MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by xp84 | 2025-08-11 23:47:22+00:00
Put another way:

It's falling in Western countries because we're commiting cultural suicide for the reasons I cited for Europe (the US is behind Europe, but seems to be on the same road). It's falling in countries like China because they moved like 70% of their population from farms to huge cities in the last 40 years, which causes their society to work much more like... the West. Places like Africa, etc. are falling as they get more access to birth control, work for women, etc.

I guess I should have said this: I theorize that the whole world is following a similar path, but different areas started sooner and are thus much farther along in their decadence. Africa is now where the US was in 1965. Europe today may be what the US looks like in 20 years.

Obviously though Western cultural beliefs are much easier to spread now than they were decades ago, so it could be that the developing world "catches up" much faster now. Maybe in 10 years, Africa will be more like US 2010 than US 1975.
by mikestorrent | 2025-08-11 23:47:26+00:00
There's a great meme with the classic intelligence bell curve setup where the "grug" and the "elite" sides both use a plain text file with their own ideas of how to do things, and only the "midwit" in the middle is using a huge pile of tooling to accomplish roughly the same thing.

I too went through the phase of using Dendron and Obsidian as well as more common todo list tools (and tickets)... and here I am back at Apple Notes, whose sole advantage over a text file is that it has enough capabilities to store a screenshot. That's all I really needed. My notes are like the classic notebook: a lot of the time it's write-only, a lot of the time it only has to be able to be understood for a week or two before the information is too old to matter anyway.

Don't overthink it.
by frankus | 2025-08-11 23:49:05+00:00
I'm subjectively terrible at recognizing faces but scored significantly better than the average test taker on the recognition test (https://www.testmybrain.org/face-blindness/face-blindness.ht...). There must be some selection effects among the test takers.

I scored worse than average on the celebrity faces test, but I chalk that up to be largely oblivious about pop culture.
by thewanderer1983 | 2025-08-11 23:49:24+00:00
The last line of the slide reads "Once you start thinking about these issues, it is hard to think about anything else: demography is destiny."

Raoul Pal primary thesis about macroeconomics is that Demographics is everything. Here is a 54 second video of him highlighting that issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJm_zFbIqPE
by codingdave | 2025-08-11 23:50:50+00:00
Accounts don't get flagged, posts get flagged. You are off to a rocky start here. I'd recommend reading the following two pages, contributing to the discussions on the site for a while, then maybe trying to share something later:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
Ask HN: Why did tech news sites report that Linux dropped Intel 486 support?
by josephcsible | 2025-08-11 23:51:09+00:00
Back in April, while kernel 6.15 was in development, https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250425084216.3913608-1-mingo@kernel.org/ was posted to LKML, which drops support for Intel 486. Today, kernel 6.17 is in development, so both the 6.16 and 6.17 merge windows have come and gone since then, with that patch not having been merged. Given that, why did so many tech news sites, e.g., Ars Technica (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43946562), The Register (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43977283), and ZDNet (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43928570), post articles implying that it had been merged?
by jmb99 | 2025-08-11 23:51:37+00:00
I am personally dealing with PCIe signal integrity issues at work right now, so I can say yes, it’s incredibly finicky once you start going outside of the simple “slot below CPU” normal situation. And I only care about Gen 3 speeds right now.

But in general yes, PCIe vs RAM bandwidth is like comparing apples to watermelons. One’s bigger than the other and they’re both fruits, but they’re not the same thing.

Generally people don’t talk about random-access PCIe latency because it generally doesn’t matter. You’re looking at a best-case 3x latency penalty for PCIe vs RAM, usually more like an order of magnitude or more. PCIe is really designed for maximum throughput, not minimum latency. If you make the same tradeoffs with RAM you can start tipping the scale the other way - but people really care about random access latency in RAM (almost like it’s in the name) so that generally doesn’t happen outside of specific scenarios. 500ns 16000MT/s RAM won’t sell (and would be a massive pain - you’d probably need to 1.5x bus width to achieve that, which means more pins on the CPU, which means larger packages, which means more motherboard real estate taken and more trace length/signal integrity concerns, and you’d need to somehow convince everyone to use your new larger DIMM...).

