MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by emptybits | 2025-08-10 21:52:27+00:00
I second the garlic recommendation here. It is more tolerant to nutrient and water variability than most crops. Slugs and many other pests won’t bother it.

If you do give it regular fertilizer and water then you can plant it extremely densely, seeding just a few inches apart. Great for apartment dwellers with raised bed or container gardens.

We plant around Halloween and harvest in early July. That leaves time and space for a late summer crop if you wish.

Also, garlic stores very well. We harvest about 100 bulbs each year from a small plot, maybe 2-3 sq m., and that gives us garlic for a year, fresh, cured, minced (into butter or pesto), and for gifts.

And don’t even get me started on how amazing and versatile garlic scapes are. The scape harvest is its own prized crop!

Added: I’m in Vancouver. Garlic seems to love the overwintering process here, usually with some light snow.
by Smeevy | 2025-08-10 21:52:41+00:00
Absolutely not. I feel terrible for people coming out of school with CS degrees right now.

Life is already difficult for young people right now and 6 figures of college debt is just putting another obstacle in their path.

For what it's worth, I don't know that the open source route is particularly fruitful either. I hear people recommending that as a way to get hired, but I never hear much about it making a difference in the hiring process.

Just my .02, though.
by ivanjermakov | 2025-08-10 21:52:53+00:00
If I understood `abort` semantics correctly, it has a type of `never` or Rust's `!`. Which has a meaning "unobtainable value because control flow went somwhere else". `void` is closer to `unit` or `()` because it's the type with no allowed values.

Cool trick: some languages (e.g. TypeScript) allow `void` generics making parameters of that type optional.
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-08-10 21:53:49+00:00
> You also need to look at the counter parties in a lot of the union corruption, they were in dirty corrupt industries controlled by the mob.

For me, the most memorable outcome of corruption was the Knox Mine disaster in 1959. UMWA officers, including District 1 president, had accepted bribes from company officials.

I hadn't ever read that the mob was tied to that corruption. However, a little searching turned up evidence of it.

federal prosecutors had been on the trail of suspicious ties between coal operators and local officials of the United Mine Workers of America. That trail began at the infamous November 1957 "mob meeting" in Apalachin, N.Y., which was raided by federal investigators. Among the 60 or so men who attended were four Wyoming Valley residents, including reputed crime boss Russell Bufalino and Dominick Alaimo, a committeeman with UMWA Local 8005, which represented workers in 10 mines, including the Knox Coal Co.’s River Slope Mine in Jenkins Township.

https://www.timesleader.com/archive/991527/a-look-back-how-t...
by touzen | 2025-08-10 21:54:02+00:00
Actually, the situation is even weirder in Swedish! Even though we write "att", it is pronounced "o" when used to mark an infinitive but not when used like the word "that" in English. So, in the sentence

Jag tror *att* han gillar *att* äta I think *that* he likes *to* eat

the first "att" (that) is pronounced similar to its orthography but the second one (to) is pronounced "o".

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/att#Swedish
by dzhiurgis | 2025-08-10 21:54:31+00:00
Loved that one. We need something like this for NZ's south and north islands and so far ships are by far the best option.

Maybe some semi submersible, low-safety tube for cargo could make sense tho, but I'm not holding my breath.

New government cancelled $1.45b ferry replacement project for cost blowout and everyone expects it to cost even more.
by mdp2021 | 2025-08-10 21:55:09+00:00
(Can't see it now because of maintenance but of course I trust it - that some get it right is not the issue.)

> if you can find an example this model can't

Then we have a problem of understanding why some work and some do not, and we have a due diligence crucial problem of determining whether the class of issues indicated by the possibility of fault as shown by many models are fully overcome in the architectures of those which work, or whether the boundaries of the problem are just moved but still tainting other classes of results.
by al_borland | 2025-08-10 21:55:23+00:00
For what it’s worth, college for me played a much bigger role in developing my soft skills than it did the hard skills. I find these things sorely lacking with many people I work with, especially those who are extremely technical. I think these skills helped to advance my career more than anything else, and would be transferable to nearly any type of job.

