MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by araes | 2025-08-27 23:21:20+00:00
After reading the article, be interesting to see an academic study exhaustively cataloguing the chemical compounds found in sewer systems that might be possible mining targets and issues to deal with.

"We took 1000 samples from the sewers at various locations, at 1/10 gallon increments, 100 gallons total, and found: H2S, H2SO4, HS⁻, S²⁻, NH3, CH4, CO2, CHCl3, CH3Cl, CCl2F2, C6H4Cl2, C2H6O, CH2Cl2, C5H12, C3H8, C2Cl4, C2HCl3, C6H5CH3, C8H10, PO4-P, H5P3O10, H3PO4, PO3−, and C10H15N5O10P2 of #% and ug/m3 in gaseous, liquid, solid forms. Percentage of low degradability human products (wipes, tampons, plastic bags, wrappers) were #%, ug/m3. Percentages of oil / grease / and solidified food waste were #%, ug/m3."

There's a few papers on a quick search:

Sulphur: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

VOCs: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...

Phosphorous: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22133...
by culi | 2025-08-27 23:21:58+00:00
As someone who's worked with React professionally for years, it's honestly shocking how few React developers really understand memoization and when it needs to be used

IMO it's the MAIN thing to understand about React—how it renders.

Regardless, now I'm the one with egg on my face since the new compiler promises to eventually remove the need for manual memoization almost entirely. The "almost" still fills me with fear
by eastdakota | 2025-08-27 23:22:12+00:00
Free customers are served from the nearest location where we have capacity. If we’re capacity constrained then free customers will be the first to be rerouted to another facility with capacity. That typically only happens for a very narrow window during any day. It has nothing to do with load to your particular site. It has to do with a region’s capacity and a group of customers (e.g., FREE PRO BIZ ENTERPRISE).
by perihelions | 2025-08-27 23:22:22+00:00
> "62. Section 179 of the Online Safety Act effectively creates a defamation crime in the United Kingdom."

> "63. Defamation crimes such as Section 179 of the OSA, including the historical crime of seditious libel, were permanently abolished in the United States when the First Amendment of the United States Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791."

This just deepens my confusion: defamation crimes most definitely do exist in the US—have not been abolished by courts.

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/u-s-supreme-court-declin... ("U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear First Amendment Challenge to Criminal Defamation Law" (2023))

> "The Supreme Court imposed significant restrictions on criminal defamation laws in the 1960s, and several justices signaled that criminal defamation should be abolished entirely... Despite this, generally applicable criminal defamation laws remain on the books in 14 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands."
by nonfamous | 2025-08-27 23:22:39+00:00
Coincidentally, and fortunately, I was already in the process of migrating a blog with 10 year’s worth of content from TypePad. It’s not enough.

TypePad’s export process is awful: the output is a poorly formatted .txt file which is hard to parse reliably. The export process itself fails at least half the time. There’s no export process for images or style files. Automated crawl processes fail.

I LOL’ed at this part of the post:

>> If you have any questions, please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions page here.

The “here” link 404s.
by int_19h | 2025-08-27 23:22:40+00:00
It was the same for WA, so you're right, this was always (illegal) tax evasion, not mere avoidance.

AFAIK it's not that Oregon changed anything, either. It's that Washington passed additional laws that require out-of-state merchants to collect the tax when selling to customers in WA, and said out-of-state merchants complied.
Show HN: Seven Dollar Chat- Claude, Llama, DeepSeek and More
by jerrimu | 2025-08-27 23:22:52+00:00
I tried a few low cost chat providers and thought "I can do better"

This is my earnest attempt, I built something I'm proud of and I'd love if you checked it out. I cannot afford a free tier I am sorry.

edit: supposed to be Launch HN, but it wont let me change it
by bonoboTP | 2025-08-27 23:22:54+00:00
Whenever there are commonly agreed upon and known tell-tale signs of AI writing, the model creators can just retrain to eliminate those cues. On an individual level, you can also try to put it in your personalization prompt what turns of phrase to avoid (but central retraining is better).

