MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by BoxFour | 2025-08-03 18:00:06+00:00
I’m on board with the overall point, though I’d actually flip the logic in this section:

> Once a senior answers, the junior then takes responsibility for making sure that question doesn't need to be answered there again.

That might make sense for simple questions. But for anything more complex, especially when the issue stems from something you have control over, having senior folks take ownership might make more sense. If they can tie the fix to visible impact, there’s a strong incentive for them to actually solve the root problem. Otherwise, there’s always the risk that experienced team members simply ignore the question 100% of the time (which also solves the problem of "i've already answered this question").

One way seniors might approach these types of groups is by treating them as a source of ideas. Repeated questions like “how do I use X?” might indicate that X needs a redesign or better onboarding. An experienced corporate climber could treat those questions as justification for "X 2.0 which is way easier to onboard to" and get backing to work on it.

Anyone who’s spent time at a large tech company has likely seen this dynamic play out, because it’s a common pathway to promotion. Definitely taken to problematic extremes, no doubt, but a slightly-healthier version of that playbook still beats the alternative of relying on the arcane knowledge of a select few as gatekeepers of information.
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-08-03 18:00:22+00:00
For one of my small-biz clients, I could use what the author outlines - restrictions and all (if I'm an outlier, is fine).

Besides fixing my customer's stuff, I learn and improve their systems. There's a small corral of offsite indy IT talent; I'm the onsite, everything else guy.

I could use a simple space to quickly post v1 thoughts in an unpolished format. They'd be available for our other IT to review and comment on.

Since I want this, all the client will pay for is for me to implement it. Nothing else. Also, the owner likes data to stay in house. Together it rules out subscription and cloud products. I'll see what my FOSS options are.
by semitones | 2025-08-03 18:01:05+00:00
Furthermore, it is very rare to have the following kind of text present in the training data: "What is the answer to X?" - "I don't know, I am not sure."

In this situation very often there won't be _any_ answer, plenty of difficult questions go unanswered on the internet. Yet the model probably does not interpret this scenario as such
by scarface_74 | 2025-08-03 18:01:10+00:00
On the other hand, now you see companies that don’t want to deal with government blocking acquisitions do they just get all of the people they want from startups and leave the rest of the employees high and dry and the investors worse off.

https://www.reuters.com/business/google-hires-windsurf-ceo-r...

Unlike Figma, companies rarely want the startup’s product and usually end up either abandoning it or making it a part of their own offerings by getting their new hires to write it from scratch.

Even when they do need the acquiring companies IP, they license the IP and then poach the employees.

Microsoft almost did that too with OpenAI during the Altman fiasco.
by tompccs | 2025-08-03 18:01:41+00:00
If you want to live in a uni-polar world, you should support companies like Palantir which bolster American hegemony over global security. If you would prefer to live in a multi-polar world, with multiple superpowers vying for supremacy, then you should support Chinese espionage operations and invest in Indian oil refineries.

If you think wanting to live in a unipolar world is "evil", then there's no helping you.
Show HN: Zomni – An AI sleep coach that personalizes CBT-I for everyday use
by deni_marina | 2025-08-03 18:01:55+00:00
Hi HN,

We built Zomni because we were tired of sleep trackers that show data but don’t help you actually sleep better.

Zomni is a personal sleep coach powered by AI and rooted in CBT-I, the most effective treatment for insomnia. It doesn't just record your sleep; it gives you a daily plan and dynamic recommendations tailored to your real habits, rhythm, and mindset.

The problem: Most sleep apps show you charts like “6h 42min” or “sleep efficiency: 78%,” but leave you wondering: now what? They often make sleep worse by encouraging unrealistic goals and reinforcing bad patterns (like over-napping or obsessing about 8 hours).

What we built:

A fully conversational AI sleep coach (built on OpenAI)

Hyper-personalized advice based on your last 3 nights of sleep

A CBT-I–based sleep plan that updates automatically

No wearables, no stress — just real habit change.

