MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by arnsholt | 2025-08-25 12:15:43+00:00
I worked on an application implemented in SmallTalk for about two and a half years, and having the IDE be in the application was honestly a huge force multiplier, at least for the kind of complicated desktop application we were making. Basically, it made development extremely smooth because you always had the application at your fingertips and while developing no matter what kind of error happened it would trap into the debugger so you could see what was going on. No more remembering to set breakpoints or running under a debugger or anything; just write code, test and get dropped straight in the debugger if something goes awry. In some cases we could even fix the bug, and retry the failing operation in-flight. To stretch the Factorio metaphor beyond the breaking point, I would even say that the image-based nature helped there to be less mess, because you no longer have to care about the organization of your code in the source files: you edit methods and classes, but the on-disk organization of the bits and pieces is no longer a concern.

Where the image-based system does cause trouble is when you need to interact with stuff outside of SmallTalk. It basically doesn't play very well with others (in particular stateful stuff like database connections which can't straightforwardly be persisted when the image is saved and closed). But overall, I found developing in SmallTalk to be extremely productive, even in the antiquated implementation we were working with.
by Borg3 | 2025-08-25 12:16:38+00:00
Why? WHY?! Why the heck are you using (D)VFS on your immutable data? What is the reasoning? That stuff is immutable and usually incremental.. Just throw proper syncing algoritm on it and sync w/ backups.. thats all. I wonder aby logic behind this...

Docs and other files you often change is completly different story. This is where DVFS shines. I wrote my own very simple DVFS exacly for that case. You just create directory, init repo manager.. and vioala.. Disk wide VFS is kinda useless as most of your data there just sits..
by thyristan | 2025-08-25 12:17:05+00:00
The alternative is obviously: Do it right on the first try.

How much of a problem it is can be seen with tons of products that are crap on release and only slowly get patched to a half-working state when the complaints start pouring in. But of course, this is status quo in software, so the perception of this as a problem among software people isn't universal I guess.
by andreareina | 2025-08-25 12:19:06+00:00
Not even close. They probably take the estimated fat-free mass (which comes with huge error bars), run it through something like the Katch–McArdle/Cunningham formula, which has IIRC something on the order of a 200 kcal stddev.

Re others having much more junk food and alcohol: you don't see what they're eating when you're not around. I'm one of those "fast metabolism" people, but what that also tends to come with is a very responsive appetite: left to my devices I eat a lot less the day after a big meal.
by adrian_b | 2025-08-25 12:20:45+00:00
For any really bigger color space, you would have to use more than 3 primary colors, which would increase a lot the cost.

Moving the monochromatic BT.2020 colors from 630 nm, 532 nm and 467 nm could get a little increase in color space coverage, but at the expense of a lower efficiency in power consumption to brightness conversion. 467 nm is not a very pure blue, but the sensitivity of the eye drops very quickly in the blue region, so a better blue would require much more power. Similarly, though not so pronounced, for a different green.

Moreover, in the green region there is a gap, both for lasers and for LEDs, where the available devices have low efficiencies for converting electrical power to light, so changing the frequency of the primary green color would have to take that into account too.

In conclusion, I believe that the BT.2020 (actually BT.2100) color space is close to the best that can be done in displays of reasonable price and energy efficiency.

A true coverage of 100% of the BT.2100 color space can be realized only with laser projectors. Any display with LEDs or quantum dots will never have really monochromatic primary colors, though a coverage of significantly more than 90% of the BT.2100 color space is not too difficult. However, the advertised percentage of the color space may be misleading, because it varies depending on the kind of color space used for computations. A coverage percentage computed in OKlab would be more informative than a percentage computed in the XYZ color space.
by AbstractH24 | 2025-08-25 12:20:50+00:00
I’d look to the lasting infrastructure improvement from the dotcom era. Such as laying fiber.

A big ones here may also be increased technological literacy, the rise of a new UI paradigm (chat with a non-human) and the structuring so much data in the world that while it previously existed was hard to meaningfully leverage because it was unstructured.