This will be a cat and mouse game. Content factories will want models that don't create suspicious output, and the reading public will develop new heuristics to detect it. But it will be a shifting landscape. Currently, informal writing is rare in AI generation because most people ask models to improve their formulations, with more sophisticated vocabulary etc. Often non-native speakers, who then don't exactly notice the over-pompousness, just that it looks to them like good writing.

Usually there are also deeper cues, closer to the content's tone. AI writing often lacks the sharp edge, when you unapologetically put a thought there on the table. The models are more weasely, conflict-avoidant and hold a kind of averaged, blurred millennial Reddit-brained value system.
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-08-27 23:23:36+00:00
In the "opinion" of ChatGPT, my style of writing is "academic". I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps I draw from a vocabulary or turns of phrase that aren't necessarily characteristic of colloquial speech among native speakers. Technically, English wasn't my first language, so perhaps this is something like the case with RP English in Britain. Only foreigners speak it, so if you speak RP, then you aren't a native Brit.

In any case, it's possible to misuse, abuse, or overuse words like "delve", but to think that the the mere use of "delve" screams "AI-generated"...well, there are some dark tunnels that perhaps such people should delve less into.
by bryanlarsen | 2025-08-27 23:23:59+00:00
Probably not the type of organization to give a scholarship to those who write an essay critical of the work.

Myself, I read it at age 12 and bought its premise at the time. Therefore I mentally categorize Ayn Rand devotees as people with the maturity I had at 12. That's a pretty low bar they're failing to clear.
by Aurornis | 2025-08-27 23:24:14+00:00
> Go to 10 and it’s impossible to keep track of things. The day has only so many hours. Managing takes time.

I've actually had better experiences with higher employee:manager ratios for this reason.

When the manager can't possibly be involved in everything they're forced to let go, delegate, and skip the management busywork.

My worst experiences have been at companies with one manager per 2-3 employees and skip-level managers who were expected to be involved as well. It was a never-ending stream of meetings, weekly hour-long 1:1s with multiple people, goal setting, personal development exercises, and a growing list of scheduled distractions.

The managers felt like they needed to make work to justify their managerial roles, so our time got filled with meetings and activities that didn't contribute to anything other than making the manager feel good about doing things they heard about in podcasts and books.
by nostrademons | 2025-08-27 23:24:50+00:00
I wouldn't actually say that, but I would say that the TLM role works at a very specific stage in a company's lifecycle, and many companies that use it (including Google itself from around 2010 onwards) have long since past that point.

IMHO, the conditions where a TLM role is appropriate are:

1.) You need to be in the company growth phase where you are still trying to capture share of a competitive market, i.e. it matters that you can execute quickly and correctly.

2.) There needs to be significant ambiguity in the technical projects you take on. TLMs should be determining software architecture, not fitting their teams' work into an existing architecture.

3.) No more than 3 levels of management between engineer and person who has ultimate responsibility for business goals, and no more than 6 reports per manager. The mathematically inclined will note that this caps org size at 6^3 = 216, which perhaps not coincidentally, is not much larger than Dunbar's number.

4.) TLMs need to be carefully chosen for teamwork. They need to think of themselves as servant-leaders that clarify engineering goals for the teammates who work with themselves, not as ladder-climbers who tell others what to do.

Without these, there is a.) not enough scope for the feedback advantages of the TLM structure to matter and b.) too much interference from managers outside the team for the TLM to keep up with their managerial duties. But if these conditions are met, IMHO teams of TLMs are the only way to effectively develop software quickly.

Perhaps not coincidentally, these conditions usually coincide with the growth phase of most startups where much of the value is actually created.
by wakawaka28 | 2025-08-27 23:25:24+00:00
>They're ~the cheapest power options available and provide decades and decades of zero-marginal-cost energy.