You can also add more memory channels to effective double/quadruple/sextuple memory bandwidth, but again, package constraints + signal integrity increases costs substantially. My threadripper pro system does ~340GB/s and ~65ns latency (real world) with 8 memory channels - but the die is huge, CPUs are expensive as hell, and motherboards are also expensive as hell. And for the first ~9 months after release the motherboards all struggled heavily with various RAM configurations.
by NooneAtAll3 | 2025-08-11 23:51:46+00:00
I can easily point to deception in two words

1) Hard 2) Words

"Should there be a reform of our justice system" -> "should the law be passed"

"emphasis", "restitution", "compensation" -> too hard to skim, brain is bailing out

---

the only way to provide valid direct democracy is to provide more than enough explanations and rewordings from both sides of the debate *at the point of voting* to remove miscommunication
by karmakaze | 2025-08-11 23:52:28+00:00
Imposed scarcity in most forms are what I see as the problem. It's a problem if copyleft source is used without respecting licensing terms. Unless I was doing something in a larger scale business capacity, I don't have a problem with bits and pieces of what I publish to be used. It's not like I've published any major database or hosted application platform. They tend to be smaller things that solve specific technical problems, like a DB query/ORM library. In most cases I think more individuals would be learning/using small parts of it rather than the whole thing as-is.

The only thing that's really a problem I see is if you're trying to build a business around developing opensource. Even then, it's better to publish non-core pieces of it so that many eyes can use and hopefully improve the security or fix bugs/holes in it.
by hodgehog11 | 2025-08-11 23:53:40+00:00
It's clear you have a better handle on the situation than I do, so it's a shame you weren't the one to talk to them face-to-face.

> llama.cpp has been just fine for me.

Of course, so you really shouldn't use Ollama then.

Ollama isn't a hobby project anymore, they were the only ones at the table with OpenAI many months before the release of GPT-OSS. I honestly don't think they care one bit about the community drama at this point. We don't have to like it, but I guess now they get to shape the narrative. That's their stance, and likely the stance of their industry partners too. I'm just the messenger.
by mindwok | 2025-08-11 23:54:30+00:00
In my experience of trying dozens of todo apps and systems over the years, they become a reflection of some theoretical ideal version of myself and inevitably fail because I am not someone who is inherently organised and disciplined with task completion.

Turns out this was my problem. I just wasn't serious about keeping track of things to do, and doing them. No app in the world could solve that. Once I started to take it seriously, it doesn't really matter what you use to keep track of things. If it's there, you'll do it.
by danterolle | 2025-08-11 23:55:45+00:00
I already have some experience with Python/PySide6, and I was mainly interested in having a working prototype as soon as possible (I’m experimenting with SDL3 and animating squares isn’t exactly thrilling!). Plus, Qt widgets integrate very well with Python, it is so easy to create a section, especially when the documentation is well written, that helps a lot. Also, with PyInstaller, the build process for each platform is fairly straightforward (although for customized icons, there are a few extra steps to take).

There are some downsides of course (like the bundle size, for example), but that's not a problem, the core idea is: double-click on Tilf and start drawing right away.
by ok_dad | 2025-08-11 23:56:05+00:00
Nice assertions, but where’s the content of your post? What’s your opinion here based on those two things? Those are just two statements, but do you believe things are different now than historically or are you arguing it’s the same as it ever was, or something else?

I’m probably not old enough yet to share my opinion on societal change across generations, I was a kid until recently.
by sadsicksacs | 2025-08-11 23:58:37+00:00
The difference being that the moneyed interests behind these things over promise their abilities, misrepresent their limitations, and refuse to monitor usage in anyway that would reduce engagement.

Combine that with people who are largely tech illiterate and you will hear “if ai says it it must be true”, or “ai knows more than you so it must be correct”.

