MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bitwize | 2025-09-27 20:18:43+00:00
Apple was always like that.

"Once upon a time, pointers on the Macintosh had 24 bits..."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44632615

Though at least back then, they provided backward-compatibility modes for old software. You know, back when the expected service lifetime of your Mac was longer than that of your dog.
by staplung | 2025-09-27 20:19:08+00:00
It's interesting to note how the West discovered there had been a nuclear accident in the USSR when Chernobyl exploded. The Forsmark reactor in Sweden detected the fallout on the clothing of workers returning to the plant after lunch, IIRC.

Surprised this station seems to post-date that? Seems like it would have been handy to have in the Cold War. Then again, Russia has long had a mining presence on Svalbard so maybe that has something to do with it.
Show HN: AhaTree, a 60-second interactive demo
by kez_ | 2025-09-27 20:19:20+00:00
I’m testing a new way to explain QuickIntro (turns referrals into meetings without the awkward ask). Instead of slides or a video, I built a 60-second “AhaTree” you can click through, no signup required.

Would love feedback: is this format clearer than the usual demos?
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-09-27 20:21:41+00:00
It's not obvious that this was corruption though.

What they were doing was, they'd take a bucket of high risk mortgages and apply a contract to them to retroactively sort them. So, if you bought the 30th percentile of the bucket and then anything more than 70% of the people in the bucket paid their mortgages you would get paid, and if fewer than that did then you wouldn't.

Then they were rating the highest percentiles in the bucket as AAA because even for borrowers with bad credit, the probability that such a high percentage of them would default was considered very low. Even for people with bad credit, default rates are usually only something like 10%.

But that doesn't work out if you haven't noticed that banks have stopped caring about the default rate when issuing mortgages.
by delusional | 2025-09-27 20:23:04+00:00
I've only been in industry for 7 years. So far, the problem I've seen at my two employers have been stopping the "code-slingers" from making absolutely worthless systems that create a ton on noise in the organization, and redirecting their efforts towards long term valuable and productive ends.

From observation and induction, it seems very easy to contribute net-negative value in a software development position, and delivering long-term net positive value really requires a lot of discipline from the developers, or a lot of wrangling from non-technical members.

PS: Discipline here does not mean "being picky about what things to accept" it means being picky about what things you make up. From observation, a lot of the most valuable work is super fucking boring, and it takes discipline not to make up a more intellectually stimulating task.
by andrewmcwatters | 2025-09-27 20:24:10+00:00
Wouldn't it be so cool if you could actually do anything with it? Imagine building a Bugatti and installing an unremovable speed limiter that forced you to top out at 75 MPH, because of course you're never going to take it to a track.

It was only intended for highway travel at best.

But hey, you can scroll at 120hz now, right? Think different!

All this tells me is that Intel and AMD are the only manufacturers making leading chips that you can do anything with.

Edit: Fixed last sentence.
by kube-system | 2025-09-27 20:25:06+00:00
The Raspberry Pi foundation is not a computer company, they are an educational charity that just happens to also make a computer. Their primary work is in pedagogy resources, research, and support. A Raspberry Pi has more educational resources, because literally that is the primary work of the company that makes it. They have a full CS curriculum for ages 5-19. The entire reason it exists is as an educational tool. Their mission statement doesn't even mention making a computer -- they simply do that to support their primary education work.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/about/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/research-impact/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/teach/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/learn/

https://codeclub.org/en

It wasn't until later that hobbyists and commercial interests also started using Raspberry Pis for things outside of the classroom. But that's where they came from.
by cozzyd | 2025-09-27 20:25:33+00:00
I've spent quite a bit of time in kangerlussuaq while on route or on my way back from summit station. Would love to explore more of the country, but even just kangerlussuaq is quite beautiful. I've seen pictures from the east Coast from some pilots based out of Akureyri who were assisting some geologists at Summit one year and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

Greenlandic hot dogs are delicious too, similar to Iceland.
by 3eb7988a1663 | 2025-09-27 20:25:51+00:00
How technically challenging is this? I would expect that all weather monitoring stations are already kitted out with all the detectors they can bolt onto the air intake. CO2, oxygen, air pressure, humidity, radioactivity, love in the air, whatever.

