MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-08-09 14:06:40+00:00
Here's another perspective.

Let's say Harvard's admission were to become largely based on social status rather than merit. You could say "so be it", but let it be known that that is what Harvard is. Being one thing while advertising another is lying and the greatest offense.

A positive side effect is that perhaps we won't fetishize Harvard as much and keep insisting that one must get into Harvard. You don't. Harvard's brand depends on you thinking you do, of course.

The current model of academia in the US and elsewhere is wretched. Obscene tuition is one thing. The failure to educate is another. Universities got out of the education business a while ago. Universities are focused on jobs, that's the advertising pitch, which is not the historical and proper mission of the university. So you end up with institutions that are bad at both.

So if these "elite" schools lead to a disenchantment with merit, I see a silver lining. It could provide the needed impetus and motivation to distribute education more widely in smaller colleges with a greater clarity and focus on their proper mission (e.g., Thomas Aquinas College [0]) while creating a robust culture of trade schools. The majority of people do not need a college education! And frankly, it's not what they're looking for.

Germany does something like this. Fewer people go to university there, and they have a well-developed system of trade schools.

Furthermore, you could offer programs that allow students at colleges to take classes in these trade schools.

Let's stop trying to sustain a broken model. The time is ripe for educational reform.

[0] https://www.thomasaquinas.edu/
by ryandrake | 2025-08-09 14:07:03+00:00
Awesome. I remember much earlier in my career I was working on a 3D turn-by-turn navigation software, and one of my tasks was to draw the sky in the background. The more senior guy on the team said, just draw a blue rectangle during the day and a dark gray one at night and call it job done. Of course, I had to do it the hard way, so I looked up the relevant literature on sky rendering based on the environment, latitude, longitude, time of day and so on, which at the time was Preetham[1] ("A Practical Analytic Model for Daylight"), and built a fully realistic sky model for the software. I even added prominent stars based on a hard-coded ephemeris table. It was quite fast, too.

Well, the higher ups of course hated it, they were confused as to why the horizon would get hazy, yellowish, and so on. "Our competitors' skies are blue!" They didn't like "Use your eyes and look outside" as an answer.

Eventually, I was told to scrap it and just draw a blue rectangle :(

All that to say, nice job on the site!

1: https://courses.cs.duke.edu/cps124/fall01/resources/p91-pree...
by zamadatix | 2025-08-09 14:07:15+00:00
> If every billionaire gave away every cent of their wealth it would fund the federal government for 1 year. do a web search!!

I think you and I see "less than 1,000 people have enough wealth to run the common good for a very rich country of 340,000,000 people for a full year" as having vastly different meaning in terms of what's reasonable. Why should the yearly common good spending of 340,000,000 people inherently be a lot less than the amount the top 1000 are worth?
by SalmoShalazar | 2025-08-09 14:07:17+00:00
One could flip your post to say “AGI is coming” and be claiming the opposite, and it would be equally lacking insight. This is not “critical” to remember.

There are interesting and well thought out arguments for why the AGI is not coming with the current state of technology, dismissing those arguments as propaganda/clickbait is not warranted. Yannic is also an AI professional and expert, not one to be offhandedly dismissed because you don’t like the messaging.
by jorams | 2025-08-09 14:07:27+00:00
The "on average" is doing an awful lot of work. Some cells are never replaced, some organs are replaced every few years or even partially over decades, some organs are replaced every few months (one of which is the skin).

Tattoos however, IIUC, sort of "float" between cells, and as those cells are replaced one-by-one the ink is kept in place by the surrounding cells that are still there.
by onli | 2025-08-09 14:07:28+00:00
I agree. This will actually cause me problems.

I have a huge selection of mostly handwritten JSON data that powers a benchmark collection. Sometimes, mistakes happen and keys get duplicated. That is not a big problem, if e.g. a graphics card is two times in an array nothing bad can happen. Even if the actual value is wrong because of such a duplication (like a benchmark update gone wrong) that will usually not be a problem, cause there is a lot of other data that will place the component at around the correct position regardless.