Then when that same magic technology starts telling you you are special, you believe it because the machine is always right.
by stego-tech | 2025-08-11 23:58:51+00:00
For what it's worth, I'm also a single gay man and think similarly at times about the path not taken, and why I chose not to adopt as I had originally planned in my 20s. It sucks, but I'm content with being the cool Uncle to my niblings and providing external support to my siblings as needed. Society needs more than just parents in order for children to thrive, and I believe queer folk are ideally suited to fill in a lot of those roles.

As for my comments on sex specifically, I'll admit I'm speaking through the perspective of someone who A) doesn't have it in order to procreate, and B) has a healthier relationship with it than many of my own peers might. It's not solely an act of procreation or hedonism, but it can fill both roles - though I will only ever know it from the perspective of pleasure alone.

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts like that. Thank you.
by 0x6c6f6c | 2025-08-12 00:00:05+00:00
A hypothetical scenario, but what if the consequences are a severe drop in overall intelligence? There is a conflated sense of "knowing" that comes from these tools.

AI that teaches you? Cool, it is great you learned. But generative AI giving you full essays you can hand in without even learning a topic? It's not difficult to see how this could have negative impacts.
Improving AI Search to Reduce Hallucinations, Bias, and Memory Loss – Feedback?
by zyruh | 2025-08-12 00:01:13+00:00
Like many here, I’m frustrated with AI search tools that make things up without clear citations, agree with everything instead of thinking critically, and forget context in longer projects.

I’ve teamed up with a small dev group to build an AI search tool with real-time fact-checking, credible sources, and persistent context. What features would matter most to you — and would you be interested in being added to the waitlist when it’s ready?
by BizarroLand | 2025-08-12 00:02:18+00:00
I think your understanding of the words "autonomous" and "self-organizing" is somewhat lacking. If there were no humans, those things would not happen.

Further, if it were a byproduct of the presence of humans, then the backpath of invention would be repeated multiple times and spread out across human history, but, for instance, despite the presence of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, magnetite, wood and ink across the planet, the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing were essentially exclusively invented in China and only spread to Europe through trade.

The absence of the four great inventions of china in the Americas heavily implies that technology is not a self-organizing process but rather a consequence of human need and opportunity meeting at cross ends.

For instance, they had the wheel in America, but no plow animals, so the idea was relegated to toys despite wheelbarrows being a potentially useful use for the wheel.
by stego-tech | 2025-08-12 00:02:50+00:00
> There is nothing authentic about porn, what a strange comment. Sure, it hacks the reward system of the brain in the same way that a slot machine does, but this does absolutely nothing to promote families.

Disagree on both. Pornography, like any media, has a multitude of styles and types that can evoke different sets of emotions from the viewer. It's an art form that speaks uniquely to each individual, and I've found it to be a healthy way to explore my own interests as well as to connect with potential partners on shared interests. It's also seen plenty of use by married couples as inspiration or "mental lubricant", promoting intercourse (and raising the chances of procreation) in the process. While it's true that not everybody uses it in such healthy ways, and it's also true that some smut is incredibly toxic (particularly to the uneducated/ill-informed), on the whole it's an inseparable part of the human experience we'd do well to utilize for the art and tool it is instead of repressing it out of some misguided notion of subjective purity.
by KetoManx64 | 2025-08-12 00:03:28+00:00
One of the great strengths of Linux, and one of the things that draws new people in, is the custizability and making the system your own to whatever degree you want. That a "modern" display manager doesn't let you have a screensaver and people try to cover up for it with "you're just trying to use your system wrong. Be normal and use your system like we say is normal" is embarassing.
by debugnik | 2025-08-12 00:04:51+00:00
> Linux runs perfectly fine on most of the Surfaces [...] There's the usual asterisk here or there,

Are we reading the same tables? The last several models are full of question marks and crosses in the support matrix, and many models old and new seemingly require the linux-surface kernel fork for key features like touchscreens and even some touchpads, you can't just install your distro of choice.