If you already have the facility why not record everything? Or is a good radiation detector a $$$$ investment?
by mirekrusin | 2025-09-27 20:26:25+00:00
Type erasure has nothing to do with soundness - ocaml also erases types at runtime but it is sound. In typescript "any" type, unsafe casting, non null assertions and couple of other constructs are unsound. Gradual typing at package level was addressed by (also unsound) declaration repository (overall successful I'd say - primary reason it won over flow in my opinion).

I have a problem reconciling "sound gradual typing" - is there such thing at all? Sounds like contradiction to me, no? Untyped function's result can be considered "unknown" (as opposed to "any" using typescript terminology) and require runtime checks at call site (as if it was i/o boundary) - that's fine but arguments on the other hand must have some type declaration on its signature to be considered sound. Injecting runtime checks in untyped library for arguments feels nonsensical because if you can do it then you already did static code analysis that did infer argument types and you can shove it into function signature as static type declaration - ie. that's just more sophisticated static inference that doesn't require runtime code injection.

You could argue that there may be some dynamism that cannot be expressed at type level and that requires runtime checks deeper in the untyped code but if it cannot be expressed then by definition it's unsound and frankly who cares about runtime checks nested deeply in untyped code - what's the difference if it blows up at runtime in the middle of that untyped function with type error or some other error?
by WalterSear | 2025-09-27 20:26:46+00:00
My beta starts end of October, if you are interested.

https://youtube.com/@groove-tronic

I'm disabled (which is why I've been forced into starting my own venture) and can only work a few hours a day, but I'm still more productive than I have been in 25 years, even when I had a team of engineers and a designer working for me.

The code is also cleaner - because refactoring is cheap now.

And I'm working in a language (C++) that I had barely touched when I started.
by zzo38computer | 2025-09-27 20:27:18+00:00
It is what I thought too; if it should be reinvented, it should be done properly. (Although, I still think TCP will do; it is not necessary to change it to UDP instead.) Comment 45393083 has some of my comments about this Gurted.

There is another discussion at: gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/s/SmallWeb/15126 (connect to port 1965 with TLS and send the full URL followed by CRLF)

I think Gemini was designed to be between Gopher and WWW (and it is not so bad, although I would have made the TLS optional instead of mandatory; from my experience, I am not the only one). I designed Scorpion to be between Gemini and "WWW as it should be if it was designed better", which has the result of being neither a subset nor superset of the capabilities of Gemini or of WWW (as well as doing things that I considered to be useful enough to keep, such as range requests (although, for simplicity, I allowed only a single range per request, rather than the multiple ranges per request that HTTP does)).

I also think that it is useful to use different protocols (and different file formats) for different uses; e.g. for some types of games (and for live chat services) it would probably be better to use an interactive session such as Telnet or SSH (or IRC, in the case of chat) rather than using HTTP or Gemini (even though both are used).
by kristianp | 2025-09-27 20:28:21+00:00
I agree it seems strange market placement. I guess the Pi 500 is for kids and the double the price 500+ is for adult hardware hackers who often like mechanical keyboards. However if they're hardware hackers, an all in one keyboard pc makes hacking the hardware redundant?

