MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by simne | 2025-08-27 20:04:40+00:00
Read history of Bugatti Veyron for answer. In short, VW have made extraordinary machine, but so expensive, they fear to sell it for real cost.

So literally, VW partially donate Veyron to their clients, selling it under-priced.

I think, same happen with Apple M architecture - it is extraordinary and different from anything on market, but Apple sell it under-priced, so to limit losses, they decided to limit it to very few models.

How such things happen? Well, hardware is hard - usually so sophisticated SoC need 7..8 iterations to achieve production, and this could cost million or even more. And mostly happen problem, just low output, mean, for example you make 100 cores on one die, but only 5..6 working.

How AMD/Intel deal with such things? It's hard, mean complex.

First, they just have huge experience and very wide portfolio of different SoCs, but used some tricks, so could for example downgrade Xeon to Core-i7 with jumpers.

Second, for large patterns like RAM/Cache, could disable broken parts of die with jumpers, or even could disable cores. That's why there are so many DRAM PCB designs - they usually made as 6 RAM fields with one controller, and with jumpers could sell chips with literally 1, 2, 3,4,5 or 6 fields enabled; some AMD SoCs exists with odd number of cores because of this (for example 3-cores), and other tricks, which could made some averaged profits from wide line of SoCs.

Third, for some designs, Intel/AMD use already proven technologies, like Atom was basically just first Pentium on new semiconductor process, or for long time, I7 series was basically Xeons previous generations.

Unfortunately for Apple, they have not such luxury to make wide product line, and don't have significant place to dump low grade chips, so they limited M line to one which as I think just appear to have largest output.

From my experience, I could speculate, Apple tops consider to make wider product line, when achieve better output, but for now without much success.
by gunta | 2025-08-27 20:04:59+00:00
Ha! Fair play on the reality check ;)

Though funny thing - while writing that admittedly over-caffeinated post, I was watching something more interesting happen: $400+ in binding commitments rolled in over 24 hours for a GitHub bot that doesn't exist yet. Not "I'm interested" clicks. Actual credit cards, 7 random internet user credit cards.

The prototype that revealed the gap? It wasn't the bot. It was discovering people will pay for software that literally doesn't exist if you just ask them to commit first. The friction isn't in building - it's in validation.

I spent years maintaining a 13k-star project, burning out while users tried to throw money at features. Built this "commitment engine" in 3 hours. Now I'm thinking: what if every open source project could pre-sell features before writing them? What if every startup could get paid before building?

You're right to call out the hype. But sometimes the real billion-dollar opportunity isn't what you're selling - it's what you accidentally discovered while selling it. This validation mechanism might be more valuable than the original product.

"Build nothing → Get paid → Build exactly that" beats "Build everything → Hope someone pays" every time.

But yeah, I should probably calm down with the "every gap is billions" talk. Maybe just millions.
by touisteur | 2025-08-27 20:05:00+00:00
I'm guessing the temperature could increase quite fast (milliseconds or less) in heavy duty areas, especially when going scalar-to-dense-vector operations.

My best understanding of the avx-512 'power license' debacle on Intel CPUs was that the processor was actually watching the instruction stream and computing heuristics to lower core frequency before reaching avx512 or dense-avx2 instructions. I guessed they knew or worried that even a short large-vector stint would fry stuff...

Apparently voltage and thermal sensor have vastly improved and looking at the crazy swings on NVIDIA GPU's clocks seem to agree with this :-)
by hinkley | 2025-08-27 20:05:38+00:00
Battery banks are worse than degraded raid arrays in some important respects. The bad cells tend to try to bring the rest of the pack with them. It’s one of the reasons people keep toying with partitioning cells and putting controllers onto individual cells or small groups of them.

Parting out two or three dead battery packs to cull the best of the survivors can improve things quite a bit. And as you say, on a stationary pack you can afford to overdo telemetry, cooling, and safety circuitry because it doesn’t have to move, let alone accelerate.

I don’t know what the half life is like for the reused cells though. Do the cells that lasted twice as long as their neighbors continue to outperform or do they revert to the mean over time? I could see either being true. The days when you accidentally produce cells that are several stddev better than your target quality should make cells that last longer, unless they’re sold to a leadfootted driver.
by petralithic | 2025-08-27 20:05:39+00:00
I've talked to people like this and when you dig deep enough, it's a fear of the economic effects of it, not actually any strongly held belief of AI inherently not being intelligent or emotional. Similarly, and I'm speaking generally here, ask artists about coding AI and they won't care, and ask programmers about media generation AI and they also won't care. That's because AI outside their domain does not (ostensibly) threaten their livelihood.
by thephyber | 2025-08-27 20:06:02+00:00
Being from the US, I don’t think the average person _does_ that (even with OTC meds).

