MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vict7 | 2025-08-25 19:28:57+00:00
Curious perspective. Apple silicon is both performant and very power efficient. Of course there are applications where even a top spec MacBook would be unsuitable, but I imagine that would be a very small percentage of folks needing that kind of power.

Sadly, the choice is usually between Mac and Windows—not a Linux desktop. In that case, I’d much prefer a unix-like operating system like MacOS.

To be clear, I am not a “fanboy” and Apple continues to make plenty of missteps. Not all criticisms against Apple are well founded though.
by Terr_ | 2025-08-25 19:29:24+00:00
I suggest the caller stakes a little bit of money as a deposit that is, by default, returned to them within a day... But an angered recipient can retaliate by choosing to seize the deposit.

I think this works for many situations:

1. Between amicable friends and businesses/clients, nothing changes.

2. If there was a normal relationship, but one side starts unfairly seizing call-deposits... Well, maybe it's time to no longer have them as a vendor/customer/friend.

3. Spammers either eat the additional cost, or they have to work harder to make sure they only call people who are unlikely to retaliate.

_____

There's still a problem where someone asks to be called (the number needn't actually be theirs) as a way to trick the caller into losing money... But even then, I think it represents an improvement over what we've got now.
by crazygringo | 2025-08-25 19:29:45+00:00
I don't know what you're talking about -- that isn't true.

There is absolutely no perceptual hue shift in the HSL/HSV models depending on saturation and lightness/value, or when they get translated into sRGB. That's the entire point of HSL/HSV, to isolate hue and hold it constant.

HSL/HSV are not perceptually uniform in terms of brightness when hue is changed, or even brightness linearly. But hue is hue. Perceived hue does not change based on brightness or saturation.
by aredox | 2025-08-25 19:29:51+00:00
I get downvoted when in the last 24 hours, he has signed an executive order to go after people who burn the American flag and has threatened to revoke the licence of ABC and NBC. Imagine just for a second the reaction of Clinton or Obama did that, on top of having a loyalty list of companies and sending the FBI after your critics...

There is clearly a cabal of MAGA supporters trying to game this website to suppress anything that make Trump look bad.
by scotty79 | 2025-08-25 19:29:55+00:00
Yes. Code is the state of your project. You can't avoid it. But you can parcel it, keep it in different bucket, from other stuff. That's what source files are for.

Docker is neither smalltalk vm nor lisp. It's unholy pragmatic thing, when you have ton of state but you want to cram it all in a bucket so it doesn't crawl out.
by numpy-thagoras | 2025-08-25 19:30:32+00:00
Read Wildberger if you want to know what he thinks.

I can tell you that it is the output of a function, not a distinct entity that exists on its own independently of the computation.

The whole point is that as a theory for the foundations of mathematics, you do not need to assume numbers with infinitely long decimal expansions in order to do math.
by themafia | 2025-08-25 19:30:44+00:00
I happen to have an envelope handy:

2000 kilocalorie converts to 8.3 megajoules. This should be the amount of energy consumed per day.

8.3 megajoules / 24 hours is 96 watts. This should be the average rate of energy expediture.

96 watts * 20% is 19 watts. This should be the portion your brain uses out of that average.

96 watts * 24 hours is 464 watthours. This should be the average amount of energy your brain uses in a day.

This is why I've never found "AI" to be particularly competitive with human beings. The level of energy efficiency that our brains operate at is amazing. Our electrical and computer engineering is several orders of magnitude out from the achievements of nature and biology.
by encom | 2025-08-25 19:31:12+00:00
I'm surprised at the number of Logitech users in this thread, because in my experience the quality of their products has taken a total nose dive. Not to mention their products are over priced. I've had too many issues with them, and vowed to never buy from them again.

My current mouse is a ZOWIE FK2-C. It's simple, wired and it just works. Been using it for years, and no switch issues yet.
by conductr | 2025-08-25 19:31:22+00:00
I disagree, am with qualeed on this one. I don’t think the size doubling means much at all except raising the question of why did it double? What was added that I care about? My instinct tells me nothing so it’s shouldn’t really be acceptable except this is par for the course these days. Nobody cares about bandwidth it’s just assumed to be fast and unlimited by nearly every publisher of software.

