MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by craftkiller | 2025-08-22 18:14:22+00:00
> Notably Rust did the correct thing

In addition to separate string types, they have separate iterator types that let you explicitly get the value you want. So:

String.len() == number of bytes String.bytes().count() == number of bytes String.chars().count() == number of unicode scalar values String.graphemes().count() == number of graphemes (requires unicode-segmentation which is not in the stdlib) String.lines().count() == number of lines

Really my only complaint is I don't think String.len() should exist, it's too ambiguous. We should have to explicitly state what we want/mean via the iterators.
by inferiorhuman | 2025-08-22 18:14:26+00:00
Problems arise when you try to take a slice of a string and end up picking an index (perhaps based on length) that would split a code point. String/str offers an abstraction over Unicode scalars (code points) via the chars iterator, but it all feels a bit messy to have the byte based abstraction more or less be the default.

FWIW the docs indicate that working with grapheme clusters will never end up in the standard library.
by rafterydj | 2025-08-22 18:14:30+00:00
That sounds horrendously inefficient, no?

Is creating a giant wobbly world of unreliable AIs all talking to each other in effort to get their own tasks accomplished, is that leaving us much better off than humans doing everything themselves?

Better yet, if you have an application that does exactly what you want, why would you (or an AI representing you) want to do anything other than use that application? Sure you could execute this binary and get what you want, OR you could reach to the AI-net and make some other AI do it from scratch every time. With inherently less reliable results.
by kjkjadksj | 2025-08-22 18:14:41+00:00
I find that in LA people routinely cut off the waymo or refuse to let it in. After all why not it is a robot, not someone who might legitimately harm you like a road rager. It also tends to fail the cultural left turns. That is, sending 2-3 cars left during yellow not just one like in other places. Seeing it stuck awkwardly in an intersection for another cycle from failing to make an assertive left turn is somewhat common.

Waymo also avoids certain challenging environments by excluding it from its service coverage, namely hilly neighborhoods.
by selkin | 2025-08-22 18:14:43+00:00
> The problem with email is that everything is transmitted in plain text.

That's not a Gmail problem, and no reason to migrate. Some use cases just don't fit email, and for those, we have other, more fitting platforms.

> So, I went with mailbox.org that still offers integrated PGP encryption, and if you want, you can always use external PGP too (which I was already doing with Gmail).

Ok, so now you have two problems.
by tennysont | 2025-08-22 18:14:48+00:00
Fun to see talk of "a compiler for DNA"---I've been hoping for that for a long time.

I have to admit, at a _glance_ this feels like a promising idea with few results and lots of marketing. I'll try to be clear about my confusion, feel free to explain if I'm off base.

- There's not a lot of talk of your "ground truth" for evaluations. Are you using mRNABench?

- Has you mRNABench paper been peer reviewed? You linked a preprint. (I know paper submission can be touch or stressful, and it's a superficial metric to be judged on!)

- Do any of your results suggest that this foundation model might be any good on out of sequence mRNA sequences? If not, then is the (current) model supposed to predict properties of natural mRNA sequences rather than of synthetic mRNA sequences?

- Did a lot mRNA sequences have experimental verification of their predicted properties? At a quick glance, I see this 66 number in the paper---but I truly have no idea.

I'm super happy to praise both incremental progress and putting forth a vision, I just also want to have a clear understanding of the current state-of-the-art as well!
by tanelpoder | 2025-08-22 18:14:48+00:00
Pretty cool. At some point I wrote my own routines with pure DuckDB SQL, so I wouldn't have to import UDFs, it would all be in just SQL files. DuckDB already has a basic `bar()` function for bar charts [1] and also you could use YouPlot [2] if you prefer just piping the output to some other command instead of using a library or extension. I created my own bar charts though, as I wanted to use the "partial" unicode block characters for more fine-grained bar charts.

