MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by the_snooze | 2025-08-19 13:40:26+00:00
Depending on where you are in the US, hand counts are not realistic. California ballots are notoriously long, with upwards of 50-something contests on a single ballot: regular "pick one" elections, ranked-choice voting, and many ballot initiatives.

The US has indeed largely moved towards "voting machines," but I should be explicit about what this means. These aren't the touchscreen computer-only (direct-recording electronic) machines that were hastily deployed after Bush v Gore. The overwhelming majority of states and municipalities now use some kind of optical-scan paper ballot technology, like scantron forms that are tabulated and kept safe in a box with a scanner bolted onto it. So even if the scanner is broken, there's a reliable record of voter intent.

https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...
by widforss | 2025-08-19 13:40:31+00:00
Hand counts is the way it is done in Sweden. It means that anyone can easily (well, as easy as possible) both understand the system and inspect it locally (all counting is open to the public).

The result is delivered in a matter of hours, and since vote counting is a parallell process it scales well enough that I doubt it would take much longer in the US. The US have massively more complicated ballots though, which I think is another issue entirely that you guys must solve.

I doubt it would be very expensive either. You don't have to pay people very much to do their civic duty every couple of years and count a couple hundred ballots.
by os2warpman | 2025-08-19 13:40:35+00:00
Every single instance to-date where "AI" has been integrated into a product of platform has been a hinderance rather than a benefit.

From milquetoast write-by-committee text generation engines that allow shitty writers to pump out terrible business boilerplate in an email client to customer service representatives tacked onto storefronts that don't do anything except waste your time, using anything AI feels like wading through a waist-deep swamp that ten thousand cows have shit in.

In a way, Apple having terrible AI is a plus to me. It recognizes that there's a cute puppy in a photo in my photo library and that's what I need, and want, it to do.
by yetihehe | 2025-08-19 13:40:57+00:00
If for example you knew someone who has great idea, but doesn't have time to check it with a prototype because he has a lot of "normal" work, but he doesn't want to give it for free to everyone (so that he can finally have some more money and check his other ideas), what would you suggest to that person, or how would you support such person?
by cjs_ac | 2025-08-19 13:40:59+00:00
> My setup: Next.js 14 with App Router, Tailwind CSS v4, hosted on Vercel. Starting weight: ~600KB.

The website is a blog of four static pages. The styling of the pages is simple, clean, and effective. There's no need for any JavaScript or a CSS framework; the CSS could be entirely handwritten in probably 100 lines. If the image is 71 kB, there's no reason for the total download for the home page to exceed 80 kB.
by ajross | 2025-08-19 13:41:02+00:00
It's clearly neither. The real danger is note the adjudication of the elections themselves, it's the acceptance of the results. The danger is the belief by a plurality of the ruling party's support base that elections are somehow fraudulent, because that empowers the ruling party to ignore democracy. We may already be there, and threads like this are in fact the means by which democracy dies.
by nelox | 2025-08-19 13:41:22+00:00
It makes sense that the way dating apps classify people ends up shaping how we think about ourselves. Categories are never neutral. Even something as simple as “serious relationship” versus “casual dating” nudges people into making identity choices rather than just expressing fluid preferences.

A useful way to see this is to think of dating apps less like marketplaces and more like personality trainers. By giving you drop-downs, filters, and tags, they are constantly asking you to rehearse a particular version of yourself. Over time, those rehearsals stick. You start saying “I am this kind of dater” instead of “right now, I feel like this.”

What is novel here is not that technology influences identity, advertising and TV have done that for decades, but that dating apps are interactive feedback systems. Every swipe reinforces not only who you think you want but who you think you are. In that sense, the categories are doing double duty: they constrain your choices and they slowly calibrate your sense of self.

So the interesting question is not whether the categories are “accurate” or “inclusive” but whether we want platforms to keep that much influence over how identities are formed. They are not just matching people. They are training us in how to describe, filter, and rank ourselves in intimate contexts. And that carries a much heavier weight than we usually acknowledge.
by philips | 2025-08-19 13:41:36+00:00
Personally I agree.

However, I think a weakness in the arguments is that many of the tabulation machines we have are very old, poorly designed for vote integrity (eg no paper ballots or confusing scan sheet design), and closed source which can lead to accusations of both hardware/software flipping votes and the systems being impossible to audit.

To counter these concerns you can use paper ballots everywhere, open source software for the machines, and risk limiting audits to verify the count.