But people in the middle of a health / mental health crisis aren’t thinking straight and may rush to try and relieve an issue with their body ASAP. Famous American celebrities have done this (Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Prince, Tom Petty, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anna Nicole Smith, etc) so it happens, but I’m not sure it’s a thing people do when they aren’t in crisis.
by merksoftworks | 2025-08-27 20:06:07+00:00
This is a misquote - the two minutes of context around the content he was commenting cause it to make way more sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc

He's right that to someone who's art is about capturing the world through a child's eyes, the dreamlike consonance of everyday life with simple fantasy, this is abominable.
by ubermonkey | 2025-08-27 20:06:15+00:00
HN as always drastically overstates how hard it is to run non-AppStore software.

Yes, the Mac defaults to a stricter policy than most HN readers would want. Mass market computers SHOULD. That they don't is a reason we have so much malware on the Aunt Millie PCs of the world.

HN readers are more technical. We want to do what we want to do, but we have to understand that what WE want isn't what's right for the average user. As long as a platform gives us a path to download a random utility from a buddy's site or whatever, it's fine.

It's very, very easy to set a Mac to run whatever you want. Nothing is hidden about it. Is it different than it was under Sonoma? Yes, but the changes are well documented and there are countless articles online, including at Apple, that explain the trivial steps required.
by nkohari | 2025-08-27 20:06:17+00:00
I hate social media and what it's done to the internet, but I accept that it is now a part of the fabric of society. You can't unring the bell. (In fact, here I am, saying I hate social media on a social media site.)

In the end, it doesn't matter what you or I think. You can hate AI, but it's not going away. The industry needs more skeptical, level-headed people to help figure out how best to leverage the technology in a responsible way.
by jacobx | 2025-08-27 20:06:18+00:00
We probably need to make this more discoverable, but if you keep swiping down on the prompt area, you can swipe it completely off screen and your app will be full screen (with a small movable floating button to exit).

I really like the idea of a platform for people sharing mini-apps! It would be great if people could make lightweight specialized apps for different niches and share them with less friction.
by bryanlarsen | 2025-08-27 20:06:34+00:00
Whoever you sold it to would have to have a valid Firefox trademark in a different field like the original owner did, or Firefox would be to snag it via a trademark lawsuit.

Or you could sell it to a malware site, who would lose it fairly quickly but might be able to make some cash in the meantime. I can't imagine they'd earn much though. The old firefox.com didn't have Google juice until after the transition.

The only value in the firefox.com domain is the ability to shake down Mozilla for a sum less than the cost of filing a trademark lawsuit. Which is significant, but not extremely so.
by MontyCarloHall | 2025-08-27 20:06:40+00:00
Both languages let you use explicit `this` but don’t mandate it. The “static closure” approach is great. I don’t like having to explicitly pass `this` as a parameter to every method call as in the OP (or worse, the confusing Python approach of forcing `self` to be explicitly written in every non-static method signature but having it be implicitly passed during method calls).

What I don’t like is being able to reference instance members without `this`, e.g.

void foo() { int x = bar + 1; // should be illegal: it can be hard to distinguish if `bar` is a local variable versus an instance member int y = this->bar + 1; // disambiguation is good }
by sunshowers | 2025-08-27 20:07:03+00:00
The big thing is that futures are passive, so any future can be cancelled at any await point by dropping it or not polling it any more. So if you have a situation like this, which in my experience is a very common way to use mutexes:

let guard = mutex.lock().await; // guard.data is Option<T>, Some to begin with let data = guard.data.take(); // guard.data is now None let new_data = process_data(data).await; guard.data = Some(new_data); // guard.data is Some again

Then you could cancel the future at the await point in between while the lock is held, and as a result guard.data will not be restored to Some.
by londons_explore | 2025-08-27 20:07:38+00:00
No EV that I'm aware of has the ability to bypass a single cell in a series string.

I have often wondered if it would be worth designing an EV battery that can permanently short out a bad cell in a string, perhaps by deliberately disabling balancing, letting the bad cells voltage fall to zero, and then perhaps having a single use 'bypass' that latches on.

It wouldn't be a seamless user experience, because if you discharge the cell to say 0.5 volts but then the user tries to charge their car, you can't let them, since you cannot safely charge a lithium cell which has fallen below the minimum voltage, but you also cannot bypass it till the voltage falls to zero. Could be done automatically at 3am though like system updates.
by brabel | 2025-08-27 20:07:44+00:00
You should see the context in which he said that. It was 2016. It was no ChatGPT he was talking about. It was some truly bizarre art that was going on back then, like a sort of humanoid form trying to learn how to walk without being given instructions... it would do disturbing things like us its head as if it was a limb and move in completely unnatural ways... that's what he, and most who watch that video, found so disturbing. But of course, taking things out of context and using a powerful sentence as if it were referring to something entirely different to make your own point is more fun.
by griffzhowl | 2025-08-27 20:08:32+00:00
To be fair to the Greeks, thay also came up with the idea of elementary particles. I think it's Democritus who's credited with the idea of "atoms".

