MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by thewebguyd | 2025-08-20 18:13:18+00:00
That's the problem with pixel. Everytime I try to switch from iPhone, ever year's line up has some glaring GC issue. I've tried every year since the 2XL. Most recent is the 9 Pro XL (only the XL size) the camera bar falling off.

The pixels could be amazing phones if Google could fix their crappy QC and invest in some actual customer support.

People like Apple - you can go to a physical store and get support. You can get AppleCare+ and have accidental damage replacements, battery replacements, etc just take it to the store.

Google doesn't have that, they don't have a physical presence, and it's nearly impossible to get a human and if you do, they are really stingy about RMAs.
by dakiol | 2025-08-20 18:13:22+00:00
It's an opinion based on countless of references and books out there. I cannot cite them, but it's like "code should be designed to depend on abstract interfaces instead of a concrete implementation", "everything is a byte stream", "adding more people to a late project makes it later", "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships", "Show me your flowchart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowchart; it'll be obvious.", etc... they are usually true.
by fluoridation | 2025-08-20 18:13:42+00:00
>An hour of a server CPU costs $0.01. How much is an hour of your time worth?

That's irrelevant. A human is not going to be solving the challenge by hand, nor is the computer of a legitimate user going to be solving the challenge continuously for one hour. The real question is, does the challenge slow down clients enough that the server does not expend outsized resources serving requests of only a few users?

>Even if the attacker is no better at solving the challenge than your browser is, there's no way to tune the monetary cost to be even in the ballpark to the cost imposed to the legitimate users.

No, I disagree. If the challenge takes, say, 250 ms on the absolute best hardware, and serving a request takes 25 ms, a normal user won't even see a difference, while a scraper will see a tenfold slowdown while scraping that website.
by mikepurvis | 2025-08-20 18:14:18+00:00
Interestingly despite being pretty hard-nosed about a lot of things, Nix does not insist on a read-only source directory at build time— the source is pulled into a read-only store path, but from there it is copied into the build sandbox, not bind-mounted.

I expect this is largely a concession to the reality that most autotools projects still expect an in-source build, not to mention Python wanting to spray pyc files and build/dist directories all over the place.
by chiefalchemist | 2025-08-20 18:14:30+00:00
Unfortunately, the survey doesn’t seem to have asked “What is journalism?” That baseline understanding is essential.

It did ask and get: “Most Americans (79%) agree that someone who writes for a newspaper or news website is a journalist”

Which is sad because true journalism is effectively a verb. It not who you are, or your title, or who you do it for. It’s what you do in order to reveal the truth. Furthermore, reporting and journalism are not synonymous. Along the same lines, op-ed is not journalism.

Just because it comes from The NY Times doesn’t by default make it journalism - tho the NYT is happy for you to believe otherwise.

This is my go to. It’s not prefect, but it does (indirectly) - as it should - call bullshit on most of today’s “journalists.”

https://kottke.org/20/01/jim-lehrers-rules-of-journalism-1
by pants2 | 2025-08-20 18:14:53+00:00
Ironically, Home Depot is the only store I ever shoplifted from because of a bad UX on their app. They have/had a "shop in store" mode, where you can scan an item and pay for it in the app. So I scan and pay and leave.

A few days later I get an email "your item hasn't been picked up and you've been refunded."

Apparently if you scan an item and pay for it in the store they still expect you to wait for their staff to approve you, or something. It wasn't clear.

This was also only necessary because they didn't accept Apple pay so I had no way of paying for my items except through the app.
by johnsmith1840 | 2025-08-20 18:14:54+00:00
From their blog its not obvious the value but pure cdp as a framework is powerful for other reasons. If you have very high performace requirements it makes sense.

I build something like an automation system pure cdp to shave ms off. But I'm a real time user interaction system plus automation not pure ai automation.

Doesn't make much sense to shave ms when an LLM call is hundreds of ms ans that's the only "user"
by etempleton | 2025-08-20 18:15:44+00:00
I never said it did. Having a fab on US soil is important for the short term, but you need cutting edge fabs on US soil in the future too and that doesn't happen unless you are doing a lot of research.

