MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mothballed | 2025-08-30 19:34:55+00:00
It cannot be understated how much kids interrupt the ability to focus on tasks. The ability to do nothing but focus on solving on a problem for a week straight felt like 100x the productivity of having to totally context switch at the end of the day to someone needing a juice or going into a screaming tantrum because the color of the cup is wrong and that being non-stop until the next work-day, which totally obliterates all the short-term working memory you had of the task at hand.
by d4mi3n | 2025-08-30 19:34:57+00:00
I thought this was an interesting statement:

> the difficulty of male competition increases with population density at a greater rate than the same of female competition

I queried GPT and checked a few of the sources, it was an interesting diversion: https://chatgpt.com/share/68b3508b-cd98-8000-8021-811acd5908...

TLDR; seems to be that:

- There isn't any direct empirical research that supports the idea of male competition for a partner gets harder with population density. On the contrary, it seems competition for a guy finding a partner gets worse the lower the population density becomes. This would explain stories I've heard about dating in parts of Alaska.

- The sex ratio balance of a population seems to be the highest predictor of the level of competition for a partner. This makes intuitive sense to me: The less common gender will always have more options than the more common gender in an area.

What I don't know and would be interested to hear about: Is there a strong link between population density and gender ratio? In addition to this, I'm sure there's also all sorts of interesting facets you could examine like cohorts by age, sexuality, or partner preferences like height, build, appearance, etc. and how that factors into the perception vs reality of competition for a desirable cohort of partners vs total available partners.
by ajb | 2025-08-30 19:36:03+00:00
I think Kent is in the wrong here, but it really doesn't help that the kernel people from Linus on down are seemingly unable to explain the problem, and instead resort to playground insults. Apart from being unprofessional and making for a hostile work environment, it doesn't really communicate why Kent's actions are problematic, so I've some sympathy for his not believing that they are.
by tux3 | 2025-08-30 19:36:05+00:00
Unfortunately, there's also nothing they can do if Kent says no. Say there's a disagreement on a patch that touches something outside fs/bcachefs, that person can't exactly write their own patches incorporating the feedback. They're not going to fork and maintain their own patches. They'd be stuck between a rock and a hard place, and that gets us back to a deadlock.

The issue is that I have never seen Kent back down a single time. Kent will explain in details why the rules are bullshit and don't apply in this particular case, every single time, without any room for compromise.

If the only problem was when to send patches, that would be one thing. But disagreements over patches aren't just a timing problem that can be routed around.
by bofadeez | 2025-08-30 19:36:26+00:00
Of course it is[1]. Every single method used to screen a candidate is essentially testing for general mental ability. Being admitted to an Ivy League school is basically an IQ test. Interviews are basically IQ tests. Employers want to hire smart people. The fact that his is even a debate is crazy.

[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-10661-006
by vaxman | 2025-08-30 19:36:36+00:00
PS: I've been downvoted on HN for years and years for mentioning this topic. Once, someone even summoned dang. One would think that by now, with this being out in the open (why did "China H2Oh" fail again? lol) but no..threat actors gone act.. Those smart enough to listen to words of someone with nearly five decades in the Business might not lose as much money as those who don't.
by lelandbatey | 2025-08-30 19:36:40+00:00
I think if you look at the larger numbers, there is more of a middle class of game devs than ever before, they just ALSO exist in the shadow of a set of large studios that are larger than ever before. I as a game player feel like I'm getting more "games for me" than ever, even though the games I enjoy fall pretty far out of the mainstream (Farm Together 2, Cat Quest 3, Quest Hunter, Slime Rancher 2, Factorio, Traveler's Rest, Satisfactory, many many more).