I created my own sparklines too with LISTAGG and unicode characters for rendering latency histograms, but the bigger problem there was that some latency buckets didn't have any data falling into them. That missing row of data still needs to be rendered as an empty bucket. So while the pure SQL approach worked, it was a convoluted query where I used an outer join with a list of synthetically generated latency buckets to align the rest of the buckets right.

That was a prototype anyway, later on I switched to returning the filled bucket numbers (latency:count) with LISTAGG as CSV that I later parsed and rendered in the app layer [3]

[1] https://duckdbsnippets.com/snippets/54/quick-inline-bar-char...

[2] https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/guides/data_viewers/youplot.h...

[3] https://tanelpoder.com/posts/xcapture-v3-alpha-ebpf-performa...
by shortstuffsushi | 2025-08-22 18:15:04+00:00
No kidding, the entire thread seems to be "you don't know what you're doing and you haven't done any research," in the face of responses saying "correct, this is the beginning of the process, where we do the research."

Then some random tag on guy presumably after this hit HN "I like that it doesn't have ads," which has literally nothing to do with the issue, lol.
by justsomehnguy | 2025-08-22 18:15:07+00:00
> In this situation there are a lot of processes running, for which increased cores-count and memory availability seems worth it.

It's always the workload type. For the mixed environments (some with a heavy constant load while the other have only some occasional spikes) the increase of RAM per node is the most important part what allowed us to actually decrease the node count. The whole racks with multiple switches was replaced by a single rack with a modest amount of servers and a single stacked switch.
by ebiester | 2025-08-22 18:15:08+00:00
There are certainly exceptions. And if a problem cannot be decomposed, then you have a "stop the world" formal code review with a team-wide multi-hour dive into the code.

In my world, though, we use the refactoring tools such as feature flags and incremental improvements. We can use stacked pull requests. It requires training and discipline but it's absolutely doable for 99% of tasks.
by reactordev | 2025-08-22 18:15:24+00:00
Idiocracy. It’s all just a move to protect vested interests in fossil fuels.

Tesla has the right idea with solar roofs but we need better options than shingles or giant panels mounted. Wind gen is amazingly good if you have a consistent supply.

When I was sailing, the sun and wind would recharge my batteries during the day. At night, wind would keep the batteries charging so I could run lights, laptops, VHF, and NMea2000 equipment.

The future isn’t this. Banning renewable energy is like banning breathing.

EDIT

Coming back after a walk, I can't stop thinking about this. When I worked at an energy tech company, me and a couple data scientists actually worked out that if, theoretically you had solar panels capable of capturing sun energy with 99% efficiency - you could power all of humanity on 1 day's worth of sunlight. (granted you had the storage capacity, we did fun things like "You saved 254,143 trees by reducing your water use" kind of stuff).

The wind farms off the coasts in the EU countries are producing massive amounts of energy at fractions of the cost. Yes, the engineering is hard. Yes, the big tall windmills are ugly (paint them, put LED lights on them, who cares). You don't need the giant big ones, a field of smaller ones works too at the same altitude (key part... wind is faster at altitude). Make a wind mill kite and send it up. There's so much energy around us. We just need to find a way to trap those electrons.
by lelandfe | 2025-08-22 18:15:38+00:00
I dunno, my snarkometer is going off.

> Thanks for raising these 6 examples of sites publishing XML files. We can add it to the existing list of 357 sites

This feels like an email I'd get from HR. The point of the topic was the ease in finding those 6, not to discuss those 6 specifically. Maybe being direct pisses people off more than this corporate-styled language, though.
by programd | 2025-08-22 18:16:05+00:00
> game design is a rabbit hole

Game engine design is a rabbit hole :)

Game design is the ultimate lockbox - you're unlocking an entire imaginary world which has some platonic existance in your mind.