Okay, so Taiwan is blockaded or invaded by China. The USA has a 3nm TSMC fab that they can assume control over, and, yes, they have the labor of that fab, great, but what about 2 nm? 1 nm? Etc? Without TSMCs R&D does the US have a cutting edge fab in 10 years? 20 years? Beyond? There is literally no other company in the United States that could even hope to expand their capabilities to be considered on the cutting edge within the next 15 years.
by mg | 2025-08-20 18:16:09+00:00
The people at Google seem to think much more like me than the people at Apple.

There are 3 primary decisions Google made that click with me, while Apple's choices are a mystery to me:

1: When I put a Pixel on a table, it sits there stable. Because the backside is symmetrical. When I put an iPhone on a table, it wobbles.

2: When I sort my photos on a Pixel, I sort them in folders. The "camera" folder is where the unsorted photos are. When I sit in a bus or in a cafe, I go through it and sort the new photos into folders. This seems impossible on iPhones. Everything stays in the main folder forever. You can add photos to albums, but that does not remove them from the main folder. So there is no way to know which photos I have already sorted.

3: On Android I can use Chrome. Which means web apps can use the File System Access API. This makes web apps first class productivity applications I can use to work on my local files. Impossible on iPhones.

I'm sure people who prefer iPhones have their own set of "this clicks with me on iPhones and puzzles me on Pixels" aspects?

Is this a "left brain vs right brain" type of thing? Do most HNers prefer Androids?
by uticus | 2025-08-20 18:16:33+00:00
Pushing the burden of network permissions management outside the browser, to the OS? Heresy!

To be serious, this has introduced me to sandboxing on BSD via pledge [0] and comparisons against Linux seccomp [1] - thank you!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17289654

[1] https://kristaps.bsd.lv/devsecflops/ (submission by same poster at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44264021)
by giancarlostoro | 2025-08-20 18:17:38+00:00
I think on-device models will be the breaking point for AI. Nobody wants to pay for a trillion dollar cloud bill. We've made consumers think that the only way you're paying for software is if you have to buy hardware that comes with it. If you want AI to truly blow up, make it run on potatoes. It doesnt have to do EVERYTHING, just specific needs.

That said, what is with Android phones and their back cameras? They look silly. I thought Apple adding 3 to theirs for the 12 was a bit silly, but at least they made it look nice. One of those models looks like a Battlestar Galactica villain...
by charlie-83 | 2025-08-20 18:17:47+00:00
Not that I'm trying to justify the prices, but I'm interested by the take that a phone should cost less than a computer. To me, the phone has an actual camera and is significantly smaller (and, if you are talking desktop, has a screen) so should cost more for the same sort of power. Of course, there are phones and computers at all different prices so it's hard to compare.
by traceroute66 | 2025-08-20 18:18:04+00:00
And the other side of that coin is ...

Lots of FOSS maintainers are happy to bitch and moan about how they are doing god's work for little or no remuneration. They are of course, quite correct to do so, it is indeed hard work, long hours, poor or no pay.

But, and its a big BUT .... you can put all the donation, crowdfunding buttons that you like on your GitHub page. The reality is that will only get you so far.

So there is a lot to be said for corporations that recognise the work and are willing to pay an old-school salary to the maintainers. It provides life-stability for the maintainers, and it provides product-stability for the corporation ... win-win.

And in 2025 the reality is that corporation thinking on open-source is a far cry of what it was back-then. In the majority they are far more enlightened and open to contributing-back.

Yes it will never be sufficient for the die-hard FOSS greybeards. But even a billion dollar corporation cannot possibly put dollars behind every single tiny piece of open-source software it ever uses. You have to pick-and-choose, its just the reality of life.