All of those are games made by "small to medium sized" studios and sold enough to support their team (maybe not Quest Hunter, as that's older). My point is that there's just SO MANY games that're just mid-size and floating along. Basically no one is getting RICH on game dev, but there's more folks making a living there than ever.
by rasebo | 2025-08-30 19:36:43+00:00
The goal is to predict if, for example, someone is better suited to sweeping the floors vs working with complex systems. Both are useful and respectable jobs but you both want an individual who can actually do it, not someone who just thinks they can, and someone whose capabilities won't be wasted on too simple tasks. These tests are great tools to help you figure out future performances of said individuals, as well as their satisfaction on the job/task. A mismatch will cause impact both for the individual and the company/military unit/etc.
by lossolo | 2025-08-30 19:36:44+00:00
You are right that DNA damage inevitably accumulates and that selection (including miscarriages) weeds out embryos with severe defects but that doesn’t fully explain why a newborn’s biological age is near zero.

What scientists usually mean by "cellular age" isn’t mutation load, it’s the epigenetic and functional state of cells. During gametogenesis and early embryonic development DNA undergoes extensive repair, telomere maintenance and global epigenetic reprogramming that wipes and rewrites methylation patterns. This resets the cellular "clock" even though some mutations are passed on.

So while mutation load drifts slightly each generation, the reason babies start biologically young is this large scale reprogramming. That’s also why researchers are trying to mimic this process in adult cells (Yamanaka factors etc) to reverse aspects of aging.
by jama211 | 2025-08-30 19:37:37+00:00
_sigh_. Really dude? Just because people overestimate them on average doesn’t mean every person does. In fact, you should be well versed enough about the statistics to understand that it will be a spectrum that is highly dependent on both a persons role and how they use it.

For any given new tool, a range of usefulness that depends on many factors will affect people differently as individuals. Just because a carpenter doesn’t save much time because Microsoft excel exists doesn’t mean it’s not a hugely useful tool, and doesn’t mean it doesn’t save a lot of time for accountants, for example.

Instead of trying to tear apart my particular case, why not entertain the possibility that it’s more likely I’m reporting pretty accurately but it’s just I may be higher up that spectrum - with a good combo of having a perfect use case for the tool and also using the tool skilfully?
by medvezhenok | 2025-08-30 19:37:52+00:00
I understand the argument, but I think you're missing the nuance somewhat. There are a series of things that are learnable mental tricks; I have read Moonwalking with Einstein and am well aware about rhyme techniques, memory palace techniques, etc. I memorized ~250 digits of pi in the 6th grade, so I'm also aware of techniques for that. I wouldn't consider either of those a domain of savants.

(sidenote - I would be impressed with the people that could memorize millions of digits of Pi, given that the world record is either 70,000 digits or ~110,000 digits last time I checked (depends on the source), and it takes ~6 hours just to recite that many digits)

I'm talking specifically like things like Hypercalculia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercalculia , which are documented feats that cannot be explained by "tricks". Usually people with savant syndrome also have co-occurring autism and other neurological conditions like synesthesia.

Here is a an ABC profile of one of these savants: https://abcnews.go.com/2020/autistic-savant-daniel-tammet-so...

I don't think you could learn a "trick" to compute 27^7 in a few seconds.
by LightBug1 | 2025-08-30 19:38:00+00:00
Reap what you sow.

Considering the awful lengths I've seen Israeli lawyers, lobbyists and policy makers go to push the Israeli agenda, I'm more than happy to see the pendulum swing the other way, or have certain elements push a more pro-Palestinian agenda. Especially right now.

Don't like it? Create the rules of the game and then cry when they're used against you? Stick it.
by casey2 | 2025-08-30 19:38:11+00:00
It's a process. There is little utility to be gained from specifying mathematics, the title and abstract should explain why a general audience might care, but the meat is often for your advisor. If you think that more people will care then expand it out, use your school standards, even more? sure you can check out some knuth books on mathematical writing or use this grammar, but have you considered programming? It's by far the most inclusive and effective way to tell other people what you actually mean. Maybe popular languages aren't optimal for this try a specification language.

