MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by wisty | 2025-08-03 21:30:21+00:00
If only politicians mattered why doesn't Trump sack virtually everyone in DC?

The government is a large organisation and its middle management is both vast and powerful.

And this huge middle management is obliged (arguably) to listen to academia unless otherwise instructed by politicians (who are too few in number and mostly not talented in steering large organisations so much as they are used to just going with the flow and taking the credit).
by 1659447091 | 2025-08-03 21:30:23+00:00
> Many people also don't know how to transit through security, given how little they travel. They need the three hours.

More and more are getting pre-check status since their credit cards pay for it. More than once I have been stuck behind a group (LAX Int'l terminal) where the middle aged male would hand a stack of 4-6 passports to the unlucky TSA person who will either be annoyed and purposely take their sweet time looking through the passports and handing them to each person and telling them they have to be the one to hand it over or hand them all back to the guy and tell him to give the passports to their owner to be checked, at which point there is a 50/50 chance (in my experience) that he will start arguing with the TSA person, throughly embarrassing the adolescent humans in the group.

The MyTSA app is great for getting average wait times, which check points are open/closed and instructions for how to do security. As someone else posted, Planning ahead pays off.

> Many people praise how luxurious some international airports are, especially when compared to ones in the US. Them serving as lush shopping malls is a big part of that.

One of my early international travel experiences was clearing customs at Amsterdam Schiphol and being dropped into a literal mall while looking for the train; it was one of my more bewildering and awestruck airport experiences
by NotGMan | 2025-08-03 21:31:43+00:00
You think that Bezos and Musk have billions in their own personal bank account?

So what do you mean be "extreme wealth"? Companies? Dividend payouts? House? Yachts?

I agree that luxury items that are out of reach of the middle class (eg sport cars etc...) should be taxed highly, but a toy that a rich person can buy vs a rich person investing money into his own or other companies is a problem if you want to tax that since no-one will then create new companies and invest in R&D.
by vinnymac | 2025-08-03 21:31:52+00:00
If anyone is curious how they are measuring these are the benchmarks: https://github.com/nodejs/undici/blob/main/benchmarks/benchm...

I did some testing on an M3 Max Macbook Pro a couple of weeks ago. I compared the local server benchmark they have against a benchmark over the network. Undici appeared to perform best for local purposes, but Axios had better performance over the network.

I am not sure why that was exactly, but I have been using Undici with great success for the last year and a half regardless. It is certainly production ready, but often requires some thought about your use case if you're trying to squeeze out every drop of performance, as is usual.
by pavel_lishin | 2025-08-03 21:32:14+00:00
Yeah, children bring home all sorts of vile stuff that'll knock you out for a day. And sometimes, it'll just be something random. This morning I had - let's call it "digestive distress" to avoid describing the horrors - that would have definitely meant I wouldn't be able to work if it were a weekday, but I think I'm over it now, and I'll be showing up tomorrow just fine.
by hollerith | 2025-08-03 21:34:01+00:00
No, most of the B-52s currently in service are well over 50 years old:

"The last production aircraft, B-52H AF Serial No. 61-40, left the factory on 26 October 1962."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress#Var...

Another weapons system: the M1 heavy machine gun is still heavily used, e.g., one on every Abrams tank, 4 or 6 on every aircraft carrier, and ISTR all of the US's inventory of it was made before and during WWII. I think maybe they use barrels that were designed more recently.
by starmole | 2025-08-03 21:35:31+00:00
This article is initially very well written and convincing. And it started to stress me out a little bit! Am I at great risk for having most of my wealth tied to the dollar?

But taking a step back: It is making very strong predictions for a future state of what I would consider a chaotic system. As the author identifies as a Physicist and not a Psychic, why is there no mention of uncertainty? No mention of how you would test or refute the prediction?

Looking at very selectively picked graphs is like reading tea leaves.

If even just a few people read the article and change their investment strategy as a result you already affected the outcome.
by robocat | 2025-08-03 21:35:48+00:00
I would be interested to see if we could create an hours-worked currency.