Finally, regarding the FUD about "oh, its going to be shutdown tomorrow". That road is paved with examples where it DID NOT happen ... I seem to recall that the usual suspects (Redhat / Canonical / IBM etc.) all employ a great deal of maintainers of various critical parts of Linux. As far as I can tell the output of those maintainers taking the corporate dime has neither suffered or been shutdown.
by OnlineGladiator | 2025-08-20 18:18:23+00:00
The easiest way to get TSMC's R&D in the US is to have them build a fab here and have employees here. If China invades Taiwan, and TSMC has employees that want to flee to somewhere else, the US would be the most logical option. If they already have a fab here, an established workforce and infrastructure here, that's better than having to start from nothing.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-08-20 18:18:37+00:00
Hacker news is not an app for cheap entertainment. Social media is. Hacker news is predominantly used by professionals, entrepreneurs, and/or tech interested/adjacent people. Social media isn't. Internet access and historical self selecting of people who sought out online spaces for interaction/community (it was not the norm, nor as acceptable, in fact often considered weird) acted as a gatekeeper that previously skewed early social media to have a different user base than today.
by filoleg | 2025-08-20 18:18:38+00:00
Yes, I am aware, which is why my grandparent comment said “[…] once someone […] has met the residency requirement to apply for citizenship.”

The amount of time one has to wait before meeting the residency requirement (aka before they can apply for the US citizenship) depends on other circumstances. With the default being 5 years (technically 4 years and 9 months, because by the time process finishes and you get your citizenship, you will hit the required 5y mark, so they officially let people apply at 4y9mo mark; there is even a first-party "early filing calculator" tool[0]), and the number going down depending on whether it was through marriage, whether you served in the US military and applied for the expedited process, etc.

However, my post explicitly mentioned that I was talking about the time one has to wait after they apply for the US citizenship, to which this has zero relevance.

0. https://www.uscis.gov/archive/uscis-early-filing-calculator
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-08-20 18:18:39+00:00
>NSA science departments being demolished is lowkey great news; as a European

Ironic to read this gloat, given the new spyware, chat control and anti online privacy acts that the EU countries are pushing for, which will also be achieved using US/Israeli tech instead of domestically developed one, because the EU has none.

So your tax money will go to the US big-tech(again!) so that your government can spy on you. I don't think this is something to be happy about just because hey at least the US has domestic issues.
by seanw265 | 2025-08-20 18:18:48+00:00
Yes certainly! I've dealt with large datasets like this in the past and know firsthand how challenging it can be to wrangle them.

Something like this would be a great fit for my travel planner app if I knew I could trust that the results were high quality before prompting the user with them.

Btw I edited my earlier comment with a few more examples just before you replied.

Good luck!
by brgross | 2025-08-20 18:18:48+00:00
I went with great circles since that feels like the most “natural” straight line on a sphere — the path you’d walk if you just kept going forward without steering. You could define "straight" as a constant compass direction (I think it's called a "rhumb") -- that would look straight on a Mercator map but would actually require regular steering adjustments to maintain the bearing.
by iLemming | 2025-08-20 18:19:21+00:00
I'd say this ain't an opinion - it's a fact. Where else can you rename a bunch of items in your directory tree, recursively, using all the features of your editor - multiple cursors, keyboard macros, spellchecking, etc.?

There just doesn't exist another piece of software (go ahead, prove me wrong) where you can edit your filesystem like a wiki page.
by hugs | 2025-08-20 18:19:44+00:00
it's all good, man. if it makes you feel better, i don't like rust. ;-) my eldest son loves it, though!

fun-fact: i've never used mercury. when i came up with "selenium" -- it was because a colleague saw an early demo and said it had the potential to "kill mercury". (spoiler alert!)

but in that moment, i hadn't heard of mercury before, so i had to google it. i then also spent a few extra cycles googling around for a "cure for mercury poisoning" just so i could continue the conversation with that colleague with a proto-dad-joke... and landed on a page about selenium supplements. things obviously got out of hand.

i didn't want to call the project "selenium". i preferred the name "check engine", but people started calling it "selenium" anyway. i only wish nice things for the mercury team -- the only thing i know about them is that hp acquired mercury for $4.5B. so i hope they blissfully don't care about me or my bad dad-jokes.