And, last but not least, lowering the barrier to entry to starting tech companies by eliminating and launching a new generation of SMB-like tech startups that don’t need to take VC-money and scale to survive. And as a result can can solve problems facing niche industries (not to be confused with things like Wix or Etsy that lowered the barriers business selling real world products to create an online presence)

If nothing else, mainstreaming AI will have the same impact mainstreaming spreadsheets did.
by JKCalhoun | 2025-08-25 12:21:58+00:00
I think I get it: the article is saying we're in a minor mass extinction and you're suggesting the threshold for a large mass extinction is exceedingly high — we're not even close.

(And I am guessing you brought nuclear war in as an example of post apocalyptic science fiction that even still would not push us to the large mass extinction threshold.)

"If there is a geologic precedent for what industrial civilisation has been up to in the past few centuries, it is something like the volcanoes of the end-Permian mass extinction."

These kinds of things (mass extinction, health of the planet) are things that I increasingly show an abundance of caution for. Not doing so seems like the horrific alternative. I get that there have been some very high bars to make this #6 mass extinction, but also downplaying what is happening because it is not yet a record seems reckless.
by rimbo789 | 2025-08-25 12:22:01+00:00
Polymer Corp itself is a fascinating origination. Created in ww2 to create synthetic rubber - which the Germans had all of the ip of - it was a wildly successful research to commercialization entity. It was so successful after the war it was considered too important to privatize and it stayed as a crown corp for decades.

I believe they even did a run of $10 celebrating it.
by ninetyninenine | 2025-08-25 12:22:07+00:00
You must agree with it. The fact I can formulate a sentence with it indicates it fits with the colloquial definition of the word. Every human recognizes it, even you. You’re just being stubborn.

When I say I can understand something now and then not understand something later it doesn’t violate the definition of the word. Now you are making a claim that your personal definition of understanding is violated but that’s also a lie. It’s highly unlikely.

First of all death. I understand something now. Then I die, I don’t understand something later due to loss of consciousness.

Amnesia. I understand something now and I don’t understand something later due to loss of memory.

In both cases someone understood something now and didn’t later. Every human understands this conceptually. Don’t lie to my face and say you don’t agree with the definition. This is fundamental.

The act of understanding something now and then not understanding something later exists as not only some virtual construct by human language but it exists in REALITY.

What happened here is that when I pointed out the nuances of the logic you were too stubborn to reformulate your conclusion. It’s typical human behavior. Instead you are unconsciously re-scaffolding the rationale in order to fit your pre existing idea.

If you’re capable of thinking deeper you’ll be able to see what I’m in essence talking about this:

In the gap between prompt and response. The LLM is capable of understanding the prompt and capable of reasoning about the prompt. It does so on an ephemeral and momentary basis. We can’t control when it will do it and that’s the major issue. But it does do it often enough that we know the LLM has reasoning capabilities however rudimentary and inconsistent because the answer it arrives at via the prompt is too low probability to be arrived at using any other means OTHER than reasoning.
by brandon22 | 2025-08-25 12:22:20+00:00
This direction feels especially relevant for enterprise use cases. On-device AI avoids cloud latency and subscription costs, but enterprises also gain privacy, compliance, and real-time responsiveness when models—and sensitive data—stay fully local. It’s compelling to see this shift: not just a fallback for poor connectivity, but a strategic architecture choice where endpoint control (encrypted storage, NPUs, hardware trust) is as critical as algorithmic capability. Great post!
by crispyambulance | 2025-08-25 12:22:22+00:00
... and in the cases where one does manage to put in the effort to understand what EW is actually saying, the ROI has been trite and uninteresting and could have been said with simpler words and gotten to the point in far fewer words.

Example: See the conclusion of Nguyen's teardown response paper to "Economics as Gauge Theory": https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.03460

Basically... 1) Tautology, 2) Inconclusive, 3) Not usable
by captn3m0 | 2025-08-25 12:22:27+00:00
Bought by Private Equity [TSS] <1y ago[0].