Voting Works builds software for both sides of these voting processes as OSS with machine scanned paper ballots.

https://www.voting.works/audits

https://www.voting.works/machines
by saghm | 2025-08-19 13:42:46+00:00
This is a view I've expressed for years now, and usually people are pretty repetitive to it until I follow it up with "and that's a big part of why I find Ruby easier for me to write scripts in than Python". As someone who has never really worked much on production code in either of those languages, I'll never understand how Python managed to end up in the situation where it's installed enough to be the scripting language of choice when people want to reach for something other than bash. Sure, Ruby has its warts, but it's not like people are really delving into the messy parts of Python either for their scripts, and at least Ruby hasn't had a debacle major version breaking changes in the last decade.
by cynic_ | 2025-08-19 13:42:48+00:00
These things still exists in CS (though not as popular in US but that's a reflection of CS losing popularity there)

People right now are having the same community experiences in custom server, or with official Valve, or third party like FaceIt... From crazy custom mods to try hard competitive games.

From time to time I stumble on some community servers when looking for a better DM warm-up server. Players and admin talking to each other like they were regulars, admin flying around in a batman skin killing a camper with lightning bolt, all the usual admin/community tools and more... also all the laughing, banter, playing songs and crap on the mic...

Would you have tried to join in? Let's just face it we've abandoned and stopped seeking it as we got older.
by delichon | 2025-08-19 13:42:54+00:00
This URL used to host an FBI recommendation to use ad blockers for personal security.

https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624

It's gone now. I wonder if that's a policy choice.

Edit: It just moved to https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2022/PSA221221

The FBI recommends individuals take the following precautions... Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches. Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including extensions that block advertisements. These ad blockers can be turned on and off within a browser to permit advertisements on certain websites while blocking advertisements on others.
by jeremysalwen | 2025-08-19 13:43:01+00:00
The yardforce500 is hard to find in the USA, but it's extremely cheap in Europe. I found a great deal and paid $208 for the mower and $135 for a package forwarder to ship it from Germany. I have a complete spreadsheet of my expenses here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BV8VCtqTer8iodXvyRd1...
by GistNoesis | 2025-08-19 13:43:02+00:00
The problem with this visualization is that the pattern we see are meaningless.

It's making me thing of sieving, like in Sieve of Eratosthenes. But we have progressed a lot since.

What's nice about primes are the abstract ideas they generate, and the properties they have.

Primes connect numbers together. It allows you to form "groups" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_(mathematics) ) of elements which don't have "subgroups". They are the sizes of the groups which don't have subgroups. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy%27s_theorem_(group_theo... )

If you want to know more about primes, you can look at the factorization of numbers problem.

You need to wrap your head around Euclid's algorithm (300 BC but it still matters a lot), this guy stumbled onto something very deep.

Prime numbers color other numbers. Once you pick a prime, number smaller that it can be colored as either "square" or "not square" (in the cyclic group defined by the prime). That's something figured Euler with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_criterion .

It's one angle of attack to the factorization problem. This breaking of symmetry has been exploited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_sieve .

But that's not the algorithm, I want to speak of today. I'd rather speak of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenstra_elliptic-curve_factori... . The principle is simple, build a mathematical construct (elliptic curve) using the number which is not a prime and you want to factorize, and treat it as if it was a prime. Then you watch the construct crumble, trace the bug, and you have your factors.

If you are more mathematically proficient, you can also have a look at the General Number Field Sieve, but it's much harder.

To conclude I'd like to give a final nugget for the road : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_modular_multiplicat... a nice trick around division.
by zeta0134 | 2025-08-19 13:43:03+00:00
> The decision notes that this is not just about “changing variable data in the memory of a computer, but rather changing code created by the bytecode of the website ‘computer program’ as a form of expression of the website programming itself.”

Everyone who actually writes software, meanwhile, and understands that code IS data, is collectively facepalming right now. I felt the tremors. Nevermind that almost since its inception, JavaScript has always been an optional component of the web, and my browser very well lets me turn that off. The ability to do so is critical to my security posture. That it also happens to remove distracting visual noise is a nice side bonus.

Firmly, without reservation: if you deliver to me content A, I am under NO OBLIGATION to actually consume content B, merely because you included it in the same package.
by Jensson | 2025-08-19 13:43:06+00:00
I know people who bought a computer and automated away a massive amount of work and thus paid it back in a single day in the 70s.

Back then companies needed a massive amount of people to sit and do all the calculations to do their accounting, but a single person using a computer could do the same work in a day. This was so easy and efficient that almost every bigger company started buying computers at the time.

You don't need to automate away accountants, you just need to automate away the many thousands of calculations needed to complete the accounting to save a massive amount of money. It wasn't hard to convince people to use a computer instead of sitting for weeks manually calculating sums on sheets.
by mb7733 | 2025-08-19 13:43:47+00:00
I worked as a poll clerk in a Canadian federal election once and counted ballots and the experience left me with full confidence in the system. It would be impossible to game on a large scale and incredibly difficult on a small scale.