And since you mentioned Luanti, it deserves to be much better known as a credible open alternative to Minecraft. You could do a lot worse then designing/prototyping your game with Luanti as the game engine.

https://www.luanti.org/
by antichronology | 2025-08-22 18:16:20+00:00
There is a number of different technologies. Some of the big ones are:

- mRNA therapies: These therapies deliver a synthetically created messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule, typically protected within a lipid nanoparticle (LNP), to a patient's cells. The cell's own machinery then uses this mRNA as a temporary blueprint to produce a specific protein.

The big example here is CAR-T therapy from Capstan which just got acquired for 2.1B. Their asset,CPTX2309 , is currently in Phase 1. Previously to do Car-T therapy you had to extract a patient's T-cells and genetically engineer them in a special facility. Now the mRNA gets delivered directly to the patient's t cells which significantly lowers the cost and technical hurdles.

- RNA interferences (RNAi): Used for gene expression knockdown through natural cellular mechanisms for viral detection. The big example here is Alnylam with 5 approved therapies and a number in clinical trials.

- Antisense Oligonucleotides (ASOs): Short single stranded RNA molecules that get delivered directly to the cell and target an existing mRNA. The big win here is Spinraza which is the first approved treatment for Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) which previously didn't have a treatment. The Spinraza clinical trial (ENDEAR) was so effective that they deemed it unethical to continue it because the control arm wasn't receiving the treatment. Prior to Spinraza most patients would pass away prior to two years of age.
by pembrook | 2025-08-22 18:16:21+00:00
Reddit/HN/X/etc are jam packed with tech workers with $hundreds of thousands of dollars in tech equity. I'm not sure what you're talking about, this board is quite literally the highest income community on the internet.

Given the tone of your comment, it doesn't sound like reasoning from first-principles logically, but instead reasoning from an emotional feeling and working backwards.

It sounds to be like you're hoping for the AI bubble to burst so you can experience the schadenfreude of the "technically incompetent dumb investors" you despise losing all their money.

Hoping for emotional validation is not a very convincing argument that it is happening right now imo.
by AnonC | 2025-08-22 18:16:29+00:00
The closest would be having your own domain that’s linked to an email service provider (like mailbox.org or Google Workspace or several others). But to your point of switching email providers being daunting, first buy your own domain and then use that domain with an email provider of your choice. Then start chipping away at the emails you receive in your Gmail account and switch each of those senders to your new domain (and a new email address there). Do it a few at a time, give yourself a whole year to complete it and get going.

It’s even easier if you list out the most important senders in a checklist and move those first. But give yourself at least a few months time. It’s certainly possible.

Once you have your own domain, future migrations to another email provider would be a matter of moving the emails and updating DNS.
by cookiengineer | 2025-08-22 18:16:40+00:00
I don't understand how WHATWG decides to remove XSLT, contradicting the 30+ years of never break the web doctrine... And simultaneously doesn't want to fix the typeof null specification bug because of, wait for it, Microsoft Exchange 2003 relying on that.

This makes absolutely no sense.

We could've had such a nice language. The efforts for a cleaner language and web platform API were there, but doctrine always said no because of legacy and people have moved on to alternatives now.
by primitivesuave | 2025-08-22 18:16:51+00:00
I exclusively use Waymo in SF, even if it costs a bit more than Uber. You'll most often get a great human Uber driver, but there's a very real possibility that the person is a bad/unsafe driver or the ride is unpleasant for a myriad of other reasons. With a Waymo, you know exactly what you're buying.
by transcriptase | 2025-08-22 18:17:01+00:00
“just one more law bro. i promise bro just one more law and we’ll be safe bro. it’s just a little more surveillance bro. please just one more. one more law and we’ll stop all the threats bro. bro c’mon just give me access to your data and we’ll protect you i promise bro. think of the children bro. bro bro please we just need one more law bro, one more camera, one more database, and then we’ll all be safe bro”
by munificent | 2025-08-22 18:17:01+00:00
Probably a combination of:

* In a high-trust high social cohesion culture, you can rely on people returning carts all the way to where they belong instead of just selfishly leaving them in the parking lot once they are done with it.

