MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by keyringlight | 2025-08-24 15:04:48+00:00
I think there's a lot of weirdness if you try to answer "what is the PC gaming platform?" and how Valve or anyone else fits into it, and because it's PC a lot of answers can be true simultaneously, and many different users want/expect different things.

Is it processor architecture? Is it the OS? Is it the store and whatever facilities they provide? Is it the mode of physical interaction with the device (desk, couch+TV, etc)? Is it being able to assemble any random collection of hardware and expecting it to work? Does that discount set builds? Is it mandatory that the user is free to screw around with the software any way they please or can you lock stuff down?

At least on the commerce side, it's been the case since steam was opened up to third parties that they were the gatekeeper for success unless you were already huge (and now very few companies want to go it alone). Going back to Introversion's Darwinia they were just scraping by until they got on steam, developers have long been complaining that the varied methods Valve has used to get on the store (manual review, greenlight, etc) showed the vast majority of gamers only purchase through it or that you'll get a large wave of new business when you release on it. Now it seems like a 'tragedy of the commons' situation unless you've got your own marketing or it's a hobby project.

It seems like you've now got to do mental gymnastics to say Valve doesn't own the PC gaming platform
by matthewfcarlson | 2025-08-24 15:05:12+00:00
As some with a gaming PC, a few VR headsets, and a steam deck, I find myself reaching for the steam deck most often. It’s a good enough experience and easy to just turn on and play. The friction to getting the VR headset out is surprisingly high so it really only happens when I’m playing with a friend, which only three friends have headsets. So it just ends up not happening.
by ailbet | 2025-08-24 15:05:15+00:00
This is a common question from people interviewing at Valve. I was suspect how accurate it was before I joined given how long it's been since it was updated. However, it still 100% represents the culture within Valve. Desks are still on wheels, structure is still completely flat, etc...

It's been on my list of "eventual todos" to make a trivial update to help reinforce that it's still relevant.
by jethkl | 2025-08-24 15:05:33+00:00
Wasserstein distance (Earth Mover’s Distance) measures how far apart two distributions are — the ‘work’ needed to reshape one pile of dirt into another. The concept extends to multiple distributions via a linear program, which under mild conditions can be solved with a linear-time greedy algorithm [1]. It’s an active research area with applications in clustering, computing Wasserstein barycenters (averaging distributions), and large-scale machine learning.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mover's_distance#More_th...
by ffsm8 | 2025-08-24 15:05:57+00:00
Yeah, your colleagues opinion is kinda inline with how it was usually pitched - at least around 2010 when I learned about it to a degree that it wasn't just a fuzzy concept to me.

One of the goals I remember was to think from the outside to the inside: you first create a test which asserts your most outter API as a unit test with inputs as you want to use it.

Now you keep adding functionality until it passes, creating new tests whenever you make a new boundary/function/API

This supposedly makes it easier to design it well, because you don't have to keep everything in scope and instead only tackle one layer at a time - like an onion from the outside to the core. And you always design the APIs as they make sense, not as is technically easiest because you can just define it however you want, and then think about implementing it.

E.g. https://www.infoq.com/presentations/tdd-ten-years-later/
by dns_snek | 2025-08-24 15:06:33+00:00
So this has nothing to do with "getting things wrong" and everything to do with why they get things wrong.

They get simple, rephrased, but conceptually equivalent questions really wrong and they do this:

1. while the context already contains their previous answer to the original question (which was correct),

2. while the context contains all background information on the topic that would allow an intelligent being to arrive at the correct answer through simple logical deduction,

3. without recognizing or acknowledging that they provided a conflicting answer (without being prompted),

4. while denying that the two answers are contradictory if that fact is pointed out to them,

5. while fabricating a list of bogus reason justifying a different answer if pressed for an explanation.

That's one common failure mode, the other common failure mode is where they uncritically accept our own erroneous corrections even when the correction contain obviously flawed reasoning.

This behavior demonstrates a fundamental lack of conceptual understanding of the world and points at rote memorization in the general case. Maybe LLMs develop a more conceptual understanding of a certain topic when they've been benchmaxxed on that topic? I don't know, I'm not necessarily arguing against that, not today anyway.

But these errors are a daily occurrence in the general case when it comes to any topic they haven't been benchmaxxed for - they certainly don't have a conceptual understanding of cooking, baking, plumbing, heating, electrical circuits, etc.
by westurner | 2025-08-24 15:06:43+00:00
Also for the bees:

"Scientists found the missing nutrients bees need – Colonies grew 15-fold" (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45000823 :

> "Engineered yeast provides rare but essential pollen sterols for honeybees" (2025) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09431-y
by sunscream89 | 2025-08-24 15:07:09+00:00
> I find that demographic differences between voters and parliamentarians or lack of political knowledge cannot fully account for representation gaps. Finally, I show that right-wing populists fill the cultural representation gap.

