MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by giancarlostoro | 2025-08-15 11:29:16+00:00
GTK having this kind of scheme is why Vala was made and inspired by C# but uses GObject and all its joys, then transpiles your code to C.

This is why a surprising number of GTK applications (more than I realized) are coded in Vala. I lowkey wish they had just adopted D instead of building up Vala. D is basically compiled C# to me in its own ways.
by realityking | 2025-08-15 11:29:17+00:00
Absolutely. But if the new company pays them to just recreate the IP the developed in the previous company - now much faster because they‘ve done it before - that‘s an issue. And patents protect against that.

That said, a patent whose primary claim seems to be (based on the workaround) _where_ the processing takes place (ant not _how_) seems like exactly the kinda thing that shouldn‘t be patentable.
by gmadsen | 2025-08-15 11:29:19+00:00
because what can be embedded in billions of parameters is highly unintuitive to common sense and an active area of research. We do it because it works.

One other point, the platonic ideal of reasoning is not even an approximation for human reason. The idea that you take away emotion and you end up with Spock is a fantasy. All neuroscience and psychology research point to the necessary and strong coupling of actions/thoughts with emotions. you don't have a functional system with just logical deduction. At a very basic level it is not functional
by KaiserPro | 2025-08-15 11:29:40+00:00
> government-aligned media

The telegraph and times are government aligned? so is GB news? Now thats a good joke.

I have actually met the media teams for a number of government departments (including during the drafting of the OSA) They are almost the living embodyment of "the thick of it" clever people trying to do good, surrounded by industrial grade cunts.
by nrawe | 2025-08-15 11:29:49+00:00
I appreciate that with recent articles shared here it might look that way. What is difficult as a Brit reading this is that so little has actually changed that I can't quite grasp what you mean.

Firstly, the paper reporting the "power grab" is a national newspaper read by millions. Secondly, as noted in several other places, the spin the newspaper has put on the judgement is deeply cynical. Lastly, this legislation has been in debate for years under multiple governments with a decent (by no means unilateral) amount of public support for some (but distinctly not all) the provisions.
by _heimdall | 2025-08-15 11:29:51+00:00
I wouldn't expect many to take issue with your point here. The problem at hand isn't whether or not social media has been a net positive or net negative, the problem is whether the government should be in the business of arresting those who say things the government doesn't want said.

We can deal with social media directly without government censorship and arresting the public. Remove any legal protections that give social media a free pass regarding what is posted on their sites. If we want people's speech to be censored, at a minimum that should be done by the private company who is financially on the hook for what content they allow.
by geocar | 2025-08-15 11:30:27+00:00
> I've worked on Gecko for 10+ years, and we were constantly called names for absolutely any change we would do. Insulted and accused of the worst intentions.

I think if Gecko crashed less that'd be great.

I think if Gecko starts selling me a VPN service, and the parent org gets busy doing a bunch of real-estate investments, I wonder if you're making a web browser anymore.

> the hate towards people who actually made the web happen (Smaug, Anne, Emilo, etc…)

I'm sorry I disagree.

I am hearing them say they can't make the web happen, because it's hard and they're not very good at programming, they put so many bugs in their code they just can't fix it, and it's really interfering with their efforts to add another privacy-impacting feature that they can use to sell more ads.

I think if every one of them got hit by a bus tomorrow absolutely nothing would change on the web except maybe we'd keep XSLT for another six months.

I want to appreciate anything you've done for Gecko, but it's hard if you don't realise it's people like me made the web happen too: I've been building web applications since 1994, and my applications have run on billions of devices at this point, and paid for my house, and some twenty years ago I used XSLT.

Do you really think I should bail them out by rewriting my fully working code so they don't have to fix their smelly broken code? You really think I have no standing to be a little bit annoyed by that attitude?
by doublerabbit | 2025-08-15 11:30:51+00:00
But the UK is not lacking in protest; we do protest.

What I am saying is that protesting is a method of freedom & rebellion that is now flawed for today's modern world. It may work in a few odd countries but overall now achieves nothing.

Protests do not work in these modern times.

It may of worked in the in the 1800's because society was maybe of been more united, less corrupted in power however the power that folks had has been chiseled away and has been decaying ever since.

Adding the fact we are now more divided than ever.

The only kind of protest that would work today are those of who use their wallet. Stop buying from corporations from the likes of Amazon, funding Google. But no, we won't do that; whatever would you do without your Amazon prime.

Instead let's hold a stick with cardboard glued to it and pretend that politicians care. (spoiler: they don't)

Protesting about war and then buying resources to protest about the war off Amazon who back the war is face-palming hilarious.

Otherwise everything is a just waste of time, resources and exposure. But by all means, if it makes yourself feel better then go for it.

