MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Fizzadar | 2025-08-12 15:33:04+00:00
The problem isn’t home usage, or data centers. It’s the total lack of investment since the water companies were privatised and moved to a model of money extraction for shareholders. Now we have no new capacity in years and more leaks (waste and clean) than ever, and yet it’s always the public who need to save a little more or pay increased bills.

Successive governments (both sides) have been shown to be totally spineless with water regulation, despite significant public outrage. Privatisation has been a huge failure and yet we appear to be stuck in this position.
by LegionMammal978 | 2025-08-12 15:33:10+00:00
> Tail-recursion and iteration are broadly equivalent right? So picking one over the other is a matter of style and capability.

Tail recursion is more closely related to goto statements. So one could argue that imperative iteration constructs, as with other forms of structured programming, are superior in giving the reader immediate knowledge of the broad control flow, while tail recursion (especially mutual tail recursion) could have all sorts of weird behaviors.
by rangerelf | 2025-08-12 15:33:49+00:00
I disagree; it's basically lawyerspeak for "sucks to be you".

If one is expected to go through all the documentation of both the main package and all dependency packages, and also through whatever specific configuration details to your case, just to be able to catch a specific IMPORTANT detail that's not clearly spelled out in the main package, that's malicious.

"A dependency we use captures your clipboard data and sends it to remote servers"

That sentence right there would kill their userbase, so they omit warning you about it. And on top of the "...user should have read the description..." non-apology, "just split the packages, bro".

That's malicious.
by pjc50 | 2025-08-12 15:34:04+00:00
This is "plastic straws" bullshit. From the statement, quoted from "The Environment Agency’s Director of Water and NDG chair, Helen Wakeham"

> "Water companies must continue to quickly fix leaks and lead the way in saving water. We know the challenges farmers are facing and will continue to work with them, other land users, and businesses to ensure everyone acts sustainably.

> We are grateful to the public for following the restrictions, where in place, to conserve water in these dry conditions. Simple, everyday choices – such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails – also really helps the collective effort to reduce demand and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife."

Watch how the bait and switch operates. The privatized water companies are (a) bankrupt and (b) leaking hundreds of millions of liters of water (figures quoted in the 500m - 600m region for Thames Water). However, this is politically difficult to fix because it requires the government to do something and maybe even spend some money. So they put out a statement which implies that ordinary people could do something to help, even if it's literally a drop in the bucket.

see https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/land-use-biodiversity...
by throw4847285 | 2025-08-12 15:34:15+00:00
People find academic philosophy impenetrable and pretentious, but it has two major advantages over rationalist cargo cults.

The first is diffusion of power. Social media is powered by charisma, and while it is certainly true that personality-based cults are nothing new, the internet makes it way easier to form one. Contrast that with academic philosophy. People can have their own little fiefdoms, and there is certainly abuse of power, but rarely concentrated in such a way that you see within rationalist communities.

The second (and more idealistic) is that the discipline of Philosophy is rooted in the Platonic/Socratic notion that "I know that I know nothing." People in academic philosophy are on the whole happy to provide a gloss on a gloss on some important thinker, or some kind of incremental improvement over somebody else's theory. This makes it extremely boring, and yet, not nearly as susceptible to delusions of grandeur. True skepticism has to start with questioning one's self, but everybody seems to skip that part and go right to questioning everybody else.

Rationalists have basically reinvented academic philosophy from the ground up with none of the rigor, self-discipline, or joy. They mostly seem to dedicate their time to providing post-hoc justifications for the most banal unquestioned assumptions of their subset of contemporary society.
by potato3732842 | 2025-08-12 15:34:19+00:00
I think it speaks volumes that you think "american" is the approximate level of scope that this behavior lives at.

Stuff like this crosses all aspects of society. Certain americans of certain backgrounds, demographics and life experiences are fare more likely engage in it than others. I think those people are minority, but they are definitely an overly visible one if not a local majority in a lot of internet spaces so it's easy to mistake them for the majority.
by jvanderbot | 2025-08-12 15:34:31+00:00
What is going on here.

