed. Any other approach would be reckless.

Again, you're arguing that the rational thing to do is to not build the thing properly. You've misunderstood rationality and you're getting nonsense conclusions where people choose to get to get poor results by their own standards because they aren't very good at risk assessment. That isn't how rational actors behave. Rational people take a holistic view of all the foreseeable costs and benefits of an action (like, for example, having a government that aligns with their policy preferences) and are capable of probabilistic thinking.

> In all likelihood many won't bother without being directed, encouraged or otherwise socially motivated.

Well sure, but in practice people aren't rational. If they were rational, they would just quietly assess whether their coalition had the potential to win at some point and - if so - identify that it is in their best interests to vote. Then do it without prompting.

> Given you previously mentioned Game Theory, this is a surprising claim. Prisoner's dilemma? Tragedy of the commons?

The game theoretic optimum in both those cases is to achieve the best possible result through communication and coalition building.
by dangus | 2025-08-03 01:44:36+00:00
What I’m saying is that these are all garbage opinions backed by nothing. “Cool” is “just your opinion, man.”

They layperson thinks of Apple quite positively. Nobody cares what us nerds here think is cool. The bazillion people who happily bought AirPods don’t care that a tiny group of nerds are still mad that Apple took away their dork expansion slot and dweeb ports.

Apple is more trusted than any other tech company with privacy in consumer surveys.

Apple is the smartphone company with the highest customer satisfaction ratings (over 80%).

Consumer reports ranks Apple first in computer support customer service.

These are quantitative measures.

Apple very clearly has command of their messaging and there really aren’t any cracks in their strategy.
by dogcow | 2025-08-03 01:45:26+00:00
I recently decided that it was high time to stop ignoring IPv6 after 30 years of computing and actually learn how it is supposed to work.

So I started digging in, and there's definitely a lot to like.

But I see two big problems that are showstoppers in my opinion, at least for my home network (not even considering the fact that very few residential ISPs even support v6 at this point):

1. Generally speaking, the IPs of your LAN are based on the prefix assigned by the ISP. Most residential ISPs don't offer static prefixes. This means that every time your prefix changes, the IPs of all your devices on your LAN change. Seems like this "feature" was developed in a more idealistic era when people probably thought everyone would be getting static IPv6 addresses, since shortages would never be an issue. Unfortuantely, they failed to foresee the fact that most major ISPs are terrible, greedy organizations that either outright refuse to offer static assignments, or continue treating them as if they were scarce IPv4 resources, charging a premium or requiring business-class service to even get them.

2. The ISPs that do support v6, like Comcast/Xfinity in the USA, are only allocating one /64 prefix. This means you can only have one subnet (VLAN) on your LAN! Why are they being so stingy?

I would love to migrate to IPv6, but these two issues alone make it feel like a clown show for home users.
by seb1204 | 2025-08-03 01:45:35+00:00
I would like to hear more about this. So you buy a, say new air fryer, a new monitor, a new mobile phone or a new shirt and it takes you 12 months to first use it? Or was this more like I buy 3 SD cards in bulk buy might not need 3 right now? Do you live in a remote area where online shopping delivery is not available? Is it just a habit? Honestly curious.
by timr | 2025-08-03 01:45:53+00:00
I disagree. A lot of smaller acquisitions went away during the Khan reign, and from what I was hearing it wasn’t coincidental.

Basically the random and aggressive nature of it was having a chilling effect on all M&A. Why would you go thorough the hassle of a small acquisition (as a buyer) if you knew there was a even a 10% chance that the FTC was going to take an interest?
by iot_devs | 2025-08-03 01:47:17+00:00
Honestly I don't see the problem.

The students are cheating into studying more?

Homework and home assignments are not really a way to grade students. It is mostly a way to force them to go through the materials by themselves and check their own understanding. If they do the exercises twice all the better.

(Also nowadays homework are almost all perfect scores)

Which is why LLM are so deleterious to students. They are basically robbing them of the thing that actually has value for them. Recalling information, re-elaborating those information, and apply new mental models.
by soraminazuki | 2025-08-03 01:49:41+00:00
> because I do what (little) I can to slow down AI.