Every person is given a similar amount of lifetime (only a few countries are exceptions).

Time can't inflate or deflate, is understood by all and easily measured, and it can't be stored. Taking it from others or trading it between people is difficult (we use money as a proxy instead).

Some obvious problems: quality of time, the value of different people's time is variable, retirement.
by fragmede | 2025-08-03 21:37:01+00:00
Without getting hung up on the definition of the word "think", the fact that anyone can feed an LLM a couple of bullet points and generate a pile of convincing sounding marketing copy, is worth something if you're to someone. We can disagree on exactly how much and to whom, but if you're not willing to see that as fact then there's no common ground to base a conversation on.
by rconti | 2025-08-03 21:37:15+00:00
The CT sales are <10% of their capacity, per your wording. Do you think Model Y sales are down 90%?

No doubt Elon is destroying the profitability of his company by being a public asshole, but the Cybertruck is a fundamentally flawed vehicle (almost) nobody asked for, which is why it's a flop. By comparison, (refreshed) 3 and Y sales are not off by nearly as much, and some of that is just because they're just refreshes of existing vehicles people have been buying for many years, and there's a lot more competition in the EV market, and overall EV sales are slowing.
by DaveZale | 2025-08-03 21:37:24+00:00
I have a tub in the kitchen sink to capture all dishwater, and make 4-5 trips outside to dump the water daily, into watering tubes that are six inches deep, around the dripline of each tree. Here in the SW US it is almost pointless to water at the surface, 90% or so is lost to evaporation within a day.
by wtallis | 2025-08-03 21:37:43+00:00
Definitely don't think of enterprise vs consumer SSDs as good vs bad; they're optimizing for different use cases.

Enterprise SSDs get you power loss protection and firmware QA aimed at server workloads and operating systems, and performance tuning prioritizing consistent sustained performance, and larger form factors with enabling higher capacity and higher power.

Consumer SSDs get you higher peak performance (eg. SLC caching) and orders of magnitude better idle power savings and QA against Windows and its NVMe driver, in form factors suitable for laptops and not requiring direct airflow over the SSD.

A very long time ago when the SSD market was still quite immature, there was a time period where "consumer" SSDs were little more than cut-down enterprise SSDs with inferior NAND and fewer features. But that changed well before NVMe showed up.
by throwup238 | 2025-08-03 21:38:01+00:00
> Honest question, is the UN bureaucracy that different from the big international NGOs?

It very much depends on the bureaucracy but there are quite a few UN agencies with actual authority far beyond what any NGO would have (with the exception of the International Committee of the Red Cross which is explicitly given authority by the Geneva Convention).

For example the WHO is backed by other international treaties like the International Health Regulations (~196 signatories) that give it various powers like declaring a public health emergency. Its executive board is full of Ministers of Health, Directors-General of national health services, and other high ranking public health officials that directly exercise their powers within their respective governments.

There’s also the International Court of Justice, IMF, International Atomic Energy Agency, ICAO (aviation), IMO (maritime), and ITU (telecom) with various powers ranging from allocating spectrum to handing out billions in bailout loans.

The UN may not be able to enforce many of its rulings and decisions without a standing army but for the most part, many agencies do have a lot of authority backed by international law to actually do stuff beyond coordinating its member nations and few countries ever rock the boat. Out of the agencies I mentioned above the ICJ is really the only one that has the rare bit of trouble because noncompliance escalates to the Security Council where appeals die due to friendly vetoes.
by JdeBP | 2025-08-03 21:38:02+00:00
These are pretty much staples for any synthesizer music collection that ever was. There's going to be an Axel F in there somewhere, too. And possibly Chariots of Fire.

I was amused that Crockett's Theme was the very first one played to me. Alas, I didn't note the sompletely unrelated title before closing the page, and have no clue now where it is in the collection.
by throwaway9832 | 2025-08-03 21:39:07+00:00
If you think the measure of driving rusk isn’t per km, then you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

And just repeating things doesn’t make them different, up to 7.5 tones, it is the same speed and that is plenty enough different weight for stopping distance.

