MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Nemi | 2025-08-24 18:02:33+00:00
Tragedy of the Commons is a real thing. The goto solution that most companies use is to remove all privileges for everyone. But really, this is a cultural issue. This is how company culture is lost when a company gets larger.

A better option is for leadership to enforce culture by reinforcing expectations and removing offending employees if need be to make sure that the culture remains intact. This is a time sync, without a doubt. For leadership to take this on it has to believe that the unmeasurable benefit of a good company culture outweighs the drag on leadership's efficiency.

Company culture is will always be actively eroded in any company and part of the job of leadership is to enforce culture so that it can be a defining factor in the company's success for as long as possible.
by zozbot234 | 2025-08-24 18:03:53+00:00
If you've decided to build a nuclear plant already (and there are plenty of reasons for such a choice - for one thing, it adds diversity to the mix when combined with intermittent renewables) that energy is no longer "horrifically expensive", it's already paid for. If you're worried about "producing too much" (which could happen with either nuclear or renewables), putting it in storage makes sense.
by ViewTrick1002 | 2025-08-24 18:04:03+00:00
Looking in absolute terms France is essentially phasing out nuclear power. But can't bring themselves to accept it politically.

They have an enormous fleet nearing end of life and are making political noise over a tiny number of plants they haven’t even taken the final investment decision on.

They are stuck arguing how the mindbogglingly large required subsidies should be financed.

In other words: They are betting on renewables as much as anyone else, they just can't bring themselves to stop wasting money on nuclear power due to political reasons.
by ocdtrekkie | 2025-08-24 18:04:06+00:00
I think people overestimate the value of a little bump in performance. I recently built a gaming PC with a 9700X. The 9800X3D is drastically more popular, for an 18% performance bump on benchmarks but double the power draw. I rarely peg my CPU, but I am always drawing power.

Higher power draw means it runs hotter, and it stresses the power supply and cooling systems more. I'd rather go a little more modest for a system that's likely to wear out much, much slower.
by davidandgoli4th | 2025-08-24 18:06:02+00:00
The UK's data protection laws, enforced by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), require platforms to use "data protection by design". This means minimizing personal data collected for age assurance:

You are not required to save your ID under the UK's new age verification laws; instead, platforms must use age assurance methods that confirm your age without collecting or storing your personal data, such as facial estimation or digital identity wallets. The focus is on privacy-preserving tools that provide only a "yes" or "no" response to an age threshold, adhering to data protection principles and minimizing the collection of personal information.

- Changefly ID is the core technology for anonymous authentication (https://www.changefly.com/our-research). Changefly ID requires zero PII.

- Optionally, if a service requires identity / age verification, we just released Anonymous Identity & Age Verification for Changefly ID (https://www.changefly.com/blog/2025/08/anonymized-identity-a...).

- You can verify your identity for free: https://www.changefly.com/account/verify

- Developers can verify Changefly ID’s and/or age requirement checks with our open API: https://www.changefly.com/developer
by stevenjgarner | 2025-08-24 18:07:23+00:00
Researchers at Oxford and collaborators engineered yeast to produce six essential sterols found in pollen, creating a nutritionally complete bee supplement that boosted colony reproduction up to 15-fold and could help reverse honeybee population decline.

Can this synthetic sterol-enriched diet be successfully scaled and adopted in real-world beekeeping to not only improve colony survival but also reduce competition with wild pollinators and strengthen global food security?
by pjmlp | 2025-08-24 18:07:29+00:00
I stand by my comment and it is even slightly documented on Wikipedia.

> One quirk of MFC is the use of "Afx" as the prefix for many functions, macros and the standard precompiled header name "stdafx.h". During early development, what became MFC was called "Application Framework Extensions" and abbreviated "Afx". The name Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) was adopted too late in the release cycle to change these reference

MFC was a dumbed down version of Application Framework Extensions, which was more in line with the higher level approach done by OWL and CSet++.

