MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ndiddy | 2025-08-08 01:28:23+00:00
This is largely untrue. MS-DOS and PC DOS were both built out of the same codebase for most of the time MS-DOS was on the market. They didn't diverge until some point after DOS 5 (1991). If you look at the MS-DOS source code, you'll see an IBMVER define that controls whether to build IBM PC DOS or generic MS-DOS. The option was there in the first place because Microsoft initially sold MS-DOS to OEMs as a generic 8086 operating system. In the early 80s there were a bunch of computers that ran MS-DOS, but weren't PC compatible. These largely died out as time went on. DOS was barely an operating system, so there were a lot of programs that bypassed it and accessed the hardware directly. None of those programs worked on non-PC clone MS-DOS computers, so most consumers chose PC clones for the far greater software library. What is true is that unlike most early 80s OEMs, Compaq built their version of MS-DOS with IBMVER set, so Compaq DOS was closer to PC DOS than many other early DOSs.

As time went on and Microsoft started selling more and more copies of MS-DOS to manufacturers making PC clones, MS-DOS and PC DOS grew closer together, not further apart. MS-DOS 3.2 (1986) was the first version that Microsoft made available in a packaged form to OEMs that were shipping PC clones (it was still available as source code to OEMs who wanted more customization). For previous versions, OEMs were required to write their own versions of several hardware specific utilities (such as FDISK.COM and MODE.COM) that were originally written by IBM. MS-DOS 3.2 contained Microsoft-written clones of these utilities. MS-DOS 3.3 (1987) was written entirely by IBM (not Compaq!), as most of the key members of the MS-DOS team were busy working on OS/2. Because it came out after the Microsoft-IBM joint development agreement, Microsoft gained the rights to the IBM-written utilities and the packaged versions of MS-DOS 3.3 and all later versions shipped with the same utilities as their PC DOS counterparts.

The closest thing to the claims this article makes is that Compaq did in fact maintain their source code license to MS-DOS and made enhancements to their version. The most notable example of this is that Compaq DOS 3.31 introduced a modified version of FAT16 that supported partitions larger than 32MB. I assume Compaq licensed this functionality back to Microsoft, as there's versions of DOS 3.31 branded for other OEMs, and support for Compaq's modified FAT16 (known as FAT16B) was included in MS-DOS 4.0.
by bigbadfeline | 2025-08-08 01:29:09+00:00
> It is impossible to predict what the stock market will do. If you think it is predictable, please go ahead and lose all your money trying to do so.,

Those with insider information beg to differ. The stock portfolios of most in Congress beat Joe Average's by far, and these are people who only get little hints, no more.

> and since we aren't running an authoritarian state that big brothers our citizens,

However, our citizens are big bordered by private entities, and that results in a government blindsided by them.

> The stock market has a big impact on inflation, since it changes the value of people savings and thus how much they spend.

That's backwards. Fed policies target inflation and the stock market is totally obsessed with them, they drive the market. That is, inflation expectations have a big impact on the stock market via the Fed.

Claiming that inflation isn't predictable is a claim that the Fed mandates are fake and all these meetings, market interventions and rate changes are all for naught.

In fact, the Fed can control inflation... if they really wanted, if there were no conflicts of interest and if there was no political pressure from the government, war funding, etc.
by slt2021 | 2025-08-08 01:29:15+00:00
even if it is victim free, it can affect mental health in a way that a consumer will be more compelled to do a criminal act and create a real victim.

let's say you publish a Steam game how to be a school shooter and shoot kids, wouldn't that lead to real school shootings ?

who can definitely say that computer generated content about criminal behavior, won't lead to real crime with real victims?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Shooter
by lmm | 2025-08-08 01:29:26+00:00
Not all functional programming styles emphasise types so much - Lisp-based languages may not even have types at all. To my mind classes conflate several different things, and a lot of the benefits of functional style is to unpick those different things and let you approach them separately:

- Basic compound data structures (product types). Most imperative languages don't have sum types, which is the root of a lot of problems in that style

- Interfaces (some more enlightened imperative languages separate these out) and the adapter/impl/typeclass/what-have-you that ties together an implementation of that interface for that datastructure

- Mutable references - some way of associating an identity or name with a value that can be switched for a different value accessed via the same identity/name
by ohelno | 2025-08-08 01:30:39+00:00
> it may be very difficult for us as users to discern which model is better

But one thing will stay consistent with LLMs for some time to come: they are programmed to produce output that looks acceptable, but they all unintentionally tend toward deception. You can iterate on that over and over, but there will always be some point where it will fail, and the weight of that failure will only increase as it deceives better.