But then again, it is a useless conversation because you have no idea what road safety is about as you seem to focus on absolute numbers and the best way to get absolute 0 is to close all roads and ban driving.
by lossolo | 2025-08-03 21:39:11+00:00
> Africa's population surge is a liability as much as it is a benefit, especially considering they already have to import a large portion of their food supplies.

They also need to import phones, dishwashers, and cars. But how many cars do you really use? How many phones?

Africa's population growth is projected to drive steady demand for consumer products, while the West and parts of Asia are expected to see a decline. They have abundant natural resources, and they’re likely to become the cheapest labor force after countries like Vietnam and Thailand see rising wages and living standards.

We’re already seeing this in China, where wage growth is pushing some manufacturing to neighboring, lower cost countries.

Demand is ultimately limited by the number of people. You can produce as many goods as you want using AI powered factories but without demand, they’ll just end up in the garbage.
by matsemann | 2025-08-03 21:39:43+00:00
> All the ramblings channels should be in a Ramblings section at the bottom of the channel list. They should be muted by default, with no expectation that anyone else will read them.

I hate that Slack and other apps have nothing in between "mute" and "tell me immediately if I have anything unread". Many channels I want to know if there are new messages and read, just not by the second. If it could batch them up and only show them as unread after lunch, perhaps.
by cogman10 | 2025-08-03 21:39:51+00:00
Not so much the problem.

The bigger issue is a ton of foundations are just bribery enabling organizations. There's a reason pretty much every politician and rich person has one.

Donate $10k and the foundation can pay for a lavish speaking engagement in the Bahamas. The foundation head can give a 10 minute $50000 talk about how poverty is bad and then they enjoy the open bar and conversations with rich and powerful people.

Let's be frank, the average citizen isn't giving a dime to the George Clooney foundation for justice [1]. So you have to ask, why does such a foundation exist?

[1] https://cfj.org/
by slyall | 2025-08-03 21:40:10+00:00
The US Military is very aware of this. The Next generation fighters and bombers all have longer ranges and longer ranged missiles. The Air-force is working on building more runways and hardened hangers

The Army and Marines are planning around having units on Islands that have to have their own anti-aircraft and anti-ship capability since they won't be able to rely on air or sea support.
by disambiguation | 2025-08-03 21:40:54+00:00
> Others have looked more towards what a post-dollar world would look like: a gold-backed currency. A basket of commodities. A BRICS+ crypto-alternative. Bretton Woods 3.0.

> All of it’s noise — and none of it matters.

I've been reading libertarian de dollarization doom posts since 2008.

The question is, if the system is so messed up, why does everyone continue to put up with it? It's exactly due to the lack of viable alternatives. So long as the American monetary system is the only game in town, it will remain the reserve currency regardless of the debt or strength of the dollar.
by mzk_pi | 2025-08-03 21:41:21+00:00
We're building a contribution-based protocol that operates without price or currency. Instead of money, it uses trust (prestige), contribution history, and system connectivity as core signals.

The protocol's internal logic is already mathematically proven — it prevents inflation, exclusion, and market saturation by design. Its long-term dynamics converge toward a natural point of systemic harmony, represented by π (pi).

When I asked GPT-4 to forecast the global scale of such a system, it gave an answer. But it led me to a deeper question:

> Can AI meaningfully forecast systems that have no historical precedent? > Or is it simply extrapolating from past trends?

We’re discussing this here: https://github.com/contribution-protocol/contribution-protoc...
by vinnymac | 2025-08-03 21:41:56+00:00
Currently for very small projects I use the built in NodeJS test tooling.

But for larger and more complex projects, I tend to use Vitest these days. At 40MBs down, and most of the dependency weight falling to Vite (33MBs and something I likely already have installed directly), it's not too heavy of a dependency.
by jmbwell | 2025-08-03 21:42:31+00:00
All of this, plus, writing the documentation before building the app. I remember a Dilbert cartoon making fun of this being about the time I started realizing Dilbert wasn’t as smart as I had thought.