Even compared to my disappointing experience running Linux at home, I'd say that's more of an asterisk minefield, except for a few Surface Laptop models.
by ersshh | 2025-08-12 00:05:08+00:00
Congrats on the launch!

Some honest feedback: isn't the magic of a postcard, especially a physical one, linked more to the handwritten aspect of the note, and less the voice? My old firm emphasized hand written thank you's for everything because it showed time and effort into this sort of item but I feel like that get's lost with a digital postcard + audio file link. Especially when considering going back and reading notes versus having to scan a link.

Curious how you're thinking about all this.
Ask HN: Are my wife and I the only schmucks working in corporate America?
by tuckerpo | 2025-08-12 00:05:45+00:00
I’m a software engineer with 8 years in the industry, currently at an R&D lab as a staff software engineer. My wife’s an accountant. Across every job I’ve ever had — and every job she’s had — there’s a pattern that’s so consistent it’s starting to feel like we’re losing our minds:

We are constantly overworked and relatively underpaid… while the majority of our peers are chronically under-worked and wildly overpaid.

At my current job, I’m now starting work at 6 AM and wrapping up around 5:30 or 6 PM, five days a week. It’s meeting after meeting, plus deep technical work that actually moves the needle. And in the middle of this, my boss will randomly ping me for “status updates,” as if I might be kicking back on the beach instead of drowning in deadlines.

Meanwhile, the managerial class — from what I can tell — spends their days in “alignment sessions” and “strategy syncs”, sends a few vague emails, and leverages the work of their teams to look busy. This specifically is something I've noticed my entire SWEng career: middle-management, product managers, <insert_noun> managers will *use you*, the engineer, as a mechanism to appear useful (i.e. PM can just say "Yeah, I've got tuckerpo working on that.", somehow commanding a gigantic salary).

And hell, it's not even exclusive to management: I've got a half dozen buddies working remote for Nvidia, absolutely SWIMMING in RSUs, like, newly minted millionaires, who will come to my apartment in the middle of the work-day to "hang out", for hours, while supposedly on the clock. These are Principal+ engineers.

My wife’s story is even more absurd. She’s in the office from 7 AM to 6 PM, buried in work. Her peers? Many openly admit to doing maybe two hours of actual work a week, sometimes calling her just to chat because they’re “bored.” When she raises her workload with management, she gets gaslit: told it’s a “time management” problem, as if her 11-hour workdays are just the result of her not using the right productivity app. Again, not a one-off deal, consistent trend across roles at several companies for her.

We both feel like we’re starring in The Truman Show. We’re surrounded by people who seem to have cracked some secret corporate code... getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to appear important while producing very little tangible output.

So, a few questions for readers here on HN:

- Is this just us? Are we somehow in a doomer echo chamber of two, convincing each other that we’re the only ones actually doing work?

- Or is this a widespread thing across industries? Do you feel it too?

- Are we total jamokes for actually working?

- And the real question: how do we get in on this game? How do you climb into that gilded $250k+ corporate tier where your main deliverable is a calendar full of recurring Zoom calls and the occasional “per my last email”? Do we get MBAs? Learn to politic and schmooze?
by CyberDildonics | 2025-08-12 00:07:01+00:00
You can do whatever you want, but systemically it is a lot better than doing it manually and anyone experienced with modern C++ will tell you it essentially stops being a problem.

Also you say not preventing memory leaks but your only example is cycles, which is only happens with reference counting, which is only even necessary with multi-threading. Also it implies a data structure that contains a bunch of shared pointers internally that end up referencing each other, which implies a linked list or tree made out of shared pointers, which is essentially a wild mistake huge mistake in the first place. In practice this doesn't really happen.
by stego-tech | 2025-08-12 00:07:02+00:00
Your argument paints with a very wide brush, which is likely the source of the downvotes. That said, I do think you're touching upon a decent theory whether you realize it or not:

What if the real issue isn't merely environmental or economic in nature, but simply the species itself pulling back on births because we feel we have too many people already? Maybe there's enough ongoing crises throughout the world (that we're increasingly aware of thanks to global media) that, internally, our drive is to reduce the population naturally through attrition? It could be to conserve resources, or until the environment supports such rapid growth again, or something else entirely, but it's plausible that the human organism is self-evaluating its current population numbers and deciding that, just like Big Capital is doing via layoffs, we can do the same with less people.