Now, what will happen is that a ruby update forces me to update the gems, and then the new JSON gem will crash with my data, and then I will have to take time I don't have to fix something that does not need fixing for a project that does not really generate income. Awesome.

The right solution here is to specify the unspecified behaviour about the duplicate keys as it is currently for this parser. Then applications randomly running into new bugs is prevented. And then print a warning, but that's done now already. And then maybe offer an opt-in to disallow input data that has duplicated keys. Not to waste the developers time by making the breakage default.

And that's why dependencies breaking are unacceptable (if the old behaviour is not completely broken), and relying on invisible deprecation messages is not okay. The sqlite gem did the same thing, completely broke their old API of how parameters could be supplied and did not revert the change even when the chaos that caused was reported, and then took it as a personal insult when I opened a discussion about how that's still a problem.

Nice is also the YAML and psych gem, that just this month suddenly could not write a YAML file with YAML::Store.new anymore. I had to workaround that with `file.write(Psych.dump(theyamlhash))`, https://gitlab.com/onli/sustaphones/-/commit/fecae4bb2ee36c8... is the commit. If I got that right this is about `permitted_classes: [Date]` not being given and not being givable to psych in YAML::Store. Made me pause.

Is the ruby community breaking? I'm not aware of gems producing developer hostile situations like that before.
by protimewaster | 2025-08-09 14:08:21+00:00
Those MB diesels made it to the States too, and they were equally well respected here in my experience. Although, there's long been a diesel aversion among some part of the population here, so it was maybe a narrower subset of the population familiar with the legend of the MB diesels.

I drove one for years, acquired when they were available as a quite cheap ~15 year old car. I've since switched to a Toyota and been quite happy with that. I don't know how long the current Toyotas will last, but the golden era Toyotas I think probably last about as well as the legendary MB diesels (with the bonus of not having to track down vacuum leaks).
by NitpickLawyer | 2025-08-09 14:09:44+00:00
> And I've gotten great results. Am I alone on this?

No, you're not. I'm ~25 years into programming, and I haven't been more amazed by a tech stack yet. It's amazing, it's everything we dreamed about, and if handled carefully, with curiosity and a desire to learn it's really helpful and productive.

The best thing for me personally is that it helps me start things I know I wouldn't have touched otherwise. Knowing how complex things can get is almost like writer's block sometimes. The various tools help with that, and I've started taking my various "ideas" from notes and slowly working up the PoC / MVP chain. And I'm having fun again!

Simon Wilson has a recent article where he basically makes the point that "I don't even care about the will it / will it not debate about AGI, the tech is here now, and it's useful to me". I feel the same way.

> I'm wondering it's really almost a personal issue

For a lot of people it is. The various media we consume, and especially social networks that are one-to-many have instilled this "identity everything". From politics to tech, people take it extremely personal and put their entire identity behind an idea. Another aspect is that saying "I was wrong" is seen like something beneath an "influencer", and these platforms push people into doubling and tripling down on their takes. So a person that has associated the idea of their identity being "against AI", will continue to be / pose against it over and over again.
by Fade_Dance | 2025-08-09 14:09:47+00:00
It's an important provider of community for many people. For many it is their primary community and where they do the majority of their socializing, so the loss of the platform means the loss of their friendships and connections, as well as the loss of their main source of entertainment. Many of these people are also getting the majority of the information from the outside world from there as well, so their world goes dark in a sense. Quite understandable why they would be upset.
by zahllos | 2025-08-09 14:09:49+00:00
I would disagree. One of the problems of operating a VPN is that it is somewhat like operating a tor exit node: bad traffic is absolutely going to exit your infra. This means if you're renting VPSes or whatever you need a tolerant hoster.

For this reason a large part of Mullvad's infrastructure is hosted by M247 Ltd. If you simply block that ASN you will block quite a large part of Mullvad. You can block the ASN by using one of the myriad services that allow you to query all the IP blocks assigned to an ASN.

It's also possible to simply enumerate all their servers. They have an API.