In the 90s that jump cost me in terms of modem time. I couldn’t download anything else for an extra 30-60 minutes that day (if I remember my speeds correctly). Today, extra 300mb costs me less than a minute and I can easily continue multitasking in the process.
by minimaxir | 2025-08-25 19:31:24+00:00
I use the G502 X (https://www.logitechg.com/en-us/shop/p/g502-x-wireless-light...) which has similar hardware capabilities, but more importantly, it has a lot of buttons which are a legitimate productivity increase. Unfortinately, the price rose with tariffs and it may be harder to justify.
by kwindla | 2025-08-25 19:31:24+00:00
As someone who spends a lot of time looking at timestamped log lines to debug Pipecat pipelines, I'm a big fan of this work from Aleix.

In general, I have three pain points with debugging realtime, multi-model, multi-modal AI stuff. 1. where's the latency creeping in? 2. What context actually got passed to the models. 3. Did the model/processor get data in the format it expected.

For 1 and 3, Whisker is a big step forward. For 2, something like LangFuse (Open Telementry) is very helpful.
by vendiddy | 2025-08-25 19:31:59+00:00
I can't remember who I read this from (it might have been Alan Kay) but they basically said the web browser should have been an address bar with the ability to run any sandboxed applications in the screen below. They said the internet well designed but the browser was a disaster.

So hyperlinks were good but the rest was a bad design. An HTML viewer and Javascript interpreter would have just been one possible app to run in the browser.

It is a shame that, to this day, the browser can't easily handle running arbitrary applications. You're still effectively locked into JS/HTML.
by ants_everywhere | 2025-08-25 19:32:27+00:00
I like to imagine at the end of the human race when the sun explodes or whatever, some angelic being will tally up all the numbers ever used by humans and confirm that there are only finitely many of them. Then they'll chalk a tally on the scoreboard in favor of the ultrafinitists.

As long as someone isn't a crank (e.g. they aren't creating false proofs) I enjoy the occasional outsider.
by mikestew | 2025-08-25 19:32:31+00:00
It also means I'm unreachable for anything actually important that isn't in my contact list. That's an annoying price.

Calling me is now the equivalent to wanting to send me a telegram. The phone system is broken, we all know it's broken, and yet you want my phone number? Send me an email, it's just as fast and has better tools for managing scumbags. Unknown callers are silenced and go to voicemail. Wife is in an auto accident? State troopers know how voicemail works. Kid is in trouble? It can wait 30 seconds while I wait for the VM to come through (and, haha, trick question: we don't have kids).

OTOH, I grew up in the era of landlines and payphones, and well before answering machines (old school VM). People still got in accidents, kids still got sick at school and needed to come home, doctors still called, and we all got along just fine. Because EMTs still took people to the hospital, the school nurse still took care of your kid, and the doctor either called back or sent a letter, and the world move on despite not being able to instantly reach people 24x7. I realize I sound like one of those "we didn't have $SAFETY_FEATURE, and we lived", when in reality not all of us did. But we aren't talking about lawn darts, for the most part I think we did get along just fine. (Auto accidents and breakdowns are something made better by cell phones, but in the day lots of folks had CB radios. ::shrug::)
by teeray | 2025-08-25 19:32:48+00:00
As others have alluded, there are unknown third parties who must call you (and you would want their call). For example, the hospital: something has happened with a loved one. We can probably solve this problem with certification. Show me your medical license (or hospital scale equivalent) and you get to make unsolicited calls. Then we allow people to select certified unsolicited calls by category: medical, financial, civic, etc.
by netdur | 2025-08-25 19:33:17+00:00
You’re conflating editing with rendering, YouTube didn’t overwrite creators's uploads, it applied an ML filter in the streaming/transcode pipeline, the same layer that already resizes, compresses, and tone-maps. That's not "editing my content" any more than your TV's sharpness setting edits a film, An "Enhance" toggle/label would be good UX, but calling it silent edits misdescribes what's happening