From what I recall, our polling station, which served only a small portion of the city, was broken into several polls, each run by 2 or 3 poll workers.

At then end of the day the poll workers personally counted the ballots they collected at their poll (so every ballot was counted at least twice, and each individual only counted a fraction of the ballots at the station.) Monitors from the different political parties were free to watch the whole process.

I'm definitely getting some details wrong, but generally the whole thing, plus automatic recounts for tight races left no doubts for me.
by zerkten | 2025-08-19 13:44:13+00:00
A problem is that these device variations now overlap. Originally when Apple was selling a lifestyle there was a clear choice between available options. The current options often force you into a decision about buying up which affects typical consumers the most.

I have a 2018 iPad Pro which I use for Lightroom amongst other things. I'd like to replace it with something new as I need OS support long term and it'll be a fine device to use with our bike trainer. The current iPad Air blows it out of the water, except for the screen downgrade.

Do I suck it up and save some money, or go with the latest iPad Pro? There is a lot more thinking involved than there used to be. It's much more challenging for regular consumers because the iPad pricing ceiling has been pushed higher on top of accessory considerations. This pattern repeats across the lines because it's known to generate more revenue.
by sunscream89 | 2025-08-19 13:44:16+00:00
This is actually pretty good stuff.

> Entropy exists, not just from thermodynamics but also from the existence of information theory.

Try “entropy is the existential phenomena of potential distributing over the surface area of negative potential.” This fits both sides only invalidating modern information theory. State is a single for instance of a potential resolve. Number of states are a boundary condition of potential interfering with itself (constructively or destructively). Existential reality is not made up of information, existential reality is potential resolving into state in the moment of now. Probability is the projected distribution of potential (over whatever surface area such as inverse square the distance or heat dissipation or voltage resistance or number of cars on a highway.)

Potential and potential resolving (true entropy) is the underlying phenomenon not state (information).

This could somehow fit it, such as how some minds are limited by what they interpret (numbers of state) while other minds see an intrinsic whole (a potential distribution like a moment of force to an architect.)
by mc32 | 2025-08-19 13:44:20+00:00
Everyone should be invested in ensuring votes and the ballots are error free and untampered. Everyone should be in favor of accurate counts.

We should also not be accepting votes with date stamps past election day. Or votes with no date stamp.

If we go all-in on electronic ballots, I think this is the place we could use a block chain to ensure security, traceability and accountability.
by conductr | 2025-08-19 13:44:36+00:00
I made it for my country home and won’t be there for a bit but maybe one day I’ll document it. But the parts store I used closed down, Open Builds Part Store. It’s nothing proprietary to them, I just got all the v slot aluminum frame and connectors there to build the chassis. Then I got hub motor wheels on Amazon or Aliexpress and batteries too. Most small components I get on Amazon, motor controller. I went with off-road air filled tires. And I wrote all then logic into an arduino mega. Oh and I used an upside down rubber made container as the case for electronics. Everything is mounted to the bottom of the lid and the box part is functionally the lid that I remove to gain access. It as built in snap locks and I used weather stripping to make the seal tight.

You just have to figure out how to mount to the lawn mower part of your choice, after than it’s the same as building any vehicle.
by lelanthran | 2025-08-19 13:45:13+00:00
> Thanks, first I've heard of them and they happen to solve a real problem I'm working on today. Always nice when you can learn something new...

You don't really need to, TBH. I pretty much always wrote a malloc-memory `sprintf` alternative if the system didn't have one. it's only a few lines of code, that'll take maybe 10m of your day the first time you realise `sprintf` on the platform doesn't exist.

Here is a sample from more recently: https://github.com/lelanthran/libds/blob/b5289f6437b30139d42...
Show HN: Kickpredict – Simple Soccer match analysis and stats collection by AI
by canercbo | 2025-08-19 13:45:16+00:00
Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a little side project: a website where I collect and display stats from soccer games (and I could expand it to other sports too).

The main idea isn’t to predict matches or do betting tips — it’s more about having a clean, easy-to-read overview of stats like: • Team performance across the season • Head-to-head comparisons • Player stats (goals, assists, cards, etc.) • Match summaries and trends

Right now it’s pretty simple, but I’d like to make it genuinely useful for fans who just want to explore numbers without drowning in clutter.

I’d love to hear your thoughts: • What stats do you usually look for when checking up on games? • Anything you wish other sports stats sites did better? • Features that would make you actually bookmark and revisit it?

Any feedback or feature requests would be amazing
by mcphage | 2025-08-19 13:46:22+00:00
> Finally the actual iPad reveal came, and it was just literally a giant iphone keyboard. Jobs showed how to type on it by balancing the ipad on his knees, and hover hand typing onto it.