Some things that seemed safe enough: Hindenburg, Titanic, Deepwater Horizon, Chernobyl, Challenger, Fukushima, Boeing 737 MAX.
by pruufsocial | 2025-08-08 01:31:09+00:00
VibeApply is a free tool that helps businesses create custom job applications using a drag-and-drop builder — no login walls, no paywalls.

You can publish unlimited applications to unique URLs and use them for as many jobs as you want. Send the link out to applicants, and their responses will show up in your dashboard where you can easily sort and review them.

It’s basically a full-featured applicant collection and tracking system built for small teams, startups, and anyone tired of clunky hiring software.

Would love feedback from the HN community on the builder UX, dashboard functionality, and ways we can improve it for early-stage teams.
by p_l | 2025-08-08 01:31:13+00:00
I read the original mention as trying to claim that it could have been solved by allowance for multiple codepages.

But for processing data in one common database, especially back then, you wanted to keep to single variation - main reason for using a different codepage if you didn't work in language other than english was to use APL (later, special variant of US codepage was added to support writing C, which for hysterical raisins wasn't exactly nice to work with in US default EBCDIC codepage).

So there would not be an allowance for multiple codepages if only because codepage identifier could cut into 72 characters left on punched card after including sort numbers
by burnt-resistor | 2025-08-08 01:32:11+00:00
It's not a vanity drug if you're obese due to genetics or side-effects of other medications.

It's myopically arrogant to throw shade with a big brush over fringe cosmetic uses when there's an incredible amount of benefit offered to formerly morbidly-obese individuals and people with seriously decompensated metabolic-associated diabetic conditions. Yes, GLP-1's are absurdly overpriced mostly in America where there are comparatively few healthcare consumer protections.
by ants_everywhere | 2025-08-08 01:33:59+00:00
The race has always been very close IMO. What Google had internally before ChatGPT first came out was mind blowing. ChatGPT was a let down comparatively (to me personally anyway).

Since then they've been about neck and neck with some models making different tradeoffs.

Nobody needs to reach AGI to take off. They just need to bankrupt their competitors since they're all spending so much money.
by paradox460 | 2025-08-08 01:35:25+00:00
They're useful, but the fact that you have to grant them a space somewhere on your computer does handicap them a bit. I typically reach for them when I'm doing library upgrades, which take a while, and having my repo switch back and forth to different versions is cumbersome, mostly due to things like dependencies and other unversioned files needing to be changed to support the application and it's specific set of dependencies.

For most other things, where unversioned files don't cause grief like this, a tool like jujutsu, which eliminates the whole stash dance, is generally better
Ask HN: Programmers and lawyers should be so similar, why aren't we?
by JSR_FDED | 2025-08-08 01:35:56+00:00
This has been bugging me for a long time. Lawyers need solid logical reasoning skills, attention to detail and structure. Just like programmers. Yet as a programmer it’s often easier to connect with for instance a biologist than a lawyer. Why is that? Why is there not more affinity between the two professions? Why are there so few crossovers (people migrating) between law and programming?
by bwfan123 | 2025-08-08 01:36:40+00:00
I lived through dot-com, and there are so many parallels. Large amount of money is chasing a dream which wont materialize in the near term.

Recent deja-vus are articles like this:

"The 20-Somethings Are Swarming San Francisco’s A.I. Boom" and

"Tech Billboards Are All Over San Francisco. Can You Decode Them?"

