MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by BenoitP | 2025-08-28 12:37:47+00:00
A bit late to the discussion, but this has deep connections. As a programmer, your job is provide business invariants using complexity management techniques. And checking that your state space is small is a tool with gigantic payoff.

Maintaining a small state space it why we want to let it crash. Each program instruction can potentially multiply the number of states possible. Erlang even has this whole "Let It Crash" philosophy as a guideline [1].

Maintaining a small state space is how you tame concurrent programs, where adding one thread can cartesian-product your state space. But there are tools like TLA+ which can help you build proofs over this state space. And build invariants that your threads can use safely. Hre is a visualizer of that state space [2]. Notice any resemblance to the graphs you just saw in the video?

Programming sometimes feel like this "Rush Hour" puzzle.

[1] https://wiki.c2.com/?LetItCrash [2] https://prob.hhu.de/w/index.php?title=State_space_visualizat...
by somenameforme | 2025-08-28 12:37:49+00:00
You're being illogical. You'd only be 'imposing your will' on people if somebody preferred it being impossible to work on their car, which is obviously absurd. It's outright anti-customer behavior with no benefit to the customer whatsoever. It's akin to arguing that e.g. price fixing should be legal so long as a business informs the customer that prices are being rigged against them.
by dns_snek | 2025-08-28 12:38:22+00:00
> Authors decided to pay to these journals and play by their rules in return for something, that have value for them. I respect their choice.

Have you ever spoken to anyone who works in academia? Because almost everyone will tell you that they couldn't care less if people get their articles from SciHub. Academia is much uglier than you're romanticizing it to be.
by jpcompartir | 2025-08-28 12:38:31+00:00
I would echo some caution if using as a reference, as in another blog the writer states:

"Backpropagation, often referred to as “backward propagation of errors,” is the cornerstone of training deep neural networks. It is a supervised learning algorithm that optimizes the weights and biases of a neural network to minimize the error between predicted and actual outputs.."

https://chizkidd.github.io/2025/05/30/backpropagation/

backpropagation is a supervised machine learning algorithm, pardon?
by Wowfunhappy | 2025-08-28 12:39:01+00:00
This is something I really wish was just built-in to Claude Code. I want it built in because I don't want to have to think about it beforehand. I should be able to jump back in conversation history and have the state of the code jump back with me, so it's restored to the same state it originally was at that point in the conversation.

(There does also need to be a way to jump back in the conversation history without reverting the code, there are times that is useful too!)
by hoppp | 2025-08-28 12:39:50+00:00
Yea but then you need need to commit each iteration of each file right away, even if its not working.

Its fine if you just rebase at the end manually, but not good if you don't, your history will be cluttered and as hard to read as the codebase.

Eventually most people who use coding tools will have low knowledge of what is being generated and then they probably never rebase either...
by darkwater | 2025-08-28 12:39:52+00:00
Evaluating the risks of vendor lock-in is a buyer's task, unless it is a protected market or there is a monopoly abuse involved.

In this case, nobody forced (generic) you to use Bitnami's Docker images, you probably just thought "how convenient, always updated and easy to pull, one less thing to worry about". Which is fine, but it's always a bet on what will happen in the future.
by gf000 | 2025-08-28 12:40:18+00:00
This is actually mostly related to a language's expressivity, which can simultaneously be used for good and for obscure stuff. (Also, JS having a rough evolution from a badly designed scripting language with hacky injection points to the browser, to being an industrial language at the core of the modern web, with strong backwards compatibility)

This can be made into an extreme (e.g. C/Zig tries to make every line understandable locally - on the other extreme we have overloading any symbols, see Haskell/Scala).
by anuramat | 2025-08-28 12:40:58+00:00
with QM, the "unobservable" stuff is just guaranteed to not be there, eg a particle detected at (x,t) is definitely not at (x',t); so you are observing it "not existing there" -- collapse just makes the measurement at (x',t) redundant

meanwhile with black holes you know there is something, but you can't measure

in both cases you don't get any information, but in QM it's only because you already know everything there is to know about the system

could it end up being fundamentally the same thing? I don't see why not, but for it to make sense you'd have to get a nobel prize for grand unification theory first

also, collapse is not real and can't hurt you anyway, see many-worlds
by mhast | 2025-08-28 12:41:00+00:00
Git won't catch new files the agent is adding. To get around that you can of course always add all new files, but then you'll potentially have your repo polluted with a bunch of temporary scratch files instead.