It's been ages since I've read about him in any depth but I remember something about him having an idea that because of the indefinite divisibility of length then the elementary particles would have to have a diameter smaller than any given length, i.e. be infinitesimal, so they had quite sophisticated speculations
by Dylan16807 | 2025-08-27 20:08:44+00:00
The thing is, any offset or jitter that can't be picked up over the network is irrelevant to what the author is trying to accomplish. And if it can be picked up over the network, I don't see why Chrony is the wrong thing to measure with.

"system time as distorted by getting it to/from the network" is exactly what is supposed to be measured here.
by shadowgovt | 2025-08-27 20:09:03+00:00
Right now, they're apparently cleaning the parks.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/national...

(... ironically: to the extent those parks have a trash problem, it's because Trump's administration cut funding to the park service (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-trump-administr...), which maintains those parks directly since they are federally-owned).
by zelphirkalt | 2025-08-27 20:09:14+00:00
Can you give examples of the calls for these procedures? Because in my experience when I pass a value (not a reference), then I must borrow the value and cannot use it later in the calling procedure. Passing a reference of course is something different. That comes with its own additional syntax that is needed for when you want to do something with the thing that is referred to.
by dzhiurgis | 2025-08-27 20:09:14+00:00
My issue with google flights is heavy cache on smaller routes. My country needs 2 layovers to get to NZ which massively increases search space. Pretty much every result is “oops we can’t find this price anymore, it’s now 10x”.

It’s still ok for finding some routes or ideas, but far from best for cheapest (ie it cant find cheapest country to book from like skyscanner).

And don’t even get me started on business flight search - that’s basically conspiracy from airlines for you never to find deals.
by bayindirh | 2025-08-27 20:09:28+00:00
> need to get self-regulated by the app stores...

Self regulation for industries does not work. On the more serious side we have Boeing, which is allowed to self regulate. We see the results.

Mobile game industry have conferences, and these conferences have talks, panels and tracks for monetization and loyalty.

Do you believe that an industry hell bent on monetization can self regulate?

Of course, not all industry players are bad. There are better, ethical brands. On the other hand, industry is so big now, The Tragedy of Commons applies to it. If some studios refrain themselves from abusing players, at least one other studio will.
by mingus88 | 2025-08-27 20:09:51+00:00
I can only speak to my social circle but initially LLMs were a lot of fun. Like my kids playing with Photo Booth filters on a new device.

I don’t think the social reaction was there the whole time. It feels more like we have been playing around with them for two years and are finally realizing they won’t change our lives as positively as we thought

And seeing what the CEO class is doing with them makes it even worse
by pbmonster | 2025-08-27 20:09:52+00:00
> The existing giro system is the real Paypal competitor. Most Europeans had access to Paypal-style money transfers before they had email.

Not at all, not even close! In most cases, that's wrong even today.

Want to sell something online? A book you wrote, a game you made? There's no way for people to pay you via giro and automatically receiving the good on the page where the payment process was initiated.

Giro is not instant, and almost no bank will offer an API that signals that a specific customer has transferred funds successfully. It always takes hours, and the confirmation process is almost always only semi-automatic for the seller.

Visa/MasterCard/PayPal/Twint/Tikkie/Wero have and will provide actual value. Giro was nice 15 years ago, but hasn't kept up.

And even for money transfers between two private individuals, giro is the inferior system - mainly because Euro banks fail at UX/UI. I don't know a single bank that offers an "address book" in their online banking app/website. If you want to send someone money, you better remember their IBAN yourself. And because the system comes with a degree of anonymity, you can't even send people money back! Their IBAN is not part of the metadata of an incoming transfer, the only way to send money back is to contact that person and have them send their IBAN.
by simianwords | 2025-08-27 20:09:56+00:00
Cynicism is the new virtue to signal for the tech elite class. New technology is the ideal way for those people to signal their cynicism.

> Critics have already written thoroughly about the environmental harms, the reinforcement of bias and generation of racist output, the cognitive harms and AI supported suicides, the problems with consent and copyright, the way AI tech companies further the patterns of empire, how it’s a con that enables fraud and disinformation and harassment and surveillance, the exploitation of workers, as an excuse to fire workers and de-skill work, how they don’t actually reason and probability and association are inadequate to the goal of intelligence, how people think it makes them faster when it makes them slower, how it is inherently mediocre and fundamentally conservative, how it is at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy, defined not by its technical features but by its political ones.