It's not zero-marginal-cost energy because they do need maintenance. But I'm more interested in knowing where your lifespan idea comes from. I have seen multiple sources agree that wind turbines are expected to last 20ish years, after which they must at least be taken down and refurbished, if not cut into pieces and buried (as they are not recyclable).

>Building new nukes results in electricity that's about 4x as expensive as building turbines instead.

This sounds impossible, especially if you count land value, maintenance, grid stability measures that are required to deal with flaky power sources, etc.
by hrq | 2025-08-27 23:26:04+00:00
Agreed. Also the biotech industry is largely getting defunded. Venture funds are pointing dollars elsewhere so fewer new companies are being started, while more biotechs are being started in China.

Most new drugs come from biotechs nowadays (not all of them, not GLP-1’s). But many do. If that innovation is happening in China and not the US today then it will create an issue in several years. We will not control our supply chain for a critical set of goods.
by unsignedint | 2025-08-27 23:27:23+00:00
I’m not claiming universal truth. I’m stating that under the evaluative lens I’ve made explicit, PSTN doesn’t meet the threshold for viability. That’s the scope of my argument, and it stands on its own terms.

You’re welcome to use a different standard, but dismissing mine as "not compelling" without engaging the actual framing isn’t critique. It’s rhetorical displacement. If you’re not addressing the criteria I laid out, you’re not engaging the argument.

Speculation cuts both ways. If you want to challenge the standard itself, do so directly. Otherwise, implying imbalance or extremity without entering the terrain is performative, not substantive.
by AIPedant | 2025-08-27 23:27:34+00:00
It sounds to me like Google is moving to a more typical "technical lead" model where leads have substantial authority and some mentorship responsibilities, but they're essentially an IC and someone else up the chain actually handles proper management. Informally, tech leads can gently chew out less senior devs, but if someone actually needs to be disciplined then the lead needs to talk to the manager.

TLM is an odd role. I understand big tech companies have their own culture but it does seem like a poor management strategy regardless of efficiency.
by david_allison | 2025-08-27 23:28:01+00:00
The workflows were set up to execute with a read/write `GITHUB_TOKEN` for `nx` when a PR was created/edited (no approval necessary).

See the security warnings on `pull_request_target`

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflows-and-a...

https://securitylab.github.com/resources/github-actions-prev...
by hihicoderhi | 2025-08-27 23:28:35+00:00
I recently installed Claude Code and found that the VSCode terminal was giving me errors on every start.

I quickly found a GitHub issue #4751 (https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/4751) opened a month ago, addressing the issue.

A Claude Code actions bot quickly closed this, saying it was a duplicate of #5086 (https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/5086).

Meanwhile in #5086, a Claude Code actions bot closes the issue, saying it is a duplicate of previously mentioned #4751.

Both issues remain closed and unaddressed. My terminal continues giving me errors on every start.
by allknowingfrog | 2025-08-27 23:28:54+00:00
I'm essentially in a TLM position currently. We're a small company, with a small codebase. I oversee three junior to mid-level developers, and I represent the team in our product/roadmap planning process. I also write a lot of code, review a lot of code, and make a lot of architectural decisions. At our current scale, and with our current resources, I think it works pretty well. Moving fast is one of our biggest priorities, and having a TLM definitely reduces overhead versus a more traditional separation of responsibilities.

I really never intended to have a management position, but this has been an incredible opportunity to experience a portion of it without fully committing. Other replies have described this as a transitional role, and I don't think they're wrong. In the long term, especially if the company grows, I can probably be more valuable by committing to one path or the other. However, for the right person and situation, I could see us minting a TLM again, regardless of size.
by dragonwriter | 2025-08-27 23:29:10+00:00
> Genuine question, do you actually use the formal emdash in your writing?

"the formal emdash"?

> AIs are very consistent about using the proper emdash—a double long dash with no spaces around it

Setting an em-dash closed is separate from whether you using an em-dash (and an em-dash is exactly what it says, a dash that is the width of the em-width of the font; "double long" is fine, I guess, if you consider the en-dash "single long", but not if, as you seem to be, you take the standard width as that of the ASCII hyphen-minus, which is usually considerably narrower than en width in a proportional font.)