I'm in no way saying you should DO mathematics in a programming language, rather translate it for a wider audience. At a sufficiently high level even little kids could understand your argument before drilling down into specifics, and since the spec never actually has to run it can be as high level as you want limited only by verification time
by throw310822 | 2025-08-30 19:38:22+00:00
I think this answer partially misses the point, because at the core of Aaronson's argument is the idea that they are the victims, that some crazy murderer moved by a hatred as deep as it's nonsensical has forced them to this horrible choice.

And yet it's Israel that is illegally occupying parts of Palestine, not the other way around; it's Israel that has closed Gaza in a total blockade for twenty years and bombarded it any time it liked, claiming many more civilian lives that Oct 7 did; it's Israel that imposes apartheid on Palestinians in the West Bank. It's Israel that constantly builds new illegal settlements in other people's territory. It's Jewish colonists that invaded a land to build an ethno-religious state that excludes the natives.

It's the whole victimhood narrative that justifies the apparently immoral solution to the ethical dilemma: "fuck it, I'm done being a victim, I will not uphold high moral principles when I'm constantly being beaten by others"- except that Israel is a nuclear power that has enjoyed for the past 50 years at least the complete economic, military and diplomatic support of the US and the West, is illegally occupying other people's land, implementing apartheid and building new settlements with the obvious long-term goal of ethnically cleansing the whole land. And has obviously no trouble whatsoever reducing to rubble all of Palestine and the capitals of a few neighbouring countries- at the same time.

Whenever someone says "I'm done being a victim, I will only look after my own interest from now on" remember- that's exactly how Nazism justified itself.
by MrJohz | 2025-08-30 19:38:23+00:00
> Right, and, likewise, you'd put it in its own package in its own right so that it is available to all sort cases you have. Thus, it is really its own program — and thus would have its own tests.

Sure, yeah, I think we're saying the same thing. A unit is a chunk of code that can act as its own program or library - it has an interface that will remain fairly fixed, and an implementation that could change over time. (Or, a unit is the interface that contains this chunk of code - I don't think the difference between these two definitions is so important here.) You could pull it out into its own library, or you can keep it as a module/file/class/function in a larger piece of software, but it is a self-contained unit.

I think the important thing that I was trying to get across earlier, though, is that this unit can contain other units. At the most maximal scale, the entire application is a single unit made up of multiple sub-units. This is why I think a definition of unit/integration test that is based on whether a unit integrates other units doesn't really make much sense, because it doesn't actually change how you test the code. You still want quick, isolated tests, you still want to test the interface and not the internals (although you should be guided by the internals), and you still want to avoid mocking. So distinguishing between unit tests and integration tests in this way isn't particularly useful.
by naasking | 2025-08-30 19:38:48+00:00
> Even ignoring all of that, there's "time to first watt" - essentially if you break ground now, how quickly can you start producing power? Nuclear has years scale, wind and solar has weeks, if not days.

France and China have built nuclear plants in 6 years, and they provide stable power for over 40 years, unlike wind turbines and panels which last maybe 20 for panels (if you're lucky), and a few years for turbine failures, and neither provide stable power.

Renewables have their place but people really need to stop with this panacea nonsense.
by dragonwriter | 2025-08-30 19:38:56+00:00
> It would be even higher except the participation rate is falling.

Prime age (25-54) labor force participation rate is steady and high (steady around the highest peak since the one at the height of the late-90s dotcom boom—which itself was the global maximum since the stat was tracked—for the last couple years.) Overall LFPR (16+) is dropping, but that's just the elderly population share growing.
by loxs | 2025-08-30 19:39:46+00:00
I have a Rust web project written ~5 years ago. Zero updates until a month ago, also zero problems. A month ago I upgrade the docker file to latest rust, zero problems compiling. Could have left it to run like this for 5 more years probably but I decided to experiment...

I issue a `cargo update` to upgrade the leaf dependencies and do automatic minor version updates. Issue cargo check. Some new warnings from `clippy`, but it still compiles and runs without problems. Could have deployed for 5 more years, but I decided to experiment more...

I upgrade some of the libraries to major new versions - I am experienced and I know which ones will upgrade without problem. They do upgrade without problem. Could have deployed for 5 more years but decided to walk the extra mile...