I did end up with a CIS degree (computers in the business college), rather than a CS degree (engineering college). I’m not sure how the required coursework might influence the development of various soft skill. It was never something explicitly taught, just things I was forced to develop in order to get through to graduation.
by shadowgovt | 2025-08-10 21:55:31+00:00
Entirely possible, but since Chevron has been overturned, courts are no longer obligated to defer to Executive interpretation of the law, and as much as people think SCOTUS is in Trump's pocket... They're not particularly anti-bank and it's a bit of a toss-up whether they'd rule for or against a bank that dragged a case of "The Feds say we can't do this and we're pretty sure Congress didn't say that" all the way to them (and banks have a lot of money to do that dragging).
by phil21 | 2025-08-10 21:56:53+00:00
Old people don’t need to monopolize real estate the way they have over the past 40ish years.

At least when being subsidized by the young via tax rates. The old voted themselves in a benefit at the expense of those taking care of them - it’s not sustainable. They cannot have their cake and eat it too. I say this as someone far closer to “old” than young. I should be paying exactly the same amount as my young neighbors for the same house value. Anything different is immoral at best.

The young productive couple with kids has far more utility being located closer to work and other economic opportunity than a retired couple, so retirees sitting on the most productive bits of real estate is a problem beyond even taxes. That we forced young couples to buy places out in the exurbs and spend hours a day commuting while also trying to raise kids would be laughable to an alien species looking at us from a big picture standpoint.

We have an inverted sense of priorities at the moment - likely due to demographics and voting power. These will rapidly shift as demographics change, hopefully without too much backlash over what we have done to the young.

If we want to make a point that overall property taxes are too high in general I’m much more receptive to that idea. No (residential) property owner should be privileged over another due to age.
by hermitcrab | 2025-08-10 21:56:58+00:00
I recently read the book 'Barbarians' by Terry Jones (the ex-Python) and Alan Ereira. It suggested that, because the Romans were such a brutal bunch who levied high taxes, some people were happier after the collapse of their empire.

If anyone is interested in the rise and fall of empires, I strongly recommend the 'Fall of civilizations' podcast. It is a masterpiece of podcasting.

https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/
by Oras | 2025-08-10 21:57:10+00:00
> His motivation for getting a degree was to be marketable to employers

In my 20 years in the industry, I was only asked once in an interview about my degree.

> but also to gain a better understanding of fundamentals

I believe there are many courses online, such as Coursera and others if he wants to learn more. None of them will have the social aspects or networking, but they are far faster and cheaper than the traditional path.

My suggestion is to sit down with your son, and start looking at the job market for junior or graduate jobs and see if it will make sense to invest $130k and 4 years of his life.

If he realises that this is not the way forward, I would suggest he start looking for local hackathons where he can join, learn, network and have fun.
by AngryData | 2025-08-10 21:57:37+00:00
Part of the problem is the pay for many tradesmen doesn't go up much for doing better work with more skills and knowledge, the only incentive most of the workers get is to just do it faster. You don't often get a bonus by making beautiful piece of work, you will get a bonus for getting done quicker even if it is the barest minimum quality of work. And many people who would make excellent craftsman are also smart and skilled enough to enter many other fields that pay better and have far less workplace hazards and doesn't involve them having to regularly pump out trash work to stay competitive.
by replwoacause | 2025-08-10 21:57:42+00:00
Yes, I think that’s right, but I find _what_ he says to be equally intolerable. I’m not interested in waiting patiently to hear someone overpromise again and again, contradict themselves on almost everything, pick public fights, or toss out provocative bad takes. This is a guy who hyped Dogecoin, called a guy he didn’t he didn’t like a pedo, announced Tesla would take Bitcoin and then reversed it, dismissed the pandemic as “dumb,” amplified far-right talking points, lashes out at anyone who challenges him, the list goes on and on. Honestly, it’d be better if he just stopped talking.
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-08-10 21:57:44+00:00
Children in general have a very hard time grasping the idea that their parents' lives resembled their own at all. For another example, look how every generation of teenagers, without fail, thinks they are the first people in the world to invent having sex for fun. I myself didn't understand how my parents used to easily catch me in most of my attempts to get away with trouble, until I realized (as an adult) that they caught me so easily because they tried the same sorts of things as kids themselves. It's just human nature, I guess.
by labrador | 2025-08-10 21:58:00+00:00
I recently finished an audiobook that describes the history of cocaine and opiate use in that era. The drugs were unregulated until addiction became an issue. I'm interested in how drugs shape our society so I appreciate books like this that fill in the missing history.