Mechanical engineers pay gobs of money for software suites that make them productive. They do automatic FEA, renders, etc. There's no ads in those. The parent companies can spend millions / y to improve that software and sell upgraded seats.

Windows as a software product has _barely_ dipped its does into ads, and survived forever at about 100/machine costs.

There are lots of examples. The only reason some software ends up cloud is so you can extort subscription feeds and the software is _cheap_ to run for the user.

LLMs are not like that. They are fundamentally expensive to run for users. An obvious end objective here is to slash all the operational budget / api teams / web ui teams / inferrence infra costs and roll that into just "build better models". It's trivial to wrap a model in a sign-in workflow and ship it to users as a core piece of software that all their other local software can use to gain LLM super powers. Selling upgrades every year keeps people paying 100/machine/user. The market size here is as big as the PC + phone market. It's enormous.

It just seems like the obvious end game is to focus on making good models and productionizing them vs running them as a service with all the headaches that takes while also building useful tools while also training new models.

I have a graphics card my employer bought, they aren't going to care if it costs 100/y more if I gain this productivity boost.

This is how it works (ad free) in almost every other engineering discipline, from matlab to autocad to adobe etc etc.

The future of LLMs is basically Windows XP: A software tax on all machines sold + Ios: A software tax on all phones sold.
by megaloblasto | 2025-08-12 15:34:59+00:00
I agree with that idea. For more business development areas, AI slop can slow things down.

I do think that these kinks will eventually work themselves out and actually increase productivity in these areas. People also need to learn that it is not acceptable to just generate some BS and send it to your boss or colleague. That just transfers the real work of understanding the generated content to someone else.
by bhouston | 2025-08-12 15:35:13+00:00
Is this article incorrect in itself? I am confused about your objection.

There is a lot of reporting on Meta's collaboration with IDF in restricting content:

https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...

https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...

> has consistently interviewed Houthi leadership.

Why should we ban someone who interviews leaders of news making groups?

I don't like Netanyahu, and he is wanted for international war crimes, but I don't advocate banning news sources that interview him.
by giancarlostoro | 2025-08-12 15:35:35+00:00
If you see "Trust and Safety" it is actually a partnership between major tech companies. It provides guidance on how their TOS / community standards should be defined. Twitter was also a member until Elon bought it out. This is where things like policies on misinformation come from (or anything in general really). Every major social media company you can imagine is part of it, Discord, Reddit, Meta, Apple, etc.

The part that always concerns me is things like this are ripe for abuse. Whoever controls the partnership potentially controls all major platforms. They'll say you dont have to follow it to the letter, but that doesn't mean some wont.

This is also why when reddit changes internal rules Discord follows suit.

I am interested in this subject because I've seen Facebook become hostile over the years on specific types of remarks. I actually quit Facebook over its AI moderation, I made a harmless meme / joke comment and it flagged me, and when I appealed, it flagged me. Meanwhile others post much worse and I get dinged for making meme references that harm no one, my what? 50 friends on facebook will read it and not get my reference?

I've also seen other platforms shift their policies (a reddit comment section today is a night and day difference from a reddit thread in say 2010).

Digital Trust & Safety Partnership website here:

https://dtspartnership.org/
by styanax | 2025-08-12 15:35:46+00:00
A tough question as everyone's needs are different; I might recommend you create an account on https://codeberg.org as it's the largest, most popular instance of Forgejo running with many FOSS projects hosted there.

Codeberg devs have to disable some features (pull mirrors e.g., only push is allowed to prevent abuse) and they use some custom code (abuse mitigation - spam, etc.) but in general you're getting the latest Foregjo experience "test drive" which only gets better when self hosting when you can use all the features.
by thewebguyd | 2025-08-12 15:35:50+00:00
> The way Apple paired with ChatGPT is awkward. You get prompted if you want to use Siri or ChatGPT. Which creates a distraction.