* In the US, the opioid epidemic means there are many more homeless drug addicts. Stolen shopping carts are useful for them to move their stuff around.
by Grazester | 2025-08-22 18:17:09+00:00
What snow and ice? We don't get much of that anymore. That was actually the last thing I am worried about here. I really want to see how Waymo does with NYC drivers and obstacles(double parking on block where sometimes you have to pull in your mirrors just to get by(if you even take the chance instead of just laying on your horn). In some neighborhoods it can be so annoying.
by const_cast | 2025-08-22 18:17:32+00:00
> Even on Linux, you can't have '/' in a filename, or ':' on macOS

Yes this is why all competent libraries don't actually use string for path. They have their own path data type because it's actually a different data type.

Again, you can do the Go thing and just use the broken string, but that's dumb and you shouldn't. They should look at C++ std::filesystem, it's actually quite good in this regard.

> And a language that doesn't provide the tooling necessary to muddle through this mess safely isn't a serious platform to build on, IMHO.

I agree, even PHP does a better job at this than Go, which is really saying something.

> Go is making the tradeoff for language simplicity, while being marketed and positioned as a serious language for writing serious programs, which it is not.

I would agree.
by chasd00 | 2025-08-22 18:17:53+00:00
i gave a ppt of 4-5 slides laying out an approach to implementing a business requirement to a very junior dev. I wanted to make sure they understood what was going on so i asked them to review the slides and then explain it back to me as if i'm seeing them for the first time. What i got back was the typical overly verbose and articulate review from chatgpt or some other llm. I thought it was pretty funny that they thought it would work let alone be acceptable to do that. When i called them and asked, "now do it for real" i ended up answering a dozen questions but hung up knowing they actually did understand the approach.
by TranquilMarmot | 2025-08-22 18:18:08+00:00
> self-hosting on your own metal, where you're now just dependent on your ISP

Your ISP, the hardware not failing, needing to do routine maintenance and (expensive!) upgrades, having room in your house, having consistent power to your servers, possible theft, natural disasters causing you to lose your home, etc.

There's a reason I use a VPS for hosting a lot of things haha. Mostly because I live in a small apartment and don't have room for a server rack.
by api | 2025-08-22 18:18:22+00:00
Go passes on a lot of ideas that are popular in academic language theory and design, with mixed but I think mostly positive results for its typical use cases.

Its main virtues are low cognitive load and encouraging simple straightforward ways of doing things, with the latter feeding into the former.

Languages with sophisticated powerful type systems and other features are superior in a lot of ways, but in the hands of most developers they are excuses to massively over-complicate everything. Sophomore developers (not junior but not yet senior) love complexity and will use any chance to add as much of it as they can, either to show off how smart they are, to explore, or to try to implement things they think they need but actually don't. Go somewhat discourages this, though devs will still find a way of course.

Experienced developers know that complexity is evil and simplicity is actually the sign of intelligence and skill. A language with advanced features is there to make it easier and simpler to express difficult concepts, not to make it more difficult and complex to express simple concepts. Every language feature should not always be used.
by Calavar | 2025-08-22 18:18:39+00:00
cargo publish bundles your source files into a format (.crate) that can be distributed to other developers. This includes instructions for actually building the project at a later time. This is analagous to 'uv build' making an .sdist file.

I guess it gets more complicated with .whl since those can contain build artifacts as well and not just build instructions.

It's true that 'cargo publish' can also upload your .crate files to a remote repository, while uv breaks that functionality out into a separate command called 'uv publish' but I think that's neither here nor there on the difference between bundling the source and building the source.
by saila | 2025-08-22 18:19:05+00:00
I agree we need to separate these responsibilities, but when it comes to mental health response, the police themselves are often opposed to alternatives, even while they complain that they're not mental health providers and often can't do anything in those types of situations.