I read from this right wing think tank piece (as a liberty minded conservationist hardliner, not a lefty libtard contrarian) a different interpretation.

Individuals are more conservative about the rights of others when they are peaceful and prosperous themselves, protecting their own interests. The “liberal lean” of chosen leaders are those who know policy represents all interests, not only those most in service to individual predisposition.

It sounds like a naturally equalizing balancing act.

This guy really hit the gas when he singles out only right wingers truly representing locals first popularism, everywhere among everyone!
by krisroadruck | 2025-08-24 15:07:16+00:00
You simply cannot cram enough cooling and power into a laptop to have it equal a desktop high end desktop CPU of the same generation. There is physically not enough room. Just about the only way to even approach that would be to have liquid cooling loop ports out the back that you had to plug into an under-desk cooling loop and I don't think anyone is doing that because at that point just get a frickin desktop computer + all the other conveniences that come with it (discrete peripherals, multiple monitors, et cetera). I honestly do not understand why so many devs seem to insist on doing work on a laptop. My best guess is this is mostly the apple crowd because apple "desktops" are for the most part - just the same hardware in a larger box instead of being actually a different class of machine. A little better on the thermals, but not the drastic jump you see between laptops and desktops from AMD and Intel.
by jader201 | 2025-08-24 15:07:18+00:00
I’ve already received 95% of the value from the game library I have on Steam.

Worst case, if I lose access to all of them, whether by choice or by force (they go under), there are other options of obtaining (most of) the same games, and that’s even if I’m interested in playing them again.

Most of the games I really care about, I probably already have on other platforms anyway, in addition to or instead of Steam.
by Aurornis | 2025-08-24 15:07:22+00:00
Every well funded startup I’ve worked for went through a period where employees could get nearly anything they asked for: New computers, more monitors, special chairs, standing desks, SaaS software, DoorDash when working late. If engineers said they needed it, they got it.

Then some period of time later they start looking at spending in detail and can’t believe how much is being spent by the 25% or so who abuse the possibly. Then the controls come.

> There is abuse. But that abuse is really capped out at a few thousand in laptops, monitors and workstations, even with high-end specs,

You would think, but in the age of $6,000 fully specced MacBook Pros, $2,000 monitors, $3,000 standing desks, $1500 iPads with $100 Apple pencils and $300 keyboard cases, $1,000 chairs, SaaS licenses that add up, and (if allowed) food delivery services for “special circumstances” that turns into a regular occurrence it was common to see individuals incurring expenses in the tens of thousands range. It’s hard to believe if you’re a person who moderates their own expenditures.

Some people see a company policy as something meant to be exploited until a hidden limit is reached.

There also starts to be some soft fraud at scales higher than you’d imagine: When someone could get a new laptop without questions, old ones started “getting stolen” at a much higher rate. When we offered food delivery for staying late, a lot of people started staying just late enough for the food delivery to arrive while scrolling on their phones and then walking out the door with their meal.
by CyberDildonics | 2025-08-24 15:08:15+00:00
Culture is essentially always a nonsense purity test to rationalize things that have no other arguments. No one needs to respect whatever idea of culture you have in your head and based on your comments I hope they don't.

People need to obey laws, not whatever morals you want to pick and choose for others to accept.

Also when someone says you are repeating white nationalist talking points verbatim, your response should be 'I didn't realize that', not 'sign me up'.
by pessimizer | 2025-08-24 15:08:43+00:00
Precisely because of the name, it shouldn't have been hard to notice that the Chicago "El" is elevated. The "Loop" is entirely above ground and gives downtown Chicago its primary identity.

edit: we do desperately need a circle line, or failing that, dedicated bus lanes imitating one. Instead we get less and less service every year since the year they decimated "owl" (night) service.
by kvemkon | 2025-08-24 15:08:57+00:00
> Vendors downplay the idiosyncrasies of specific SSD models by marketing their devices using four “headline” throughput metrics: sequential read, sequential write, random read, and random write.

For SOHO yes, where no serious database usage is expected. But server/datacenter SSDs are categorized: read-intensive, write-intensive and mixed-usage.
by likpok | 2025-08-24 15:09:47+00:00
The soft cap thing seems like exactly this kind of penny-foolish behavior though. I’ve seen people spend hours trying to optimize their travel to hit the cap — or dealing with flight changes, etc that come from the “expense the flight later” model.

All this at my company would be a call or chat to the travel agent (which, sure, kind of a pain, but they also paid for dedicated agents so wait time was generally good).
by Rochus | 2025-08-24 15:09:56+00:00
Instead the police no longer respond when citizens are physically robbed (e.g. https://www.blick.ch/schweiz/basel/erst-ab-einem-warenwert-v... or https://www.hbb-ev.de/meldungen/ladendiebstahl-im-einzelhand...). The government cares more for copyright trolls.
by ranger_danger | 2025-08-24 15:10:04+00:00
I think if that were true, there would have at least been an attempt at a court case at the very least. But AFAIK every case they have been involved in, they've won. I am not defending their content, merely a right to exist, especially when you're not breaking any applicable laws.

