MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by aanet | 2025-08-21 18:16:13+00:00
Thanks for posting this. This looks promising...

I have about 3-3.5 years worth of Apple Health + Fitness data (via my Apple Watch) encompassing daily walks / workouts / runs / HIIT / weight + BMI / etc. I started collecting this religiously during pandemic.

The exported Fitness data is ~3.5GB

I'm looking to do some longitudinal analysis - for my own purposes first, to see how certain indicators have evolved.

Has anyone done something similar? Perhaps in R, Python? Would love to do some tinkering. Any pointers appreciated!

Thanks!!
by mattnewton | 2025-08-21 18:16:13+00:00
I recently wrote a short anecdote in a similar vein- in my testing, “agentic” retrieval where you simply pass an annotated list of files to an LLM and ask it which ones it wants to look at is probably better than traditional RAG for small datasets (few hundreds of docs).

I found it was both much simpler and more accurate at the cost of marginally more time and tokens, compared to RAG on embedded chunks with a vector store.

Shameless plug- https://www.matthewnewton.com/blog/replacing-rag
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-08-21 18:16:39+00:00
the amount of false positives coming from wrongful AI summaries plus having to pull up the audio to confirm is so much more hassle than not using AI and evaluating on some different metric at the first place.

Seriously not kidding but the more I read these comments, the more I become horrified realizing wtf,The only reason I can think of integrating AI is because you wish to integrate AI. Nothing wrong with that, But unless proven otherwise through some benchmarks there is no way to justify AI.

So its like an experiment, they use AI and if it works/ saves time, great If not, then time to roll it.

But we do need to think about experiments logically and the way I am approaching it, its maybe good considering what customer service is now but man that's such a low standard that as customers we shouldn't really stand it. Call centres need to improve period. AI can't fix it. Its like man, we can do anything to save some $ for the shareholders. Only to then "invest" it proudly into AI so that they can say they have integrated AI and so they can have their valuations increased since VC's / stock market reacts differently to the sticker known as AI

man.. so saying that you use AI, should be a negative indicator instead of a positive one in the market and the whole bubble is gonna come crashing down when people realize it.

It physically hurts me now thinking about it once again. This loop of making humans bad for money, using that money for inferior product, using that inferior product only because you want AI sticker, because shareholders want valuation increase and the company is willing to do this all because they feel/ are rewarded for this by people who will buy anything AI related thinking its gold or maybe that more people will buy it from them at an even higher evaluation because AI sticker and so on..

Almost sounds like a pyramid.
by nis0s | 2025-08-21 18:17:01+00:00
> PhDs are extremely focused; in a strange way saying that you have a PhD in physics sort of makes you less qualified to talk about biology.

It depends, many fields intersect, and there are interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving. The generalist approach is to be T-shaped, but you’re right that it’s important to know your limits. The T might be shallow on some ends, but deeper on others, so you may even have a prong, trident, or comb. Truly, it depends.
by neom | 2025-08-21 18:17:11+00:00
Look at this from today: https://s.h4x.club/WnunYn98 > https://s.h4x.club/NQuXwXmQ > https://s.h4x.club/L1uwdwwo

I'm literally trying to give them tens of thousands of dollars...I dunno why I bothered even engaging with it, I hoped it would end up taking a report or something, but it doesn't, it just wastes my time.
by cycomanic | 2025-08-21 18:17:45+00:00
I have written previously about Sabine. I think it's fascinating to follow her trajectory. Initially I quite liked her show and my impression was that it gave valuable insights and critique of some branches of modern theoretical physics.

At some point I noticed that her shows were starting to significantly diverge from her area of expertise and she was weighing in on much broader topics, something in her early shows she often criticised scientists for ("don't think because someone is an expert in A that he can judge B").