If you can’t write the documentation before you’ve written the code, you don’t understand well enough what you’re building the code for.

It’s one thing to jump into code because it’s fun to write code. But writing code is not designing software, and vice versa.

Same goes for APIs. Writing docs for an API that doesn’t yet exist can help create a much more complete and coherent API.

This is why I’m often trying to help stakeholders understand that the vast majority of software development has very little to do with actually writing code.

Herein also lies a concern I have about AI assisted development. It can be a powerful aid to the design stages, and it can be a powerful aid to writing code, but I’m not sure it enables skipping the design aspects altogether and somehow coming up with a complete, coherent product.
by ztetranz | 2025-08-03 21:42:48+00:00
This is not a criticism but just an observation. I wonder how many of their members have any clue about what Calyx is about. Calyx is quite well known in the RV community where I suspect most members simply see themselves as "customers" for the T-Mobile internet service which is a "free" membership benefit. It got better recently because they now have a plan where you can put the SIM in your own router. There are very few other "unlimited" data options available for private non-business users that allow "bring your own device".
by 0xdde | 2025-08-03 21:43:47+00:00
Your "Swedish" source appears to conclude that the wealth tax is effective, but suffered from loopholes and lack of enforcement. Why not fix those rather than follow your "real plan"?

Also your UK link does not support your argument:

> Weaker-than-expected tax liabilities from additional rate taxpayers are not necessarily an indicator of an unexpectedly low yield from the 50p rate. Incomes for those earning above £150,000 could be depressed for other reasons. For example, high income earners are more likely to derive a higher proportion of income from savings, dividends and other investments – and these have been much weaker in recent years than employment income.
by Eisenstein | 2025-08-03 21:44:48+00:00
Why is no one asking what purpose is served by indexing ChatGPT conversations? Why is this necessary? There is no option on your bank's website to 'make your finances discoverable' or your health insurance website to 'make your medical records discoverable'. It is not a matter of making it easier for people to understand what it is doing, it is a matter of thinking 'what could go wrong' and then determining if it is worth the risk to expose the option to do it.
by ethbr1 | 2025-08-03 21:44:58+00:00
The under appreciated drag is which is statistically more likely to be talented?

1. Someone from a wealthy / connected family

2. Someone who scrambled to the top of 100,000 other people

Folks can argue good schools, etc. all they want, but proven ability and drive to outcompete others should be a heavy counter argument against nepotism of all sorts.
Show HN: Cold DM Vault 10 free templates for freelancers struggling with clients
by Usef | 2025-08-03 21:45:35+00:00
Hey HN,

I'm a freelancer and video editor who used to overthink every cold DM I sent.

I’d spend 20 minutes rewriting the same message and still get ignored.

So I built a small resource called the *Cold DM Vault*: - 10 free cold DM templates (freelancers, editors, indie hackers) - Designed to feel human, not spammy - Short, easy to personalize, and proven to get replies

There’s a paid version too (100+ templates), but the free one already helped a few folks break the outreach block.

Would love feedback on: – The structure – Any templates you’ve seen work better – Anything I missed

Here’s the link if you want to check it out: https://usefsgh.gumroad.com/l/fndmlw
by rscho | 2025-08-03 21:45:37+00:00
TBH, yes it's a big deal. You correctly identified that docs are especially good at rote memorization. I always thought that this calls for a drastic revamp of accepted UI principles. You would usually design to group things logically, conform to an assumed user story and design around it. Well, docs have exactly one single UI priority: speed. They'll adapt easily to having a thousand infos on the same screen, given time to learn the location of each of those. They'll never adapt to deep menus requiring 10 clicks to reach a form.
by machomaster | 2025-08-03 21:45:50+00:00
You are not the only one. I really don't understand this trend of wanting to share opinions, but purposefully making it harder/impossible for other to read it. Might as well write with dark-grey font over black background, just to make readers struggle extra hard.