PS: this isn't "generative AI" It's basic ML enhancement (denoise/sharpen/tone-map)
by ethbr1 | 2025-08-25 19:33:21+00:00
There are a few situations where tariffs are beneficial:

1. To preserve strategically important domestic industries (historically: food production and mechanization industry)

2. To shield domestic industries while they're growing to take on already efficient and scaled global competitors

Benefiting labor or saving jobs is probably the stupidest use of tariffs, if one of the above isn't also in play, because it'd be more efficient just to offshore it to low COL countries and instead refocus internal labor.

The slippery slope, of course, is that industries will claim to be included in one of the above, but instead sink their tariff-protected excess profitability into shareholder/self-enrichment instead of business investment.

It'd make more sense to require domestic industries in tariff-protected sectors to invest {near tariff} percentages of their revenue in R&D and/or capital expenses (or be heavily taxed).

Otherwise the government is simply artificially inflating their profitability, at the cost of any consumers of the product.
by kube-system | 2025-08-25 19:34:21+00:00
If we cut Social Security young people aren't gonna be able to have children because they're gonna have to spend more time and money taking care of their parents. Social safety nets make it easier for people to live a comfortable life.

Social Security would be completely solvent if we didn't make poor people pay to support other poor people, and instead tax rich people for it. It's built on a regressive tax, and the wealthy don't pay jack shit.
by mlyle | 2025-08-25 19:34:29+00:00
You’re mixing up two different questions. "What the market will bear" is a monopoly pricing story.

Food is messy because it's a commodity with a whole lot of substitution-- consumers have a high elasticity as a result.

We are talking about elasticity's prediction for the share producers and consumers each pay when there is a cost structure or tax change. Incidence theory is well validated and fits observed evidence remarkably well, including in 2019 studies of the effects of the 2018 trade war.
by dgfitz | 2025-08-25 19:34:33+00:00
> I want plug and play, but consoles have their own problems and limitations.

How so? A console is literally a gaming PC.

I can see the point of “need multiple consoles because game X isn’t on console Y” or “I’d like to play an RTS/MMO that isn’t on a console” but since you mentioned gamepads that point mostly dies.

I also haven’t ever had a PS5 or Switch controller lose link from a console because someone walks or stands between myself and the console.
by dwringer | 2025-08-25 19:34:36+00:00
There most definitely is perceptual hue shift in HSL (and HSV); it's illustrated quite well at [0](The blog of the creator of OKLab), particularly in [1], an image showing S and L axes while leaving H fixed.

[0]https://bottosson.github.io/posts/colorpicker/

[1]https://bottosson.github.io/img/colorpicker/hsl_blue.png
by stavros | 2025-08-25 19:34:44+00:00
I bought a Logitech trackball (the MX5something), and the switches stopped working a year in. Amazon refunded me, so I bought an MX Master 3S. The switches for that also stopped working a year in.

I complained to the merchant and Logitech, and luckily they sent me a new mouse each. I also bought some replacement switches and repaired the lot, so now I have four mouses/trackballs. Still, they should make better mouses.
by ACCount37 | 2025-08-25 19:34:49+00:00
I imagine that mainstream assistant chatbots doing this is a brief occurrence. The next generations of AI systems will be trained to be better about not affirming psychotic users.

But it goes to show just how vulnerable a lot of humans are.

By all accounts, GPT-4o isn't malicious. It has no long term plans - it just wants the user to like it. It still does this kind of thing to people. An actual malicious AI capable of long term planning would be able to do that, and worse.

One of the most dangerous and exploitable systems you can access online is a human.
by nullc | 2025-08-25 19:35:02+00:00
Ask the AI for a method but whatever it hallucinates end up being something that couldn't actually kill you?