At some point she weighted in on some topics where I'm an expert or at least have significant insights and I realised that she is largely talking without any understanding, often being wrong (although difficult to ascertain for nonexperts). At the same time she started to become more and more ambiguous in her messaging about academia, scientific communities etc., clearly peddling to the "sceptics" (in quotes because they tend to only ever be sceptic towards towards what the call the "establishment"). Initially she would still qualify or weaken her "questions" but later the peddling became more and more obvious.

From what the article writes I'm not the only one who has seen this and it seems to go beyond just peddling.
by dismalaf | 2025-08-21 18:17:59+00:00
The way it's written in English it has to refer to production speed. The context is also about economics.

"Make thing as fast as" = "make" is fast. Versus "Make thing that is as fast as" = now the thing is fast. Or use a word like performant which is less ambiguous and would obviously refer to the chips.

Can rephrase slightly and it's even more obvious: "I make chips faster than you". Or, "I make chips that are faster than yours".
by FireBeyond | 2025-08-21 18:18:03+00:00
I don't recall ever seeing a Wally World where the laptop boxes are just out for the taking, not in a locked cabinet.

That being said, Target stores in Washington do something similar, as the threshold for felony theft is $1,000, they'll pull the trigger on LE / LP involvement if you hit that threshold over multiple events, and bring the receipts for the previous.

I _somewhat_ think that's ripe to be challenged on proving intent in the previous instances, but I also know that serial retail thieves are not likely to be the most sympathetic cause there.
by imakwana | 2025-08-21 18:18:16+00:00
Glad to see a fellow fundamental indexer on HN! As a US based investor, I personally invest in the RAFI US broad market fundamental index (FNDB ETF) which does keep up with the Vanguard US total market over the past 10 years except the bubbly years of 2020/2021 & 2024/2025, even with a higher expense ratio.

Last 10 years comparison (VTI vs FNDB): https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&s...

In my case, after observing the Covid-19 craziness in market, I decided to dig further on value strategies and discovered this gem from Research Affiliates in Journal of Portfolio Management circa 2012, which completely convinced me on the concept of fundamental indexation as a superior alternative to market-cap weighted total market index.

Rebalancing and the value effect (JPM 2012): https://www.researchaffiliates.com/content/dam/ra/publicatio...
Show HN: Run your own private DNS with Pi-hole, dnsdist and Caddy
by allenbenny038 | 2025-08-21 18:18:24+00:00
I built a self-hosted private DNS resolver that supports standard DNS, DNS-over-TLS (DoT), and DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH).

Stack:

- Pi-hole for DNS filtering and blocklists. - dnsdist for load balancing and DoT/DoH. - Caddy for automatic TLS certificates.

Features:

- Works with DNS (53), DoT (853), and DoH (/dns-query on 443). - Single docker-compose setup with persistent storage. - Certificates shared between Caddy and dnsdist for DoT.

Docs and setup guide: https://github.com/allenhack638/self-hostable-private-dns
by tux3 | 2025-08-21 18:18:29+00:00
But I think this comes back to the same question of understaffing/overwork. We have to ask what strategic thinking led to accept long response times in the past. And the answer is unequivocal.

Unless we're claiming there is an intractable qualified labor shortage in call centers, this is always the result of a much simpler explanation: it's much cheaper to understaff call centers

A company that wants to save money by adding more AI is a company that cares about cost cutting. Like most companies.

The strategy that caused the company to understaff have not changed. The result is that we go back to homeostasis, and less jobs are needed to reach the same deliberate target.
by feoren | 2025-08-21 18:18:33+00:00
The category of "food" in economics is vast and absolutely includes things that humans don't need to live. Nobody dies if they can't buy clothing, except in very extreme cases, yet clothing is generally considered "essential". Meanwhile, people do die because they can't get jobs and become homeless, and you need an internet connection to get a job, but internet access is very rarely considered "essential" (although I suspect this is changing).

