MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Atlas667 | 2025-08-18 19:32:00+00:00
This may sound rude, but "democratic socialism" is just wishful thinking. How can regulations stop corruption? Is that really your best bet?

I'm a socialist because I know you can't stop it that way. It's simply impossible. They will corrupt/lobby/influence their way around it. They currently do.

What is your plan? To REALLY SUPER DUPER trust the next candidate you have zero control over?

"Democratic socialism" is not democratic or socialism. Socialism is actually democratic and prevents exploitation.

The only way to actually stop it is to not allow individuals to profit off of others. Individuals shall make their OWN assets through their own muscles. No ownership of property that allows you to reap what others sow. It's logically the only way to avoid power imbalances. And it's something that we all enforce and control through local councils.

Remember, democracy is not trust, its control.
by NietzscheanNull | 2025-08-18 19:32:16+00:00
Just a heads up: the signup form disclaimer ("by signing up to create an account, you are accepting our terms of service and privacy policy") appears to link to a ToS route (theinterface.com/terms), but clicking that immediately redirects back to the login page (/signin) on Firefox [141.0.3].

Same thing happened when I tried hitting the URL directly. Do I have to accept the ToS before I'm allowed to read it?
by wakawaka28 | 2025-08-18 19:32:40+00:00
>Just because I have disposable income to pay higher costs of groceries doesn’t mean it’s fair that the suppliers take advantage of difficult times to normalize a 200% increase to a grocery item.

In most cases, this is not the suppliers taking advantage of anyone. Grocers operate on very thin profit margins, as do most food businesses.

>I’m not rich by any software engineer standard, so it’s a little prejudice that you want to harass me about how much money I make as compared to a statement I made about being able to afford things.

Even poor people can still afford eggs. For a software engineer to say they can't afford them is ridiculous. If you talked to a real poor person and they knew how much you earned, and you started saying you can't afford eggs, they'd start wondering wtf you do with your money.

>I hope you never complain about the cost of living for any item or issue ever again in your life. You seem to have it all figured out.

I don't have it all figured out. I suffer from high cost of living, despite making great money. But you won't catch me saying my student loans didn't pay off, or that eggs are out of reach. I can't say that no software engineer in the world has such budget issues that they can't afford eggs. But if you can't afford THAT, I wonder what the hell you CAN afford... How are you not starving to death? Are you on food stamps yet?

Trust me I know what it's like to not afford things, or to be disappointed with life. But your problems are insignificant compared to those of actual poor people (many of whom get government benefits to sustain them). Your loans appear to have paid off, unless you paid like well over $200k for a 4 year degree or some crap like that.
by feelamee | 2025-08-18 19:33:41+00:00
> Suppose you have a FILE file and you want to get it’s contents. Ideally, you’d be able to type file. and see a list of every function that is primarily concerned with files. From there you could pick read and get on with your day.

> Instead, you must know that functions releated to FILE tend to start with f, and when you type f the best your editor can do is show you all functions ever written that start with an f

Why do you think that this is a problem of C? no one is stopping your tools from searching `fclose` by first parameter type when you wrote `file.`. Moreover, I know that CLion already do this.
by MisterTea | 2025-08-18 19:33:49+00:00
Literally plugged the phrase "etymology word calf" into duckduckgo and the first result was this: https://etymologyworld.com/item/calf

This feels similar to a recent conversation with my friend when I was trying to recall the SoC used in the Nintendo Switch and he insisted on using his chatgpt app when I just went to the Wikipedia page for the Switch faster then he could open his app.

I don't want to sound negative, but - to me people who over rely on LLMs are lazy and low effort. I would not hire or work with them.
by nearysvoice | 2025-08-18 19:33:50+00:00
Apparently, I am "inviting" Otter into very private work meetings and i don't even have an account. Someone else had it on a meeting and Otter took it upon itself to send notes to all people in the meeting...from "me". It said i was inviting them. i am being trolled by an ai bot and spreading it like a disease to others and i didn't even know it until i saw the invitation from me in a meeting i was in...and that's when i first learned it attached itself to me. This is like a virus and i am trying to figure out how to stop it.
by godelski | 2025-08-18 19:33:58+00:00
> They just spend all day figuring out how to connect things to other things and never write the part that does anything?