I think you're focusing on the wrong things. AI can be used in harmful ways, but not because they're outsmarting human beings despite all the cult-like hype. In fact, they don't need to be actually competent for the rich to take advantage of the tech in destructive ways. They just need to convince the public that they're competent enough so that they have an excuse to cut jobs. Even if AI does a poorer job, it won't matter if consumers don't have alternatives, which is unfortunately the case in many situations. We face a much bigger threat of data breaches from vibe coded apps than conscious robots manipulating humans through the Matrix.

Just look at Google support. It's a bunch of mindless robots that can kick you out of their platform on a whim. Their "dispute process" is another robot that passive-aggressively ragebaits you. [1][2] They're incompetent, yet it helps one of the richest companies in the world save money.

Also, let's not forget Google's AI flagged multiple desperate parents sharing medical pics of their kids to their doctors. Only when the media contacted them did a human being come out, only to falsely accuse the parents of being pedos. [3] People were harmed, and it's not because of competency.

Another greater concern is the ability of LLMs to mass-produce spam or troll content with minimal effort. It's a major threat to democracies all around the globe, and it turns out we don't need a superintelligence for demagogues to misuse it and cause harm.

There are more real concerns regarding AI other than the perpetually "just around the corner" superintelligence. What we need is a push for stronger regulatory protection for workers, consumers, and constituents. Not boycotting Macbooks because of AI.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538805
by CamperBob2 | 2025-08-03 01:50:37+00:00
It's not the case in this article, but we're starting to see a lot of comments and blog posts from people who have something worthwhile to contribute, but who aren't confident enough in their English proficiency to post their thoughts without running them through an LLM for cleanup.

IMHO that's a good thing, something that should be encouraged. Counting the em dashes is just an exercise in missing the forest for the trees. Accusing someone of posting AI slop without evidence should be treated no differently here than accusing them of shilling or sock-puppetry. In other words, it should be prohibited by the site guidelines.
by DonHopkins | 2025-08-03 01:51:32+00:00
Please read what I wrote:

>I remember encountering exactly that problem in the late 80's [...]

Tell me what I wrote that was untrue. Perl 5 wasn't released until October 1994.

In Perl 4, symbolic aliases worked via typeglobs, and there was no way to grab the address of a literal, temporary or lexical variable.

And even in Perl 5, references still required complex syntax, had lots of surprising side-effects, edge cases, subtle bugs, multiple forms, context sensitive rules, autovivification hacks, memory overhead and waste, subtle foot guns, and they were pointlessly much more complex and harder to use than references in most other languages.
by bitwize | 2025-08-03 01:53:32+00:00
My elementary school music teacher was very schoolmarmish and prim -- almost like Ana Gasteyer's Bobbi Mohan-Culp character -- and had training in opera performance. She also did the "ta"/"titi" thing, but backwards. She would, for example, teach us a ta/titi sequence -- writing the notes on the board, teaching us the names and shapes of the notes, having us sing/perform it several times -- and only then reveal the lyrics to be "Baa Baa Black Sheep, have you any wool?" Her years of musical training taught her that getting the details right early on was super important. I'm incredibly thankful for having had teachers like this.

It sounds like the teachers you've had who said "just do what makes sense" have punted on the act of teaching itself. They either don't know how to, or are unwilling to, do the hard work of providing detailed instruction and holding kids to a high standard of learning. That's just sad to see man.
by kelseyfrog | 2025-08-03 01:54:36+00:00
To clarify, I am not suggesting this is a slippery slope. That was your characterization, not mine. My point is that, based on available data, laws that limit free speech are applied in ways that restrict political, reproductive rights, feminist, and LGBTQ-related expression 89% of the time.

It appears that there may be some misalignment in our discussion. When prompted to share your perspective on the topic, you have chosen not to engage directly. Additionally, the conversation has shifted scope several times, which makes it challenging to address the core issue. If you would like to discuss the topic further, I am open to continuing. If not, I respect your decision to move on.
by seanwilson | 2025-08-03 01:55:45+00:00
> I’m almost certain this is ignorance on my part, but it seems like this would mean the proof is… possibly wrong?