You can typically go back and edit git history. But it will require force push and breaking changes. And a few sacrifices to ensure that it doesn't make a mistake because then your repo is potentially broken.

Best way to do that is probably to have it work on branches and then squash merge those.
by winkelmann | 2025-08-28 12:41:30+00:00
> if you don't mind buying grey market keys

Please don't buy "grey market" MS keys (i.e. super cheap keys or keys for products not sold to end users, like LTSC).

Either buy keys from legitimate vendors or use alternative activation methods (emulated KMS, etc.). I believe a lot of these grey market keys come either from MSDN subscriptions or leaked MAK keys, in either case, you aren't really paying for the product, you're just funneling money to sketchy people.
by kube-system | 2025-08-28 12:41:39+00:00
I feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding of this issue in the software community, because primarily, supply chain risk isn't a software or engineering issue. It's a governance issue.

Someone doesn't have to be a bad actor for a project to have supply chain risk. Nor do all who evaluate supply chain risk have the same security posture and evaluate risks the same as others might. The DoD likely has a very different set of risks they evaluate against for their security posture than you do.

Most supply chain risks are not an indictment of somebody's code or somebody's character. A lot of one person projects are risky just because they're only one person. Having a bus factor of one is a supply chain risk in and of itself.

And while most people don't prepare for war while choosing their packages, it's not unreasonable for a military to do so. During a war, the ability for people to govern themselves and their own projects often changes dramatically, even in democratic countries. It is entirely routine for countries to require cooperation by the force of law in war time, even the US can and has forced private companies to cooperate with war efforts. This is probably not in the security posture calculation for most of us. But it is for some.
by notepad0x90 | 2025-08-28 12:42:08+00:00
Can someone articulate for me why everyone seems to be opposed to this?

You can sideload apps on non-google-certified android builds/installs just fine right? If you're going to publish an app that literally be installed on billions of devices, is this not a sensible measure? Long overdue even? Why isn't Windows and Linux distros enforcing this as well is my question!

Do you guys understand that people's lives are being ruined by malware? and the most popular way of deploying malware on the most popular platform (android) is sideloading apps!

This is a similar situation as "Freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach". You can publish any android app you want, that doesn't give you the right to anonymously deploy those apps on everyone's personal tracking devices (phones).

I get a petition to allow alternative attestation and verification authorities. and honestly, I don't think Alphabet has much choice on that given EU and US anti-trust policies. I can't image the EU being ok with a US company collecting the IDs of all its developers.

For about a decade now, on Windows, you are required to have an ID-verified code signing certificate so sign drivers for example. And that has dramatically reduced rootkit abuse on the platform. Don't get me wrong, I also don't want to submit my ID to anyone. But this is a very sensible measure, one that will improve security in measurable and significant ways to millions of regular people.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-08-28 12:42:48+00:00
> delegitimize developer criticism before addressing its substance. This attacks the critics rather than engaging with their actual concerns

It’s a petition, not a debate. Who is speaking is absolutely relevant. Tens of thousands of tiny developers with a few million collective users aren’t relevant to Google.

> Appeal to Corporate Omniscience

This is not a logical fallacy. You may be thinking of appeal to improper authority. But in that case the criticism is that we don’t know Google anticipated this. Not what you wrote, which is technically ad hominem, since you conclude adversely based on Google being a corporation.