I see a lot of people write software like this regardless of language. Like their job is to glue pieces of code together from stack overflow. Spending more time looking for the right code that kinda sorta works than it would take to write the code which will just work.
by albertzeyer | 2025-08-18 19:34:12+00:00
How do you not have the citations in front of you? They are all in the article? I don't expect that any relevant (re)invention of backprop is missing there. Or, if you really know some reinvention of backprop that is not mentioned here, tell Jürgen Schmidhuber, he is actually very curious to learn about other such instances that he is not aware of yet.
by hinkley | 2025-08-18 19:34:24+00:00
I was reading a book series from my local library and for reasons I don’t understand they were missing the third or fourth book in the series. Probably damaged or lost. I even thought I could check the local (especially used) bookstores, buy a copy and then gift it to the library, but there’s a new edition that has a completely different vibe and size, with 2024 prices so I thought better of it. So I’d heard of Anna’s Archive and I got it there. Then it turned out one of the last books was unavailable too, can’t recall if it was missing or someone else had it out and wasn’t going to return it any time soon.

I was just trying to finish this writer’s corpus on a reread of their later material. It’s not that I’m cheap. I own a paper and audiobook copy of several of my favorite books. Including this author, so I’ve paid her twice. I just avoided the trap some of my friends long ago were falling into of hoarding books, by only keeping books I intend to read again. So any completionist tendencies have always been resolved via library or electronic editions.

I’m getting older now, and my first real confrontation with my own mortality came up with books. I have several years worth of books even if I were retired and reading three or four a week. New things come out all the time, and new voices. I haven’t read some of these books in ten years or more. Am I really going to read them again before… So a couple years ago I reread Dune for what will likely be the last time and sold my ratty old yellow copies to a used bookstore. If I do it again it will likely be audiobook.
by andrei_says_ | 2025-08-18 19:34:35+00:00
A language intentionally designed for DX + a pragmatic, stable, well organized framework minimizing boilerplate and BS are still the winning formula for fast web app development.

The productivity and joy I get from working with this stack are immeasurable. I’ve been ruined in terms of having zero tolerance for the agony that comes with the JS ecosystem for example.
by wildzzz | 2025-08-18 19:34:45+00:00
I buy a lot of Keysight equipment for work. Most of the options and upgrades are one time purchases. Sometimes the option requires an actual hardware change, other times it just unlocks the full capability of that some subsystem. There's also software applications you can purchase or subscribe to along with various features you can spend money on.

Everything has a different price, it's absolutely insane how they decide it. If you want a subscription, it costs about the same for 2 years as it does to just purchase the license. But wait, do you want a permanently locked node license or a transportable license? The node locked one is a bit cheaper. Why? Because then you can't salvage your software from a broken unit and install it on a working one, silly.

They'd prefer you just subscribe to everything because then you'll pay less money than if you fully purchased a unit from a competitor.
by keernan | 2025-08-18 19:35:04+00:00
I am now retired but I was a middle manager with three different Fortune 500 companies. What I experienced was the same at all three companies:

1. Senior management had no clue how to hire middle managers. Literally one hundred percent were selected as a promotional reward to the best performing employee. Almost always a person who had no prior management experience. And there was no training.

2. Senior management demanded obedience and loyalty. If there were performance issues, they wanted the person fired. If too many people were fired, then that was the middle manager's fault. In the end, if you didn't have people on performance plans, you weren't being tough enough. But if you ended up having turnover, you were going to be fired yourself.
by thomassmith65 | 2025-08-18 19:35:34+00:00
It is neither humorous nor strange because that formulation omits authors.

How many authors who write the books in Anna's archive are happy about it?

