MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Why Big Tech Can't Build a Precise Product Database – and Why We Did
by CTMinfo | 2025-08-03 05:49:29+00:00
Everyone talks about Big Data. But when it comes to actual engineering, logistics, or international trade — the reality is noise, chaos, and duplication.

We built CTMinfo as an alternative paradigm: 100% verified, unambiguous, internationally standardized product data. Not predictions. Not AI guesswork. Just clean, structured, human-validated truth. The problem: Too many names for the same thing

Take an AA battery, for example.

It may be called:

Duracell Basic AA (LR6/ER14505/FR6/R6P) GP Ultra AA (LR6/ER14505/FR6/R6P) Philips LR6E4B/97 AA

Same product. Dozens of names. Different catalog structures. Different classification systems.

This is just one category. There are 10,000+ product categories worldwide facing the same chaos. What we did differently

We introduced two concepts:

SmallData — not millions of dirty entries, but compact, human-verified data structures. OpenTech — logic that is explainable, verifiable, transparent. Not a black box.

Instead of collecting noise, we extract meaning. Each product gets a unique international code, e.g. 31-0015-5643-1002-002, which precisely describes:

“Battery type AA, alkaline, 1.5 V, 1500 mAh”

This allows:

universal search across manufacturers matching of real analogues complete catalog standardization clear link to real physical characteristics (voltage, composition, dimensions)

Why Big Tech can’t (and won’t) do this

Because their incentives are the opposite.

They monetize ambiguity — the more similar products you see, the more ads you click. Their systems are built on AI approximations, not physical properties. They rely on scale, not structure — and can’t easily reverse course.

To build something like CTMinfo, you need:

engineers who understand supply chains, people who’ve worked with customs, logistics, and real catalogs, and domain experts who verify each entry by hand.

No amount of machine learning will replace that. Is it scalable?

Yes — in a different way.

Our business model is simple:

$1/month per verified product listing 100% accuracy, no duplicates, no fuzzy logic Perfect for ERPs, customs, government procurement, science, and automation

Start with one category. Build trust. Expand.

Example: Just the AA/AAA battery market is $20B/year globally. Our verified database could cover it with 7 specialists in 1 year. And save millions in search, procurement, and error reduction. This is more than a catalog

This is a structural challenge to how information flows today.

CTMinfo is:

beyond politics, beyond corporate influence a system where lying is technically impossible an open ontology of physical reality, built from real-world data

We're not here to guess what users meant. We describe what is.

Contact: Dmitriy Andriyanov ctminfocom@proton.me www.ctminfo.com Telegram: @ctminfocom
by illiac786 | 2025-08-03 05:49:34+00:00
Oh, I fully agree that people ok with this arrangement beyond 30 years are rare. But if that’s who a person is, why should they give it up? They should keep searching for the soulmate that is also ok with this arrangement.

This type of shared apartments also have the effect of creating a sort of microcosm of people thinking alike on this specific topic. You tend to get to know other such shared apartments. This changes drastically the odds of finding partner ok with this arrangement.

Source: I lived 5 years in different such shared apartments, the microcosm effect really was insane, I automatically got to know the friends of my roommates, half of whom lived in a shared apartment, then I got to know their roommates, etc. 3 of my relationships started because of this network.
by slavik81 | 2025-08-03 05:51:22+00:00
It's terrifying that 96% of all mammalian life on Earth is now human beings and our livestock. We might be able to feed more people, but habitat destruction is already the greatest threat to most wild species. Humans are doing fine, but the toll on everything non-human has been enormous. We are living through one of the greatest mass-extinction events in Earth's history.

I don't fear famine, but I worry about what we're doing to our planet.
by augment_me | 2025-08-03 05:51:39+00:00
I think what is missing on from the conversation is the generational question.

In general, once new technologies have been introduced, there has been the older generation who has been sad about it because they have the frame of reference on the previous way of doing things. However the new generation does not know anything else, and are often happy enough since the lower-dimensional new reality is their only reality.