We’d love feedback — from tech, behavior, or personal perspectives.

Thanks for reading, Zomni Team
by deathanatos | 2025-08-03 18:02:10+00:00
What a Poe's Law of a comment.

Slack's search is … okay … but there are any number of times when I have issues finding a thread I was looking at prior.

For all the AI hype that is the current time, search still can't a.) rank the alert bot that is just spamming the alerts channel as "not relevant" when "sorting by relevance" or b.) … find the thread when I use a synonym of an exact word in the thread.

Or the other day I was struggling to find an external channel. I figured it should be easy. But again, I chose a synonym of the name, so miss there, but I though still — by management edict, all of our external channels start with #external-, I'll just pull up all external channels and linear search by eyeball … but management had named this one #ext-…
by slwvx | 2025-08-03 18:02:12+00:00
> In this framework, it is shown that the mass of a bit of information at room temperature (300K) is 3.19 × 10-38 Kg. To test the hypothesis we propose here an experiment, predicting that the mass of a data storage device would increase by a small amount when is full of digital information relative to its mass in erased state. For 1Tb device the estimated mass change is 2.5 × 10-25 Kg.

...

> In what follows, we propose a simple experiment capable of testing this theory by physically measuring the mass of digital information. This consists of an ultra accurate mass measurement of a digital data storage device, when all its memory bits are in fully erased state. This is then followed by the operation of recording digital data on all of its memory bits until is at full capacity, followed by another accurate mass measurement. If the proposed mass – energy – information equivalence principle is correct, then the data storage device should be heavier when information is stored on it than when it is in fully erased state.

Interesting!
by ryandrake | 2025-08-03 18:02:14+00:00
There were only 66 years between the Wright brothers' first successful powered flight in 1903 and the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. The slope of the following 66 years of aviation/flight history has been distinctly less steep.

If you were in 1969 and extrapolated the trendline, we would have colonized the inner solar system by now.
by wredcoll | 2025-08-03 18:02:42+00:00
I had the opposite experience.

It is of course possible to make value judgments, there are in fact good things and bad things, but people and their cultures are far too complicated to categorize that way.

We can talk about "things that frequently happen" and whether those are good or bad, but even determining why they happen or how to encourage or discourage them has so far seemed beyond modern science.
by djoldman | 2025-08-03 18:02:43+00:00
> According to Pew, 61% of U.S. adults say having close friends is extremely or very important for a fulfilling life.

I'm not sure what one is supposed to infer from this.

I'm reminded of a Gallup poll[0]:

> How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism -- very worried, somewhat worried, not too worried or not worried at all?

> 36% in August 2021.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/4909/terrorism-united-states.as...
by browningstreet | 2025-08-03 18:04:23+00:00
This sounds exactly like “work” today. Certainly matches my experience in big tech.

It reminds me, tangentially, of something I did a while ago. I scraped hundreds of environment non-profits and NGO websites from around the world. Many of them are UN affiliated to some degree.

I tried to find 3 things: 1) what the non-profit does, 2) what the non-profit produces, 3) what the non-profit accomplished.

My ability to glean these details, by scraping and double-checking manually, had a very very low hit rate.. at least via website content. Organizations are oblique and very little is clear/available. [The same problem exists for websites for places (restaurants, venues, athletic events, etc). By and large, they all hide their addresses.]

I’m guessing these efforts and reports would produce a similar translucency if audited from outside.
by Avipat_ | 2025-08-03 18:04:49+00:00
We launched Kled 6 weeks ago as a data marketplace for everyday people. Users upload personal content like camera rolls, dashcam footage, homework, POV recordings, and original music, and we pay them for it.

While AI companies scrape public data to train their models, we’re building a platform that compensates users and gives AI labs access to licensed, high-quality data.

The product took off quickly. We did over 20 million impressions on Twitter, more than 10,000 people signed up, petabytes of data were uploaded, and we’ve paid out over $300,000 to users.