If I recall correctly, after the 2000 bust, folks fled silicon valley abandoning their leased BMWs at the SFO airport. 101 had no traffic jams. I wonder if that will repeat this time around.
by pengli1707 | 2025-08-08 01:36:50+00:00
> This is 100% a problem with the MCP spec: it does not currently provide a way to narrow what tools, and therefore context, flow into the LLM.

it's not the business of MCP spec, it should be task/job level, different task may need different tools and MCP just supply entire tools it has. The tool pickup should be the take charge by llm. moreover maybe some has `while list` to include or exclude some tools, but it should not from MCP spec.
by danans | 2025-08-08 01:37:16+00:00
> I have no problem saying that Indo-European is a preferable term nowadays, but to claim that the term "indo-germanic" is ethno-nationalist is just absurd.

It's not absurd because it was used ethno-nationalistically, by both Indians and Germans in the past. I've certainly heard it used in English exactly that way. In English, and especially in linguistics contexts, its nationalist associations are clear.

Furthermore, it's also patently incorrect: there is no higher affinity between the Indic and Germanic branches of Indo-European.

"Indo-European" is a term derived from the geographic span of the language family, not a particular language at either end (there is no "Indian" or "European" language). In contrast, the latter half of Indo-Germanic specifically refers to the Germanic sub-branch, to the exclusion of the many other Indo European sub-branches.

The fabrication of that supposed affinity to the exclusion of the other branches was a specifically nationalist exercise, different only in degree to more egregious things like the appropriation of the swastika (whose name and most prominent use is Indic). We know this because the Indo-European family was uncovered by William Jones when he observed the affinities of Ancient Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, not the Germanic languages (those connections then quickly followed). So its identity was always broader than Germanic from the moment of its discovery.

Therefore, Indo-Germanic doesn't make sense for the same reason Indo-Hellenic or Indo-Celtic don't make sense.

The oldest sub-branch affinity we can deduce in the Indo-European language family is the centum/satem split, which Indic and Germanic languages are on opposite sides of, and even that split is difficult to track down to single branch point, it could be an independent development in different sub-branches.
by MisterMower | 2025-08-08 01:37:30+00:00
How does this satellite benefit humanity as a whole? Why should US taxpayers fund it in its entirety if other people are reaping the benefit?

Do you seriously believe the US government, given its profligate spending over the past three decades, is somehow less short sighted than its corporations, who at least try to maintain their long term financial solvency?

Putting men on the moon provided the know-how to put a nuke on an ICBM and send it straight to the doorstep of the Kremlin. The other benefits and discoveries were purely coincidental.

But at least those benefits were real and valuable. What benefits has this satellite provided that are anywhere close to what we got out of the space program?
by bigyabai | 2025-08-08 01:37:45+00:00
This probably won't move the needle on that. Mastercard and Visa's assessments were risk-based and entirely apolitical, even if widely disagreeable (and imo against constitutional rights). Their fight will be settled separately, and I'm not holding out much hope for the right-wing willpower to defend incest video games. It wouldn't surprise me if the suggested remediation from this admin was to use crypto instead.
by TheAlchemist | 2025-08-08 01:38:24+00:00
Yeah, there is more to the story - it's just pure fantasy !

Tesla robotic future ? They are years behind competitors... they are very good at faking autonomous robots though - people are still falling for their Twitter posts, Robotaxi unveil with teleoperated robots and Tesla Diner teleoperated robot serving popcorn (which last something like 2 days... then it was gone already). It's all PR stuff, nothing is really happening behind the scenes.
by runarberg | 2025-08-08 01:39:00+00:00
I think there is a fundamental difference though. In the 19th century when you had a rail line between two places it pretty much established the only means of transport between those places. Unless there was a river or a canal in place, the alternative was pretty much walking (or maybe a horse and a carriage).

The large language models are not that much better than a single artist / programmer / technical writer (in fact they are significantly worse) working for a couple of hours. Modern tools do indeed increase the productivity of workers to the extent where AI generated content is not worth it in most (all?) industries (unless you are very cheap; but then maybe your workers will organize against you).