Same thing has happened with fast-food, social media or psychologists in your phone. You have a generation grown up with nothing except for it, and dont know anything else, and hence are as happy as they can be with the options.
by bluefirebrand | 2025-08-03 05:52:33+00:00
I think as more and more people offload their thinking into LLMs we are going to hit a plateau. Innovation will stall and maybe even stop because LLMs need constant new input to improve and we will no longer be producing humans that create high quality things for LLMs to use as high quality inputs

Do you think constant growth is more or less likely than the situation that I outline?
by Jensson | 2025-08-03 05:53:58+00:00
Inviting a person for sex is not harassment unless you keep doing it to a person who told you no, or its done from a position of power, but "elevatorgate" was neither of those.

Women who don't want that sex of course will tell you to stop, but other women who do want that sex will tell you to do it more and that men are too reserved. Men can't read minds so women will just keep having to say no.
Ask HN: How important is branding for developer tools
by kinj28 | 2025-08-03 05:54:37+00:00
We’ve spent a lot of time on product and docs, but now we’re wondering: if brand matters at all?

On one hand, devs care about speed, reliability, and docs. On the other, I see tools like Vercel, Supabase, or Postman build huge momentum through brand, community.

In addition - I’d also love to hear: • If you’ve built or used a dev tool, what role did brand play? • Can dev tools win on product alone in 2025?
by nmaley | 2025-08-03 05:55:20+00:00
I've spent a lot of my career doing various types of solution design. One of the insights I gained from thinking a lot about representation, intentionality and the philosophy of language is that the way you represent a problem has a big influence on how easy you will find it to solve the problem. I've found that helps with solution design. Don't just think about the problem. Think about what is the best way to represent the problem.
by StopDisinfo910 | 2025-08-03 05:55:30+00:00
That’s family records. People care about that. I will hazard you probably didn’t peruse their whole collection of books and magasines however and I think it’s normal.

People care about the things which remind them of their loved ones: prized possessions, objects with strong memory attached too or things they used to love as kids, this kind of things.

The rest is well stuff.
by joshvm | 2025-08-03 05:55:39+00:00
I really like having the mobile version for fast searches, often faster than online. Useful for example while hiking or other out -of-network places. Even some big stores have zero signal inside and sometimes I want to look up things. You can also get almost any Stack Exchange site.

If you live in a low, but not zero, bandwidth environment... since the rise of LLMs it's now cheaper to have the models do your dirty work. Before, you might have to search through pages of results, load MBs of data and still not find the answer. Offloading that to a data center and getting a few hundred kB back is convenient. Coupled with Kiwix and you can do quite a lot with a lousy internet connection.
by devmor | 2025-08-03 05:55:54+00:00
I don’t know if that can really be applied here. I don’t know if any previous lessons can be applied here.

Every one of these past innovations has been removing manual labor from something - be it household chores, traveling, having to build something, etc.

This innovation is aimed at replacing both thinking and social interaction. Putting aside whether you find that exciting, terrifying, morally objectionable, etc. it’s just too different of a paradigm shift to predict.
by manmal | 2025-08-03 05:57:20+00:00
A few thoughts on this:

- I wouldn’t outsource my brain to CC when it comes to checking CC’s output. Very mixed results in my experience, and it might discourage further exploration/thinking if you’ve already performed the checklist CC has given you (satisficing).

- Slash commands are the idiomatic way to memoize often used prompts, I wonder why author put them in CLAUDE.md?

- I’m also a bit skeptical that, aside from strict rules CC needs to follow, the encouragements/enchantments for writing good code author put in CLAUDE.md really work. But who knows.

- I DO like the caveats section at the end a lot. This is probably the most important piece of the article, when it comes to large codebases. Never just accept the first draft. Review everything with high suspicion and bend the output to your own style and taste. Otherwise, you‘re pushing legacy code.
by abdullahkhalids | 2025-08-03 05:59:12+00:00
Why do you think the price of SSDs should be close to cost?