You might not get it all, but you can block a significant percent.
by Aurornis | 2025-08-09 14:09:56+00:00
> Because if you get chain timing issues on a 2010 BMW diesel, you ain't repairing that, it's more expensive than a new car.

In the article the guy has 3 whole spare cars for donor parts and he does all the work himself. He’s not paying mechanic rates or even buying new parts (which are no longer available).

The amount of time and effort he’s put into this car is undoubtedly more expensive than buying a new car at this point, unless you count his time and free.
by recipe19 | 2025-08-09 14:10:01+00:00
I've heard that a number of times, but the vast majority of people who get into CS do it because they want a high-paying tech job, for which most of what they'll learn at the university is borderline useless (and to the extent that cutting-edge CS research happens, the academia is nowadays usually trailing the industry).

The problem, arguably, is that we don't have reputable trade schools that would actually teach what the students need. But if that changes, I think some CS departments will be in for a rude awakening.
How HN: A messaging app that keeps all your data local – no cloud, no tracking
by annuaicoder | 2025-08-09 14:10:02+00:00
I got tired of messaging apps that send all my data to the cloud, so I built Links Messenger - a desktop app where everything stays on your device.

Privacy features: - Local SQLite database - no cloud storage - Encrypted passwords with bcryptjs - Peer-to-peer voice calls via WebRTC - No analytics, tracking, or external requests - Open source so you can verify everything

It's like having your own private messaging server, but simpler. The app includes real-time messaging, voice calls, emojis, and contact management - all running locally.

Perfect for teams that want to communicate without sending data to third parties, or anyone who values privacy.

The code is open source and you can build it yourself or download the pre-built version.

Try it: https://annuaicoder.github.io/Links-Messenger Code: https://github.com/annuaicoder/Links-Messenger

What do you think about local-first messaging apps?
by nine_k | 2025-08-09 14:10:20+00:00
/* Technically, most binary formats are legible to a human, given a proper renderer, e.g. journalctl. What TFA speaks about is ASCII/UTF-8 text formats that need no processing besides rendering CR, LF, and TAB characters specially. Assuming a Unix command line, I would call these "cat-readable" formats, or maybe even "less-readable". */
by xmonkee | 2025-08-09 14:11:28+00:00
This is such a bizarre and gross take. Yes our history is a history of class struggle. But history does progress. For thousands of years we were supposed to be property of kings so shall we mean revert to that?

I went to an “elite” public university in India which has a sub 1% acceptance rate. It was mostly extremely smart and driven middle class kids from incredibly diverse social backgrounds. Everyone had the time of their lives. And almost everyone now (20 years later) is doing incredibly well in life. They are doing startups, public policy, research, tech leadership etc. There is zero legacy admissions. And yes there is a network effect, of course. You can count on the friends you made at uni, but not because they inherited the influence. You don’t have to lick boots to have a good life.
by sgarland | 2025-08-09 14:11:50+00:00
I also interviewed with them a couple of years ago, for their Database SRE (AKA DBRE) role. It was going quite well until I discovered that they required you to live within commuting distance of an office, and unfortunately I had just moved away from one. They didn’t require in-person, supposedly, but needed the option, I guess?

I was quite impressed by the interviews, mostly for their pragmatism and skill-fitting. The programming interview wasn’t LC, it was “can you use a language (preferably Python) to parse a CSV and get useful information out of it,” because that’s the skill level the team needs. On the other hand, the Linux and DB interviews were quite in-depth, because again, the team needs those skills.

10/10 would interview again if I’m ever near an office again.
by ben_w | 2025-08-09 14:12:16+00:00
While I have no reason to think they have an inner world of this kind:

I also think (like @TeMPOraL) that it's probably worth acting towards it as if it is a person even if you don't think there's anything going on inside, precisely because of — to phrase it as you do — it will perform the role of pretending to be whatever it is you treat it as.

People who are treated as things, don't do as well as people who are treated as people, so an AI that's pretending to be a person who is being treated as a thing, will pretend to be a less competent person than an AI that's pretending to be a person who is treated as a person.