> ignores the possibility that feedback could be legitimate even if anticipated

No, it does not. It says such a petition brings no new information to the decision makers at Google. If Google (note: this is OP’s hypothesis, not a fact) anticipated small developers complaining. Small developers are complaining. That doesn’t make the complaints wrong. But it would make them practically irrelevant.
by nikeee | 2025-08-28 12:42:55+00:00
I use my "blog" as a bookmark list. Every link is its own Markdown file with frontmatter tags. Sometimes I add more context or text, based on what I'm linking to. Some time ago I added a cron job that takes all links and looks for their archive.org entries in a similar time period and puts them in a JSON file. If the original goes down, there is always a permalink available that can be rendered instead. There is also a cron job that checks for link availability. If there is no snapshot, the link gets added to a TODO stack and add I manually create an archive.is entry later.
by michaelt | 2025-08-28 12:43:27+00:00
Many large organisations inadvertently, with reasonable intentions create a structure with a powerful bias towards inaction.

It's reasonable, when a company is looking into buying a new SaaS product, that the legal team review the contract.

It's reasonable for legal to ask for variations in the contract, if there's something in it they can't approve.

It's reasonable for the product to be reviewed for compliance with our privacy laws, before we order employees to start using it.

It's reasonable that the information security team get to be consulted before a new product is adopted, we don't want insecure products sneaking in.

It's reasonable that we want single-sign-on from our vendors, that's good for security. And we want SOC2 compliance if possible, as we're trying to be SOC2 compliant ourselves.

It's reasonable that a vendor have a record in our finance database, so we can pay them and know who we've paid what.

It's reasonable that, before approving a vendor, we get a statement from them that they do not use slave labour in their supply chain.

It's reasonable that every expense be attributed to a project or department within the business.

It's reasonable that the project or department's budget have an owner, who has to approve major expenditures.

It's reasonable that the work above is split across quite a few teams, and that each team have a queue of work where non-emergency requests can take a week or two.

But take those reasonable policies together, and it takes 3-6 months to adopt a new SaaS product - so it's a heck of a lot easier to stick with an under-performing, over-priced vendor than it is to get a new vendor approved.
by majkinetor | 2025-08-28 12:43:52+00:00
I am sure your mum uses 0.000001% of Linux features. She could probably work equally well on Commodore 64 with browser and mail. So that amounts to nothing. Besides, she has you to fix any issues, and Mint is the recommended distribution to use if you are switching from Windows. So there's that.

Your own usage of Linux is irrelevant to the mainstream user. If you use anything for 20 years, you will probably be good with it if you care at least a bit. Most people don't care, it is a mean to an end. Hell, I am in IT since kindergarten and I don't care sometimes, it happens now and then that I just want some stuff to work without any issues.

Linux is harder than Windows. It can't be anything else, as it is not originally made for mainstream user, but for engineers and geeks. We came a long way since inception though and today many distros offer decent OS for mainstream user.
by chamomeal | 2025-08-28 12:44:31+00:00
I have also used vim macros to do all sorts of text formatting that would have otherwise taken ages!!

One time my girlfriend needed to format a bunch of text, I don’t remember why. It was like a csv but couldn’t be opened in excel because it was badly formatted or something?

Anyway her work computer had vim on it, and I totally saved the day. Pretty much the proudest moment of my life lol. It was like this xkcd, but for vim https://xkcd.com/208/
by tenthirtyam | 2025-08-28 12:44:51+00:00
That's a fair question and I've not done the math. Does "overall cost" include long term usage - I suppose it does or it wouldn't be "total".

For example, I spent a bunch of money to install solar panels, house insulation, and soon a heat pump. They each have, respectively, about 9 year, 30 year and probably 15 year payback time at today's energy prices, so depending on lifespan and future energy prices it's an open question if it would've been cheaper just to stay as I was.