Besides, the usual definition of "essential" in economics is more about price elasticity, how consistent demand is, how spending on the category changes as income changes, etc. But whatever your parameters for that definition are, if you actually measure these things you'll see things that surprise you, and most of your results are going to be artifacts of how you categorize things. Lots of entertainment shows low price elasticity. Should dried beans and rice be in the same "food" category as foie gras? Is a Disney+ subscription essential to a working single mother of young children? Is heroin essential to a heroin addict? Are opiates essential to someone in chronic pain? Is alcohol essential to an alcoholic? Some would literally die if it were suddenly unavailable!

The category is murky, nobody can agree on what is or is not essential, nor even what its definition is: low price elasticity? necessary for life? necessary for a fulfilling life? able to be temporarily deferred in a crisis? All of these result in different lists.

> You sure have a weird definition of it.

As I feel like I've made quite clear: I do not have any definition of it, and neither do any of you. So let's not make policy decisions and economic predictions based on what is or is not "essential", please. People want GPUs, and you'll find lots of people who are more willing to give up their clothing and restaurant food than their GPUs.
by lacy_tinpot | 2025-08-21 18:18:39+00:00
Now you bring out the straw man as a defense? How about you use that idea for what you're typing as well.

You're not standing up for art and culture. You're not asking for a "little reflection". You are however just being a cynic. And cynicism is toxic. It's bad for health. It's a weird affliction. Worse it's actively harmful to society.

Optimism is better. Tools that create abundance are better. Managing scarcity is dystopian, and ultimately harmful. It's a mindset that needs to be purged. Creating abundance is a far superior mindset.
Show HN: Gonatego – a vibe-coded charity site for my son
by atkinsmatt10 | 2025-08-21 18:19:01+00:00
What this is A small site + shop for a pediatric brain-tumor fundraiser, built via "vibe coding": describing the feel and constraints in natural language and letting AI generate/reshape code, styles, copy, and assets until it matched the intent. Live and usable; no account required to browse or check out.

Backstory In June 2025, our 8-week-old son was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor. We built a working site to coordinate a run/walk team and sell a few items to raise funds.

Try it You can read the story, browse merch, and step through checkout without signups. If you want to test the full path, standard card checkout works.
by crazygringo | 2025-08-21 18:19:11+00:00
Sadly, I've seen a significant number of engineers who simply don't trust what PM's say about what the customers need.

They think PM's don't provide value, so they ignore what PM's say.

It's only when they hear from customers directly that they go... oh, so these needs are real? I thought it was just PM bullshit.

In a healthy workplace this doesn't happen. But sometimes engineers need to talk to customers to trust that the stuff their PM has been telling them is actually true. And then the relationship becomes more collaborative and trusting.
by moomoo11 | 2025-08-21 18:19:20+00:00
What genuine connections are you making waiting in line to get movie tickets and popcorn?

Why not just walk to the theater to your seats and actually get excited for the movie? That ticket seller is doing their job and Gtfo.

I think people are so doom and gloom about this stuff.

Isn’t it better to just like go sit at the seats with your family or friends and enjoy the trailers and talk about the movie before it starts? Idk. That’s actual connection building.

I saw Avengers in Japan and my friends and I were talking to Japanese people about the movie at our seats.. using google translate. Actual connection building.

I don’t think anyone goes to the movies to enjoy waiting in line to ask some college student who doesn’t give a shit for 4 tickets to Dune.
by moomoo11 | 2025-08-21 18:19:28+00:00
What about something like this?

Link to the ticket. Hopefully your team cares enough to write good tickets.

So if the problem is defined well in the ticket, do the code changed actually address it?

For example for a bug fix. It can check the tests and see if the PR is testing the conditions that caused the bug. It can check the code changed to see if it fits the requirements.

I think the goal with AI for creative stuff should be to make things more efficient, not replace necessarily. Whoever code reviews can get up to speed fast. I’ve been on teams where people would code review a section of the code they aren’t familiar with too much.

In this case if it saves them 30 minutes then great!
by IgorPartola | 2025-08-21 18:19:31+00:00
This is a one time gain. Think of it like instead of doing the work yourself you are just pair programming with a junior developer whom you cannot trust to write secure and bug free code. You can probably optimize your interactions such that this “intern” does work while you do other work. But if it’s work blocks what you are doing, it’s just that now you work differently.