David Farber - Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed [Audiobook]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxm0hYnGezA
by starchild3001 | 2025-08-10 21:58:22+00:00
USA had a nearly constant per person economic growth rate of 2%/year in the last ~150 years, perhaps going as far back as the beginning of industrial revolution.

Extrapolating such curves into the future suggests the current AI revolution is simply the last and latest node in a string of revolutions and it's nothing special.

If you think about it, having the world's all information at your fingertips (google), and in your pocket (iphone) might have been equally revolutionary. And before that came TV, radio, car, train, boat, plane, electricity, gas engine, steam engine etc as revolutions.

There's nothing that suggests the economic output per person is accelerating beyond the historical 2%/year. What could be reasons? Perhaps limited electricity, compute, AI model quality, computer speed etc.

So, the more analytical side of me thinks what we're experiencing is nothing extraordinary. It's just another revolution in a string of many :)

Obviously, my other, the more human side gets scared and feels afraid about the meaning of life, and humanity's place in it.
by theragra | 2025-08-10 21:58:25+00:00
If you think america moved too fast in the beginning of the century, try Russian Empire. Not only the same technological marvels as everywhere in the west, but also three revolutions and several wars. Change of government from monarchy to parlamentarism to socialism. Also, countless posts, painters and new genres of art.

If you know Russian, Dusk Of The Empire podcast is pretty cool.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCL7ox52jCNuMcckQSc0o5HQ#botto...
by andy99 | 2025-08-10 21:58:51+00:00
(2020) - I agree, personally I think two issues are 1. taking advantage of people caring to give them below market comp for the work expected of them, and (more subjectively) 2. having some lame and disconnected mission or stated culture. It's easier to care about building something cool than about displaying grit and authenticity or whatever BS some cost center has come up with.

Point being, it should be reciprocal. Most (at least many) technical people will always want to do good work and care about the problem they're solving, it's easy to destroy that by expecting them to care only about story points or whatever instead of something meaningful.
by einarfd | 2025-08-10 21:58:52+00:00
That they exempt politicians is basically admitting that the security problems that detractors bring up is true, and is something that should be used against them.

After all exempting some police, that work on investigating child molesting, from the scanning, that is understandable.

Exempting prime minster Mette Frederiksen, on the other hand. Means either that they understand that it undermines security, or that she or some other top politicians are child molester. So which is it?
by nis0s | 2025-08-10 21:58:59+00:00
I think they do? They’re currently in decline due to both local and global pressures, so I guess that change in behavior is a response which leads to their fertility rate being a “sustainable” one.

That said, social safety programs aren’t just about money per se, but about freeing up parents from working and investing time in child-rearing. If life is expensive and requires at least two incomes to sustain a household, who has the time to get pregnant, give birth and raise a child? Maybe this is a problem that gets resolved if children can be safely incubated outside a womb, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of who’s going to do all the work that needs to get done on a daily basis to run a household with kids.
by efitz | 2025-08-10 21:59:01+00:00
I am not sure what “the collapse of an empire” means. True empires bleed off colonies or satellites, often over hundreds of years; sometimes with wars, sometimes without.

Today being imprecise with language to smear one’s political opponents is in fashion; a lot of talk about “empire” and “regime” etc. is just propaganda.