If you don't care to trivially make your text readable, then we for sure don't care to spend time to struggle through your text to see if there is any useful substance there.
by throw0101d | 2025-08-03 21:47:03+00:00
> Thanks Jones Act

The problem is with Congress deciding to not contract to build replacement vessels. In this instance the Jones Act is not the problem.

See "Hawaiian Rum Company Challenges the Jones Act" (30m) from the same channel which really gets into the details and history of the act:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuvAY4k3KQ8
by garrettdreyfus | 2025-08-03 21:47:21+00:00
The study you cite is talking about sea level rise since 1900 which is a very different story.

The IPCC section “9.6.1.1 Global Mean Sea Level Change Budget in the Pre-satellite Era” says Since SROCC, a new ocean heat content reconstruction (Section 2.3.3.1; Zanna et al., 2019) has allowed global thermosteric sea level change to be estimated over the 20th century. As a result, the sea level budget for the 20th century can now be assessed for the first time. For the periods 1901–1990 and 1901–2018, the assessed very likely range for the sum of components is found to be consistent with the assessed very likely range of observed GMSL change (medium confidence), in agreement with Frederikse et al. (2020b; Table 9.5). This represents a major step forward in the understanding of observed GMSL change over the 20th century, which is dominated by glacier (52%) and Greenland Ice Sheet mass loss (29%) and the effect of ocean thermal expansion (32%), with a negative contribution from the LWS change (–14%). While the combined mass loss for Greenland and glaciers is consistent with SROCC, updates in the underlying datasets lead to differences in partitioning of the mass loss.”

Edit: by a different story I mean a different story from what is the leading driver of sea level rise. Sea level rise from ice melt was larger since 1900 because sea level rise in general was less fast back then and global mean temperature rise was much smaller so thermosteric sea level rise played less of a role. Thermosteric sea level rise is larger than ground water factors, both will be eclipsed by ice melt in the upcoming century.

I would note the authors pointedly do not call it the leading driver of sea level rise.
by wtallis | 2025-08-03 21:47:49+00:00
They're (over)due to start shipping miniPCs aimed at being AI/ML workstations, using a SoC that's a collaboration between Mediatek and NVIDIA, with 128GB of DRAM. They have not yet announced intentions to put those chips in laptops and run Windows on them, but the writing has been on the wall all year. It would be entirely unsurprising to see NVIDIA(+Mediatek) overtake Qualcomm for ARM Windows PC sales next year. But it's too soon to start making purchase plans around that.
by franciscop | 2025-08-03 21:48:02+00:00
I'm a small-ish time author, but it was really painful for a while since we were all dual-publishing in CJS and ESM, which was a mess. At some point some prominent authors decided to go full-ESM, and basically many of us followed suit.

The fetch() change has been big only for the libraries that did need HTTP requests, otherwise it hasn't been such a huge change. Even in those it's been mostly removing some dependencies, which in a couple of cases resulted in me reducing the library size by 90%, but this is still Node.js where that isn't such a huge deal as it'd have been on the frontend.

Now there's an unresolved one, which is the Node.js streams vs WebStreams, and that is currently a HUGE mess. It's a complex topic on its own, but it's made a lot more complex by having two different streaming standards that are hard to match.
by fuzzfactor | 2025-08-03 21:48:46+00:00
This was amusing:

>Today’s microwave can cook a frozen burrito. Tomorrow’s microwave will be able to cook an entire Thanksgiving Dinner.

Actually it went like that in reverse.

They didn't really mass-market microwaves in the 1970's until they were capable of cooking a whole turkey faster than ever, and then developed free microwave cooking lessons well-attended at appliance stores. Where they demonstrated how to cook a whole Thanksgiving dinner, live. You can't make this up. Smelled wonderful :)

There was a very prevalent attitude that the emerging microwave could be nothing less than a major appliance, and there was not yet a concept for launching anything that was not thought capable of replacing a conventional oven right away.

They weighed about 75 pounds and were naturally big enough to hold a turkey.

This is the kind of microwave ovens that Dire Straits was lamenting about delivering at the time, before they got better gigs, with less stress on the hands & fingers.

Don't ask me how I know . . .