It might have seen brilliant for those coming from raw C and Petzold never having seen what Borland and IBM were doing, but other folks like myself have knew better.

Unfortunately Borland's mismanagement eventually gave the crown of Windows C++ frameworks to Microsoft, and IBM also wasn't much better with OS/2.

And to this day there is nothing visual in Visual C++, to the level of C++ Builder, and FireMonkey framework.

While ironically ATL, WRL and WinRT are all worse in developer tooling than what MFC had to offer.

In 2025 starting a new Visual Studio project, it is the grandpa MFC that wins out in Visual Wizards, dialogue editors and COM integration tools.

Agree that many folks around HN and similar sites lack the background of having been actually there, moving up from MS-DOS, getting to carry around Petzold's book, learning the new way of doing UIs, and why things became as they are.
by glenstein | 2025-08-24 18:08:01+00:00
>I mean, sure, I might just grab the nearest thing, carry it and set it in the first available spot and repeat... But usually I'm putting a little more into it than that. Unless the destination is comically oversized, I need to make sure I'm making good use of the space. Even just packing boxes, putting a 150lb plastic tub full of ammo on top of a bunch of boxes full of dishes is... probably not going to turn out well at the other end.

I think I get the gist here, and tell me if I'm right. The way I would put it, is that as you are working, you're also planning, simultaneously. In the process of carrying out the plan, you're also refining the plan. It's like working and planning at the same time, and you lose both when you're taken away from the task. (I think I relate to that because it's how my brain works, at least.)

The second half, if I'm following, is that there's a lot of important contextual knowledge and problem solving, and there's a degree of craft that cashes out as a difference in the quality of work between a novice and someone more experienced, and interruptions can have an impact on that higher quality work that's similar to interruptions to "knowledge work". Normally big walls of text on hn are, stylistically, taboo and associated with low quality but this is very strong all around imo.
by skaul | 2025-08-24 18:08:45+00:00
That was in the blog from the starting, and it's also the most important mitigation we identified immediately when starting to think about building agentic AI into the browser. Isolating agentic browsing while still enabling important use-cases (which is why users want to use agentic browsing in the first place) is the hard part, which is presumably why many browsers are just rolling out agentic capabilities in regular browsing.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-08-24 18:09:14+00:00
'Almost everyone' was a very select group even in the 2000s. Look at reddit discourse post cheap postpaid internet phones versus before.

The internet connected computer in the home was a productivity tool. Even just gaming required gamers to become pretty PC/OS/tech savvy. Cheap postpaid internet phones are bread and circuses. They two have different effects on society.
by dragonwriter | 2025-08-24 18:09:31+00:00
> I don't believe that fixing those problems would solve the underlying issue, which is that the voters themselves have a deep antipathy towards each other.

The evidence is very strong that the reduction of the dimensionality of discourse and the polarization are a direct result of those features of the electoral system.

> I'm hard pressed for a solution short of starting over from scratch,

That's not only not a solution, it is not even an actual option. You can't start from anywhere except where you are.
by flamesofphx | 2025-08-24 18:10:54+00:00
I never recommended teaching programming straight out, unless you want to get someone with a concrete/inflexible way of doing things that will not accept change. So I recommend the following still... (To Get a well rounded idea and also the ideas on how things work in the background)

1. Basic Logic teaching first

2. Teaching Basic OS & hardware building next.

3. Don't Start Programming Languages until they have learned Algebra 2 & Geometry

4. Teach Basic Algorithms next (Agnostic to the programming language or non-programming related, electronic, robotics, and hardware kits are great here and something kids like, project with Arduino can further OS and Hardware design knowledge while having fun. They also show samples of programming and how it works)

5. At this point let them learn about the various style and languages out there, and them pick a style they like (OOP, Functional or Procedural), Have them pick there own Major language that can accommodate there favorite style, and two minor one, one of which focuses on the style the most hate. Have them pick an esoteric language (like brainfuck) and learn how to "Print" there name (Not hello world) with it. Or If they want to learn assemble for like there hardware stuff above, that can take place of esoteric learning, but make sure the write something that instruct some hardware to perform at least there first moderate algorithm.