My hunch tells me this is a temporary stopgap until Apple figures out their "private cloud compute" or whatever where they can run their own model, after that it'll be seamless. Try to do as much on device as possible, and if that fails/is not possible, offload to the model running on Apple's servers rather than a 3rd party service.

Maybe they're "behind" (although, this tech is still so early I don't think anyone is truly behind), but I appreciate their approach to try and do as much on device as possible. They are the only ones around that aren't just defaulting to "harvest as much data as possible and ship it to our servers."

I can be patient - Siri works fine for what I want it for anyway - it can set reminders, timers, alarms, dictate messages, and create notes. That's about all I use it for and would use it for. Anything else I'm not going to ask my phone, I'm going to take it out and head to Google.
by cubefox | 2025-08-12 15:36:04+00:00
First of all, I don't think Google ever made such a "claim". Moreover, what you are suggesting is that it is okay to do something bad if you say it's bad, but not to do something slightly bad if you say it's good. That's absurd. What Apple is doing with iOS is objectively much worse than what Google is doing with Android, irrespective of any alleged "claims".
by xnx | 2025-08-12 15:36:13+00:00
Shortcut keys, auto-complete, custom-GUI elements for which no comparable standard element exists, drag and drop, image insertion/resizing, rich text formatting, auto-updates for new items, etc.

It's possible to make a web 1.0 HTML email client but GMail is much much better. It's the difference between 1998 MapQuest and Google Maps.
by ritvikpandey21 | 2025-08-12 15:36:24+00:00
We processed hundreds of millions of pages and found that a single accuracy metric is misleading. A model that's 98% accurate on 1,000 pages with 200 data elements each still produces 4,000 incorrect values. The real killers are broken reading order in multi-column layouts, shifted table columns, and lost cross-page context that silently corrupt datasets without throwing errors.
Show HN: Joinable's RAG-in-a-Box – fastest way to build a RAG App for your data
by julijabain | 2025-08-12 15:37:04+00:00
Hey HN, I’m Julia, my team and I are building Rag-in-a-Box (https://www.joinable.ai/rag-in-a-box), hosted RAG service that let’s builders of any skill level launch their own RAG app loaded with their own data in minutes.

[ What can you do ] 1. Load your documents (PDFs, CSV, PPTs, Word Docs, etc) and make them searchable instantly. All your data stays private and encrypted.

2. Choose latest open source LLM (Llama 4, Deepseek, GPT-oss, etc) to interact with your docs

3. Access your hosted RAG via API - build your own custom front end or integrate with your existing product / service.

[ Why we built it ] 1. I love Notebook LM, but it has limitations: - you stuck with using Gemini models - no API - I wanted to integrate my notebook with my other apps but couldn't

2. Prior to this my teammate Brian was Head of AI at a public software company, teams across the organization constantly asked him to build various RAG apps for internal use (searching marketing docs, pulling financial information, etc)

But these projects weren’t a company priority, required lots of resources, therefore moved slowly through approvals... and were scrapped at the end.

This is why we decided to build RAG-in-a-Box to make it easy for anyone build their own RAG app.

[ How does it work ] 1. Create a Data Collection (“folder”) this will become your mini RAG application

2. Dump your data

3. Click Launch - your RAG is ready to Go

4. Use Joinable dashboard to start interacting with your RAG app or

5. Connect to your RAG App via API - add data, delete docs, generate markdown responses, pick LLM models, etc all available through API

Optional - embed your RAG App into your existing application or build custom front end or even a mobile app

Here are some quick tutorials to get started: https://joinable.gitbook.io/joinable-api-docs

We’ve just launched and would love you to try it and hear your feedback!
by xp84 | 2025-08-12 15:37:08+00:00
The Pope is based in Italy, but it’s probably the most inconvenient papacy in history for one to point that out, since the Pope is from Chicago.