If you want to talk about content that objectively breaks laws... 8chan hosts monkey torture videos.
by scarface_74 | 2025-08-24 15:10:56+00:00
Of course, I overlooked the scenario that the parent mentioned about paying for themselves.

I frequently took my wife with me on work trips and we would stay a few extra days. I would buy her ticket separately, have separate receipts when we ate out so I could have mine reimbursed and put the extra days as personal in Concur.

Our favorite chain hotel is Embassy Suites where you got a good free breakfast and an afternoon happy hour with free alcoholic drinks so she would benefit without it costing the company.

Funny enough, since expenses reimbursement approval was done by a department outside of the US, they consistently disallowed my hotel expenses because it showed two people in the room even though it didn’t cost more and was within policy. I just had to tell the hotel only to put 1 guest.

I know the hotel check in thought I was having an affair with someone even though my wife was standing right there with me.
by jfengel | 2025-08-24 15:11:06+00:00
“We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar,” Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!”

It's just so self fulfilling. Someone is being very stupid. Maybe it's me. Maybe it's him. Possibly it's both of us.

But there is no way out of the conclusion that the country is (at least) a near majority of very stupid people. Not merely mistaken or holding different values, but genuinely incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy.

Of course if I'm the stupid one, maybe my reasoning there is also wrong. I know I conflated individuals and groups in a less-than-rigorous fashion.

But either way I feel unable to find a solution to this conundrum. Certainly I can't if I'm stupid. And if a majority of voters are stupid, then it undercuts the principle that enables us to live in the same region together. I am rapidly running out of ideas to continue that.
by gruez | 2025-08-24 15:11:21+00:00
>1) Em-dashes

>3) Comma-separated list that's exactly 3 items long

Proper typography and hamburger paragraphs are canceled now because of AI? So much for what I learned high school english class.

>2) "It's not X, it's Y" sentence structure

This is a pretty weak point because it's n=1 (you can check OP's comment history and it's not repeated there), and that phrase is far more common in regular prose than some of the more egregious ones (eg. "delve").
by thisisit | 2025-08-24 15:11:41+00:00
The government has made a lot of noise about injunctions and courts interfering with executive power and SCOTUS is agreeing with them. So, expect that legal action will be taken and then these things might happen.

Government will argue that executive power can decide if the contracts are "suggestions" or not.

If that doesn't work, try to reduce the scope of the injunction such that it applies to specific set of contracts. And then stonewall those contracts.

If the case is still lost, government will quickly appeal and file for temporary relief. If temporary relief is not coming in the short term, chose to ignore the court because executive power is above everything else.

Repeat this till it gets to SCOTUS and get a specific carve out and go to step 1 - stonewall these contracts.

I'd say given the on again, off again tariffs, courts acting like this and government retroactive actions like against Intel (CHIPS grant money was withheld to take 10% stake) it can be safely said it is no longer place for many long-term investment.
by capitainenemo | 2025-08-24 15:12:36+00:00
Well, I also use it for other old terminal apps (BBS games), and the remapping of characters was fun too, using unicode to make certain features more distinguishable. (Only downside is it messes up the crystal ball, if you remapped that char, since it wants the standard values, but you can just use memorised values or turn it off temporarily)

The unfortunate thing is the "lag" is a bit annoying with some apps, so I'll probably still use the python2 one for now.
by ploxiln | 2025-08-24 15:13:03+00:00
This math is missing a step: $200k went to your publisher who already gave you the $200k, so really you got about $394k total (before your taxes).

And it's worth remembering that your publisher got $194k ... I'm not sure if this publishing arrangement makes sense for the publisher ($200k risk for not much more reward?) or for you (30% of your net income from the game, after valve's 30%) (I'm not in the industry so honestly I just don't know)
by jijijijij | 2025-08-24 15:13:12+00:00
> But if you applied it consistently, you'd have to admit that Germany, the US, and many other Western countries also engage in full-blown hybrid warfare, against their own populations.

Just because two things superficially share some traits doesn't mean they are equivalent, at all. "Full-blown warfare against their own populations" is a bit dramatic, don't you think? As a German, I can tell you, while the government doesn't much act to my benefit, I am not exactly at war with them either. Intelligence, military and police don't have the competence or power, either. Most importantly, like in many proper democracies, there is a plurality of opinions and oversight in parliament, which prevents this sort of thing at scale. "Full-blown warfare" would imply a grand conspiracy, that's simply not factual.