I upgrade the more problematic ones, especially actix_web, the web framework, which had a massive rewrite and a huge new release with almost completely different API surface... It's a bit difficult to understand the changes, especially some parts of the old code written for the old version (which I no longer remember), but in an hour I'm done. Afterwards `cargo outdated` does not report any outdated libraries. I deploy for the next 5 years. Zero problems since then.

Well, it's not decades yet, but I can imagine similar effort to maintain it over the next decade.
by d4mi3n | 2025-08-30 19:39:51+00:00
Neat! I'm not surprised at the findings here. BlueSky (for the average user) is pretty much a drop in replacement for Twitter.

Despite the smaller total numbers in Mastadon, it's great to see that the ecosystem seems to be successfully avoiding centralization like we've seen in the AT-Proto ecosystem.

I suspect that the cost of running AT proto servers/relays is prohibitive for smaller players compared to a Mastadon server selectively syndicating with a few peers, but I say this with only a vague understanding of the internals of both of these ecosystems.
by nobodywillobsrv | 2025-08-30 19:39:52+00:00
Am I right that there is no CLI yet? I feel like I'm crazy sometimes that many people see to be only using these through IDE when I feel like the CLI (claude, codex, gemini) are superior for most "agentic" tasks.

Is there something I am missing perhaps as to how one uses this stuff in VSCode for example? I have tried it a bit and it's fine but still prefer CLI for the agent and then IDE for me.
by b112 | 2025-08-30 19:40:30+00:00
I doubt this will ever be.

Even if the LLM is capable of it, websites will find some method to detect an LLM, and up the pricing. Or mess with its decision tree.

Come to think of it, with all the stuff on the cusp, there's going to be an LLM API. After all, it's beyond dumb to spent time making websites for humans to view, then making an LLM spend power, time, and so on in decoding that back to a simple DB lookup.

I'm astonished there isn't an 'rss + json' API anyone can use, without all the crap. Hell, BBS text interfaces from the 70s/80s, or SMS menu systems from early phone era are far superior to a webpage for an LLM.

Just data, and choice.

And why even serve an ad to an LLM. The only ad to serve to an LLM, is one to try to trick it, mess with it. Ads are bad enough, but to be of use when an LLM hits a site, you need to make it far more malign. Trick the LLM into thinking the ad is what it is looking for.

EG, search for a flight, the ad tricks the LLM into thinking it got the best deal.

Otherwise of what use is an ad? The LLM is just going to ignore ads, and perform a simple task.

If all websites had RSS, and all transactional websites had a standard API, we'd already be able to use existing models to do things. It'd just be dealing with raw data.

edit: actually, hilarious. Why not? AI is super simple to trick, at least at this stage. An ad company specifically tailoring AI would be awesome. You could divert them to your website, trick them into picking your deal, have them report to their owner that your company was the best, and more.

Super simple to do, too. Hmm.
by sokoloff | 2025-08-30 19:41:13+00:00
I'm talking about the financial realities of starting a company from scratch, which impacts how many companies get started in what form and might be a significant part of the explanation why you aren't seeing as many worker-owned companies as you express a preference for.

Brainstorming and figuring a way to address that might be a way to help you mold/nudge the world towards your preference.
by bofadeez | 2025-08-30 19:41:50+00:00
The US Army requires a minimum AFQT percentile of 31 for enlistment which, based on standard IQ norms (mean = 100, SD = 15), maps to roughly an IQ of 85 (one standard deviation below mean).