Personally, I’m not trying to pretend that Europe is substantially more opposed to the institution of organized religion, I just think it’s a touch more nihilist than the US at present, and more atheistic, and specifically that Europeans are a little more likely to agree with the following: “There is no objective measure of good and evil; everyone should do whatever they want to do as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. Life has no particular purpose or meaning, though individuals are free to make up whatever personal goals they want.”
by gausswho | 2025-08-12 15:37:11+00:00
Not necessarily. Netlify told me as I had blown past 20 bucks for 1TB of traffic that paying 50 bucks for every additional 100GB was 'a good problem to have'. Well no, not at all. If your project is one of love, the end game is not subjecting your audience to boatloads of ads.
by jmyeet | 2025-08-12 15:37:18+00:00
This is unbelievable. We're all used to Google abandonware by now but the resources required for storage of shortened URLs and any dev maintenance must be so miniscule to be a rounding error to a rounding error on any budget anywhere in the company.

What can possibly be the motivation for this? I see no rationale for it in the linked post.

Google already has severe trust issues with anything they launch. They hurt themselves because people expect whatever is being launched to be abandoned so why invest in it? Reputation matters.
by childintime | 2025-08-12 15:37:19+00:00
well the situation may improve, so when one types `log10`, it can just fill in `math`. I tend to remember the function, not the library, so that would work better for me.

so it seems to me you're hung up on the current limitations of the language server, which is an implementation detail.

if what you want is actually important, the syntax should have been `import yyy.xxx as xxx` or similar, with optional `as xxx`, instead of a Cobol inspired syntax detail to remember.
by alephnerd | 2025-08-12 15:37:34+00:00
If they give a proscribed terrorist organization an actual platform WITHOUT pushback then they are biased.

CNN or NYT will bring Israeli government and IDF spox but also ask hard questions about civilian casualties (and Israelis get annoyed by that) and/or bring in a spox on the Palestinian or activist side.

Yet MintPress does the opposite by providing fawning coverage for them and other movements that were previously allied with the Assad government.

PBS has interviewed the Houthis via Frontline, yet also made sure to also push harsh and tough questions about their atrocities. MintPress didn't.

> Is this article incorrect in itself

I do not trust it. At some point you need to also validate whether your source is credible or not. And MintPress simply is not a credible source.

Edit:

Cannot reply below, so I will say this about the BBC - they try to be unbiased where possible and have reported on Houthi war crimes such as child soldiers on multiple occasions.

A credible news source is a source that tries to reduce it's bias where possible and rectify by giving multiple different sides a voice

Otherwise, it's an agenda-driven platform.
by CoderJoshDK | 2025-08-12 15:37:45+00:00
With continued reliability issues and the CEO stepping down, now feels like such an opportune time for a competitor to start taking market share. I sure am rooting for it!

For the longest time, I thought that there was absolutely no way for some of these corner stone companies (slash tech) to be toppled. And I’m very impressed with their ability to destroy consumer trust!
by anonym29 | 2025-08-12 15:37:50+00:00
Unrelated to the contents of the article itself, but this page is a great example of the UI ramifications of GDPR. On mobile, I get a full screen popup, and there appears to be an "accept all" button, but no "reject all" button. I'm grateful to have tools like uBlock Origin's element zapper for pages like this.

For those who don't, here's a version of the page with no full-screen banner: https://archive.is/bTEse
by svelle | 2025-08-12 15:38:45+00:00
After having used the IntelliJ/PyCharm spellchecker for German quite extensively I can only attest to this. It's so much more than just checking is a word is spelled correctly.

On the other hand, I did use Grammarly for a while and ultimately became annoyed at its tendency to keep "re-adjusting" sentences after it had already fixed them, so there is a fine line to walk.
by bubblyworld | 2025-08-12 15:38:54+00:00
What is the base rate here? Hard to know the scope of the problem without knowing how many non-rationalists (is that even a coherent group of people?) end up forming weird cults, as a comparison. My impression is that crazy beliefs are common amongst everybody.

A much simpler theory is that rationalists are mostly normal people, and normal people tend to form cults.
by philipwhiuk | 2025-08-12 15:39:00+00:00
> Install a rain butt to collect rainwater to use in the garden.