I toyed with it and found it to be less frustrating to set up the latest layout for a VueJS project, but having it actually write code was… well I had to manually rewrite large chunks of it after it was done. I am sure it will improve but how long until you can tell it the specs, have it work for a few minutes or hours or days, and come back to an actual finished project? My bet is decades to never.
by khuey | 2025-08-21 18:19:36+00:00
Ironically the "simple" JS program has a bug in it. The documentation for fs.watch is very explicit that the filename in the callback can be null and that you need to check for that. In Rust that fact would be encoded in the type system and the programmer would be forced to handle it, but in JS it's easier to just write bad code.

https://nodejs.org/api/fs.html#filename-argument
by mark_l_watson | 2025-08-21 18:20:28+00:00
I would like to make a broader comment: perhaps as users we should ask what AI features even make sense to use? Starting last year I experimented heavily with Google Gemini interacting with Google WorkPlace apps. The technology was cool, and is even much better now, but I came to the conclusion I don't really need it.

For an iPhone local AI, I wrote an app for myself (although I think there are maybe 10 other people who use it) that chats with Apple's local model (that is fairly good) and switches to a Secure Enclave model on their servers and from the documentation it looks like using the cloud model is private and secure.

Even better now, I signed up for ProtonMail's optional Luma LLM Chat system with integrated private web search tools. It is surprisingly good, and I trust Proton that it is private.

Almost the only thing I frequently use commercial LLMs for now is a few times a week using gemini-cli for coding, and NotebookLM a few times a month, plus occasional Gemini use, but I pay for Luma (powered by Mistral models) so I routinely use it for AI search use cases.

Just because technology is incredibly cool, this doesn't mean that we have to use it if real productivity gains are slim or non-existent.
by ranger_danger | 2025-08-21 18:20:47+00:00
> criminal intent doesn't matter when it comes to negligence and damages

Are you a criminal defense attorney or prosecutor?

> They have to had known

IMO good luck convincing a judge of that... especially "beyond a reasonable doubt" as would be required for criminal negligence. They could argue lots of other scrapers operate just fine without causing problems, and that they tested theirs on other sites without issue.
by latexr | 2025-08-21 18:20:53+00:00
There is also another layer: when SIPS was introduced, there were tons of articles and videos teaching people to turn it off when they shouldn’t. This ranged from uninformed social media “developers” who confidently spewed dangerous bad advice, to outright bad actors trying to compromise your machine. Non-savvy users could still break their own systems by disabling these features easily.

But largely I agree with you. I wish Apple had taken longer to fully develop a robust solution from the ground up instead of the status quo of piling on year after year to a semi-broken system.
by convolvatron | 2025-08-21 18:21:13+00:00
personally I think the customers and I both get some value out of our interactions. but I normally don't sit on customer calls. why? because half of the time I screw up the sales aspect by saying

- the salesperson told you what? no, we don't do anything like that - oh, yeah, this is easy, you don't really need our product, just use X - yeah, we have vague plans to do that, but no real schedule. its gonna be a major lift - once we finish coding and testing that, its gonna be great!
by NamTaf | 2025-08-21 18:21:17+00:00
> They assume they know more than everyone else. Got a guy who has had a problem for 5 years and tried 20 different solutions? The engineers will spend 10 minutes thinking about it, come up with a solution (that won't work, but they insist it will) and dismiss the problem as "trivial", and think the guy is an idiot.

I call this the load-bearing 'just' - as in, 'oh, why don't you just...'

If I catch myself saying or writing that word, I kick myself and think about why I'm doing it. Usually I stop and reapproach my input.
by klabb3 | 2025-08-21 18:21:20+00:00
100%, and I say that as someone who often think average is misleading, but in this case it makes no sense to report median (unless you are working at Google and trying to chase tail usage).