But there's the comfort factor (heat pump should regularize house temps) and security factor (still warm & cosy during a power cut). I'll allow myself a little feel-good factor of carbon emission reduction too. Maybe these can also apply to the question of using a heat-pump in the dirt-as-thermal-storage scenario here.

I suppose overall I'm of the mind we should be collectively treating carbon emissions as the highest priority and using a heat pump here might aid that?
by numlocked | 2025-08-28 12:45:24+00:00
Hi folks -- I'm Chris from OpenRouter. This one hurts. We're back, but our database was down for about 45 minutes, which caused user and credit lookups to fail, and took down the API. We are investigating why, and of course going to look into improving durability so this failure mode can't happen again. We will share a post-mortem on the site when we have finished our investigation. I'm sorry to our users who count on us.
by jakelsaunders94 | 2025-08-28 12:45:26+00:00
We've spent the last ten days trying to get marketing off the ground for our new project. We managed to get 600 followers and 12 email list signups.

I've struggled to find good advice work marketing as an indie dev, so documenting my learnings as I go.

I'd like to not have to reinvent the wheel though. If you know of any good, authentic material please link them to me!
by JohnFen | 2025-08-28 12:46:01+00:00
I don't resent middle managers at all. I value them. They are the firewall keeping upper management from interfering with my work too much, advocate for the team to upper management, and deal with a ton of other bureaucratic nonsense for me. They help to maintain team harmony and keep everyone rowing in the same direction.

Good ones, anyway. I resent bad ones, but not because they're middle managers.
by A_D_E_P_T | 2025-08-28 12:46:33+00:00
> Literally the lawyers’ jobs to do this.

Sure, but we're talking about an adversarial system where the lawyers are necessarily at-odds with each other, so they research the issue each from their own perspective. Then the one side will present the judge (in motions, etc.) with "here are ten cases that support our position, we've researched them exhaustively," and the other side goes, "no, no, those are distinguishable because X, here are ten cases that support OUR position, we've researched them extensively," -- and the judge and his clerks, so busy that it takes them two months to respond to any motion or communication, often just go with their guts and justify their decision post hoc.

> I don’t think it’s a coïncidence that the oldest continuous legal systems in the world are precedent-based.

lol, dude, it's a mess right now. If society cared at all about justice, and especially about access to justice, the current system would undergo absolute root-and-branch overhaul.
by bgwalter | 2025-08-28 12:46:37+00:00
Generic piracy is for example distributing a commercial unmodified video with full attribution. You don't normally create a derivative work.

Plagiarism is training on generously licensed open source software and creating a derivative work without attribution.

Not all hackers were in favor of piracy, the majority of open source hackers have always been pretty protective of their licenses, which were written before the existence of the laundromats.

Taking all IP and using it against its creators is entirely new and does not match the piracy issues.
by kotaKat | 2025-08-28 12:46:38+00:00
Yep. In the announcement, they already got full green light approval from various governments basically saying this was a great idea and the clear path ahead.

> …with Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs praising it for providing a “balanced approach” that protects users while keeping Android open.

> …Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society sees it as a “positive and proactive measure” that aligns with their national digital safety policies.

> In Brazil, the Brazilian Federation of Banks (FEBRABAN) sees it as a “significant advancement in protecting users and encouraging accountability.”
by egorfine | 2025-08-28 12:46:39+00:00
> Appeal to Corporate Omniscience - The argument assumes that because Google anticipated negative feedback, this somehow validates their decision or renders criticism invalid. A company expecting pushback doesn't automatically make their decision correct.

This argument is not present nor implied in my comment.

> Circular Reasoning - The logic is essentially: "Google knew people would complain, therefore the complaints don't matter because Google expected them." This doesn't address whether the complaints have merit.

My text did not comment or expressed any opinion whether the complaints have merit.

> False Dichotomy - It implies that developer feedback is either completely valid (and Google should have changed course) or completely invalid (because Google was "prepared" for it). This ignores the possibility that feedback could be legitimate even if anticipated.