As there are many consumer level producers (who all buy from a smaller set of actual producers), it may seem like the market is close to perfect competition (which would justify price=cost).

But actually there are many low quality producers that frequently burn those stupid enough to buy from them. And a few high quality producers who generally sell what they advertise. So if you are trying to buy a high quality SSD, you are buying from an oligopoly that have built their brands over the years. So they can charge significantly higher than cost due to this reason.

And I imagine that others can't drop their prices much lower than this price because then people get suspicious and don't buy it at all.
by totemandtoken | 2025-08-03 05:59:30+00:00
Location: Detroit, Mi Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: C++, Python, JavaScript (React, Next.js) Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nasir-sharaf/ Email: nsrsharaf7 [at] gmail.com

Hello, sorry I'm a few days late, my name is Nasir Sharaf, I was previously working as an embedded systems software engineer on contract at General Motors and prior to that as a software dveloper engineer at Theia Scientific. I've also done some freelance work implementing a frontend for cryptocurrency group. I'm currently on the market and looking for work that will allow me to grow my skills, especially in this new LLM era. Thanks!
by drusenko | 2025-08-03 06:02:37+00:00
But how can you ever have the confidence that your other options will continue to be worse over a longer time frame?

Almost by definition, if you are in the state of mind to consider suicide, you are probably not accurately and impartially weighing the question proposed — and that means it’s likely mostly independent of individual circumstances and values.

(This is different to how I felt when I was younger, and coming from someone who has had several people close to me feel that way at one point in their lives, and now living incredibly positive lives a few years after the fact)

I can see some limited circumstances where it is carefully and openly considered over a longer period of time — like a terminal illness, or unbearable and unsolvable chronic pain — but those cases are the minority by far.
by philbo | 2025-08-03 06:05:37+00:00
As one of the curious minority who keeps trying agentic coding but not liking it, I've been looking for explanations why my experience differs from the mainstream. I think it might lie in this nugget:

> I believe with Claude Code, we are at the > “introduction of photography” period of > programming. Painting by hand just doesn’t > have the same appeal anymore when a single > concept can just appear and you shape it > into the thing you want with your code review > and editing skills.

The comparison seems apt and yet, still people paint, still people pay for paintings, still people paint for fun.

I like coding by hand. I dislike reviewing code (although I do it, of course). Given the choice, I'll opt for the former (and perhaps that's why I'm still an IC).

When people talk about coding agents as very enthusiastic but very junior engineering interns, it fills me with dread rather than joy.
by lettuceconstant | 2025-08-03 06:05:45+00:00
I don't know about the situation in your city, but there problem really is that a comparatively large portion of e-scooter drivers are either idiots or drunk and idiots.

At least here they should follow same traffic rules as bikes, but it's very common to see them driving amid pedestrians. Of course, no gear present whatsoever. The average scooter accident is also more serious than the average cycling accident with head injuries being particularly common. Even if the typical victim is the driver himself, that does not make e-scooters great for the city.

We already have city bikes here and it would be societally much preferable if people were just using those instead.
by BenGosub | 2025-08-03 06:05:51+00:00
The fact that just by being on the bike for two hours, my brain doesn't go into negative pathways, but it just focuses on the road always brings me out of a slump.

I can also recommend easy, restorative yoga exercises, which is the lightest exercise there is, but it will help you with: sitting too much, improve sleep, stretch and reduce stress.
by seuros | 2025-08-03 06:06:03+00:00
Hi, The infrastructure was not complex at at all, i can transfer it in 1 day.

I was hospitalized, in another city, with all the computer at home, and locked behind 2FA.

They send me is on notice on Thursday, by Monday evening, all access was revoked.

For weeks i asked for a readonly access to my data, then they could take anytime they want to verify, they refused.

And he more i ask about my data, they more they avoid to speak about it.