I.e. if you have an IQ below 85 you can't even sweep up the floor for the army
by wtallis | 2025-08-30 19:42:04+00:00
BTRFS does have stable, usable multi-disk support. The RAID 0, 1, and 10 modes are fine. I've been using BTRFS RAID1 for over a decade and across numerous disk failures. It's by far the best solution for building a durable array on my home server stuffed full of a random assortment of disks—ZFS will never have the flexibility to be useful with mismatched capacities like this. It's only the parity RAID modes that BTRFS lacks, and that's a real disadvantage but is hardly the whole story.
by gregorygoc | 2025-08-30 19:43:03+00:00
Any efficiency gains which come from cleaner organization structure are gone because of the lossy translation mechanism between a PM and Eng team. You can argue that good PMs translate requirements perfectly, but this is a rare skill and I’m just saying I’ve never seen it from someone in this role. Perceived enjoyment of one’s role is a separate topic, but not completely orthogonal. If someone just wants to code and they force them to be a PM then their personal productivity might drop. This is why I asserted in the beginning I’m talking about feature teams, where a role fit I described is more likely.

As engineering becomes less expensive with generative models I can imagine efficiency tilts even further in favor of engineers doing more PM-like work.
by aDyslecticCrow | 2025-08-30 19:43:32+00:00
Over a population, outside factors affecting the score is smoothed out to create a normal distribution. Over one individual, most factors remain the same.

Over two different people, so many factors affect the score that making the claim "one person is more intelligent than the other" is statistically unsound without a massive score difference. This is even ignoring that a full IQ test involves FAR more than the usual online logic puzzles people tend to know, yet still have these flaws.

so yes; > colloquial use and understanding of IQ is flawed.
by dwaltrip | 2025-08-30 19:43:48+00:00
Don’t confuse security in oneself and confidence with “commanding”. They are not the same thing at all.

Women and men both want the former.

> women weaponizing sex against men by initially advertising their assets, then withholding them unless they can control their men

You need to spend more time with women who are emotionally mature. What you describe is childish behavior.

Keep in mind emotionally mature people will have less tolerance for bullshit or anti-social behavior.
by kartoffelsaft | 2025-08-30 19:44:32+00:00
If there are rooms in your house someone else could lock you out of, do you own the house or do they?

If someone else could use your car without your permission, do you own the car or do they?

If someone could grow their own plants in you back yard, do you own the garden or do they?

If someone else could choose what programs run on your computer, do you own the computer or do they?

Saying "basic human right" instead of just "basic right" may be odd, but definitionally, owning a thing means having the right to say how it is used. Either you own it and have that right, or you don't own it and don't have that right. That's what owning means.
by dbmikus | 2025-08-30 19:44:49+00:00
I'm going to be pedantic and note that iOS and Android both have the capability security model for their apps.

And totally agree that instead of reinventing the wheel here, we should just lift from how operating systems work, for two reasons:

1. there's a bunch of work and proven systems there already

2. it uses tools that exist in training data, instead of net new tools
by rcxdude | 2025-08-30 19:44:49+00:00
The rough tax avoidance strategy here is to take out loans with your assets as collateral, and keep rolling those loans forward until you die, at which point they can be paid off and then onto your heirs with relatively little tax. This doesn't give you access to all of your wealth as cash (since the collateral is risky so you need to put up some amount more than you're borrowing), but what you do get you get without paying anywhere near as much tax, the interest on such loans is very low, and you still keep control of whatever asset you're borrowing against and whatever gains/income it might produce.
by avazhi | 2025-08-30 19:45:33+00:00
"You achieved a total score of 50! This means that you are 70% higher than 13351 participants who have completed the test. The percentile score is calculated on-the-fly. This means that your percentile rank may change as more people complete the test."

Not sure this was worth 65 minutes of my time. Would have liked to see whether whatever this version of the ICAR60 is is pegged to a standardized (IQ) test score. I'm assuming the 13,000 people who have also taken this are not representative of the wider pop.
by matheusmoreira | 2025-08-30 19:46:20+00:00
> I think it is the audience feedback and knowing that we are playing beloved songs that I enjoyed.

That seems right... Out of every person in the wedding, this person remembered me because I sat down to enjoy one of the older tracks they were playing while everyone else was busy.

Maybe it's just their tastes. He told me they can play anything but they just really liked playing instrumental music a lot more than big radio hits. They really liked playing jazz which I also enjoy.