They'll sell a lot more 500s, but are the profit margins on the 500+ really that great?
by spit2wind | 2025-09-27 20:28:54+00:00
Steno is 100% the way to go to avoid and heal RSI. Infinitely more ergonomic. It also erases much of the difference between Emacs and VIM (assuming you use repeat and 1up). Yes, it has to be learned. But you already learned Emacs or VIM, so clearly you're not afraid to invest a little now for a big return later (e.g. no RSI). It's also fun.
by measurablefunc | 2025-09-27 20:29:42+00:00
The definition I use for a financial bubble in case of AI is the following: financial debt obligations/investments that can not be repaid/serviced w/ future growth. Unlike pure software, the growth in AI is coupled w/ huge investments in real infrastructure (data centers, power plants, network interconnect, etc). This means that regardless of what happens the infrastructure is not going away & given how software can be so easily reprogrammed these days there is no way that all of it will suddenly go up in a puff of smoke. OpenAI & others will figure out how to redeploy the infrastructure for different use cases & keep the money flowing. This is unlike office buildings & general real estate b/c it's not like an office building or a family home can be quickly repurposed for something else to keep the money flowing to whoever owns the underlying infrastructure.

I don't think it's a bubble. The numbers seem large but that's b/c the underlying infrastructure costs a lot of money & unlike other forms of infrastructure computers can be used for all sorts of different things by simply redeploying different software to it that consumers will find compelling (even if it's no longer 6 second clips of cats doing backflips from diving boards).
by SantalBlush | 2025-09-27 20:31:08+00:00
I think this bubble makes sense. Any investor who believes AI is the future--that is, that AI will disrupt entire industries and replace labor in quite a few ways--must have a slice of the AI pie. They know full well that most of their AI investments will go bust, but that doesn't matter as long as they have a significant piece of one of the few companies left standing when the bubble bursts. So they take shots at anything that looks like it could be one of those survivors. When it all pops, they will have some of the winners and they will write off the losers.
by drnick1 | 2025-09-27 20:32:33+00:00
There are no privacy-preserving social media apps. There are privacy-invading by design, and some of them, like Facebook, even have an explicit goal of using real names and connections. Your only option here is to dump social media altogether.

Other things like DNS filters/adblockers and privacy settings can help, but they do comparatively little for your privacy compared to quitting social media. And the best thing is that you don't need to be tech-savvy, you just need some awareness and maturity.
by srcreigh | 2025-09-27 20:32:49+00:00
Here's what I've been able to do:

https://pxehost.com

It's a cross platform PXE server. You just run it (root-less, no config) and the other computers on your LAN can boot up via PXE and (via netboot.xyz and iPXE) automatically download a Linux installer

The tool itself and the website both started their life as extremely functional 1-shots from GPT-5. pxehost was in a ChatGPT chat, and pxehost.com began as a 1-shot in a Codex CLI.

To me it's really cool that something like pxehost exists, but the fact that it began life as a fully working prototype from a single ChatGPT response is insane.
by gruez | 2025-09-27 20:33:25+00:00
>How do you know you're getting "most" of the benefits? Data collection for most proprietary apps and websites is still extremely hard to monitor and as long as it's still a primary source of revenue, I don't think the businesses behind them will give up the data without a fight. So I don't think using an ad blocker or relying on the service's own privacy settings will work here.

If you're browsing the web with an ad blocker and VPN, have third party cookies disabled, are using a privacy respecting email service, big tech basically has no insights into your off-site activities. Facebook might know you're still messaging your aunt, but it doesn't know what sites you go on (via facebook embeds). Therefore big tech doesn't know what your interests are (unless you join a facebook group for model train enthusiasts or whatever), or what you buy. You might still object to Facebook knowing that you messaged your aunt at all, but if that's the only way of keeping in touch with her, it's really the best you can do without going off the grid.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-09-27 20:33:30+00:00
"Neither of these platforms are good venues for dissemination of scientific research."

These "platforms", i.e. other peoples' gigantic websites, are fantasy worlds that cater to self-aggrandisement where relevance requires a presence in that world

The outside world, aka the real world, is under represented and thus ignored
by bob1029 | 2025-09-27 20:33:42+00:00
Virtually all of it is about the spatial volume and stiffness of the cabinet material & design. The actual type of material, dimensions and surface finish are almost entirely irrelevant to performance. MDF is dirt cheap and highly performant.

