MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by gjsman-1000 | 2025-09-29 14:01:15+00:00
Why is populism popular?

Because sometimes people need to be saved, because the current system is actually broken, unfair, and inordinately stressful.

Populism is the normal population yelling "you forgot about us." Nothing more. Where it goes from there, depends on the politicians grasping that fact, and what they offer as a solution. This is also why populists win - their clientele doesn't feel like they have much to lose; while the competing politician is yelling about abstract global principles and norms and basically saying "your situation is unfortunate, screw you; you don't get it, idiot; pull yourself up, bootstraps!"

Edit for reply: > Populism creates problems or do not solve them in order to exist.

This is just upper class elitism with a thin veneer. Upper classes have constantly, always accused the lower classes of exaggerating their problems; and have constantly, always accused those claiming to address those problems as making them up. It's also a defense mechanism - because it lets you conveniently accuse the lower classes of voting in Mr. Mustache while washing your hands of any responsibility, because the problems were made up and people are gullible, obviously.
by whatamidoingyo | 2025-09-29 14:01:25+00:00
I had a similar idea, but without the camping. Just really want to set a day (probably Sunday) where I don't look at a screen at any point during the day. Just books, magazines, and my own brain.

Thinking about it, I think I looked at a screen multiple times every single day for the last ~15 years. Maybe longer.
by Workaccount2 | 2025-09-29 14:02:22+00:00
On one hand: You are not nearly as important or meaningful as you think, and no ones brain will store and index your face for more than the length of the video. With online content the way it is now, you are a blade of grass in a continental sized grassland. It should be liberating to understand how little anyone actually cares.

On the other hand: The threat of being fed into a future AI-god is real, the the downstream effects unknown.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-09-29 14:02:41+00:00
Absolutely correct, but also... there is something about having your early growing-up years be in the context of consistent 5-6% annual GDP growth rates and the rollout of interstates/highways, performance automobiles, massive urbanization and the development of giant suburbs with McMansions, two cars in every garage, etc. etc. ... to convince you that you deserve prosperity, that exponential growth, and exploding CO2 emitting energy use is the Natural Order Of Things.

It so happens that in parts of North America this life experience is associated mostly with a certain set of of age/demographics.
by falcor84 | 2025-09-29 14:02:45+00:00
>This too shall pass

> Things will eventually settle down into a new normal

While I accept the former as a wise axiom, I don't think we can derive the latter in regards to the tech industry. Things have been accelerating, and I'm concerned that we're now fully in "Present Shock" territory and it'll keep being hectic with no ground to stand on until eventually there is no more tech industry as we know it.
by BlackFly | 2025-09-29 14:02:46+00:00
> If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.

This take just pushes the notion of utilitarian to an extreme. In this framing, primary industry isn't utilitarian and only some subset of secondary industry is (chiefly B2C industry of products that aren't used as tools or parts of a final product by the consumer: a framemaker isn't utilitarian). The only utilitarian software in this definition is games or other entertainment software since otherwise the "utility" is an means to an end as a tool but that is exactly what a library is.

Making transistors is utilitarian. Making a library is utilitarian.

I am otherwise sympathetic to the pain points but I don't think there is an easy label for the layers of non-essential complexity that have built up and cannot easily be stripped away.
by whizzter | 2025-09-29 14:02:49+00:00
The by far biggest issue for Java is that they still haven't gotten their act together on value-types (project Valhalla), going back in time, the one thing someone should have told the designers was to not to release the erasing generics in Java 1.5 and go for something like C# did with value type structs.

Not really for "purity" issues, but rather due to the fact that memory speeds and main memory latency patterns that started to emerge as problems in the early 00s only got worse over time and having the erasing generics kind of cemented the memory access patterns.

The Java teams has done some truly amazing things in terms of GC research, but much of it is needed simply because the Java and JVM memory model (while "simple") is very allocation-heavy compared to C# that went for value types very early.

Take a peek at the QuestDB source code(Java) for heavy data-manipulation tasks, it's not really written in an idiomatic Java style to avoid GC costs (strongly reminicent of the way some people coded for JavaME back in the early 00s), a C# port would not be entirely idiomatic either but far more so than the existing code.
by dangus | 2025-09-29 14:03:34+00:00
People don’t like to hear it but they make products people want and those products are acceptable enough in quality.

The millions of people who play FIFA, Madden, and Battlefield don’t sit around on niche forums bashing EA for not making enough innovative indie-style titles.

EA even puts out titles that are legitimately critically acclaimed every once in a while (Split Fiction as a recent example).
by matttproud | 2025-09-29 14:04:17+00:00
Gentoo and Linux from Scratch (LFS) were a great way to learn back in the day (yes, 20-some years ago) — and support relatively custom operating environments through USE flags (e.g., which flavor of Motif did I want to use). I found Gentoo to be a rather practical low-level tradeoff in that era compared to Debian (super old package set and release cadence). You have to bear in mind: there were plenty of Gentoo users out there who weren't into abusing CFLAGS and such. And Portage had such a low bar to climb to create a package (cf. Debian Policy Manual as a description of the arcane nature of Debian package management with dh). Moreover, Ubuntu, which was a good pressure on Debian to modernize, wasn't yet on the mainstream for a good window of time when Gentoo really took off.
by oblio | 2025-09-29 14:05:23+00:00
This is true for folks from the wild and woolly days of... before 2005 (I think?).