My comment does not present this dichotomy as described by you.
by sjsdaiuasgdia | 2025-08-28 12:46:40+00:00
The "real-time" version looks awful with constantly shifting colors, inconsistently sized objects, and changing interpretations of the underlying data, resulting in what I would consider an unplayable game vs the original ASCII rendering.

The "better" version renders at a whopping 4 seconds per frame (not frames per second) and still doesn't consistently represent the underlying data, with shifting interpretations of what each color / region represents.
by akimbostrawman | 2025-08-28 12:46:44+00:00
Arch isn't liable regardless. It's a community driven project run by volunteers without contracts.

>it's pretty common that you have to update archlinux-keychain before an upgrade can succeed because the signing keys

"Since 2022-07-29, the archlinux-keyring-wkd-sync.service and the associated systemd timer have been created and enabled by default"

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Package_signing#Upgr...
by darkwater | 2025-08-28 12:46:58+00:00
I understand the sentiment and where it comes from, and I'm not saying it's a good decision from Broadcom (I think it is a bad one indeed!). But still, this risk is part of the game. Even if it was full opensource and with a broad community, it was still a single vendor, not even a non-profit umbrella like the Apache or Linux Foundation. So, the risk of trusting a single vendor was there.

The good thing of it being opensource is that someone else (company, community, foundation or whatever) can step in, fork it, and maintain it from now on, unlike what happens with proprietary software or SaaS.
by devilbunny | 2025-08-28 12:47:28+00:00
The Mini isn’t. The main one is, at least if you really like crosswords.

Brendan Emmett Quigley releases two free puzzles a week on his site; the New Yorker is free if you don’t let cookies accumulate; the LA Times is ad-supported for nonsubscribers, and the Wall Street Journal is free. I could be forgetting some more free ones.

And there are many subscription-based crossword constructors out there.

The NYT crossword is one of the oldest and certainly the best-known American-style crossword out there; it set many conventions (no isolated letters with no crossing word, 180 degree rotational symmetry) and with Wil Shortz’s becoming editor of the puzzle in the 1990’s changed the vocabulary of crosswords significantly by ditching old, obscure words. They even use mild curses occasionally these days (note: internet-only crosswords often do not censor their language).

Difficulty rises steadily from Monday to Saturday, with Sunday being about a Thursday difficulty but larger. Thursday and Sunday have themes; various forms of wordplay can be found in them, such as rebuses (in the lingo, this means multiple letters in one square even if it’s not an actual rebus-able set of letters), making Wednesday to Thursday one of the hardest leaps for a new solver.

A Saturday NYT is the hardest non-specialist American-style crossword out there. As such, it’s considered the baseline for serious cruciverbalists. If you can’t do them, every week, with no or minimal hints, you will struggle badly with more challenging puzzles.
by emilecantin | 2025-08-28 12:47:37+00:00
I tend to have auto-accept on for edits, and once Claude is done with a task I'll just use git to review and stage the changes, sometimes commit them when it's a logical spot for it.

I wouldn't want to have Claude auto-commit everything it does (because I sometimes revert its changes), nor would I want to YOLO it without any git repo... This seems like a nice tool, but for someone who has a very different workflow.
by janice1999 | 2025-08-28 12:47:37+00:00
> You can publish any android app you want, that doesn't give you the right to anonymously deploy those apps on everyone's personal tracking devices (phones).

This is about users freedom to install apps on the devices they own.

> non-google-certified android builds/installs

Those targets are rapidly disappearing. Alternative Android ROMs are dying one by one. Look at how few modern phones are officially supported by LineageOS. And many of those are Pixels which Google is no longer releasing binaries for (making ROM builders lives harder).

> Do you guys understand that people's lives are being ruined by malware?

Do you have figures to back that up? There are already multiple warnings when sideload apps.

> For about a decade now, on Windows, you are required to have an ID-verified code signing certificate so sign drivers for example.

Drivers and applications are not the same things.