But to further agree with your point: skim-reading this transcript, Claude here is only calling itself an NBI to agree with the user.
by formerly_proven | 2025-08-09 14:12:31+00:00
Even then, a EURO5 diesel still makes quite a stink. Of course, even an EU6+OPF gasoline car still puts out air akin to a dying dog's fart.

ICE vehicles just can't go away quickly enough (and we should aggressively get stinky vehicles like everything pre-EU5 and loud vehicles like motorcycles and scooters off the road first).

I'm not huge on regulation, but if anything MIV is underregulated. Even in the EU anything that was street-legal at some point in the past 70 years is grandfathered in, nevermind that illegal vehicle modifications - if caught - at most earn a slap on the wrist. That's enormously dumb and doesn't fly anywhere else.
by jmb99 | 2025-08-09 14:12:34+00:00
> I don't think anything with mechanical moving parts is going to last that long, with regular usage, and have original parts.

I know of at least two cars with 800k km with original engines. Both GM small blocks (Gen 2, multiport fuel injection so computer-controlled). Neither engine has been opened since they rolled off the floor in the 90s. They’re not particularly efficient (only about 270HP out of 5.7L) but if taken care of, they probably will go forever.

Definitely an exception, though. Very little else on those cars is still original. But it can be done.
by dlcarrier | 2025-08-09 14:12:36+00:00
I'm okay with academia being an institution of the elite, as long as we stop pretending that their BS (or BA) will make everyone successful. We can't all be elite; that's not how that works.

Rich people are going to waste their time and money no matter what, but I didn't want them also wasting yours and mine. The man-hours and percent of the GDP (often paid for with taxes) we put into conflating cause and effect is absurd.

We dodn't need merit-base academia, we need merit-based employment that disregards elite and academic status.
by solarkraft | 2025-08-09 14:12:46+00:00
I’m all for this. This is the first effort I’ve seen attempting to solve the full stack - most local solutions I’ve seen look so DIY that I don’t have much hope I’ll be able to properly configure and operate them dependably.

I think there’s room for an integrated solution with all the features we’re used to from commercial solutions: Web search (most important to me), voice mode (very handy), image recognition (useful in some cases), the killer feature being RAG on personal files.
by DoesntMatter22 | 2025-08-09 14:13:17+00:00
In 2023 their profit was 15 billion dollars. Of that they got 1.79 billion in regulatory credits. So about 12%. They also made over 15 billion in 2024 of which regulatory credits were 2.7 billion, about %18%. So your claim seems false.

https://ycharts.com/indicators/tesla_inc_tsla_automotive_reg... https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/financials/
by verandaguy | 2025-08-09 14:13:45+00:00
There's two main reasons for this:

- First and most impactful: as the earth curves down and away from the observer's horizon, your line of sight goes through a thicker slice of the atmosphere.

Looking straight up you might have 100km of atmosphere until space (the distance is made up here, but I'm using the Kármán line as an arbitrary ruler), but looking out towards the horizon (assuming a perfectly spherical Earth), it's much, much more than that 100km, so the light will scatter off of (and/or be filtered by, depending on angle and time of day) more particles in the atmosphere, affecting the colour of the sky.

- The compounding factor here is if there are environmental factors that boost the particle count in the air, and especially particles that'd stay in lower layers of the atmosphere. Where I am, we've been dealing with wildfire smoke of varying strengths for a few weeks. Today's gentle enough, but it's bad enough that my gradient goes from rgb(115, 160, 207) at the top of the sky to rgb(227, 230, 227) at the horizon (which is shockingly accurate).
by sokoloff | 2025-08-09 14:13:59+00:00
I think it's self-evidently true that there is a not ignorable group of people who can't create enough value to be worth being paid $20/hr (plus the employer-paid overheads) and have that be something that an employer would voluntarily do.