That's part of the motivation to formalise it. When a proof gets really long and complex, relies on lots of other complex proofs, and there's barely any single expert who has enough knowledge to understand all the branches of maths it covers, there's more chance there's a mistake.

There's a few examples here of errors/gaps/flaws found while formalizing proofs that were patched up:

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/291158/proofs-shown-to-be...

My understanding is it's common to find a few problems that then need to be patched or worked around. It's a little like wanting to know if a huge codebase is bug-free or not: you might find some bugs if you formalized the code, but you can probably fix the bugs during the process because it's generally correct. There can be cases where it's not fixable though.
by tpmoney | 2025-08-03 01:56:26+00:00
As an uninformed observer, the studies were the least “convincing” part of his argument. It was the minimum force transfer numbers and the human force limit numbers, and then the note that other sports have stricter standards for the protectiveness of their gear that was the standout argument.

The obvious questions that come to mind are “does commonly available gear exceed the standards despite the minimums” and “is the test representative of real world impacts”.
by amoshebb | 2025-08-03 01:57:15+00:00
In nova scotia there are grants to build “community solar gardens”. A 3-6MW solar farm is built somewhere cheap and convenient and then anybody in the community can pay for so many panels and then they get that amount knocked off the light bill as if they had rooftop solar. Idea is it lets people buy solar unrelated to if they rent/own or have a good roof pitch or whatever.
by theshackleford | 2025-08-03 01:57:30+00:00
> man I'm so sorry for you.

I feel sorry for you. I guess we can share our feeling sorry for each other in common.

> You just write long BS for you bias.

Careful now, your bias is showing.

> Have a good day

Every day is a great day with the money i've made off TSLA lately :) Thanks Elon!
by xinweihe | 2025-08-03 01:57:30+00:00
Fair question. Here’s how TraceRoot is different.

- We don’t just stream raw logs/traces into an LLM, we build execution trees and correlate data across services and threads. That gives our agent causal context, not just pattern matching.

- It’s designed to debug real issues in production, where things are messy, not just dev or staging.

- We are aiming for automatic bug detection and remediation soon, not just copiloting, but a debugging agent that can spot regressions and trigger fixes proactively.

- We are working on persist historical incidents, fixes, and infra quirks, so the agent improves with each investigation, and doesn’t start from scratch every time.

Happy to dive deeper! Let me know if you have more questions.
by foundart | 2025-08-03 01:59:34+00:00
I've navigated burnout and some slightly toxic environments.

I bailed on a job in 2022 when I was tired of it and the hiring market was still good. The hiring market turned and it took me a long time to get something new once I was ready. Fortunately, I had a significant cushion.

Prerequisite to taking up any of my suggestions that follow: How long do you think it would take you to get a new job? Triple that estimate. Can you go that long without pay?

If the answer is no, stop reading here.

Regarding prepping / searching while working - have you considered dialing back your hours to give yourself more energy for the search? If they don't like it... well, if you are still comfortable with your financial cushion given my first question, then at least you will have made some progress toward your next thing while still getting paid.

Another way to assess how you feel about staying: Take at least a week and a half off. Several of my job changes have occurred after some time off. It made the suckitude of the current job so obvious that I quit waffling about it and started looking.
by ghushn3 | 2025-08-03 02:00:18+00:00
I don't think I've ever understood the motivation behind working for so much money. If I got paid $250M a year, I'd work a year and then live comfortably for the rest of my life pursuing my passions. Even if the thing I was doing for work was my passion, I'm sure I'd prefer to do it without ownership of that work going to someone else.
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by williamstein | 2025-08-03 02:02:22+00:00
Kevin Buzzard told me that the worry that it might in fact be wrong is a huge motivator for him. I also once asked Serge Lang why so much mathematics is correct (which surprised me coming from programming where everything has bugs), and he said; “people do a large number of consistency checks beyond what is in the published proofs, which makes the chances the claimed results are correct much, much higher.” Another related quote Bryan Birch told me once: “it is always a good idea to prove true theorems.”