And no, I didn't vote for Brexit.
by gchamonlive | 2025-08-15 11:31:29+00:00
> How is it possible for you to "see" the text in your mind and not be able to replicate it with a pen? Even if the mental image is faint and fuzzy, surely you can sketch it out roughly at first, then refine it until it settles into its exact form? Apparently, that is not how mental images work, either.

That's really not how it works. I draw as a hobby and I love to study human anatomy. I can conjure in my mind people in many poses with detail, in different clothes and colour. Still the act of drawing without a reference is a world in itself. If I try to sketch from memory without a reference, it quickly falls apart.

It's not that the mental image is incomplete, wrong or an illusion. Is just that knowing it and reproducing it are two very different things.
by dgroshev | 2025-08-15 11:31:31+00:00
The government in power has little to do with the Act, it was passed two years ago by a different party that is now refusing to own the mess that they created. Sure, one can say that the government could be more diligent at repealing bad laws, but the Parliament had quite a few things on its plate already, so it's not surprising that this Act coming into power during the summer recess wasn't high on the agenda.
by JKCalhoun | 2025-08-15 11:31:34+00:00
"Evel K.", ha ha. Never heard him called that.

In the photos I see the transition from the "high rise" bicycle to the "BMX" bike. While somewhat cool looking, the BMX bikes, for me it was also the end of an era — my era — for biking. Instead of BMX bikes I moved instead on to 10-speed road bikes (later 12 speed ... now 1000 speed or whatever they're up to).

The photos also shows a time when wearing a helmet was not a thing. That did come shortly after (I mean at the time of these photos, I don't think you could even go to a Sears or wherever and buy a "bike helmet". After a rather nasty spill I had riding to work one morning, I became a helmet convert.
by vanderZwan | 2025-08-15 11:31:34+00:00
And if you like that you can move on to "Stop" for your 80s neon-glow needs, and maybe finish with "D.A.N.C.E." if haven't seen it yet (even though the designs in it are not 80s specific any more).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-R19oA1m8w

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy1dYFGkPUE
by loxs | 2025-08-15 11:31:36+00:00
Just the straight/naive rewrite was ~3 times faster for my benchmark (which was running the program on the real dataset) and then I went down the rabbit hole and optimized it further and ended up ~5 times faster. Then slapped Rayon on top and got another ~2-3x depending on the number of cores and disk speed (the problem wasn't embarrassingly parallel, but still got a nice speedup).

Of course, all of this was mostly unneeded, but I just wanted to find out what am I getting myself into, and I was very happy with the result. My move to Rust was mostly not because of speed, but I still needed a fast language (where OCaml qualifies). This was also before the days of multicore OCaml, so nowadays it would matter even less.
by exe34 | 2025-08-15 11:32:21+00:00
I think it's fair to say that the maggats will say whatever they need to achieve their aim, not what they believe to be true. They have the national guard deployed in their capital to stifle dissent by the same orange taint who said he wasn't allowed to do that when it was his people trying to stage a violent self-coup (and he has since pardoned those criminals).

What they want is a similar fascist group in the UK to do well in the next election - and freedom of speech is one of the easiest things to moan about when criminals are getting nabbed.
by roenxi | 2025-08-15 11:32:36+00:00
The West have been executing a long-range plan for 30 years on this one, the lack of power plants is intentional. There have been any number of roadblocks and people working hard to prevent the West doing specifically what the Chinese have done with the goal of maintaining the high air quality that Western countries tend to enjoy.

If anything the West's culture has been doing more long term planning. It is quite difficult to force an economy not to produce something.
by khalic | 2025-08-15 11:32:37+00:00
You’re analysing things in a vacuum, there are historical and contemporary examples of public protest, pressure campaigns and civil disobedience leading to policy change, and you’re arguing they’re what, all CIA plants or impossible? If not, please make your point clearer.

Have you any proof that these rent a mob thing exists? You used “maybe part”... Please find a specific service for renting a mob, not a single individual or small group. Or proof that this service exists, because this is an awfully convenient way to bend the narrative to your side “they were all faking it” is almost never a valid hypothesis
by exasperaited | 2025-08-15 11:32:59+00:00
> In fact it is pretty obvious from the OSA itself that the definition of Category 1 is not primarily about capturing porn sites.

Indeed it is not.

The main focus of the Category 1 stuff is evidently whether big sites are actually doing enough to allow children (and parents) to report threats and danger and not see content they don't want to see.

It is for example about trying to reduce harms to children from pro-suicide and pro-anorexia content as well, and about compelling the Category 1 services to provide mechanisms so children can report bullying, grooming and online sexual exploitation from other users.

And also to provide some access to oversight and reporting from to those mechanisms.

That is to say: if a Category 1 service is open to children, it needs to have workable mechanisms to allow children to report threatening and disturbing content and messaging from other users, it needs to at least provide context/warnings around and probably filter pro-suicide and pro-anorexia content, and it is required to be able to present evidence of how those tools are being used and whether they are effective.