> Buypass AS has a new owner. Total Specific Solutions (TSS) took over ownership with effect from October 16, 2024.

[0]: https://www.buypass.com/news/change-of-ownership-in-buypass-...
by wolrah | 2025-08-25 12:22:51+00:00
> - shorts (they're fine in a separate space, just not in the timeline)

No they're not. Nothing that mandates vertical video has ever been fine nor ever will be. Tiktok, Reels, Shorts, all bad and should be destroyed.

Unless the action is primarily vertical, which is rarely ever the case, it's always been and always will be wrong.

Yes I will die on this hill. Videos that are worse to watch on everything but a phone and have bad framing for most content are objectively bad.

There is nothing wrong with the concept of short videos of course, but this "built for phones, sucks for everything else" trash needs to go away.
by somenameforme | 2025-08-25 12:23:12+00:00
A typical example here might be something like chess. The primary reason people play it is competition and enjoyment of the game. But there are some who a distorted mentality and simply want to win, even if they're not the one's doing anything, and so you get things like people using computers to cheat. And online chess sites (and increasingly even major over the board events) only work so well by making sure that these sort of people are completely removed from the game.

The desire to compete is somehow not really the same as the desire to win. This is overtly apparent in things like body building. 99.9% of body builders will never compete in a body building show, let alone win, but enjoy the journey that's mostly full of years of self inflicted pain, occasional injury, and endless dedication - largely for the sake of competition and of course what it does to your body. And that latter part isn't really about showing off or sex or whatever, but simply about pride in what you've accomplished - much in the same way one might take pride in their ability to play chess well, or manage a healthy business.
by Ray20 | 2025-08-25 12:23:43+00:00
> believe the western's propagandist depiction of what communism

The main problem with communism was that it was much worse than Western propaganda portrayed it to be. Because if Western propaganda had tried to depict it truthfully, no one would have believed it. Communism is so much worse that it is literally unbelievable, so anti-communist propaganda has to make communism look good in order for anyone to believe it.
by fp64 | 2025-08-25 12:24:48+00:00
Why do you compress the executable? I mean this is a fun part for size limit competitions and malicious activities (upx often gets flagged as suspicious by a lot of anti virus, or at least it used to), but otherwise I do not see any advantage other than added complexity.

Also interesting that "ultra lightweight" here means no error reporting, barely checking, hardcoding, and magic values. At least using tty color escape codes, but checking if the terminalm supports them probably would have added too much complexity......
by borroka | 2025-08-25 12:24:57+00:00
I don't understand the "chiseling" aspect referred to.

The issue is quite simple. There is a certain budget that the company, person, or institution is willing to spend on a specific goal. If the money isn't spent on you, it's spent on someone else or something else. Since we're not talking about volunteering, my main goal is to maximize my return while maintaining my integrity and professionalism (e.g., without stealing, lying excessively [we all lie a bit, come on], or operating outside the ethical norms as dictated by common sense).

If the C-suite is flying first or business class, I feel encouraged to fly business or first class. If nobody is flying first or business, flying not in economy would not be ethical. But if they insist...
Show HN: Slack bot with Sentry MCP for error summaries
by djlim | 2025-08-25 12:25:34+00:00
We were getting overwhelmed by noisy Sentry alerts, so I built a small Slack bot using Sentry MCP. Instead of dumping every error, it sends a simple daily summary and highlights what’s actually critical.

It’s free to use and doesn’t require signup: https://runbear.io/a/slack/sentry-issue-radar
by bell-cot | 2025-08-25 12:26:27+00:00
Reminds me of Richard Feynman's extremely skeptical take on scientific "knowledge" - vs. how much of that is just baloney that sounded good at the time, then got repeated a lot.

And - Not a Chemist, but I'm thinking that "what things do and don't humans actually digest?" is vastly easier to reality-check than the nuclear physics which Feynman specialized in.
by eadmund | 2025-08-25 12:26:42+00:00
> I always thought it quite weird that somehow by virtue of being in beer, that the water somehow becomes sterilised.