Mostly a joke but one the common properties in people with an delusional or otherwise unhealthy pattern of AI use appears to be substituting it for all their own choices, even where it's obviously inappropriate. E.g. if you try to intervene in their conduct, you'll just get an AI generated reply.
by schmookeeg | 2025-08-25 19:35:10+00:00
Ignoring the massive political elephant that exists in all of this stuff -- isn't this a good trigger, as demand for the "updated standards" products will force these companies (or resellers of these products) to either validate their products for sale in the US or force the US to recognize these EU standards?

I suppose an immediate counterpoint is that the US Consumer seems unwilling to clamor for high-quality products. :/
by shadowgovt | 2025-08-25 19:35:13+00:00
This has the potential to be disastrous for Google, but maybe not.

Personally: I don't use Apple because I like being able to whip together little apps to side-load without having to check in with a walled-garden mothership. If Google is going to move closer to Apple in that regard... Apple's UX ecosystem is better, so I have far fewer reason to keep using Android.
by vlovich123 | 2025-08-25 19:35:38+00:00
In Rust there’s no forcing of any specific garbage collection mechanism. You’re free to do whatever and there’s many high performance crates to let you accomplish this. Even in Swift this is opt-in.

As for “skill” this is one thing that’s super hard to optimize for. All I can do is point to existence proofs that there’s no mainstream operating system, browser or other piece of high performance code written in Java and it’s all primarily C/C++ with some assembly with Rust starting to take over the C/C++ bits. And at the point where you’re relegating Java to being “business” logic, there’s plenty of languages that are better suited for that in terms of ergonomics.
by Liftyee | 2025-08-25 19:35:40+00:00
> is there any good smooth scrolling PDF viewer (for windows at least)

Seems like the asker is looking for Windows software in this case. Either way, "Get a Mac (...)" sounds a little unreasonable as a solution for "need a better PDF viewer".

Just my $0.02: I'd presume that if a Mac was a better fit for this commenter then they would have switched over already. For some, the extra attention to detail and improved UX of an Apple device is not worth the extra $$$ compared to an equal spec'd PC. There are also other concerns you are probably aware of.
by gowld | 2025-08-25 19:36:06+00:00
It's funny and a bit sad because we just went througha decades-long effort to migrate away from jet/rainbow gradients to vik/batlow/bi-hue gradients, and now rainbow is forcing its way back.

https://theconversation.com/how-rainbow-colour-maps-can-dist...

https://www.poynter.org/archive/2013/why-rainbow-colors-aren...
by ghaff | 2025-08-25 19:36:19+00:00
While there are unincorporated areas in the US, I'm not sure no property taxes are a given even in those areas. I live in an incorporated town and definitely pay property taxes and get a variety of town services but do need to handle my own sewer and trash (though I get water and electricity along with fire/police/etc. services as well as public schools as relevant).

In fact, I'm not sure the degree to which just bowing out of public schooling is even allowed given that I think that's over half of my town's budget.
by echelon | 2025-08-25 19:36:20+00:00
This abundance of marketing (not necessarily this blog post) is happening because of all the environmental chatter about AI and data centers recently.

Google wants you to know it recycles its water. It's free points.

Edit: to clarify, normal social media is being flooded with stories about AI energy and water usage. Google isn't greenwashing, they're simply showing how things work and getting good press for something they already do.
by PaulHoule | 2025-08-25 19:36:39+00:00
In terms of thermal issues (like the color of a light bulb or a star) a higher temperature (e.g. color temperature) is more blue.

On the other hand, people perceive reddish colors to be "warm" and bluish colors to be "cold" and I'd say one justification for that is that if you're in the shade on a very hot sunny day with a perfectly clear sky the sky actually feels cold because you are radiating more heat off to space than the radiant energy you absorb from that scattered blue light.
by Analemma_ | 2025-08-25 19:37:00+00:00
Wait what? Companies are absolutely doing this at scale, they're just laundering it through third-party content providers, who get seen or not seen based on what the user has lingered on in the past. If you haven't seen your relatives' Facebook feeds lately, they're close to 100% LLM-generated slop, which gradually gets tuned to the specific user based on what their eyeballs have lingered on in the past. TikTok isn't quite there yet but is trending in the same direction.