6. There picked major language if capable of all style, they should write a full program that access a database, program should be able to create update, read and delete in each style. This should provide an example of the strengths and weakness of style to a small degree.

7. Have them program 7 random things in there minor language, but more capable then print or echo statements (CRUD stuff at least), this should give some respect to mature major languages.

8. Have them write program for atleast 5 other languages (Including a Java & Smartphone app, if they have avoid those up till now).
by LinchZhang | 2025-08-24 18:10:58+00:00
For this article, I wrote 4000+ words in the first draft and asked AIs to help suggest places where I repeated myself, different sections or other things to cut, etc, so the final article is tightly focused. I tend naturally to be longwinded, and it's helpful to go through iterations of figuring out what to cut in consultation with AI. I also use them to check grammar, typos, and spelling, and whether my points are too complicated (as a rule of thumb, if I didn't explain something well enough for Opus to understand, I assume I need a better explanation for human readers as well). I'm not theoretically opposed to having AIs do the writing but empirically I have not found them useful.

This might be presumptuous of me, but I do not believe current-generation AIs are capable of writing articles of the quality level of my nonfiction writing. I think they have a) lower quality and quantity of overall insight, particular on philosophy-adjacent topics, b) lower ability to be appropriately confident in making claims well[1], and c) noticeably worse ability to "write well", subjectively defined (eg weaker sentences, less deft use of metaphors and references, tries too hard to force a point when there's nothing there, etc).

Honestly I find myself slightly offended by the comparison, though I acknowledge it's one of the things where 2-3 generations down the line AIs might well surpass me at.

I think "blurry jpeg" misses the point, for most practical questions. It conflates substrate and developmental history with emergent capabilities and consequences, and is only one step up from saying "AI is just 1s and 0s"

[1] To be clear this is something I have not mastered, I'm just saying AIs never seem to get this well, though maybe I'm just bad at prompting. In particular there's a particular "internet slop"-style that they go to very quickly, and when I try to prime them away from that they sound fake in a different direction.
by ProllyInfamous | 2025-08-24 18:11:57+00:00
My modernest operating system is a current distro of Ubuntu.

Still in love with my Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) tax machine (offline).

I keep another machine of the same era (Intel Core2Duo) online with Win7Pro, for official paperwork/logins. Doesn't seem to be hacked / compromised, yet (what people usually say).

Also rocking modern Apple Silicon (M2Pro/3/4) which is impressive equipment, particularly considering their miniscule power usage. The current 15" MacBookAir will stream video for the majority of a day on a single charge, and from CostCo can be occassionally purchased for $849 (which includes an additional year of warranty).
by anzumitsu | 2025-08-24 18:12:22+00:00
To play devils advocate, isn’t any security approach fundamentally statistical because we exist in the real world, not the abstract world of security models, programming language specifications, and abstract machines? There’s always going to be a chance of a compiler bug, a runtime error, a programmer error, a security flaw in a processor, whatever.

Now, personally I’d still rather take the approach that at least attempts to get that probability to zero through deterministic methods than leave it up to model alignment. But it’s also not completely unthinkable to me that we eventually reach a place where the probability of a misaligned model is sufficiently low to be comparable to the probability of an error occurring in your security model.
by ec109685 | 2025-08-24 18:13:12+00:00
That was my point about dropping privileges. It can still be exploited if the summary contains a link to an image that the attacker can control via text on the page that the LLM sees. It’s just a lot of Swiss cheese.