> I'm not sure why they would report on the median

The why is an easier question. They probably picked the lower of the two numbers because it lies in their interest to state they are energy efficient.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-08-21 18:21:27+00:00
"It's just that some greedy companies are writing incredibly shitty crawlers that don't follow any of the enstablished [sic] conventions (respecting robots.txt, using proper UA string, rate limiting, whatever)."

How does "proper UA string" solve this "blowing up websites" problem

The only thing that matters with respect to the "blowing up websites" problem is rate-limiting, i.e., behaviour

"Shitty crawlers" are a nuisance because of their behaviour, i.e., request rate, not because of whatever UA string they send; the behaviour is what is "shitty" not the UA string. The two are not necessarily correlated and any heuristic that naively assumes so is inviting failure

"Spoofed" UA strings have been facilitated and expected since the earliest web browsers

For example,

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alandipert/ncsa-mosaic/mas...

To borrow the parent's phrasing, the "blowing up websites" problem has nothing to do with UA string specifically

It may have something to do with website operator reluctance to set up rate-limiting though; this despite widespread impelementation of "web APIs" that use rate-limiting

NB. I'm not suggesting rate-limiting is a silver bullet. I'm suggesting that without rate-limiting, UA string as a means of addressing the "blowing up websites" problem is inviting failure
by isodev | 2025-08-21 18:21:35+00:00
I think people are unaware of the difference between Apple Intelligence and Siri - they even have the same colour glow now. Also, can you always tell if it's Siri or Apple Intelligence handling a request?

The only privacy screen on macOS and iOS is during oob or after OS updates, and it does not make a distinction. As the OP post highlights, there is no way to avoid said telemetry from being sent or configure it in Settings. So all this is not only shady but quite illegal.
by vdupras | 2025-08-21 18:21:41+00:00
I have trouble understanding how that guideline applies here. The original article shows how it's possible that we're about to see an AI bubble pop, the parent comment show generic american arrogance[1], and I come up with a historical example of such a mix of hubris and arrogance.

If my comment can be characterized as flamebait, it has to be to a lesser degree than the parent, right?

And I'm not even claiming that the situation applies. If you take the strongest plausible interpretation of my comment, it says that if indeed this whole AI bubble is hubris, if indeed there's a huge fallout, then the leaders of this merry adventure, right now, must feel like Napoleon entering Moscow.

But well, anyways, cheers dang, it's a tough job.

[1]: the strongest possible interpretation of "This is how America ends up being ahead of the rest of world with every new technology breakthrough" is arrogance, right?
by xenotux | 2025-08-21 18:22:04+00:00
> What's the point of surveilling the movements of average citizens' money?

The most important is taxation. People pay their babysitters or gardeners under the table, or transact with friends and family without reporting income, and this is a huge amount of lost tax revenue.

Another reason are policy options. For one, there are certain decidedly "non-terrorist" goods and services that the government might not want you to purchase. Heck, in the era of ZIRP, many economists were seriously talking about negative interest rates. You can't do that if a person has the option of taking out cash and hiding it under the mattress.
by jakebasile | 2025-08-21 18:22:31+00:00
Took the plunge 2.5 years ago. I'm more likely to give up gaming than move back to windows at this point. It's so pleasant to be able to use the same reasonable tools I use for development to customize my environment for gaming. For example I use a custom Babashka script to switch off various things like mouse acceleration and night shift when a game starts. I have a repo of Ansible tasks to take a stock Ubuntu install and customize it exactly how I like it. I can take a ZFS snapshot of my entire library and revert instantly if a mod installation goes wrong.
by mattnewton | 2025-08-21 18:22:40+00:00
I think algorithms is a unique limit because it changes how much data or compute you need. For instance, we probably have the algorithms we need to brute force solving more problems today, but they require infeasible compute or data. We can almost certainly train a new 10T parameter mixture of experts that continues to make progress in benchmarks, but it will cost so much to train and be completely undeployable with today’s chips, data, and algorithms.

So I think the truth is likely we are both compute limited and we need better algorithms.