The fall of a government will leave a power vacuum and people will rush to fill it; violence might be part of the fall but will almost certainly be part of the competition to be the replacement. We have dozens of examples in the last hundred years.

During all those times, people have to live their lives; things go on pretty much as normal for most people not involved in the struggle for power. However there are disruptions to utilities and financial systems; many people lose their life savings and sometimes feeding people is hard, let alone doing business like manufacturing.

The only thing that is “apocalyptic” about the fall of a government and its replacement with a new one, is when the new government is full of radical ideologues that use the force of government, and ultimately violence, against their political opponents, such as in the Russian Revolution, the Nazi rise to power, and Mao’s rise to power.

This is not a foregone conclusion; we didn’t see intentional mass starvation or genocide in Iran, for example, although there were thousands of executions as the new regime purged its opponents.
by tengwar2 | 2025-08-10 21:59:40+00:00
You could write your own GUI rather than using a text screen. I had to do that as I was working under OS/2 1.0, which didn't have the Presentation Manager. it did mean providing your own character set (ripped from VGA on DOS in my case) and mouse handing.

Btw, I'd love to know where this idea about no assembler programs on OS/2 came from. There was no problem at all with using MASM, with CodeView to debug on a second screen.
by bravesoul2 | 2025-08-10 21:59:42+00:00
> In dialects of Northeastern Canada, parallel inflected forms are acceptable:

> 12) They tries and does that.

There is a Ricky Jervais show https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Life_(TV_series) where the main character talks like this alot but not because that is common in the UK but perhaps to show he is a bit simple/slow. I think there is a danger in making that assumption about anyone based on the accent or general way they talk.
by red75prime | 2025-08-10 22:00:07+00:00
My hypothesis is that a model fails to switch into a deep thinking mode (if it has it) and blurts whatever it got from all the internet data during autoregressive training. I tested it with alpha-blending example. Gemini 2.5 flash - fails, Gemini 2.5 pro - succeeds.

How presence/absence of a world model, er, blends into all this? I guess "having a consistent world model at all times" is an incorrect description of humans, too. We seem to have it because we have mechanisms to notice errors, correct errors, remember the results, and use the results when similar situations arise, while slowly updating intuitions about the world to incorporate changes.

The current models lack "remember/use/update" parts.
by imenani | 2025-08-10 22:00:07+00:00
Each of these models has a thinking/reasoning variant and a default non-thinking variant. I would expect the reasoning variants (o3 or “GPT5 Thinking”, Gemini DeepThink, Claude with Extended Thinking, etc) to do better at this. I think there is also some chance that in their reasoning traces they may display something you might see as closer to world modelling. In particular, you might find them explicitly tracking positions of pieces and checking validity.
by SilverElfin | 2025-08-10 22:00:30+00:00
In the US, violations of civil rights that are performed by officials (like legislators) can be prosecuted under something called color of law. I think it is rarely done, if ever, but the justice department could do it. Maybe Americans need to start pushing their own representatives to call for such a case in situations where individual rights are violated.

Is there something like this in the EU, so that officials feel personal risk and liability for their actions in pushing this anti democratic policy?
by robocat | 2025-08-10 22:00:40+00:00
> who’s in a similar enough wealth tier to me

I've seen this be a problem with well-off female friends again and again.

It's always a status issue when I've seen it (the women sees herself as high status and she wants a high status man).

Wanting someone well-off (more than say a million or two) really limits your dates, and is a problematic selection filter (you're chasing the same guys everyone else is chasing which leads to horrible selection biases). Specifically the men that meet the filter often have negative learned traits if they have plenty of women chasing them.

> that I don’t have to financially support him

An excuse. Plenty of men don't worry about that issue when looking for a woman. Independence is a nice-to-have .

I often ask single friends what their must-haves are in a date. The replies always worry me. Then you see them successfully find someone that doesn't fit their requirements (maybe flexibility is a selection bias for successfully relationships?)

Why is it so hard to learn meta-skills?