I've built a ~700 liter subwoofer using 24" diameter Sonotube concrete forum material ($200-300 right now). The circular shape means that the only unbalanced forces occur at the ends of the tube. Fortunately, this is also where you put the driver (bottom) and the port (top) along with reinforcing material. You can make incredibly deep & powerful LFE cabinetry without even breaking 200lbs of total weight. Mine would go flat to 13Hz and could easily be moved by 1 person.
by tentahedronic | 2025-09-27 20:33:44+00:00
My general advice here for you and many others in this thread would be to switch to Context (or even Luametatex if you really want to make some truly crazy stuff, basically it's just a newer and more experimental version of Context) if you are not happy with things and like to do your own customizations and don't bother becoming a TeX wizard. Latex is super if you are fine with the template you are provided or you absolutely need some obscurish package, otherwise Context is similar enough and bending it to your will is pretty much how it's supposed to be used.
by WalterSear | 2025-09-27 20:35:28+00:00
I don't think that my product demos will tell you much about how effective AI has been, but here:

https://youtube.com/@groove-tronic

Now you can't say nobody has anything to show.

This does real-time DSP (time stretching, effects, analog emulation), in a language I didn't know when I started (C++), that I started a couple of months ago.

I could not have created this without AI, cannot make progress without AI. When I use up my Pro account limits, I'm done for the day - I'm too slow without it for continuing to make sense.
by gruez | 2025-09-27 20:35:48+00:00
>There are no privacy-preserving social media apps. There are privacy-invading by design, and some of them, like Facebook, even have an explicit goal of using real names and connections. Your only option here is to dump social media altogether.

Even something like Mastodon? Where's the privacy invading part, the fact that you're uploading vacation pics for others to view, or that it's building a dossier of your interests for advertising purposes?
by pranay01 | 2025-09-27 20:36:54+00:00
one of the cases we have observed is that Phoenix doesn't completely stick to OTel conventions.

More specifically, one issue I observed is how it handles span kinds. If you send via OTel, the span Kinds are classified as unknown

e.g. The Phoneix screenshot here - https://signoz.io/blog/llm-observability-opentelemetry/#the-...
by fakedang | 2025-09-27 20:37:56+00:00
Not to sound inhuman (well I'm going to sound inhuman anyways), but DR Congo is perhaps the most irrelevant country geopolitically for the 115 million population it has. The stability of DR Congo does not make a difference to the stability of Africa on the whole in any way - if DR Congo were to descend into civil war (like it has before), it won't make a difference in any way, except for perhaps Rwanda. DR Congo could disappear one day and the world would continue moving forward like nothing else happened.

This is a country with hundreds of ethnicities and sub-ethnicities, that should not exist as a cohesive entity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Con...). The three decades it existed without a civil war, it was under the autocracy of Mobutu Sese Seko, under whose regime corruption and extrajudicial killings were rampant, as is typical with any autocratic regime. Following which, the army took control, which led to civil war and even more corruption and extrajudicial killing, which continues till today. This country is a money pit, something the Soviets learnt during the Cold War, and the Chinese today, and any initiative to uplift this country is going to end up in a blackhole. After all, how the heck is anyone supposed to establish anything longlasting in Africa's own backyard bullpen?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Con...

This country is Panem Manifest.
by patchymcnoodles | 2025-09-27 20:38:03+00:00
As another commenter said, the part with Intel is the only manufacturer making leading chips, doesn't really makes sense.

Right now Intel is losing a lot, lucky to them Nvidia invested. So far I would only use AMD. In my desktop is an AMD, because it is just the fastest desktop CPU und the threadrippers are absolute multicore beasts for servers.
by Balinares | 2025-09-27 20:39:00+00:00
The amusing thing is that it takes several orders of magnitude less data to bring up a human to reasonably competent adulthood, which means that there is something fundamentally flawed in the brute-force approach to training LLMs, if the goal is to get to human-equivalent competency.

Also the fact that 30B models, while less capable than 300B+ models, are not quite one whole order of magnitude less capable, suggests that all things being equal, capability scales sub-linearly to parameter count. It's even more flagrant with 4B models, honestly. The fact that those are serviceable at all is kind of amazing.