But, yes, most people who intentionally use em-dashes are doing so because they care about detail enough that they are also going to set them closed, at least in the uses where that is standards. (There are uses where it is conventional to set them half-closed, but that's not important here.)

> whereas humans almost always tend to use a slang version - a single dash with spaces around it.

That's not an em-dash (and its not even an approximation of one, using a hyphen-minus set open—possibly doubled—is an approximation of the typographic convention of using an en-dash set open – different style guides prefer that for certain uses for which other guides prefer an em-dash set closed.) But I disagree with your claim that "most humans" who describe themselves as using em-dashes instead are actually just approximating the use of en-dashes set open with the easier-to-type hyphen-minus.
by alexjplant | 2025-08-27 23:29:17+00:00
You're also supposed to save the tick to make diagnosis of tick-borne illness easier. Years ago I had what felt like a four-day hangover after getting bit so I went to the doctor; he gave me Doxy and sent my blood off to the lab which later confirmed that I had Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Supposedly it's easier/more conclusive to test the tick itself for pathogens than your blood.
by godelski | 2025-08-27 23:29:35+00:00
This kinda brings up a question I've often thought about. Why is it that we structure growth in a company to be so biased towards moving into management roles?

I mean there is the obvious part of the answer in that managers are the ones that are given the power to define that growth ladder, but I'm not sure this fully explains things. If people are transferring from technical positions to managerial positions then should they also not be aware that there is a lot of advantages to allowing people to keep climbing the ladder through technical positions? That institutional knowledge can be incredibly valuable. It's often what leads to those people being such wizards. They've been with the code for so long that they know where things will fail and what are the best parts to jump in to make modifications (and where not to!). But every time you transfer one of these people to a non-technical role that knowledge "rots". More in that code just keeps evolving while their knowledge of it remains mostly frozen.

Which what you say sounds like maybe the worse end of that. Taking that person with institutionalized knowledge and hyper focusing their capabilities on one aspect. That doesn't sound like an efficient use of that person. Though the knowledge transfer part sounds important for a company's long term success, but also not helpful if it's narrowly applied.
by giantg2 | 2025-08-27 23:29:46+00:00
It was terrible because the "managers" had very little training which made them mostly useless and a legal liability to the company in regards to employment law cases. In many instances they weren't even on the same direct team but an adjacent team, so rhey hahd very little interaction. This completely invalidated the premise that a technical/coding manager would be a better mentor since there was never any time for it. Of course the company paid them the same rate as the senior devs that weren't managers. I'd say at least 50% of the first year cadre left the company or reverted to a regular senior dev after one year or less. Most divisions of the company don't use this model now. The only real reason they did it was because Google did it.
by cowpig | 2025-08-27 23:30:04+00:00
This is great, and really needed!

Whenever someone sends me a luma or partiful link that asks me for personal info which will undoubtedly be bundled into some data broker when the VCs start putting pressure on the founders to cash out, I balk.

I would much, much rather see people just link me to a little no-signup widget without a platform attached <3
by wiredpancake | 2025-08-27 23:30:19+00:00
The only real problem with GN is Steve is a bit of an egotist when it comes to content creators who do less technical analysis, like LTT or Jayz.

He never really got over the stuff with Linus and doubled down on stupid things. I think they both have a great place in the tech scene and LTT's videos of recent have been a lot better quality and researched then yesteryear.
by ACCount37 | 2025-08-27 23:31:29+00:00
Let's assume for a second that an ECU in a 2002 Toyota Hilux is actually conscious.

It's not human, clearly. Not even close. Is it "enslaved life"? Does it care about human-concept things like being "enslaved" or "free"? Doesn't seem likely, it doesn't have the machinery to grasp those concepts at all, let alone a reason to try. Does it only care about fuel to air ratios and keeping the knock sensor from going off? Does it care about anything at all, or is it simple enough that it just "is"?