but again... i didn't realize there was an entire testing tools industry at that moment. all i knew was that i had a testing problem for my complicated web app -- and the consensus professional advice at the time was "yeah, no. don't use javascript in the browser -- it's too hard to test". (another spoiler.) also, (if i'm remembering correctly) mercury was ie/windows only... and i needed something that supported apple and mozilla/firefox. it felt like zero vendors at the time cared about anything that wasn't internet explorer or wasn't windows. so i had to chart my own course pretty quickly.

long story long: "you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" - harvey dent
by svnee | 2025-08-20 18:19:58+00:00
Hey, this is actually something I have a keen interest in as I'm fighting my government (as an MP) to drop those scammers where possible. Do you have any media links to send me about them selling the "good hours" on the black market?

Even if the US has a horrible visa system – as I can attest, despite only having to do it every 5 years – the EU countries could benefit from attracting talent by being more welcoming. So that is part of my mission as an MP and tech-entrepreneur. Any help and pointers is welcome.
by meindnoch | 2025-08-20 18:20:11+00:00
>I'm sure there's some fancy mathematical trick that would just do it. If I were only more comfortable with math... my handwavy sketch would be to compute the speed function by differentiating the formulas to get dx, dy, and dz and passing them through the Pythagorean equation, then reparameterize on a t' variable using the inverse of the speed function? Maybe? I feel like I'm speaking using words I don't understand.

What you're looking for is called arc length parameterization. Basically, you need to compose the curve with the inverse of its arc length function. Aside from a few special curve families, closed-form solutions don't exist.
by patrickthebold | 2025-08-20 18:20:53+00:00
Just a thought: Make the velocity of the path constant. There should be some way to take a derivative an set it to a constant and solve for z. ( or really reparameterize the curve t' = f(t)) so the velocity is constant.

Actually, now that I think about it, choosing z = c * t is kind of both influencing how the path is parameterized as well as the path carved out on the sphere.
by ACS_Solver | 2025-08-20 18:22:22+00:00
Yes, the story is definitely false. I looked into some details the first time I saw it on HN, seemed strange then, and it cannot be true. Radiation from the disaster could, and did, mess with electronics, but close to the disaster area. Most contamination is with alpha-decay elements, and alpha rays aren't going to make it from inside a train to a computer inside a building by the tracks. And yes, any living creature radioactive enough to affect electronics would be rapidly and painfully dying.

It's a funny story, but the physics is impossible, and there's several historically implausible details as well, so I'm comfortable saying it's made up.
by AmazingTurtle | 2025-08-20 18:23:29+00:00
If a quick POC is useful, we (everfind.ai) can help fill product-data gaps while honoring your "compliant vendors only" rule. We ingest whatever you have (text, JSON, HTML, Excel), map it into category-specific schemas, and surface clean fields for search/filter. You also get fast fielded search, sensible relevance, hybrid vector search, and an optional guided-selling assistant you can expose publicly. Happy to try this on a small sample.

Feel free to reach out to me at felix.faust@everfind.ai :)
by Jabbles | 2025-08-20 18:23:44+00:00
> For instance, when you're calling an airline, it can automatically find your flight details from your email and display it during your phone call.

Is this really the best example usecase they can think of? How often does an individual call an airline? I'm sure in aggregate they get a lot of calls, but I don't think I've ever had to.

It just seems really weird that this is the top example of on-device AI. The other examples mentioned, like "finding the right photos to share with a friend", seem more relatable.
by sejje | 2025-08-20 18:23:46+00:00
I'm kind-of into old techniques and crafting styles. I live in the forest, so it kind of lends itself to that.

I agree with you. I have piles of books detailing very old crafts like processing game, tanning hides, trapping, hunting. Knapping stone tools, weaving baskets, raising pole barns, distilling whiskey at home, making clothes, mending clothes, herbal/wild medicines. The foxfire books being a great example of how we preserve this knowledge.

Almost anything modern we've learned is going to be well-documented IMO. We may not be referencing those documents any longer, but they exist, and will exist for a long time.