The reason that water in beer is sterilised is that beer is brewed — i.e. boiled.

> If you've ever tried home brewing, you'll know that non-sterile conditions lead to foul rancid filth due to all the bacteria etc.

I believe that pre–germ-theory brewing practices tended to discourage unwanted microbial activity, in part through inoculation with large amounts of fresh barm. Did they put two and two together and connect those practices in the context of brewing to the broader context of water or food safety? Maybe.

> I'd find it odd if the people then knew to sterilise the water and equipment to make beer, but then not do the same to drink it.

Indeed, the article quotes Paulus: ‘But waters which contain impurities, have a fetid smell, or any bad quality, may be so improved by boiling as to be fit to be drunk.’
by arewethereyeta | 2025-08-25 12:26:55+00:00
What exactly do you want to train on a falsifiable piece of info? We do something like this at https://visitorquery.com in order to detect HTTP proxies and VPNs but the UA is very unreliable. I guess you could detect based on multiple pieces with UA being one of them where one UA must have x, y, z or where x cannot be found on one UA. Most of the info is generated tho.
by dsign | 2025-08-25 12:27:05+00:00
The well is already poisoned. I'm refraining from hiring editors merely because I suspect there's a high chance they'll just use an LLM. All recent books I'm reading is with suspicion that they have been written by AI.

However, polished to a point that we humans start to lose our unique tone is what style guides that go into the minutiae of comma placement try do do. And I'm currently reading a book I'm 100% sure has been edited by an expert human editor that did quite the job of taking away all the uniqueness of the work. So, we can't just blame the LLMs for making things more gray when we have historically paid other people to do it.
by nsaintt | 2025-08-25 12:27:05+00:00
We launch in eleven days. Before talking about features, me and my team set one goal. Talk to real people and earn a small yes.

What worked for us

Short social videos with a clear call to action at the end brought steady interest. Real help on Indie Hackers first, then a kind invite to join the waitlist. Honest posts on Reddit where we show the problem, the action, and the result, then ask for thoughts.

What did not work

Discord invites did not move the needle. Targeted ads did not land for us before launch. We will try ads again once we go live, with clearer intent and fresh creatives.

Early signs

The waitlist grows a little every day. In the last thirty days, about 1,500 people joined, which means there are only 350 spots left. People reply, ask questions, and request the next demo. That is enough signal for us to keep going.

One ask

If you have one tip for the last eleven days, I would love to hear it.
by petralithic | 2025-08-25 12:27:12+00:00
This is quite a naive take, sorry to say. It is absolutely true that a war is brewing in East Asia, part of the explicit intent being to control other countries' chip usage. This is the same sort of argument that was used during World War I when the major powers said there'd never be a war on the continent because every country was interconnected in commerce and culture, and well, it turns out that reasons for war aren't always rational.
by latexr | 2025-08-25 12:27:40+00:00
> and who refused to understand that proof of stake made energy consumption negligible.

Proof of stake brought with it its own set of flaws and failed to solve many of the ones which already existed.

> To this day, I have my Mastodon instance on some extreme blocklist because (…)

Maybe. Or maybe you misinterpreted the reason? I don’t know, I only have your side of the story, so won’t comment either way.

> The goalposts keep moving. The critics will keep finding reasons and workarounds.

As will proponents. Perhaps if initial criticisms had been taken seriously and addressed in a timely manner, there wouldn’t have been reason to thoroughly dismiss the whole field. Or perhaps it would’ve played out exactly the same. None of us know.

> even though it's the institutions themselves who are the most corrupt and taking away their freedoms.

Curious that what is probably the most corrupt administration in the history of the USA, the one actively taking away their citizens’ freedoms as we speak, is the one embracing cryptocurrency to the max. And remember all the times the “immutable” blockchains were reverted because it was convenient to those with the biggest stakes in them? They’re far from impervious to corruption.