Around 10% of the population does not score highly enough on the ASVAB (an aptitude test for the military) to qualify for military service. The military, like any large employer, has an awful lot of jobs that require minimal skills and aptitude and for 10% to be Category V [unqualified for military service] based on aptitude, I would expect they wouldn't be the employees to create $20+/hr in value for private sector or other government employers either.
by ioasuncvinvaer | 2025-08-09 14:14:43+00:00
I found that post unconvincing.

> It's very verbose.

This is his example: https://github.com/crdoconnor/strictyaml/blob/master/hitch/s...

I think you shouldn't use yaml or toml for this.

> TOML's hierarchies are difficult to infer from syntax alone

True! The point of TOML is to flatten the hierarchical structures. I would argue your configuration files shouldn't have much nesting anyway.

> Overcomplication: Like YAML, TOML has too many features

Basically TOML has a date type and all associated problems and advantages. I think it's a reasonable thing to include.

> Syntax typing

I think this is a good thing. I want to know whether something is a string or a number.
by ryandrake | 2025-08-09 14:14:44+00:00
Yes. Imagine if you could get an elite Wall Street or Consulting job based significantly on who your dad is. That would be unfair, discriminatory, and otherwise pretty terrible, except for the already elite and wealthy. Oh, wait...that already happens, and it's indeed terrible in all the ways you would predict. This really needs to be cracked down on, but the rich and powerful will always support it.
by Aurornis | 2025-08-09 14:15:27+00:00
> I wonder how many of the cars manufactured today are still here after million kilometers

The overwhelming majority of 1980s Toyota Tercels do not make it to a million kilometers. This one didn’t, either. It has had every part replaced, many multiple times over.

The owner has 3 donor parts cars and there’s a photo of his piles of parts like alternators. The original car didn’t last a million kilometers. He’s just been replacing parts constantly.

> My guess is none as they are impossible to fix yourself.

No they’re not. I have a lot of car friends and we all do most of our own work. One of them has now opened a shop and services BMWs including engine rebuilds of modern engines.

This is a myth. Service manuals are available. Even the digital repair tools are widely pirated, but you can generally buy a short term license to use them yourself if you want.
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-08-09 14:16:02+00:00
> The undergrad academics at T10 universities really aren't anything special. People want to go because of the connections with wealthy & well-connected students, but then complain when wealthy well-connected students get a easier ride.

Indeed. And the irony is that even when poorer students do attend, they find that the expensive habits of the richer students exclude them from mingling with them in many cases.

(Fun fact: one reason for uniforms in Catholic schools was to eliminate wealth from the picture.)
by Fade_Dance | 2025-08-09 14:16:09+00:00
I'm simply not convinced it's net beneficial to approach these situations by interacting with a robotic mimic. Case in point, the ego stroking aspect of the last generation was clearly important, or else people would have easily embraced gpt5. Talking with a bot makes you feel better but does it really address the root problems in the real world that cause these emotions? Does it set one up for success, or is it a temporary assuagement until the cycle comes back around (perhaps more severely). Reminds me of the large cohort who uses things like self-help books because it feels better.

I'm imagining society in which many millions of people is constantly interacting with robots to tweak their emotional state. I'm not sure that that's adding value to society or creating a better human society.
by cheesedoodle | 2025-08-09 14:16:15+00:00
I’m trying to do something similar but hyper fine tune a model of choice for my specific local data source. For example, use existing code models to answer dquestions with code examples based on my private source files and documentation.

I tried doing it with using Huggingface and Unsloth but keep getting OOM errors.

Have anyone done this that runs locally against your own data?
by ExoticPearTree | 2025-08-09 14:16:17+00:00
> They won't get rich without food, education and housing. They're barely surviving because the rich keep sucking any chance of building wealth out of them. When inequality is low, more people become rich. When it is as high as it is currently, more people remain poor.

Actually you can. Nothing motivates you more than the lack of basic necessities. When you're poor, you have only one option: do whatever it takes to not be poor.

The reason many poor people stay poor is because they lack discipline and grit. They would rather stay poor than grind for 8-12-16h a day to get out.

Rich people don't go robbing less rich people at night and that's how they get to be even richer. Stop blaming all the world's problems on "the rich who want to be even richer".