If we want to keep the railway analogy, training an AI model in 2025 is like building a railway line in 2025 where there is already a highway, and the highway is already sufficient for the traffic it gets, and won’t require expansion in the foreseeable future.
by JoshTriplett | 2025-08-08 01:39:15+00:00
> If people were polled what they want to see on social media, few would say things that are inflammatory, upsetting, divisive, etc but those as we know are strong drivers of engagement.

That's because those are two entirely different things. If you polled people and asked them "what causes you to spend more time on social media", then at least some self-aware folks would likely identify conflict, "someone is wrong on the Internet" (https://xkcd.com/386/), etc. That doesn't mean that's "what they want to see on social media", that means that's "what gets them to spend more time on social media".
by southernplaces7 | 2025-08-08 01:40:03+00:00
>Short answer: FDA is totally toothless these days after decades of industry lobbying and Republican budget cuts.

The funny thing about short answers is that they're often partly or wholly full of shit and don't describe the underlying reality. For example, see how different things get when you look at actual information instead of pulling ideological talking points out of your ass without knowing what the hell is even the case? (A common thing on this site among so many self-described highly intelligent people)

This is the FDA's actual funding history over the last 3 decades (page 6 of the PDF), showing a steadily increasing budget across both Republican and Democrat admins. Curiously, some of its bigger budget increases coincided with the first Trump administration even. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R44576.pdf
by prewett | 2025-08-08 01:40:21+00:00
As a customer, nothing infurates me like an AI call center. If I have to call, it's because I have an account problem that requires me to speak with someone to resolve it.

I moved states and Xfinity was billing me for the month after I cancelled. I called, pressed 5 (or whatever) for billing. "It looks like your cable modem is disconnected. Power-cycling your modem resolves most problems. Would you like to do that now?" No. "Most problems can be resolved by power-cycling your modem, would you like to try that now?" No, my problem is about billing, and my modem is off-line because I CANCELLED MY SERVICE! They asked three more times (for a total of five) before I could progress. For reasons I have now forgot I had to call back several times, going through the whole thing again.

There is a name for someone who pays no attention to what you say, and none of them are complimentary. AI is, fundamentally, an inhuman jerk.

(It turned out that they can only get their database to update once a month, or something, and despite the fact that nobody could help me, they issued me a refund in a month when their database finally updated. The local people wanted to help, but could not because my new state is in a different region and the regions cannot access each other.)
by ants_everywhere | 2025-08-08 01:40:23+00:00
I've seen this take a lot, but I don't know why because it's extremely divorced from reality.

Demand for AI is insanely high. They can't make chips fast enough to meet customer demand. The energy industry is transforming to try to meet the demand.

Whomever is telling you that consumers are rejecting it is lying to you, and you should honestly probably reevaluate where you get your information. Because it's not serving you well.
by Desitrain22 | 2025-08-08 01:40:31+00:00
Location: New York (NYC), NY (In person / Hybrid strongly preferred).

Remote: Open to it.

Willing to relocate: willing to travel frequently, but not relocate from NYC

Technologies: RAG, AI, Python, Llamaindex, Elasticsearch, pretty much everything related to ETL (Kafka, DynamoDB/MongoDB, S3, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Airflow)

NYC based backend / data / infra / solutions/ forward deployed engineer with 4 years of experience. Owned infra, product, and sales cycles from tip to tail. Currently built an enterprise RAG from the ground up and looking for a preferably NYC based start up. Also am a stand up comedian, come check out my tech themed comedy shows @NotSoDailyStandUp

resume: https://neal-patel-resume-08-01-2025.tiiny.site/

email: NealPareshPatel [ a t ] g'ma'il. c o m (you know the drill)
by simondotau | 2025-08-08 01:41:10+00:00
I'm going to set aside your rather mid-tier developer criticisms of Safari, and I'll refrain from vomiting out verbiage of similar problems developing for Chrome, which nobody cares about because Chrome is what web developers think the web is. Chrome is seen as the standard whereas lazy minds desperately try to dismiss Safari as an inconvenience.