That said, it’s definitely the best approach listed. And turns that exploit into an XSS attack on reddit.com, which is still bad.
by TheAmazingRace | 2025-08-24 18:13:24+00:00
I'll be honest. Jeri did a ton of whining when she didn't get her way when Valve decided to part ways with her. It was ultimately a business decision for them to abandon AR, and she took it too personally. She is very good at hardware and a wicked smart engineer, but she should be thankful she was able to keep the rights to everything when she left Valve.
by MrGinkgo | 2025-08-24 18:13:46+00:00
Super cool! I'm just starting to get into very basic html/web-dev, so not only were the 'hidden' messages in your html cute to read via inspect element, but seeing that this was all contained in a single javascript file was pretty eye-opening for me! thanks for making it open source, I'll be sure to give it another look once I get to that.

My only suggestion, alongside everyone else's agreement that text should be faster/selectable: how about trees, so that you can keep track of all the nested parts? for example, when I select any of the parts of the drivetrain, perhaps a tree/breadcrumb element would say bike/drivetrain/chainring. Similarly, maybe any other parts that get mentioned in descriptions could be hyperlinks, which can take you instantly to the relevant part.

Super cool and fun presentation! I've had thoughts about doing something similar but for old film projectors. I'll let you know if that ever ends up happening, maybe I could give you a shoutout!
by behnamoh | 2025-08-24 18:14:01+00:00
Is this much drama around a tiny niche language normal? I've been happily using Python for over a decade and never encountered weird, dramatic behavior by its creators or main developers.

Could it be that some languages, through the target audience they attract, seal their disastrous fate? By that I mean languages that attract nerds like me or peculiar math-oriented minds who can nit pick at every single detail.

You wouldn't expect this much nit from a mass-scale enterprise language like Java.
by FireBeyond | 2025-08-24 18:14:09+00:00
> If you have an overhead bag, you have to worry about them forcing you to check it. That means you have to aggressively board the plane, and sometimes that will not be enough, and you have to worry and argue about this. Also they make you pay for it.

If you are talking about gate checking, I am yet to meet an airline that forcibly gate checks you AND charges you for doing so.
by ViewTrick1002 | 2025-08-24 18:14:12+00:00
Again, you don't seem to comprehend how the grid works.

Nuclear power does not add diversity to a heavily renewable grid. Both renewable power and nuclear power competes for the most inflexible portion of the grid. A fight renewables win hands down and nuclear power is forced to throttle down.

What happens when nuclear power is forced to throttle down? It becomes more expensive due to being nearly 100% CAPEX.

Like I said, Vogtle costs 20 cents/kWh running at full tilt. Somewhere at 40 cents/kWh running half the time.

Take a look at South Australia:

https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&...

Do you notice how many instances last week renewables supplied 100% of the grid load? Mind that this is late winter in Australia.

What do you do with your nuclear plant all those hours? Shut it down? Bid negative to make renewables shut down?

In Australia old traditional base load coal plants are forced to become peakers or be decommissioned. That is the reality today. In South Australia coal plants were phased out in 2016.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...

Which again leads us back to the question:

Why should I fill my storage with Vogtle electricity at 20 cents/kWh when I can instead buy renewable electricity at a fraction of the cost?
by borroka | 2025-08-24 18:15:41+00:00
It's like asking for less than you need or could get when negotiating pay for a job or position.

One would think that the employer would recognize or remember this kind of “sacrifice.” Or that, somehow, asking for less money will lead to a more sympathetic judgment of what was accomplished. But my experience and that of many others I have observed tells me that this rarely happens.

Those who pay, pay what they can and always ask for the best that can be done. My advice is to accept business class when it is offered and to negotiate with vigor in every aspect of your professional life.
by Refreeze5224 | 2025-08-24 18:16:11+00:00
If the tool does the task for you, then you didnt do the task. I don't keep my food cold, my refrigerator does. I just turned it on. This doesn't matter unless I am for some reason pretending I myself am keeping my food cold somehow, and then that becomes a lie.

When a tool blurs the line between who performed the task, and you take full credit despite being assisted, that is deceitful.

Spell checking helps us all pretend we're better spellers than we are, but we've decided as a society that correct spelling is more important than proving one's knowledge of spelling.