Every file uploaded is automatically classified and made searchable so AI companies can instantly license the exact datasets they need.

Over the next five weeks, we’re doubling down on our labeling operations and hiring top AI engineers. We’ve raised over $2 million in venture capital at a $40 million valuation. High pay and high equity. Email avi@kled.ai
by LtWorf | 2025-08-03 18:05:05+00:00
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/abolish-the-mona...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62883713

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-14/uk-anti-monarchy-prot...

There's only one person here being dishonest and it surely isn't me :)
by st3fan | 2025-08-03 18:05:20+00:00
the number one reason is that Siri is an embarrassment. And that has become so much clearer now with ChatGPT and Claude next to it. Everyone is simply thinking: why can't we have that. Why do we have to talk to a low quality agent that can't answer basic questions while i can also walk around with my airpods in having a full conversation with ChatGPT.

I understand it is not that easy. But Apple has been neglecting Siri, or maybe failed to improve it, for so many years. And now the perception is that there is just no excuse anymore.
by rich_sasha | 2025-08-03 18:05:22+00:00
The world is very techy these days. Someone is going to do the business where tech, AI and defence interact, and it happens to be Palantir.

So... is the complaint that a company fills this niche, or is it that of all possible companies doing this business, Palantir is particularly immoral?

I'm not sure it is possible for effectively a (cyber-)weapon producer to say, ah youre using our weapons immorally, we wont sell them to you. This is the domain of government regulation and export control.

So I personally wouldnt expect the contractor in this space to stand up to some high moral standard. I think the best we can hope for is compliance with laws, and there's your problem. US doesnt care how badly people get abused by the weaponry it exports, so long as IP and military secrets aren't leaked. Palantir is safe from US regulation.

Are other countries better? Some for sure. Germany blocked Eurofighter exports on ethical grounds. I'm not judging if they were right or wrong, but merely that they forewent cash for ethical points.

But most will sell anything to anyone, so long as the price is right.

Im not saying Palantir is a nice cuddly company, only, hate the game not the player.
by Sesse__ | 2025-08-03 18:05:39+00:00
> The kindergartners were cute, they'd all where hi viz overalls on their afternoon walks and be tied together like sled dogs.

They're typically not tied together. There's a rope and everybody is told to hold on to it (this makes it a lot less likely that anyone wanders off into traffic).

> And I was told even if you were .02 you'd lose your license for a year, and 10% of you salary as a fine.

This is only partially true. Up to .02 is legal. Between that and .05 you get a fine (which is indeed around 10% of your salary). Up to .12 you get a fine plus typically a suspended sentence. There's no automatic loss of license for driving with .02 or .05, although of course at some point you go to court and are likely to lose it (like most other countries).

Basically what happened when we moved the limit from .05 to .02 is that people stopped having “only one beer” (which is, of course, at risk of becoming three) before driving home. You choose a designated driver or you take public transport. It was a Good Thing.

> While I was there also, the cops only fired a gun once the entire two years (for the whole country).

This is, unfortunately, changing. Norwegian police fired only nine shots in 2024 (plus ten more that went off by accident), but the police now carry guns as a general rule after a controversial change of law (save for higher-risk occasions, they used to have it locked down in their car), so you can expect this number to increase.

> Another weird thing, in the town I was in you couldn't mow your lawn on Sundays, or do anything that was super loud.

This is, indeed, the law in the entire country (together with most shops having to close etc.). But the rules are sort of nebulous and nowhere near universally enforced; if you call the cops about your neighbor being noisy, they are highly unlikely to do anything about it.
by HappMacDonald | 2025-08-03 18:05:52+00:00
I am a huge protester to the "constantly abbreviating words" habit in coding. It may have had a place when source code space had drastic limitations, but today "func, proc, writeln, strcpy" are anathema to me. Also I get that a lot of these in Seed7 examples were lifted unchanged from Pascal, but that just means that I dislike those aspects of Pascal as well.