> Honestly that was the point where my opinion of Apple started to decline, it honestly wasn't even that big of a deal, but it changed them in my eyes from a revolutionary tech company into one that just wanted to appear revolutionary.

Would a company that merely wanted to appear revolutionary have released some novel (but probably pointless) keyboard design?
by dylan604 | 2025-08-19 13:47:03+00:00
It looks like you have a typical OTA attached, what camera are you using with that? I've only ever used my DLSR attached to the OTA for prime photography, but it is heavy. I've learned to test the position by hand of the camera through the full rotation to see how the orientation of the camera will change throughout the night to prevent hanging situations and so it has forward tension. I noticed more backlash type issues when it had reverse tension. The one thing I haven't done yet, is to just attached the camera to a small ball head to do tracked wide angle images. However, I really haven't done any dark sky shooting in many years, pre-Starlink. I wonder if long tracked exposures with wide angles would ever not be affected by Starlink trails
by yunwal | 2025-08-19 13:47:33+00:00
> The confusing choices are deliberate way to exploit psychology of potential buyers into up-selling themselves.

I would argue that this is due to a lack of intention, and that the endless upgrade possibilities actually exhaust potential buyers into opting for cheaper options. I have no way to prove it, but it's quite obvious to me that part of Apple's market power is due to their historically simple and intuitive product lineup, and they were able to get away with being the most expensive, high margin products on the market. The more options they give, the more it starts to feel like a commodity product.
by waerhert | 2025-08-19 13:47:41+00:00
Short answer: it's in the same ballpark as other mounts of the same size. The theoretical accuracy for RA is 0.198″ (65,536 steps and 100:1 reduction) and for DEC is 0.253″ (256*200 steps, 100:1). In practice many things will reduce this accuracy: seeing, proper polar alignment, sturdiness of the wedge and tripod all account for some loss in accuracy. My highest achieved accuracy was probably around 1″ during brief moments, I'm sure with excellent seeing this could reach <1″ performance.
by esafak | 2025-08-19 13:47:50+00:00
A person who wants transactions and a relational layer isn't going to use KVRocks, but sure, if you only care about the key-value part. I gave tikv/tidb as an example; there are others.

Writing your own Redis-like interface is trivial, so tidis et al don't matter to me. Even with Redis you should write an interface so you can swap it out.
by fidotron | 2025-08-19 13:47:59+00:00
> but I haven't seen a transformative technology from them yet either

The fact you would think this is the core of what I mean. Cultures in countries which have active and powerful manufacturing sectors view the increase in reliability the Chinese have achieved in 3D printing to be transformative. In the west we're way too focused on perpetual paradigm shifts, but never invest the effort in exploiting the developed technology to the fullest potential, and so sit around wondering why we are losing wealth generating capacity to the east.
by ACCount37 | 2025-08-19 13:48:48+00:00
I am very much against laws designed to protect children and stop terrorism.

By now, "think of the children" is a tired cliche of anti-freedom laws. If "protecting children" requires sacrificing freedom for everyone, then children should not be protected.

Every time I come across another anti-freedom law wrapped in an excuse of "think of the children", I question whether the worshippers of Moloch had the right idea after all.
by _l7dh | 2025-08-19 13:49:01+00:00
I used to think that it’s beneficial to separate tech from politics but I’m convinced now that it’s a delusional stance. Politics is in tech whether we like it or not, CEOs have their political agenda and ideologies and often talk about them openly, their products directly impact people’s lives, some change the entire society. In the case of the Gaza genocide, Lavender and Gospel systems are the direct enabelers of such scale of devastation. I think it’s far from being off-topic. In a nutshell, no politics is itself a political opinion (that happens to favor the dominant party).
by jeremysalwen | 2025-08-19 13:49:14+00:00
It does not have obstacle avoidance, the best it has is recognizing it keeps getting stuck and skipping the next goal until it finds a goal it can reach. This can often look like obstacle avoidance since the next goal might be in a slightly different direction and so it will be able to continue. This is aided by a new feature that I added which will make the mower back up first when it gets stuck before continuing.

However, I should note that it's a hackable ROS system, so people have added obstacle detection with various sensors on their mowers. There is just not official support or a standard way to do it.

I've mowed with it this summer and last summer, and there hasn't been downtime at much as repeatedly getting stuck and requiring me to bring it back to the dock (although less and less). But my lawn is probably the hardest lawn any Openmower mows, as I mentioned in a cousin comment.
by nosioptar | 2025-08-19 13:49:28+00:00
mxlmc in the Apache Flex Compilers will do both. I used it before adobe gave it to apache for flash games/apps. It worked just fine.

It's also possible to do animations that way, but it'd be better to use something geared toward animation. Tupitube (formerly ktoon) supports swf, I think. But, it looks dead.

https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/flex/site/branches/flexdoc/...