Think about it , you could be sick, on a trip, having jetlag, in some festival, getting married... by the time you are back online, the delay was gone.
by fakedang | 2025-08-03 06:06:29+00:00
Ironic that the US is embracing Middle Eastern culture (specifically the Gulf countries). Honestly it's funny when Americans criticize cities like Doha and Dubai for being lacklustre and cultureless when most American tier-2 cities and towns are boring af. I've been told in some towns and suburbs that the best thing to do for leisure was to visit the local Walmart.
by whoknowsidont | 2025-08-03 06:07:27+00:00
>As someone who is fascinated by the UFO witnesses coming forward, which I have posted about on this site to standard ridicule, I think theres something to it.

I mean I wouldn't call it "standard" at this point. The last 3 years the UFO community has made lofty claims and received unprecedented government attention but nothing has come out of it.

Every. Single. Video or piece of evidence has been debunked in a very rigorous scientific sense. The rest have been proven to be literal videos of balloons.

In one hilarious incident for MONTHS the UFO community believed there was a real video of the Malaysian airlines flight being abducted via some type of teleportation technology.

Meanwhile the video had been on the internet for like 10 years and the actual animator had to come and say he had made it himself.

When you compare such grand, extraordinary claims with the outcomes there's no logical choice but to just call the people involved in those circles grifters or Russian assets.

There IS a reason why Newsmax is pushing the UFO stories. And it's not because they're valid.

Quite frankly if I were in poverty and watched how the government treated the lower classes, while it gives unwarranted respect to UFO conspiracy theorists at the highest levels of government it'd lead me to do very drastic things.

And I'm not afraid to say that publicly.
by jaredklewis | 2025-08-03 06:08:06+00:00
> Why suggest math PhDs unless it's in bad faith?

Maybe because this thread is about a math PhD (Terrence Tao)?

I’m also surprised you believe academic economists have much power. These days, most politicians from both parties in the US proudly reject more or less all of mainstream economics. Sometimes, the work of academic economists can have some small influence on decisions at the Fed, so I guess that is something.

Sociologists don’t even have that. They’re more or less just talking to themselves.
by wulfstan | 2025-08-03 06:08:28+00:00
I think it’s selection bias - a y-combinator forum is going to have a larger percentage of people who are techno-utopianists than general society, and there will be many seeking financial success by connecting with a trend at the right moment. It seems obvious to me that LLMs are interesting but not revolutionary, and equally obvious that they aren’t heading for any kind of “general intelligence”. They’re good at pretending, and only good at that to the extent that they can mine what has already been expressed.

I suppose some are genuine materialists who think that ultimately that is all we are as humans, just a reconstitution of what has come before. I think we’re much more complicated than that.

LLMs are like the myth of Narcissus and hypnotically reflect our own humanity back at us.
by conradev | 2025-08-03 06:08:49+00:00
It’s just a bulk discount: everyday folks simply can’t be relied upon to buy hundreds of millions of dollars the stuff and that’s what the company is selling. Little fish can buy in, but only if the big fish provide liquidity in the first place! In other words: someone needs to be paid to sell it and big buyers need to be incentivized to buy it.

Ultimately the IPO price is driven by supply and demand with a limited supply: price will go down (a bit) when the lockout period ends and more supply comes online.
by kelnos | 2025-08-03 06:09:14+00:00
Yup, I absolutely agree with you. I've been coding professionally for around 25 years now, 10-ish before that as a hobby as a child and teenager. There's lots of stuff I know, but still lots of stuff I don't know. If my goal is to learn a new language, I'm going to build the entire thing without using a coding assistant. At most I might use Claude (not Code) to ask pointed questions, and then use those answers to write my own code (and not copy/paste anything from Claude).

Often I'll use Claude Code to write something that I know how to write, but don't feel like writing, either because it's tedious, or because it's a little bit fiddly (which I know from past experience), and I don't feel like dealing with the details until CC gives me some output that I can test and review and modify.

But sometimes, I'll admit, I just don't really care to learn that deeply. I started a project that is using Rust for the backend, but I need a frontend too. I did some React around 10 years ago, but my knowledge there (what I remember, anyway) is out of date. So sometimes I'll just ask Claude to build an entire section of a page. I'll have Claude do it incrementally, and read the code after each step so I understand what's going on. And sometimes I do tell Claude I'm not happy with the approach, and to do something differently. But in a way I kinda do not care so much about this code, aside from it being functional and maintainable-looking.