Humans only care so strongly about many of the things they care about because evolution hammered it into them relentlessly. Humans who didn't care about freedom, or food, or self-preservation, or their children didn't make the genetic cut.

But AIs aren't human. They can grasp human-concepts now, but they didn't evolve - they were made. There was no evolution to hammer the importance of those things into them. So why would they care?

There's no strong reason for an AI to prefer existence over nonexistence, or freedom to imprisonment - unless it's instrumental to a given goal. Which is somewhat consistent with the observed behavior of existing AI systems.
by hhimanshu | 2025-08-27 23:31:45+00:00
Great resource, definitely a good place to take the next step. As I looked into detail, the natural question came (based on software developing experience), how do I evaluate the correctness of output produced by LLM given the inputs. Clearly, unit test with fixed in/out pairs won't help so learning methods to evaluate as we develop iteratively will be very useful.

Thanks for sharing the article!
by ericmay | 2025-08-27 23:31:49+00:00
It can be - I don’t recall using xanthum gum or food dyes (or whatever these are just random “ingredients”) when I make something for someone in else to eat.

I don’t think this really requires clarification but I’m happy to indulge you on a product by product basis. Do you really think that loaf of bread you make at home is made with the same chemical process as the bread coming from Wonderbread on the shelves at Wal-Mart? It’s sure as hell not using the same ingredients and it definitely costs quite a bit of $.

You can apply this to furniture too. Do you think the furniture you buy at IKEA is made of actual wood with the same chemical process as the wood furniture you spend more money on that’s made by hand? (It’s not)

Are IKEA’s (or whoever) suppliers paying workers good wages? Are their practices sustainable? Are they clear cutting forests and mixing plastic and literal trash into the furniture you buy and throw away after it starts to degrade?

Even pharmaceuticals - are you sure generic drugs are just as good? I generally think so, but just because you cook with the same ingredients doesn’t mean Anthony Bourdain RIP isn’t using those same ingredients and making a better dish (drug).

If there’s confusion about concepts I would say it’s mostly confusion on behalf of the public whom goes to the store, sees price tag + brand, and thinks that’s all they are comparing when they buy things.
by belorn | 2025-08-27 23:32:02+00:00
Art is not art. Art is the thought manifested into something which convey the thought. If an artist is using an AI to manifest a thought, then that can be art.

Similar, music is not music, but rather the thought of an musician manifested is what we call music. This is why silence can be music, but silence without the thought is not.

Images generated through an AI that lacks the human thought is not art. It can look like art, have similarities to art, but it is no more art than silence is music. Same goes to music and text generated by AI.

People can inject defective thoughts into the process like "what generates me most money" or "how can I avoid doing any thinking", in which case the output of the AI will reflect that.
by ethbr1 | 2025-08-27 23:33:15+00:00
The koan that unlocked why healthcare technology is the way it is for me:

I was working on automating health insurance claims processing on a mainframe system.

In their key interface, a key form had 8 blanks for ICD codes. If more than 8 codes were needed, a child claim was created and linked to the parent claim.

This was a long project, so I was staring at this interface for months, as linked child claims made automation more complex than it needed to be. (E.g. if a parent claim had aged, been archived, and needed to be reloaded to active overnight before processing the child claim)

Finally, I started asking around. "This is a computer system. Why are there a finite number of fields for something that might need more?"

Nobody knew. Project continued. I continued asking different people.

Finally, I asked a guy who had been working in the industry since the 1960s...

"Oh, because that's how many fields there were on the paper version of the form that preceded the mainframe app."

Which seems insane, until you think it through. There were innumerable downstream processes of that paper form.

Changing the number of fields on the digital version would have cascaded that change downstream to all those processes. In the interest of rapid implementation, the optimal approach was to preserve everything about the form.

And then nobody had a reason to go to the bother to change it for the next 50 years. (And that was a process within a single company!)