Your analysis is flawed at the core because you persist in making the same logical error which mid-tier web developers always make. Only web developers choose/change browsers because another one is "better". Ninety-nine percent of everyone else doesn't choose/change browsers, or if they do, it's because they were unwittingly exposed to an external influence, e.g.

1. Dark patterns (e.g. as employed by Microsoft in the 1990s, or Google in the 2020s);

2. Herd mentality ("my Son told me to use Chrome instead");

3. Because a website is broken (because the developer stubbornly refuses to believe that any web browser exists other than the bleeding edge release of Chromium)

And sorry but I just laughed when you said you need to spend "1000s of dollars each year on new devices". The only people who might need to do that are large corporations which already spend 1,000,000s of USD each year on developer salaries. A one-man team needs, at most, one desktop Mac made in the past 8 years ($200–1000 every 3–6 years) and one iOS device made in the past 5 years ($100–500 every 2–4 years). And that's assuming they don't already have either or both of these. And that's assuming that you're trying to do very complicated things. Most web developers shouldn't be doing anything that would break on a 10-year-old version of any major web browser (with the exception of TLS root certificates).

As an independent web developer with a Mac and iPhone, I begrudgingly buy and maintain a Windows computer and an Android phone, but you don't see me bitching and moaning about that, even though it's exactly the same thing.

No, it's not different because you're "forced" to acquire a new or used Apple product. As a developer, you are "forced" to acquire a reasonable spectrum of products based on what your audience is using. You are "forced" to test in Chrome. You are "forced" to pay taxes on income. You can wish the world was different, but wishes don't change practical realities.
by kristopolous | 2025-08-08 01:41:38+00:00
I view it more like methadone.

Let's be specific: Rape, incest, necrophilia, bestiality, and pedophila ideation.

I think we can all agree (1) these are harmful, anti-social behaviors that we do not want in our society, (2) people don't choose to have these desires, (3) most people who have them have no desire to actually traumatize others, (4) people who have these struggle with it.

These multi-media AI role-play environments would allow that type of engagement without any harm.

Now given all this, I am not a psychologist and do not know if that's part of how someone unfortunate enough to have those inclinations can deal with it healthily.

But if it is, now it exists and hopefully we can see less of it in the real world. I'm all for harm reduction if this is a way to get there.
by mrandish | 2025-08-08 01:41:47+00:00
> it’s a long shot to replace Nvidia with their own chip awhile ago

It's also worth mentioning that having their own ambitious effort in secret development was a valuable BATNA (negotiating tactic) for long-term contracts with outside suppliers. The value of that recent >$16B deal with Samsung for AI chips thru 2033 may have benefited from the prospect of Dojo as a potential in-house alternative.
by Spooky23 | 2025-08-08 01:41:52+00:00
The specifics of an IQ test aren't super meaningful by itself (that is, a 150 vs a 142 or 157 is not necessarily meaningful), but evaluations that correlate to the IQ correlate to better performance.

Because of perceived illegal biases, these evaluations are no longer used in most cases, so we tend to use undergraduate education as a proxy. Places that are exempt from these considerations continue to make successful use of it.
by m463 | 2025-08-08 01:42:19+00:00
Demonstrating the technology, Welborne stood proudly beside a prototype of the Presario 6000 as it displayed an eight-minute segment from a recent 3rd Rock From The Sun episode, downloaded from an NBC server in under 75 minutes.

lol

If you went to blockbuster, you could move 4.7 gb to your home in half the time (unless your family was involved in choosing the movie which would slow you down)
by graeme | 2025-08-08 01:43:18+00:00
The test pretty much only tests:

1. Raw reading skill

2. Precision

3. Working memory. (Less of this now that LG are gone)

You've got #1 and #2 covered it sounds like, and presuming you're a programming you're likely also top 10% in working memory, bare minimum.

There's lots of specific stuff you can teach that helps bridge deficits in those three skills, but they're serious bottlenecks if you don't come into LSAT studying already having them.

A lot of people read poorly, aren't precise, and get easily distracted/have low working memory. Including college graduates.