Both factors add up to the hunch that a point of diminishing returns must soon be met, if it hasn't already. But as long as no one asks where all the money went I suppose we can keep going for a while still. Just a few more trillions bro, we're so close.
by kerningije | 2025-09-27 20:42:01+00:00
You: > [...] USSR used a system called dead hand [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand to detect a nuclear attack and to retaliate. [...] USSR required a nuclear retaliatory system that could prevent hasty decisions. Hence Dead Hand system.

Wikipedia article you linked: "Dead Hand [...] is a Cold War–era automatic or semi-automatic nuclear weapons control system [...] that was constructed by the Soviet Union. The system remains in use in the post-Soviet Russian Federation. An example of fail-deadly and mutual assured destruction deterrence, it can initiate the launch of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by sending a pre-entered highest-authority order from the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Strategic Missile Force Management to command posts and individual silos if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity, and pressure sensors even with the commanding elements fully destroyed."

I have no idea how you got from "automated nuclear weapons launch system" to "prevents hasty decisions". Seems like the opposite to me: an incredibly irresponsible system that has more of a chance of responding to a false positive than, demonstrably, human operators.
by homeonthemtn | 2025-09-27 20:42:14+00:00
>Without it, abuses are made and evil people take control.

Which will also happen with a zero control, zero responsibility platform.

A given chat will get horrifically toxic, there will be no way of moderation, so users will be forced to create a new chat which will in turn get horrifically toxic and so on and so forth.

No, thank you.
by geerlingguy | 2025-09-27 20:42:15+00:00
It seems like there are some people in the Meshtastic and MeshCore community who have it out for each other, for reasons beyond me.

I've only personally tested Meshtastic, and from a technical perspective, it still feels very beta, and I wouldn't put critical communications on it. However, it's a fun introduction to LoRa and long range low power RF, and can be a fun way to communicate much like I think amateur radio was to its early adopters.

I think one thing that causes a lot of community strangeness is the strong push by some to make it what it's not, like some doomsday-proof communication system that will outlive cellular networks and atomic bombs. It could be useful but requires skilled operators and coordination to work well (like using different frequencies and coding at events for much more bandwidth).
by bsder | 2025-09-27 20:42:25+00:00
> What’s obvious to the audience of HN isn’t necessarily obvious to anyone else.

AI amplifies the problem.

Before AI, the idiot who accidentally has too much access probably doesn't have the ability to actively exploit it.

Given how much AI is being shoved down everybody's throats, an idiot with access now is an attack vector because they are have neither the ability nor desire to vet anything the AI is feeding to them.
by WalterSear | 2025-09-27 20:42:25+00:00
It's not about an engineer shortage - it's about exponentially cheaper and faster engineering.

I could not have attempted to create the application I have created without it.

As far as money-making - I wager it's helped me a great deal more in regards to preparation for marketing and sales, since I barely knew where to start with that. But I don't have the tangible proof yet, since I'm just starting that process up.
by xg15 | 2025-09-27 20:42:31+00:00
But if you're using Chrome, Edge or Windows, how would you know those programs themselves aren't sending back "telemetry" to profile you?

As for ad/tracking networks, there is active research in fingerprinting and "supercookies" to be able to track you even without third-party cookies. It's essentially a cat-and-mouse game between trackers and browsers as far as we know.

I don't want to say those aren't good things to do, I'm just not that confident they would bring the kind of absolute level of protection that you're asserting there.
by pojzon | 2025-09-27 20:42:41+00:00
My only real „friend” is my wife.

Over years I lost contact to all the ppl I considered friends.

I dont have time to nurture long distance relationships.

After studies we all moved away 200-300km from each other.

I have a lot of „pals” or „gaming friends”. But those ppl wont show up 4am at night to pick you up from a street fight.

I’m missing „meaningful” connections. Its easy to find ppl who dont care.