This assumes water is inconsistent. Once the rain butt is full, there's no more benefit. And then in a long dry season once it's emptied, it's not saving any more.

> Fix a leaking toilet – leaky loos can waste 200-400 litres a day.

If you're on a water meter you're already incentivised to fix this - so a better answer is water meters.

> Use water from the kitchen to water your plants.

Assuming you're using waste water, which most people won't.

> Avoid watering your lawn – brown grass will grow back healthy.

Households with lawns are rarer than they used to be - a big red flag has always been that hosepipe bans never applies to golf courses which use a large amount of water to keep their grass green all year.

> Turn off the taps when brushing teeth or shaving.

A few minutes of water p/person per day.

> Take shorter showers.

Probably minimal and potentially a hygiene problem.

> Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.

Negligible at best.
by zzzeek | 2025-08-12 15:39:32+00:00
because humans are biological creatures iterating through complex chemical processes that are attempting to allow a large organism to survive and reproduce within the specific ecosystem provided by the Earth in the present day. "Rational reasoning" is a quaint side effect that sometimes is emergent from the nervous system of these organisms, but it's nothing more than that. It's normal that the surviving/reproducing organism's emergent side effect of "rational thought", when it is particularly intense, will self-refer to the organism and act as though it has some kind of dominion over the organism itself, but this is, like the rationalism itself, just an emergent effect that is accidental and transient. Same as if you see a cloud that looks like an elephant (it's still just a cloud).
by hungryhobbit | 2025-08-12 15:39:36+00:00
Mage is an interesting game though: it's fantasy, but not "swords and dragons" fantasy. It's set in the real world, and the "magic" is just the "mage" shifting probabilities so that unlikely (but possible) things occur.

Such a setting would seem like the perfect backdrop for a cult that claims "we have the power to subtly influence reality and make improbable things (ie. "magic") occur".
by shadowgovt | 2025-08-12 15:39:47+00:00
It's generally worth remembering that some of the fallacies are actually structural, and some are rhetorical.

A contradiction creates a structural fallacy; if you find one, it's a fair belief that at least one of the supporting claims is false. In contrast, appeal to authority is probabilistic: we don't know, given the current context, if the authority is right, so they might be wrong... But we don't have time to read the universe into this situation so an appeal to authority is better than nothing.

... and this observation should be coupled with the observation that the school of rhetoric wasn't teaching a method for finding truth; it was teaching a method for beating an opponent in a legal argument. "Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy" is a great sword to bring to bear if your goal is to turn off the audience's ability to ask whether we should give the word of the environmental scientist and the washed-up TV actor equal weight on the topic of environmental science...
by stoobs | 2025-08-12 15:39:47+00:00
Not anywhere near as much as the stereotypes/memes/etc would have you believe.

Most of the issue though is the water companies funnelling revenue to shareholders and not maintaining the network, so they lose an awful lot of water through leaking pipes.

The privatisation of critical utilities and infrastructure was such a stupid move.

That said, the recommendation is nonsense, emails and photos make up a tiny fraction of the cooling requirements for data centres.
by hollowonepl | 2025-08-12 15:39:48+00:00
Well, to answer the post title question directly: far away from google services for years. It was obvious to me 10+ years ago that they only sustainable business products for them is search, yt, and marketing tracking/performance tools. Nothing else is stable, nor secured and there were examples of it before that shortener existed. G+ exposed how vulnerable google is regarding addon services and now they can’t even keep up with the archives (usenet). URL Shortener… please, that by definition looks like vaporware regardless of the vendor, anyway.
by rkapsoro | 2025-08-12 15:39:49+00:00
Something like 15 years ago I once went to a Less Wrong/Overcoming Bias meetup in my town after being a reader of Yudkowsky's blog for some years. I was like, Bayesian Conspiracy, cool, right?

The group was weird and involved quite a lot of creepy oversharing. I didn't return.