And also agree that modern methods tend to be better, or at least the best version of the old methods is widely known, thanks to youtube etc. Primitive Technology on youtube, for instance, was able to launch himself into the iron age without bringing any modern tools along. But the access to modern informational sources makes him a primitive powerhouse.
by nodesocket | 2025-08-20 18:23:49+00:00
I'll add: When doing instance to instance communication (in the same AZ) always use private ips. If you use public ip routing (even the same AZ) this is charged as regional data transfer.

Even worse, if you run self hosted NAT instance(s) don't use a EIP attached to them. Just use a auto-assigned public IP (no EIP).

NAT instance with EIP - AWS routes it through the public AWS network infrastructure (hairpinning). - You get charged $0.01/GB regional data transfer, even if in the same AZ. NAT instance with auto-assigned public IP (no EIP) - Traffic routes through the NAT instance’s private IP, not its public IP. - No regional data transfer fee — because all traffic stays within the private VPC network. - auto-assigned public IP may change if the instance is shutdown or re-created so have automations to handle that. Though you should be using the network interface ID reference in your VPC routing tables.
by lemonberry | 2025-08-20 18:23:59+00:00
Can't believe I'm a reader and didn't realize this was a book genre. For some reason I always associated it with comic books, graphic novels, and movies. Not that there's anything wrong with those mediums. I'm just more of a book guy.

All of this is to say, these and some of other recommendations in this thread are recommendations I didn't know I needed.

HN isn't perfect, but neither am I. I really appreciate the breadth of topics and interests. Big shoutout to PG for starting it, to Dang and all of the other moderators, and to everyone that contributes. I've learned a lot over the years.

They say to never be the smartest person in the room. I'm not even in the top 100 here and totally fine with it.
by jofla_net | 2025-08-20 18:24:16+00:00
>These identity verification services look like a scam to me.

Even if their intent is to run an 'honest' business, the method of bouncing a user around to god knows how many domains during the process becomes effectively indistinguishable from a compromised service, and the alternative of having each site host their own id verification system screams, HACK US. I can see users becoming increasingly accustomed to getting out their cards several times during a sign-up and not having the foggiest idea of where their information went to.
by cbsmith | 2025-08-20 18:24:32+00:00
> Nobody wants to pay for a trillion dollar cloud bill.

Buying dedicated hardware as a way to keep your AI bill down seems like a tough proposition for your average consumer. Unless you're using AI constantly, renting AI capacity when you need it is just going to be cheaper. The win with the on-device model is you don't have to go out to the network in the first place.
by articsputnik | 2025-08-20 18:24:50+00:00
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I actually refine and update my definition, that's why it is similar.

> A semantic layer is an interface to data stores that is designed to be queryable in terms relevant and familiar to those with knowledge of the business domain.

Sounds good to me, but I think it's too simplified. A semantic layer, IMO, does more. See Julian Hyde's definition, which is also similar to mine, and more involved as well:

> A semantic layer, also known as a metrics layer, lies between business users and the database, and lets those users compose queries in the concepts that they understand. It also governs access to the data, manages data transformations, and can tune the database by defining materializations.

> Like many new ideas, the semantic layer is a distillation and evolution of many old ideas, such as query languages, multidimensional OLAP, and query federation.

I appreciated your feedback. Will think a little more about it.
by solatic | 2025-08-20 18:24:58+00:00
OP's argument hinges too much on thinking that GitLab pipelines etc. only do CI.

The purpose of Continuous Integration is to produce the One Canonical Latest Build for a given system. Well... no surprise that there's a ton of overlap between these systems and Bazel etc. "build systems".

But GitLab pipelines etc. are also Continuous Deployment systems. You don't always need fancy ArgoCD pull-based deployments or, their precursor, Chef/Puppet were also pull-based deployments for VMs. You can just have GitLab run a deployment script that calls kubectl apply, or Capistrano, or scp and ssh systemctl restart, or whatever deploys the software for you. That's not something that makes sense as part of your build system.