If you've ever tried to get Facebook to take down a scam ad (like, for example, the plethora of ads now using an AI-generated Martin Lewis) you will understand that there are genuine concerns about whether the tools available to non-adult users are effective for anything at all.

Category 1 regulations have not yet been finalised and they are not merely being imposed; the likely Category 1 services are being consulted.
by ath3nd | 2025-08-15 11:33:22+00:00
> For example one was interviewed later and said a lot of the time they would wait for an agent and get distracted playing with something irrelevant and then forget to go back until much later

Counterpoint: the agents are the reason for the distraction.

> That has solutions they are not aware of to implement.

Counterpoint: there are no other current studies that suggest otherwise. Given the impact of LLMs on open source (net negative, maintainers are drowning in slop: e.g curl: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/07/14/death-by-a-thousand-s...) maybe it makes sense to be a bit more critical on LLM's supposed gains.

Let's see what we have so far:

- The only study to date suggests a net negative from using LLMs on experienced developers

- OSS maintainers are rejecting AI generated PRs due to low quality

- No other studies have come out so far to suggest otherwise

Based on my anecdotal experience and based on the currently available evidence, for me the conclusion is clear: LLMs and agents are mostly hype.
by bell-cot | 2025-08-15 11:33:40+00:00
It's wonderful to imagine all the world's employers embodying "Don't Be Evil". And any exceptions being driven out of business by their employees quitting.

At times and in places, many of the young and optimistic have been able to believe that. Or at least to proclaim such beliefs - without immediately being called on it.

But similar to "Santa Clause won't bring presents to naughty boys and girls" - that ain't how the real world actually works. And the usual social convention for those "in the know" to allow young optimists to figure things out for themselves. "Don't spoil their youthful joy, the world is shitty enough as it is." );
by jannurgel | 2025-08-15 11:33:50+00:00
Most companies treat product, marketing, sales, and hiring as separate problems to solve. Bob Moesta’s Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework suggests they’re all the same problem — understanding the progress people are trying to make, and why they choose (or don’t choose) your solution at a given moment.

If the same forces drive someone to buy your product and someone else to join (or leave) your team, what would change if your entire organization worked from that single insight?

How could your company look different if every department was aligned on the same “job” your customers and employees are hiring you for?
by elric | 2025-08-15 11:34:16+00:00
Are there any plans for significant investments in the US grid(s)? IIRC the entire US doesn't even have a single interconnected grid, with Texas having their own for some reason.

European grids aren't that much better either, loads of investments needed in order to connect more renewables. Some areas already can't handle the load from solar panels/electric vehicles. Everyone seems to know that this is both costly and necessary, but not much seems to be happening. Maybe these things simply take time?
by JKCalhoun | 2025-08-15 11:35:17+00:00
You have the time period correct with regard to helmet availability. Even if it wasn't completely dorky to wear a helmet riding a bicycle — where would you have even bought one in the 70's? Certainly not where you bought your high-rise handlebar, banana-seat bike.

I recall no lawsuits being the cause of the adoption of helmets.
by happymellon | 2025-08-15 11:35:31+00:00
> The UK has a constitution, it's just not written in a single place.

No we don't. We have what is referred to as an "uncodified constitution".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncodified_constitution

It is a collection of laws and conventions, but there is nothing set up as an overarching set of rules to guide the country. If something were to happen that was deeply unpopular with what the majority of the country feels "makes us British", there is little we could do about it.

Successful court cases against the government have usually been because the government of the day forgot to pass the law that gave them the power to do whatever move they wanted to make. A constitution change is a much bigger deal.
by jorams | 2025-08-15 11:36:07+00:00
> If they were willing to sell movies and tv shows WITHOUT DRM, I’d happily buy what I want

So much this. I take the simple moral position that I won't pirate things I can reasonably buy. That includes almost all music, and almost no movies, TV shows, comedy specials, etc. I still largely avoid pirating things and seek out alternatives instead, but I don't feel bad about it when I do because it's an industry that doesn't consider me a potential customer anyway.
by gadders | 2025-08-15 11:36:40+00:00
>>some people arrested for inciting violence via social media during the Southport riots.

Yes, but only on the right. The leader of Hope not Hate was not charged for his inflammatory tweets, and then you have this guy saying he hoped right wing protestors' throats would be cut being completely let off:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/15/suspended-labour...
by _swfb | 2025-08-15 11:37:41+00:00
I didn’t say I wanted to lie about my personality. I said I wanted to tune my personality so that I do better in interviews. It’s subtly different; I wanted advice on putting my best foot forward, and I was wondering if people had ideas for doing so.