I personally am pro Anna's archive (and sci-hub, etc) because I believe it benefits society to have better-read citizens. That said, I have some misgivings, because under our current system, there are issues with law and remuneration.
by hadlock | 2025-08-18 19:35:48+00:00
Your car is only 70% of the way through it's nominal lifespan. It seems like battery life is holding up well, but we'll find out a lot more as many of these cars begin their second decade of service, quite often with less rigorous maintenance. I suspect many/most EVs will make it to 300k and 12 years, but the oldest (truly) mass produced Model S are only just now turning 10 years old.
by Arainach | 2025-08-18 19:35:49+00:00
This is a really weird hill to die on. HP tried hard to make RPN a thing and even among engineers eventually lost out to notation that is easier to work with.

People read in one direction - in English left to right. They read faster and comprehend better when they can move in that direction without constantly jumping back and forth.

> (15 - 6) * 20 / 4 + 2 ^ 3 + 7 + 8 - 3 * 2

(15-6)*20/4 can be read as one block left to right

2^3 can be read as one block left to right. Jump back to the operator (count: 1)

7 + 8 continue left to right

3*2 is a block, jump back to operator (count: 2)

So that reads left to right as speakers of most western languages do with only two context shifts. Now let's try RPN:

> + + * - 15 6 / 20 4 ^ 2 3 - + 7 8 * 3 2

ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore.

15, 6, context shift (1)

ignore?

20, context shift (2)

4, context shift (3)

ignore?

2 (wait, am I supposed to use that caret? I'm already confused and I've used RPN calculators before. Counting this as a context shift (4))

3, context shift (5)

two more operators and I don't really understand why any more

basically, RPN makes you context shift every single time you enter a number. It is utter chaos to understand of jumping back and forth and trying to remember what came before and happens next. Even if you're used to it it's dramatically worse for humans, and no one cares how much software it takes to parse.

Incidentally from my experience with RPN calculators I'd have expected

15 6 - 20 * 4 / 2 3 ^ + 7 + 8 + 3 2 * -

Though it's not really better since instead of context shifting after every number you have to context shift after ever operator to try to remember what's on the stack
by iambateman | 2025-08-18 19:36:36+00:00
VW saw what Adobe did with the transition to a subscription model and they’re testing it…simple as that.

Can they capture more value by selling their big, expensive thing as a service rather than in one big sale?

In 2010, everyone complained that Adobe was ripping their users off charging them every month for software which basically doesn’t change (which was and is correct). But since that move, their valuation is up 10x.

I’d much prefer to drive a car that doesn’t know much about me…but then again, I still use Adobe products every day.
by bokkies | 2025-08-18 19:36:58+00:00
Not just nickel and diming with cars, in Germany/Switzerland/Austria you have to pay to use toilets in service stations, showers in campsites (2min hot water per payment) and dozens of other micro payments for things that are free even in 3rd world countries. Nothing like having a kid who's desperate for the toilet and having to scratch for the right change to get in.
by luma | 2025-08-18 19:37:04+00:00
Ed Zitron is a PR man who runs a PR company who found widespread traction when he started posting AI shittakes on twitter. He now claims to be a tech guy but has zero tech background. His entire schtick is saying smarmy things that gets clicks, and with AI skepticism he's found a very wide audience.

If he's right about something in this field, it's by accident and not a result of experience or research. He's a social media creation and one should consider his spicy takes in that light.
by floxy | 2025-08-18 19:37:42+00:00
>Also the early Nissan Leafs, pioneers in the mass-market EV space, had batteries with only air cooling and which experienced significant degradation.

Don't forget that beside the chemistry issue in hot environments, the original Leaf only had a 24 kWh battery, so you'd have a lot more cycles than say a 60 kWh or 90 kWh battery. If you assume it is good for 1,000 equivalent charge cycles, and assume you 3.5 miles/kWh, than your 24 kWh battery would be good for 84,000 miles. A 60 kWh pack would be good for 210,000 miles, and a 90 kWh pack is good for 315,000 miles. A new Chevrolet Silverado EV has a 200 kWh pack (which, if you can squeeze out 2 miles/kWh, would be good for 400,000 miles).