This word salad proves that the author out to stack leftist jabs. I want to be respectful but this paragraph proves that the author does not think for themselves but just uses this as an opportunity to signal that they are the "in group" amongst the tech-cynics.

Post is probably going to get flagged for what its worth
by tanvach | 2025-08-27 20:09:58+00:00
I've noticed that the younger you are, the most likely you're in love with AI. So the tide will turn eventually, for better or worse. I talked to someone recently who claims with no irony that 'AI has zero downside'.

I don't hate AI. I hate the people who're in love with it. The culture of people who build and worship this technology is toxic.
by athorax | 2025-08-27 20:09:58+00:00
My guess is that there aren't that many folks using zed over neovim/emacs. It seems like a more suitable alternative to vscode or jetbrains IDEs which imo have at least the same level of financial risks involved. At the end of the day it is just an editor and moving to something is pretty minimal effort if things do go in a direction you don't agree with.
by throw0101a | 2025-08-27 20:10:00+00:00
> The Fed is independent for a reason.

Just ask the folks in Turkey/Türkiye.

As Lev Menand mentioned in a recent Odd Lots episode (22m10), it was one of the reasons for the separation of powers (cites UK's Glorious Revolution where there as an attempt at a high concentration of executive powers):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_7x6fEOYIU

Menand also noted that Hamilton warned of the temptations of Government is print money on his report on a central bank:

> The emitting of paper money by the authority of Government is wisely prohibited to the individual States, by the National Constitution. And the spirit of that prohibition ought not to be disregarded, by the Government of the United States. Though paper emissions, under a general authority, might have some advantages, not applicable, and be free from some disadvantages, which are applicable, to the like emissions by the States separately; yet they are of a nature so liable to abuse, and it may even be affirmed so certain of being abused, that the wisdom of the Government will be shewn in never trusting itself with the use of so seducing and dangerous an expedient. In times of tranquillity, it might have no ill consequence, it might even perhaps be managed in a way to be productive of good; but in great and trying emergencies, there is almost a moral certainty of its becoming mischievous. The stamping of paper is an operation so much easier than the laying of taxes, that a government, in the practice of paper emissions, would rarely fail in any such emergency to indulge itself too far, in the employment of that resource, to avoid as much as possible one less auspicious to present popularity. If it should not even be carried so far as to be rendered an absolute bubble, it would at least be likely to be extended to a degree, which would occasion an inflated and artificial state of things incompatible with the regular and prosperous course of the political œconomy.

* https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-07-02-02...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_a_National_Bank
by dns_snek | 2025-08-27 20:10:04+00:00
> You're absolutely insistent that virtually any amount of "negative effects" is sufficient for diagnosis

There you go again, I'm doing nothing of the sort. They complained of severe difficulties and called some of them "torture".

You took that, minimized their complaints and accused me of wanting to medicate anyone suffering "virtually any amount of negative effects" which apparently includes the person who self-described it as torture.
by kulahan | 2025-08-27 20:10:21+00:00
Unfortunately, software developers are the absolute most offensive use of the word "engineer", because 99.9% of the stuff this field makes is a competition to take the most unique approach to a solution, then getting it bandaged together with gum and paperclips.

If this industry wants to be respected, it should start trying to be actual engineers. There should be tons and tons of standards which are enforced legally, but this is not often the case. Imagine if there were no real legal guardrails in, say, bridge building!

edit: and imagine if any time you brought up this issue, bridge builders cockily responded with "well stuff seems to work fine so..."
by petralithic | 2025-08-27 20:10:35+00:00
A human might generate a piece of media using AI (either via a slot machine spin or with more advanced workflows like ComfyUI) and once they deem it looks good enough for their purpose, they might display it to represent what they want it to represent. If Guernica was AI generated but still displayed by Picasso as a statement about war, it would still be art.

Tools do not dictate what art is and isn't, it is about the intent of the human using those tools. Image generators are not autonomously generating images, it is the human who is asking them for specific concepts and ideas. This is no different than performance art like a banana taped to a wall which requires no tools at all.
by tbossanova | 2025-08-27 20:11:12+00:00
I haven't come across any "eco activists" who solely push for straw bans etc and nothing else. It's pretty obvious that the way forward is to not use so much stuff. LEDs and solar panels are nice but don't encourage using less stuff. "Creating value for shareholders" encourages using more stuff. But you're probably right, "economic forces" look like they win, now and forever.
by hinkley | 2025-08-27 20:11:27+00:00
Precautionary principle. There’s not good ways to extinguish these fires once they start. So you kinda have to let them go. Maybe you could use some sort of deluge system or aggressive liquid cooling on the surrounding cells however. Overbuilding the delivery system but then running the pumps at their most efficient cfm except when the smoke alarms go off.