> And while this does not require any type of block chains or cryptocurrency, we certainly will need to start showing some respect to all the people who were working on them and have learned a thing or two about these problems.

Er, no. For one, the vast majority of blockchain applications were indeed grifts. It’s unfortunate for the minority who had good intentions, but it is what it is. For another, they didn’t invent the concept of trustless systems and cryptography. The biggest lesson we learned from blockchains is how bad of a solution they are. I don’t feel the need to thank anyone for grabbing an idea, doing it badly, wasting tons of resources while ignoring the needs of the world, using it to scam others, then doubling down on it when presented with the facts of its failings.
by mindwok | 2025-08-25 12:28:24+00:00
The MIT course for Operating Systems has a teaching OS called xv6. There's some nifty implementations in there. I'm not sure I'd comment on the codebase itself, but I think more importantly it teaches you good abstractions which Unix is all about: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.1810/2024/xv6.html
by AnonymousPlanet | 2025-08-25 12:28:24+00:00
There's a podcast [1], which features him as a guest to talk about Linux in general. The main impressions I got from it: he is very confused about what UNIX is and he apparently despises UNIX.

I think he's well suited for his new employer (Microsoft).

[1] (in German) https://cre.fm/cre209-das-linux-system
by swasheck | 2025-08-25 12:28:28+00:00
also, recalling from memory, standedge argues that the early perspective on wine was that it was simply a higher order of beer. it makes sense because there earliest beers were not hopped and would probably profile similarly to wine.

however, grape cultivation was more difficult/technical than grain cultivation which elevated the class of wine. it was also prized for its relative stability when diluted, with some maintaining the same (or better) flavor profile when diluted 1:2 water:wine. it was a true show of wealth to serve wine that was less than 1:1. (a history of the world in 6 glasses)

i’ve tried this with a few wine varietals and i can see what he’s saying in some regard, but it definitely alters the profile in ways.
by roenxi | 2025-08-25 12:28:30+00:00
> Greed is the impulse to rig the game once you’ve won a little, so you can keep extracting more without competing.

You're making up your own novel definition of greed there, which is certainly cheating when you're saying Milton Friedman is wrong. He was using greed in a more generally accepted sense, ie, a desire for more than one has right now.

There are a lot of greedy people out there who are scrupulously honest. As far as I can tell, the average greedy person should be modelling scrupulous honesty, advocating fair systems and enforcing rule-following behaviours - that is creating the best environment for acquiring capital and maintaining property rights. Greedy people who white-ant the systems sustaining their capital are generally more stupid than greedy.
by celsoazevedo | 2025-08-25 12:28:44+00:00
> I don't think your comment should be downvoted. Children viewing porn is a legitimate problem.

The thing is, in the UK, porn websites are already blocked by default by most ISPs and mobile networks. Only the account owner can unblock that content, either by calling the provider or by changing something in their account settings. And yes, you'll need to verify that you're an adult if you signed up to the service without providing them with details (possible with some mobile providers).

This has been the case for the past 10 or so years, so why exactly do we need this age verification stuff?
by moomin | 2025-08-25 12:29:13+00:00
I have a hard copy of this from back in the day. It’s a great read and a mixture of historical artefact and still relevant criticism.

e.g. It’s really interesting reading about LISP machines but no-one’s building a new one. Equally, all the criticism of sendmail and csh is valid but no-one uses them anymore either.

Most of the reliability criticisms have been addressed over the years but people are still trying to address the design of C, usually by replacing it. Equally, sh remains a problematic scripting language but at least it’s reliably there, unlike many of its many alternatives.
by bayindirh | 2025-08-25 12:30:09+00:00
While this tool saved my beef a couple of times, I found out that zeroing the device (partially or fully) with dd and partitioning it with gparted (the CLI tool) did also wonders.

I had a wonky HIKSemi USB flash drive, which turned out to be partitioned in a very unaligned way, and neither the flash nor the controller liked that much. Doing it manually and making sure it's aligned (which gparted does automatically) converted it to a very dependable drive.