And with a small battery it is more likely that you'd need to charge up to 100% and discharge closer to 0%, which is also harder on the battery.
by computerdork | 2025-08-18 19:38:02+00:00
Know am going to be downvoted into oblivion, but as a composer, can see it from the side of creators. Yeah, making their products free is starving these industries. For instance, in music, there is already very little money in music (think about how many musicians you personally know who can make a living off of music, besides being a music teacher). And, the music industry is still not even the same size as it was in 90's - global revenue in 2024 was $29 billion, while in 1994, in was $35 billion (and that's not even taking into account inflation).

Yes, there are many other reason why the music industry fell, but when your main demographic can always go to bittorrent to get their music if prices are too high, then there is only so much you can do with the price of music.

Yeah, I remember the 90's, music was huge, and there were so many good bands (Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, REM, White Stripes... Or if you're more into popular music, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston...). Now, music is de-valued and cheap and our music scene has been decimated. Personally, think we should try to find ways to support musicians, writers, thinkers, artists...

... but if you have a different opinion, no worries. But, if you can, give it thought.
by gspencley | 2025-08-18 19:38:27+00:00
> But I flat out don't believe the "piracy doesn't lead to lost sales" shtick, of course it does.

I'm not as certain as you are. Correlation does not imply causation, but media sales have trended upwards in the age of piracy which leads to some interesting hypotheses.

A few years ago Shirley Manson (lead singer of the 90s band Garbage) accused YouTube of making its fortune off the backs of content creators - basically charging the entire enterprise as being one big exercise in copyright infringement. And yet the music industry, as well as Hollywood, seem to be doing better and better each year in terms of dollars made. Some of the distribution models have changed - broadcast and cable television are pretty dead in the water, but the entertainment industries in general seem to be doing better than ever. And yeah lots of individual artists are still getting raw deals from Spotify and labels etc. as they always have. But industry-wise, in terms of dollar amounts, it seems there's more money to be made than ever before from creating and selling entertainment.

The statement you made that I absolutely agree with is that it's hard to get real world data on this. An individual who is able to get free access to something may be unlikely to ever pay for that same thing.But the answer to the question: "Does piracy hurt the industry's bottom line, or help it on the whole?" is a very difficult question to answer. And we have to consider the even harder stuff to measure. Things like: is a teenager who pirates recorded media more or less likely to buy merch and concert tickets? More or less likely to buy a special edition package with tangible collector items?

At the end of the day, I have no clue.

I also offer all of this being very pro-capitalism and pro-intellectual-property. I don't condone piracy. But if we're just looking at raw data and trying to form our hypothesis, we have to start with the fact that the raw data points to upwards trends on the whole.
by sokoloff | 2025-08-18 19:38:27+00:00
We road tripped our 2005 240K+ mile CR-V 750 miles each way every Christmas without a worry. We’d still be road-tripping in that if a negligent Subaru driver hadn’t rear-ended us and pushed us into a Prius ahead as the middle car in a sandwich.

The car before that was a 1998 Mercedes diesel with 225K+ miles on it that retired only because of body rust not mechanicals.

It helps that I did all the maintenance, so I knew how reliable they were.

Cars are insanely reliable and people get irrationally fearful when a car turns 100K and then again at 200K.
by skeaker | 2025-08-18 19:38:29+00:00
Your other points aside...

> I'm not against consumer boycotts, but it should generally come with a sacrifice on both sides--for consumers, that means missing out on the product or service.