In my city, we've had an underfunded street response program for a few years now, but a lot of people (including a lot of people who don't live here) see it as antagonistic to police and police funding, when really it should just be part of a holistic system to address social issues.

It makes no sense to me that the people who ostensibly care the most about addressing crime and "disorder" on the streets are often the most oppositional to programs that might actually address some of the underlying issues (not all of course, but some).
by danaris | 2025-08-22 18:19:19+00:00
But, again—it compounds for them, too.

Sometimes, this won't matter, because "they" are making millions a year (or are married to someone who is—often, toxic HOA members are stay-at-home spouses with little else to occupy them), so I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but we're not talking about some third-party management company raising prices so that they make more profit. We're talking about a cooperative raising fees for its own members—including the board members—which go into the common coffers.

Unless, y'know, we're talking about active embezzlement. Which does happen, but is obviously a failure mode and not normal operation.
by oceanplexian | 2025-08-22 18:19:27+00:00
Try driving anywhere in the world that's not Western Europe or The USA and you'll quickly see how advanced even our worst cities are when it comes to traffic.

Last time I was in China drivers simply go through four way intersections at top speed from all directions simultaneously. If you are a pedestrian I hope you're good at frogger because there is a 0% chance anyone will stop for you. I really wonder how self driving cars work because they must program some kind of insane software that ignores all laws or it wouldn't even be remotely workable.
by krapp | 2025-08-22 18:19:34+00:00
>Also, coïncidentally, the first batch of Epstein files are heading over to Congress today:

Is anyone else surprised that, Trump being Trump, anything and everything related to Epstein hasn't already been burned in a big dumpster and deleted from all of the databases?

Like, unless these files are specifically crafted around a narrative to indict Trump's enemies and exonerate him, I would have expected some kind of Stalin-esque historywashing to have taken place by now, beyond Trump just awkwardly insisting they don't exist and Epstein doesn't matter.
by giuliomagnifico | 2025-08-22 18:19:35+00:00
Mailbox doesn’t support it, but on mailbox you can use your IMAP app with Proton not.

And on mailbox you can easily send and receive PGP encrypted mail on mailbox.org. They provide a page for key import, allowing you to send encrypted emails like regular mail when needed.

It’s your choice, if you always want to use proton mail app everywhere you can use proton.
by PaulHoule | 2025-08-22 18:19:47+00:00
Of students I knew from my son's cohort, particularly his graduating high school class I'd say nearly 1/3 identify as incel and 1/3 identify as "non-binary" and I think the psychology of the two are similar and both involve something like a cult conversion.

My son does believe that a man needs to modulate their masculinity a bit to be attractive to young women who've been taught to be scared of masculinity. His heroes are people like David Bowie and Prince and thinks you can be a bit androgynous and still look fabulous and he rejects the non-binary aesthetic which he thinks is being an amorphous blob. He would not buy into the ridiculous stuff that this article is talking about.

I'm sure that young women have trouble too but it looks like there is segregation between young men and women these days a lot like segregation between white and black people today. It's not like there are formal laws that say black people can't live in certain neighborhoods but very few of us live in neighborhoods that are integrated and a 23-something who isn't in college can find there are plenty of places where you can encounter people of the opposite sex who are <13 [1] or >33 and plenty of places you can meet people of your gender who are your own age but really eligible singles are scarce. It's at least partially real in that there was a birth minimum for his cohort, and probably people in that age are at the peak of being isolated by social media.

[1] ineligible
by blobmty | 2025-08-22 18:20:09+00:00
I built a small GUI app called Logster to make working with large log files easier. Inspired by tools like glogg and Splunk, but meant to be lightweight and desktop-friendly.

Key features:

Index and search log files within a folder

Timestamp-based search with custom date/time formats

Support for custom file extensions

View and copy log contents easily

Toggle log levels for better filtering