Just something to chew on.
by stephencanon | 2025-08-12 00:07:15+00:00
All 48 peaks on the AMC white mountains 4000-footers¹ list in one continuous trek (no driving/shuttling/etc between trailheads).

¹ this list is outdated vis-a-vis modern mapping and includes at least one peak shorter than 4000 feet (Tecumseh) and omits at least one peak that should qualify per the rules (Guyot), but if the list were updated they would still have completed the direttissima, since they passed over Guyot on the way to the Bonds (dropping Tecumseh could only make the diretissima easier, but I'm not sure it makes much of a difference; it's been a decade or so since I hiked that section of the whites).

As an aside, that day 5 from Wildcat to Cabot is absolutely brutal even if you're fresh, to say nothing of having already covered 180 miles in the previous four days.
by TheHideout | 2025-08-12 00:07:21+00:00
AKA they're doing what every other aerospace company has been doing for decades, multidisciplinary design analysis and optimization [0] with simulation in the loop. If you were to ask them how they're leveraging Design of Experiments I bet it'd be met with "design of what?".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidisciplinary_design_optim...
by djmdjm | 2025-08-12 00:07:41+00:00
> - development time to switch things over

This is a one time cost, and generally the implementations we're switching to are better quality than the classical algorithms they replace. For instance, the implementation of ML-KEM we use in OpenSSH comes from Cryspen's libcrux[1], which is formally-verified and quite fast.

[1] https://github.com/cryspen/libcrux

> - more computation, and thus more energy, because PQC algorithms aren't as efficient as classical ones

ML-KEM is very fast. In OpenSSH it's much faster than classic DH at the same security level and only slightly slower than ECDH/X25519.

> - more bandwidth, because PQC algorithms require larger keys

For key agreement, it's barely noticeable. ML-KEM public keys are slightly over 1Kb. Again this is larger than ECDH but comparable to classic DH.

PQ signatures are larger, e.g. a ML-DSA signature is about 3Kb but again this only happens once or twice per SSH connection and is totally lost in the noise.
by ninetyninenine | 2025-08-12 00:09:48+00:00
Yes because there's not enough people to run the systems that create jobs.

For example an airline without enough people to hire to maintain a plane, then the plane can no longer fly and everyone associated with the plane no longer has a job.

There's a small period of time where it's easier to find a job but eventually that blows past criticality and the jobs start shrinking faster than available people.
by nh2 | 2025-08-12 00:09:53+00:00
Try

sleep 2 && zenity --entry --text="Enter text:"

and switch to a different workspace where you start typing.

The popup of the other program should appear and capture your input.

As far as I know, i3 has no prevention for that.

(In this example I'm spawning a program delayed to demonstrate that, but the same can happen to e.g. the gpg-agent password prompt popping up when an SSH connection that uses it reconnects, a chat window from an IM program, and so on. I think the idea of Wayland window activation / focus stealing prevention is that you can still have those windows pop up, but without them taking your input.)
by pfannkuchen | 2025-08-12 00:11:04+00:00
Disclaimer: my thought process tends to be somewhat autistic, I don’t mean any offense. As a non gay man I am just curious to hear your perspective.

From a strictly biological perspective, I think it could be argued that gay “sex” isn’t actually sex. Like, what makes it sex? Is it sex for pleasure? Or is it something adjacent to sex? That has some commonalities with sex, but isn’t actually sex. Like there is a part of sex missing from the equation. Why do we still call it sex?

I kind of assume it’s the kind of thing hardly anyone thinks about and the notion of thinking about it will just make everyone angry. Sorry!