I'm curious as to why you feel this way, genuinely. The decision to boycott means that there is no sale, full stop, so no money is being handed over. Why does anything after that matter? The important part, the money, is already decided from the start.
by MisterTea | 2025-08-18 19:38:46+00:00
I remember coming home from school and tuning in to the Disney afternoon. When it was over, there wasn't really anything else on so you turned the TV off and did something else like go outside or do homework (okay, that last one was a lie.) Same thing with Saturday morning cartoons, I think maybe American Gladiator was the last thing a kid would want to watch before noon and again, turn TV off and do something else. Though there was the A-team and MacGyver at some point.
by connicpu | 2025-08-18 19:39:14+00:00
Yep absolutely, I used a level 1 charger at home for a couple years and it could easily recharge my daily work commute in about 5-8 hours (depending on season). Even now the only upgrade I did was move to a 240V16A charger because I wanted it to be a little quicker after long trips, but most of the time I limit the charge rate to 8A to preserve battery health.
by mckenzba | 2025-08-18 19:39:27+00:00
What does giving apps root permissions have anything to do with rooting a device? Rooting in this context means unlocking the bootloader to allow for a custom OS/kernel that isn't signed by the OEM. You can have a rooted device while still running an OS that restricts apps (that behave) from having root account access.

I'd rather have the ability to enroll my own keys so I can boot my own signed OS and maintain a root of trust that I own much like what can be done on desktop Linux with a TPM. IIRC Google's Pixel phones have this ability (and are one of the few phones that have this ability if I'm not mistaken).
by bpcrd | 2025-08-18 19:39:38+00:00
I understand the appeal of hashing-based provenance techniques, though they’ve faced some significant challenges in practice that render them ineffective at best. While many model developers have explored these approaches with good intentions, we’ve seen that they can be easily circumvented or manipulated, particularly by sophisticated bad actors who may not follow voluntary standards.

We recognize that no detection solution is 100% accurate. There will be occasional false positives and negatives. That said, our independently verified an internal testing shows we’ve achieved the lowest error rates currently available for addressing deepfake detection.

I’d respectfully suggest that dismissing AI detection entirely might be premature, especially without hands-on evaluation. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to arrange a test environment where you could evaluate our solution’s performance firsthand and see how it might fit your specific use case.
by saelthavron | 2025-08-18 19:39:59+00:00
> I've been there, but just because you did things the "right" way and got rejected from one company doesn't mean you should throw away what worked. After all, they did interview you for a second role after the first one.

Several rejections by multiple groups. I'm pretty sure I won't get an interview from there for a while. I've not been interviewed by the same group for more than one position. Continually getting rejected and failing to achieve more than one interview per group is not what I call working.

> That said, especially in a tough labor market, finding a job is like dating, and the vibes matter a lot.

Thus, it makes perfect sense to just throw your resume at everything that moves. Vibes seem to matter more than fit. I interviewed at another place where one of the interviewers just had a week or two worth of tech experience. They were somehow a test lead. They couldn't answer a single question about testers interact with developers or how they test. I'm sure I was labeled as problematic because of my questioning even though I had zero knowledge of the lack of experience until after a few questions. The person they hired had zero experience outside of university classes. No internships. No personal projects. The position wasn't listed as a junior position.

> Technical people especially often don't want to think about the interpersonal factors, but they are a real part of the process.

It's the only aspect I've been thinking about for over a year. The "technical interview" is often a joke so I can't help but think they are using it as a hidden "vibe" interview.
by jntun | 2025-08-18 19:39:59+00:00
This is an incredibly convoluted hypothetical trying to negate the idea that users notice and/or appreciate how quickly their applications start. Usually as a PM you are managing multiple engineers, one of which I would assume is capable of debugging and eventually implementing a fix for faster start times. Even if they can't fix it immediately due to whatever contrived reason you've supposed, at least they will know where and how to fix it when the time does come. In fact, I would argue pretending there is no issue because of your mountain of other problems is the worst possible scenario to be in.
by anteloper | 2025-08-18 19:40:03+00:00
You can't take the same approach on iOS but to Apple's credit, they do a great job with user privacy with their Screen Time permission. Apps with that permission get the ability to restrict other apps on the phone without ever knowing what they are. They can even report data back to the user without ever knowing that data.

Source: I am a developer of Clearspace, which is an iOS Screen Time App https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clearspace-reduce-screen-time/...