I am of the camp "use full English words", and "if the identifier is too long then spend the time needed to find a more concise way to say what you mean in fewer or shorter full English words". Incidentally AI can be pretty good at brainstorming that, which is lovely.
by Ozzie_osman | 2025-08-03 18:06:46+00:00
I posted this a few days ago on a separate Palantir-related thread, but it probably is more relevant here. The world could use fewer Alex Karps. -- This quote from the CEO of Palantir (Alex Karp) haunts me. --- > “I actually am a progressive,” he said. “I want less war. You only stop war by having the best technology and by scaring the bejabers — I’m trying to be nice here — out of our adversaries. If they are not scared, they don’t wake up scared, they don’t go to bed scared, they don’t fear that the wrath of America will come down on them, they will attack us. They will attack us everywhere.”
by akhayam | 2025-08-03 18:07:01+00:00
Guess what.... agents, like humans, also get confused with too much context, all at once. "Minimum relevant context injected at the right time" is how you assure quality artifacts and actions from your agentic workflows.

It's just sooo hard to reconstruct the "minimum relevant context" from running infrastructure state matched against a moving target (i.e. the next version you should be upgrading to).
by pkaye | 2025-08-03 18:07:27+00:00
I used to work in SSD controller firmware. This kind of issue existed more than 10 years ago. To achieve higher capacity with each generation of NAND you are trading off everything else (endurance, retention, read/program times, etc) little by little. 20 years ago it was so rare to see any kind of errors with SLC NAND that error detection and handling was fairly simple.
by LegionMammal978 | 2025-08-03 18:07:47+00:00
> Meanwhile the modern train is nigh-uncrashable with modern safety technologies, even if someone wanted to.

Yet for some inconceivable reason, dozens of trains around the world still crash or derail every year [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_(2020%E...
by hnlmorg | 2025-08-03 18:08:01+00:00
That’s not how these mods are created though.

They are composed on trackers and the mod files are more akin to a MIDI file than they are “waveforms and shit”. At least not if you talk about “waveforms” in the PCM sense of the term.

The evolution of these mod files is an interesting one. Epic were the ones who most leaned into this for commercial uses. Games like the original Unreal and Jazz Jackrabbit 2 had some awesome sounding music and was the same mod files.

As a much younger nerd and hobby hacker too, I always wondered how those keygens were so small in size yet sounded so modern. Took years before I learned about trackers. I was pretty late to the game on that one.
by PicassoCTs | 2025-08-03 18:08:26+00:00
Is it really evil - or is it just the messenger. If you take humanity, datamine it all through the seeing stones (cellphones) and then give honest advice, the advice is gonna be harsh.

This species constantly gets high on idealization of others and self-idealization, constantly crashing and burning from the unrealistic plans it makes with this unrealistic self-image. And it is unable to learn from all these retardations. We are not really governable and thus fail as soon as push come to shove. And we then try to bury this lessons - without learning anything from them. What good is it to have a Fauci, if his plans do not have the actual behavior of the humanity baked in when the great plague hits? What good is it to invade another country, to build a democratic state - when you do not have a realistic behavior model to build a democratic state with other cultural backgrounds.

What good is it to wish for socialist economics, when it all boils down to centralized authoritarianism with witch hunts and collapsing economy.

Palantir is just the messenger for a uncomfortable message. We are not ready at all, not ready for climate change, for singularities, for high-tech where one can destroy half the planet. We are not ready for going off-planet, which is one and the same.

What is needed, is not unrealistic SciFi Visions, but basic measures to raise survive-ability of the species in crisis to come. Decentralize knowledge, create a panopticon by the people for the people, so order can be upheld even when the state collapses. The scenario-tress roots must be hardened, so we dont fall down never to recover.
by spookie | 2025-08-03 18:09:03+00:00
AR has a lot of limitations, that's what they were trying to sidestep. To be able to take a frame of the environment, composite the virtual frame and the real one in unison with various blending ops at your disposal. And finally, present the user with a properly composited image that works anywhere.