I don't hang around with enough wealthy guys to notice any pattern in them. The women I'm talking with this pattern are high professional income levels rather than deeply wealthy (I don't hang with them either).

People have such strange wants - money does matter but there's many other traits that matter more.
by NoahZuniga | 2025-08-10 22:01:07+00:00
This post is """inspired""" by an experience the author had with a github maintainer. The github issue: https://github.com/shinyorg/shiny/issues/1533

The maintainer was respectful and helpful. They responded the same day the issue was made and diagnosed and explained the issue without even receiving a proper reproducible build link. They then answered follow up questions. What an amazing maintainer!

The author of this article is truly an asshole.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-08-10 22:01:09+00:00
Ranked-choice voting sucks anyway. It's nominally better than first past the post, but only because FPTP is so broken that it can still be the loser in a competition between bad voting systems. Use a cardinal voting system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rated_voting

And framing this as a partisan issue is how you lose. Changes to the voting system that allow multiple parties aren't going to cause Democrats to win more seats in Missouri. Missouri is red regardless of which voting system you use. But it will cause Republicans to lose seats, to libertarians or some other right-leaning third party running candidates there. Which is perfectly to the advantage of the right-leaning voters there, because it better represents their interests.

It's not to the advantage of the incumbent party insiders, who then trick people with crooked amendments like that. But if you pin that generically on "Republicans", implying a contrast with Democrats and need for all right-leaning people to line up against you, you're not going to win in Missouri.

You have to pin it specifically where it belongs, on the fat cats trying to sustain their privileged position as a one-party monopoly in the state at the expense of all voters.
by mattmanser | 2025-08-10 22:01:36+00:00
So I've done that sort of refactoring a lot, albeit on real code in much bigger systems, not a script. Lots of coders won't do this, they'll just keep adding to the crap, crazy big module.

I always end up with a vastly smaller code base. Like 2000 lines turns into 800 lines or something like that.

Did that happen too or did the AI just do a glorified 'extract method', that any decent IDE can already do without AI?

I use AI, I'm not anti it, but on the other hand I keep seeing these gushing posts where I'm like 'but your ide could already do that, just click the quick refactoring button'.
by ranabasheer | 2025-08-10 22:01:49+00:00
I developed a telephony agent service to help my aging parents, who aren't fluent in English, navigate their healthcare needs. My parents simply talk to the agent, which I call Maya, in their native language. Maya then understands their requests and handles the outgoing calls to various offices and providers in English. So far, it's been an invaluable resource for them, helping with three key tasks: Scheduling doctor's appointments across multiple insurance plans. Checking pharmacy readiness for medicine pickups. Arranging transportation (both medical and non-medical) through services like CalOptima and OC ACCESS. The system uses a straightforward tech stack on AWS, combining separate ASR, LLM, and TTS models. It's a pragmatic solution I built because I couldn't find an existing service that fit my specific requirements. It’s been so useful for my family that I'm starting to wonder if this could help others in similar situations. What do you think, Hacker News? Is there a broader need for a service like this? I'm looking for your honest and brutal feedback on whether I should pursue this full-time.

Note: due to lack of scaling resources, only messaging works for general public. if you would like to test voice, I am happy to add you to whitelisted phone numbers.
by K0balt | 2025-08-10 22:01:49+00:00
How do you expect to achieve equality of outcomes when some people are born with an IQ of 90, and others with 110? Some with 80, others with 120? And for every 130, there’s a 70 that can barely function in society, and for every 140 there’s a 60 that simply cannot?

People are not born with equal potential in athleticism or intellect. It’s inconvenient, but it’s true.

The only way to achieve equality is to severely attenuate potential to the lowest common occurrence. Pol Pot tried that.
by hermitcrab | 2025-08-10 22:04:19+00:00
The British empire didn't really collapse, as such. Britain just couldn't maintain it after the financial stress of WWII. Also independence was implicit in the WWII support of some of the colonies. So a war weary Britain (grudgingly) granted independence to it's former colonies. It went better in some countries than others. The partition of India was a disaster.