Apart from the UK, Hungary and Poland, I think that's true for most western countries. The US is a bit exceptional, of course, since... well, I don't know what the fuck they are smoking there.
by the_mitsuhiko | 2025-08-24 15:13:52+00:00
> Interesting! This didn't seem to be the case in the OP's examples - for instance using a list_files tool and then checking if the json result included README vs bash [ -f README ]

There is no training on a tool with that name. But it likely also doesn't need training because the parameter is just a path and that's a pretty basic tool.

On the other hand to know how to execute a bash command, you need to know bash. Bash is a known tool to the Claude models [1] and so is text editing [2]. You're supposed to reference those in the tool listing but at least from my testing, the moment you call a tool "bash", Claude makes plenty of assumptions about what the point of this thing is.

[1]: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/agents-and-tools/tool-use...

[2]: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/agents-and-tools/tool-use...
by dragonwriter | 2025-08-24 15:14:53+00:00
Yeah, but the difference is, the precedential weight of Federal Circuit decisions on copyright is about the same as the precedential weight of HN posts on copyright.

Had the case not been in the Federal Circuit because it used to have patent issues, and had the xase instead stayed in the Ninth Circuit and had that Circuit ruled that and the Supreme Court left that part of the decision untouched, there would be binding precedent, if only in the Ninth Circuit. But on issues other than its special ones (patents, in this case) the Federal Circuit is to apply precedent from the Circuit the case would otherwise be in, but does not create binding precedent.

So, other than between Oracle and Google themselves, the parties to the original case, as a matter of res judicata, the Federal Circuit decision isn't controlling on any future court the way a Supreme Court decision or even a decision of one of the geographic circuits would be.
by reikonomusha | 2025-08-24 15:15:10+00:00
You asked where Lisp is useful, and I supplied a list of companies that find (or, in some cases of recent history, found) Lisp useful. Your Google example is pertinent, because Google had the resources to wholesale eliminate its use of Lisp any time within the last 15 years, but for some reason worth pondering, hasn't. Instead, they continue to develop the product in Lisp, and continue to contribute to the Common Lisp open-source ecosystem.

But that aside, if you want a fresh look at what people are thinking about with Lisp, maybe check out the talks that were given this year at the 2025 European Lisp Symposium [1,2]. Or perhaps look at how someone shipped a platformer game on Steam with Common Lisp [3,4], and is in the finishing lap porting it to the Nintendo Switch [5].

I realize, though, that this kind of "debate" (?) is never satisfying to the instigator. If it does satisfy though, I will agree with you that—despite all of the claims of alleged productivity and power the language offers—Common Lisp remains far less popular than Python, which I assume is your only real point here.

[1] A presentation about how adding a static type system to Common Lisp à la Haskell helps write mission critical programs in defense and quantum computing: https://youtu.be/of92m4XNgrM

[2] A talk from employees of Keepit, a company that supplies a SaaS backup service, discussed how they train people on Common Lisp when employing them: https://youtu.be/UCxy1tvsjMs?t=66m51s

[3] Discusses technical details of how Lisp was used to implement a game that was actually shipped: https://reader.tymoon.eu/article/413

[4] The actual game that you can buy: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1261430/Kandria/ (This is not intended to be an advertisement and I'm unaffiliated. It's just a demonstration of a recently "shipped" product written in Common Lisp where you might not expect it.)

[5] Technical discussion of the Nintendo Switch port: https://youtu.be/kiMmo0yWGKI?t=113m20s
by metalman | 2025-08-24 15:15:27+00:00
there is a new to me datum in that trees along residential streets are experiencing less water stress than trees in parks, due to city water leakage that was demonstrated by doing core samples on the trees to show how lead isotopes differed in the two populations of trees. it highlights a growing concern with water in general and how carefull water monitering and management is becoming, and how what was primarily interesting to civil engineering types, has a wider audience
by mysteria | 2025-08-24 15:15:48+00:00
There are big tech companies which are slowly moving their staff (for web/desktop dev to asic designers to HPC to finance and HR) to VDI, with the only exception being people who need a local GPU. They issue a lightweight laptop with long battery life as a dumb terminal.

The desktop latency has gotten way better over the years and the VMs have enough network bandwidth to do builds on a shared network drive. I've also found it easier to request hardware upgrades for VDIs if I need more vCPUs or memory, and some places let you dispatch jobs to more powerful hosts without loading up your machine.
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2025-08-24 15:16:12+00:00
The way people choose to use feedback on HN never fails to suprise me - we've got a generally intelligent user base here, but the most common type of feedback voting isn't because something is wrong but rather a childish "I don't like it - I want to suppress this comment".

In this case it's something different - this was an honest question, and received two useful replies, so why downvote?! The mental model of people using Kafka is useful to know - in this case the published data being more log-like than stream-like since it's retained per a TTL policy, with each "subscriber" having their own controllable read index.