But if you're purportedly a writer, and you're using a tool that writes for you, then I will absolutely discount your writing ability. Maybe one day we will decide that the output is more important than the connection to the person who generated it, but to me, that day has not arrived.
by breuleux | 2025-08-24 18:17:47+00:00
Okay, but even in Lisp, I'm not sure that's a good way to go about it. What do you want to do when you manipulate code, generally? Oftentimes you seek to find all instances of a specific pattern and modify part of that pattern. So why not do something like this:

transform = Replace(pattern="$x + $y", replacement="($x + 1) + $y") transform("1 + 1") # "(1 + 1) + 1 transform("3 + 4 + 5") # "(((3 + 1) + 4) + 1) + 5 transform("10 * 1 + 1") # no change, because the expression is actually (10 + 1) + 1

If you give me a primitive like that in Lisp, I'm going to use it. It's a lot more trustworthy than "replace item in list by index". Because it's nice and all that everything is a list in Lisp, but manipulating code as lists (or maps or whatever) like you describe isn't going to get you very far. If you want to do something as simple as replacing all calls to (f x) by (f x 1), you better hope you don't come across code like (let ((f 123)) ...), for example. Outside of toy cases and examples, you need robust primitives that understand the code's semantic structure.
by jmull | 2025-08-24 18:18:26+00:00
The takeaway should be:

Don't assume sqlite is doing an fsync on each commit.

While that's the "default default", you may be using a sqlite3 compiled by someone else or using non-default build options, or using a wrapper that sets its own defaults.

More generally, be careful about assuming any of the various levers sqlite3 has are set in a specific way. That is, take control of the ones that are important to your use case (well, and before that, review the levers so you know which ones those are).
by llbbdd | 2025-08-24 18:18:34+00:00
Always amuses me when I see someone use web development as an example like this. Web dev is very easily in the realm of game dev as far as required specs for your machine, otherwise you're probably not doing much actual web dev. If anything, engineers doing nothing but running little Java or Python servers don't need anything more than a PI and a two-color external display to do their job.
by danenania | 2025-08-24 18:19:01+00:00
I think my point is that when the doctor diagnoses you, she often doesn’t do so immediately. She is spending time thinking it through, and as part of that process is retrieving various pieces of relevant information from her memory (both long term and short term).

I think this may be closer to an agentic, iterative search (ala claude code) than direct inference using continuously updated weights. If it was the latter, there would be no process of thinking it through or trying to recall relevant details, past cases, papers she read years ago, and so on; the diagnosis would just pop out instantaneously.
by basilgohar | 2025-08-24 18:19:28+00:00
No one likes hearing hypocrisy from politicians, but it's one of their most dominant traits. That is, if you ascribe normal ethics and morals to them. But politicians' are a different breed, and the sooner we understand that, the better.

They will say, and do, whatever they perceive as being the most politically expedient thing to do. The ones that took moral stances in the actual best interest of the populace usually suffered politically for that. The ones that side with power tend to keep their power. This is the folly of political systems in general short of tyrannies, dictatorships, and kingdoms. And now we are seeing how democracies can be stretched into the same quality of life as so-called "lesser" systems but people don't like hearing that argument because the alternative is made out to be so scary.

It's not so much that democracy is the problem, but that it's too easy to sway people when it's so easy for money and power to be leveraged to manufacture consent. So now it's the people electing their own tyrants who will enrich and entrench themselves and being grateful for the privilege to be used for that purpose.

steps down off of soap box and stops yelling at clouds
by dang | 2025-08-24 18:19:45+00:00
> "If you weren't too stupid (or just too much of an arsehole) to Google"

> "Now take your "blood rage" back to your mother's basement gaming room"

> "Maybe you just need Mommy to blow on your boo-boo?"

> "Stop sounding like a broken record. And an idiot."

> "You're really not very good at arguing your point, are you"

I don't use the word egregiously lightly. We probably should ban any account that posts like this. I cut you a lot of slack here, and not for the first time. "But yeah yeah, I'll try" doesn't make me confident that it was the correct call.