Now, if you use multiple lenses, with one masking in grayscale the real frame positioned just before the lens in which you project the virtual frame, you can do some limited blending ops. But it's quite difficult to deal with parallax if the lenses aren't glued together, or even then with refraction.

Apple took a very conservative approach. And made it to market. Now look at the competition. Sure, they have concepts with good compositing, but the ones in the market right now aren't able to produce the same imagery that Apple Vision is capable of.

Maybe I'm wrong, haven't looked at the market in some months, but I always thought of the Apple Vision as a very pragmatic design trying to circumvent AR limitations by being a VR headset.
by LexiMax | 2025-08-03 18:09:49+00:00
> That is also a reason why now there are Webview2 instances all over the place on Windows 11.

I can't help but feel like there is a happy median between Native UI and WebUI that we haven't quite figured out yet.

In the gaming space there is this library called RMLUI that I have used in anger quite a bit. It gives you something that is shaped a lot like HTML and CSS, but with a built-in data binding layer, and a scripting layer that supports Lua by default but gives you the flexability to roll your own language and API. It also is a much lighter dependency than Chromium and V8.

It's missing a couple of features from vanilla HTML and CSS, but also has a bunch of unique featurea that make it far more useful in other ways. For example, it doesn't have CSS background images, but image decorators are so much more useful. And don't get me started on sprite sheets and theme media queries.

I can't help but think that something similarly shaped and designed more for general desktop use would blow the doors off of electron. My workstation has 32 gigs of RAM and yet it's often a half to three quarters full mostly because of Firefox, Discord, and Visual Studio Code instead of more lightweight apps like Visual Studio 2022.....which sounds crazy when you say it out loud.
by pclowes | 2025-08-03 18:09:54+00:00
There are plenty of reasons to critique Palantir but this article comes across as so ham-fisted, conspiratorial, and wanting facts that it actually makes me more sympathetic.

Critiques of Govt contractors really need to be grounded in first principles. Namely:

- should the government be able to wage war?

- should the government collect data? How much?

- how effective do we want these companies providing these services to be?

- how integrated do we want these different govt and non-govt tools and datasets.

Finally should these tools start or stop working when leaders you don’t like are democratically elected?

Palantir also did great work with hospitals and vaccines delivery during the pandemic and continues to do great work with hospitals.

Most of the critiques of Palantir come down to them being good at a job or mission the critic doesn't agree with.
by SleepyMyroslav | 2025-08-03 18:10:08+00:00
I am sorry for the confusion. It's fine to have some downvotes if its not what ppl like to see. I was not complaining. Message was purely informational from single point of view that a) game platforms have only partial C++20 support in 2025. b) there are features that are in C++ standard that do not fit description 'god-send'.
by Guthur | 2025-08-03 18:10:11+00:00
It is evil because you presume too much.

Your unipolar world is devoid of any meaning. Your democracy is an opiate for the masses with no meaningful choice. Your neo liberalism has destroyed any sense of togetherness and has robbed us of our sovereign resources. And your only answer to descent is to kill millions and bomb countries and people into the stone age.

Sorry if your moralising is now falling on death ears.
by JustExAWS | 2025-08-03 18:11:52+00:00
And when Google did it, it was considered a disaster

Because when Google did it, it was a disaster?

https://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/18/pisani-googles-ipo-was-a-dis...

And “rent seeking” isn’t “The company is selling a product or service they make in a manner I don’t agree with”
by wredcoll | 2025-08-03 18:13:24+00:00
"Resources are finite" is a trite observation that so rarely helps us discuss actual real world issues.

As an easy example, food in america is not finite in any meaningful way. There is, in fact, quite a bit of it. Making sure students in government schools aren't going hungry really isn't an issue of finite resources, it's much more complicated than that.