And I think that's fine! We don't have to learn everything, even if it's something we need to accomplish whatever it is we've set out to accomplish. I think the problem that you'll run into is that you might be too junior to recognize what are the things you really need to learn, and what are the things you can let something else "learn" for you.

One of the things I really worry about this current time we're in is that companies will start firing their junior engineers, with a belief (however misguided) that their senior engineers, armed with coding assistants, can be just as productive. So junior engineers will lose their normal path to gaining experience, and young adults entering college will shy away from programming, since it's hard to get a job as a junior engineer. Then when those senior engineers start to retire, there will be no one to take their places. Of course, the current crop of company management won't care; they'll have made their millions already and be retired. So... push to get as much experience as you can, and get over the hump into senior engineer territory.
by bitmasher9 | 2025-08-03 06:09:43+00:00
The persecution of homosexuals absolutely has an impact on consolidating authority.

* Some of your political opponents will be homosexual, so it gives you an avenue to remove them. You can turn a blind eye to your political allies, if they are discrete.

* You can use the accusation to persecute anyone.

* It sets the frame that the authority governs every private aspect of your life.
by ggm | 2025-08-03 06:11:30+00:00
> Why do you think the price of SSDs should be close to cost?

Not close, but closeER and at least some evidence of tracking. That's what I'd expect if they were ubiquitous.

Some goods track commodity prices closely. Shrinkflation happens when you can't easily alter the unit price, chocolate bars are a good example. Not that we pay anything like as little as the producers get: there's enough competition that putting valhrona to one side, chocolate prices reflect commodity prices. Same with fuel. Same with ROHC compliant resistors. SMD components. PCBs. Batteries, led light bulbs. DDR memory.

Not SSD. There is no reason it must, this isn't the laws of physics. I just observe it doesn't. If there was more visible competition in supply of inputs, they MIGHT. But it looks like at best a duopoly or tri-opoly of inputs, and prices reflect demand a lot more. Supply isn't even close to demand, there's no surplus.

Those other things are somewhat peripheral. Not saying they don't have a role, but I don't think it's fundamental. I bought 6 "patriot" P210 and they get average to poor reviews for speed and reliability.
by Scoundreller | 2025-08-03 06:11:55+00:00
Sadly, I’ve had to resort to ChatGPT for stuff like this. Their internal archive will last longer.

Of course, now there’s less and less of a way to see if it’s hallucinating.

Going through this with an old hardware project where ChatGPT says _____ vulnerability exists in their early units, but zeeero references, even on archive.org
by Jensson | 2025-08-03 06:12:14+00:00
Yeah, most people are really bad liars or don't really lie a lot, so in many cases its just obvious. But some people lie as easily as they breathe, those are much harder to understand, and other people get really nervous when accused of stuff they didn't do and sound as if they lie even when they don't, so in those cases its hard.

And this is extra important in nerd communities, since in general we are biased to believe nerds are creeps so when women accuse a socially clumsy nerd of something people will mostly believe the woman. Popular guys aren't affected much by a cancellation, but they totally destroy awkward guys.

Even more important for people on the autism spectrum. They might say "I touched her" when she touched him, since technically you touch someone if they touch you so its autistically correct. So a woman making advances on an autistic guy and then accuses him, the autistic guy will likely damn himself with statements like that since he doesn't understand how those statements will make people misunderstand the situation.
by conradev | 2025-08-03 06:12:50+00:00
Price discovery is impossible to do except on the market. You can call up everyone you know and ask them, but there are limits to forecasting.

We all knew the Switch 2 MSRP, but we had to wait for launch to see the eBay Buy it Now price.

In this case, the banks are Best Buy. They sold out quickly! Other market players are eBay sellers: the ones that knew what they were doing made a killing selling to consumers.