So it's platform partners plus filtered selection putting the tuned dopamine poison in front of people for the moment, but it's absolutely happening. And eventually the platform owners can and will cut out the middlemen.
by stripe_away | 2025-08-25 19:37:05+00:00
> there is a massive influence operation that seeks to destroy knowledge, science, and technology in the United States

Agreed. Started with big tobacco by discrediting the connection to lung cancer, playbook copied by many and weaponized by Russia.

> There is no subjective measure by which the water used by AI is even slightly concerning.

Does not follow from your first point. The water has to be sourced from somewhere, and debates over water rights are as old as civilization. For one recent example, see i.e. https://www.texaspolicy.com/legewaterrights/

You are probably correct that the AI does not damage the water, but unless there are guarantees that the water is rapidly returned "undamaged" to the source, there are many reasons to be concerned about who is sourcing water from where.
by giardini | 2025-08-25 19:37:14+00:00
Been there, seen that. Some notes:

- the two-way switched lights may have never worked as intended. So no matter what you do with the endpoints it may never work.

- doing it yourself is a waste of time and money. You'll learn nothing of value and will toss it all in the end.

-Proper solution is to hire a certified electrician who is familiar with two-way lights to fix/replace the current wiring.

If you rent, pay the electrician and send the bill to the landlord. Keep a copy. If landlord hasn't paid by the time you move out, bill him for the price. If he stiffs you, sue him in small claims court - he'll pay or you'll win.

Cheapest fix: run an extension cord with a bulb to the upstairs light, turn it on and leave it on all the time. Electricity is cheap, bulbs efficient. Having a light on inside keeps burglars away, esp. bathroom lights (according to Malcolm X).
by gjsman-1000 | 2025-08-25 19:37:20+00:00
This is one item on my long list of flaws with AI.

OpenAI thinks that as long as you aren't using dating terminology or asking to build bombs, you're probably safe.

- What does having an unquestioning mirror that is always gracious and reflects your own biases back at you, do to the mind in the long term? We don't know.

- How do you know, that after 2-3 years of this use, without any particular warning, it will not suddenly escalate into a delusion spiral? We don't know.

- Does this affect childhood development to have no pushback on their personal feelings and opinions? We don't know.

- Does this affect people's very willingness to learn, and to endure intellectual struggle? We don't know.

- Does this affect long-term retention, as losing even an imperceptible 2% of your knowledge every month, is 48% lost after 2 years? We don't know.

- How does this affect a population of which 27% have experienced a mental health issue in the last year, and of which 9% are experiencing depression? We don't know.

- Are all these problems solvable with any amount of education or warning labels, given that human nature has not changed and will not change? We don't know.

- Can this be prevented with any amount of AI guardrails or ethics training, or is it inherent to the structure of the system itself? We don't know.

- Will this eventually be considered so dangerous, that we need black-box warning labels similar to cigarettes and possibly social media? We don't know.

- Will this eventually be considered so insolvably risky for human cognition, that we outright restrain use without a license, either like driving at best, or asbestos at worst? We don't know.

- Will any employer be able to obtain insurance for AI use, if there is even a 0.2% documented chance that any employee could go psychotic from using it, completely at random? We don't know.

- Will said employees, if they do go psychotic from a work-mandated AI chatbot, successfully sue their employers for damages? We don't know.
by Retric | 2025-08-25 19:37:25+00:00
There’s many industries that have moved beyond sweatshops due to automation.

Pepsi can’t get glass bottles from 3rd world sweatshops at anything competitive with a highly automated factory. In the vast majority of industries it’s just a question of levels of automation and climate control inherently makes automation easier by reducing variability in temperature and humidity. Of course the original distinction around climate control that created the term sweatshops is dying as such operations are largely dying out, but that only reinforces the notion of automation killing off the inherent advantages of unskilled cheap labor.