It’s not just about this one job, obviously it’s impossible to know what a single employer’s reasoning is for this stuff; I have just noticed a pattern of me being pretty bad at interviews, and being declined enough to where I probably need to make some kind of change. I am not asking for one simple hack to make friends, it’s fucking interview prep. I don’t think I have low social intelligence in most cases, I have never had much issue making friends or anything like that. I don’t dispute that I am probably annoying and I don’t think I am awesome.

It’s not like interviews are anything like actual human interaction in any meaningful sense, and clearly a lot of people must agree because there are dozens of specific “interview prep” services out there.
by latentsea | 2025-08-15 11:38:23+00:00
It's all solvable. Korean did it. Koreans are fine.

For verbs you could just replace the kanji with katakana so that you still get the pattern recognition of okurigana as a visual aide.

They just don't want to do it, because they don't like to change. A generation educated under a new system wouldn't have difficulty using it. They would however lose access to an abundance of cultural artefacts which play a central role in daily life.
by KaiserPro | 2025-08-15 11:38:28+00:00
> But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else.

actually no. its grossly offensive. Not someone finding it offense. And normally its a legal garnish, for something like trying to get someone else killed or injured via text.

However you can be arrested for organising a protest that someone might reasonably find annoying. That has much less legal oversight.
by dhfbshfbu4u3 | 2025-08-15 11:38:31+00:00
The Swiss method works because their population is 6X smaller and GDP per capita is twice as high. They have a smaller geographic footprint and heavier services economy. The UK still has so much industrial traffic (inclusive of agriculture) and a far less cohesive political environment. This isn’t to say that HS2 isn’t a train wreck (haha - it is) but applying small country policies to big country problems is a a bit simplistic.
by mschuster91 | 2025-08-15 11:39:56+00:00
> with Texas having their own for some reason.

That reason is that Texas wants to avoid federal regulation [1] - regulation that would have prevented the large ass blackout a few years ago in the winter. But hey, 702 deaths [2], a small price to pay for freedom of regulations!

> Everyone seems to know that this is both costly and necessary, but not much seems to be happening. Maybe these things simply take time?

They take money and political willpower. Both are in short supply - electricity rates here in Europe are already high (and rates in the US very low), so utilities try to avoid pissing off consumers even more, and political willpower for billions of dollars of investment isn't there either as thanks to decades of austerity and trickle-down ideology there is no tax base to pay for it any more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis
by roenxi | 2025-08-15 11:41:00+00:00
I think the original paraphrase is actually pretty reasonable even with the full context - what is Section 1 doing in the Act if it is primarily aimed at protecting children? There is a lot more public discourse going on than there are unsafe children. If the act deals with both it is, practically, an act aimed primarily at influencing the public discourse with some child-related rules tacked on. Something like 80% of a persons life on the internet is engaging with public discourse and 20% is as a child.
by nrawe | 2025-08-15 11:41:26+00:00
I should note that my comparison was to a US organisation proscribed as an eco-terror organisation, the name of which escapes me, and which I couldn't find in a quick scan back through my reading or here[0]. I came across them through a podcast interviewing both sides about a decade out. I'll keep looking though and try and qualify my source :)

I guess what I mean is this: while I think the PA proscription is probably misjudged, it's not without its precedent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-terrorism
by desas | 2025-08-15 11:42:02+00:00
The US constitution is very similar, except in two important regards: amendments require two thirds majority votes in both houses and ratification by 75% of the states.

We don't have the state mechanism. You could argue the four nations could serve a similar purpose, though there's a debate about how democratic that is when England makes up something like 85% of the UK population (and doesn't have its own legislature).
by mawadev | 2025-08-15 11:42:04+00:00
I think the leaders of western countries know something that we don't know. Maybe how the economic impact of AI is not as big as advertised for 3 years or that electric cars still cannot do what is needed on a bigger scale in terms of distance and transport. Or maybe they are going to pull fusion out of their sleeves rendering the existing infrastructure almost obsolete?

AI literally came out of the US at this scale and they are the reason we have this conversation now, you can twist any narrative and make it seem like one country is smarter or better if you want to present it as that.

But does anyone even keep track of effectivity of resource utilization?

Maybe all of these avenues are not worth the effort to begin with?
by jeffrallen | 2025-08-15 11:43:07+00:00
This is an excellent analysis of how to avoid the curse of megaprojects.

Heres a couple reactions based on the Swiss point of view.

> keeps the supply chain warm

Yes! And the human resources pool. And a constant supply of construction projects means every industry touched by them can keep a pipeline of apprentices in training.

And lots of small projects means there are places where the risk is not so big of taking a chance on some innovation, or a university research collaboration, further keeping the pipeline full of students and innovations.

But, for it to work, you probably also need a high trust society. You need light touch regulation on the training, research funding, and project management. And all of that is easier at the 9 million person scale than at the 60 million person scale.