But if you think about what's happening today, things have plateaued. Most people since at least 2005 probably have laptops, and generally those hover around 250GB, 500GB, 1TB of storage (with the bigger difference being top of the line/more expensive configurations, than with generational differences). More likely people now identify with 64GB, 128GB, 256GB for smartphones and tablets.

We will soon reach a point of mass market computation where the "mature" times are longer than the early years (1980 - 2005 = 25 years, 2005 - present day = 20 years and counting).

Large leaps, at least in storage, don't really happen (50MB to 1GB is <<extremely>> consequential, 500GB to 1TB is meh.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-09-29 14:05:46+00:00
It's worth pointing out that you can absolutely use Rust without Cargo and crates.io and the culture that comes with.

You'll be swimming up against the stream. But arguably it makes sense for certain kinds of projects. I'd classify OS kernel and DB internals development as being those kinds of projects, TBH. Keep your dependency set extremely minimal, vendor it, and avoid crates.io entirely.

I don't actually run into nightly requirements... ever? These days.

Progress on language specification is good https://github.com/rust-lang/fls
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-09-29 14:05:49+00:00
> Foreign policy is almost universally a quid pro quo

At the state level, often. At the individual level, I don't think so.

My pet war is Ukraine. I don't have any personal stake in the war. I just think it's abhorrent and poses a long-term risk to the security interests of places and people I care about. I can construct that into a narrative of fulfilling American geopolitical interests, but that's an exercise I'd be engaging in after I'd come to my view based on, essentially, a moral preference.

That preference is real. But it's mine and far from universal. That someone thinks Russia is justified in invading Ukraine is frankly irrelevant to the validity of their statements on other matters. That's where I'm calling bullshit on this connection.
by tazjin | 2025-09-29 14:05:59+00:00
(GrapheneOS user, no Google services)

My bank provides the APK of their app directly on their website, and it supports updating itself after that. Actually a surprising amount of apps do this!

Other proprietary stuff I either get from RuStore (Russia-specific), or occasionally from APK mirrors / Aurora. At the moment I have no such apps (they're usually for some specific thing, e.g. an airline app that I need for a day or two).
by agentultra | 2025-09-29 14:06:11+00:00
You're not even watching them for the skills required on the job either. Most jobs aren't even about running at all.

Basic, boring, line-of-business web application shops are asking candidates to implement Boyer-Moore and k-d trees. When the applicant is going to be hired to mostly update JSX templates and figure out why the customer is frustrated. It's like every business needs Olympic athletes when they're running a hot-dog stand.

It's one thing if your business is writing a RTOS for a custom platform you develop. Asking a candidate to implement a slab allocator might be a fine exercise. It fits the work being done.

Businesses need to get off their high horse and look in the mirror. Most of them are doing mediocre things that need average, good-natured people who are willing to work.
by Aurornis | 2025-09-29 14:06:33+00:00
The archive and record is still up. The article is about how EU countries are not available in the tool.

Speculation is that some EU regulation might overlap with the site: Maybe it’s technically against some law to share that customer information or perhaps the upcoming laws about political advertising don’t have a carve-out for historical ads, so any such archive might be infringing.

If they were out to eliminate all transparency they’d just shut the site down, but they didn’t.
by Our_Benefactors | 2025-09-29 14:06:36+00:00
I didn’t see any such implication.

What’s new is the sophisticated scams and parallel industries that exist to support falsified H1B petitions.

It’s your civic duty to apply to H1B job postings. This is probably 10x more effective than using LinkedIn, which is designed to keep you in a holding pattern indefinitely.

https://h1bvisajobs.com/
by fzeroracer | 2025-09-29 14:06:37+00:00
A company going private is, in general, a good thing because they're less shackled by investors and capital.

However this is the rare exception because this is more about oligarchs making a play for total control over the media sphere rather than any sort of financial independence. That said, cornering the entertainment side of things is going to be much harder especially since the people that do this kind of thing have zero clue what a video game even is or how to make a profitable one.
by d-us-vb | 2025-09-29 14:07:02+00:00
This is an interesting take. It maps decently to the "first to market" mentality of a lot of programming these days. For sure, we'd get better programmers if they were judged by the quantity of code they produced in their personal projects, but if "quantity learners" are simply forced to churn out bad code without any reflection or the time to experiment, then I would agree that it seems pretty naive to think they'll ever improve... except at a handful of patterns that make bad code sort of work.
by shermantanktop | 2025-09-29 14:07:14+00:00
That’s a different group of skills than are required to build and maintain a CRUD app with complex regulatory requirements at 1m TPS running on a fleet of virtual hosts which are geographically remote from each other. And someone who is great at going deep on hardware may not be good at that role.

Asserting that the way it was done in the past is the best way will always get agreement from some, but the needs of industry change over time.
by js8 | 2025-09-29 14:07:49+00:00
I found it amusing that someone would say something to the effect of "killing people is the furthest I am willing to go, but not further", as if there is any further...

Anyway, I agree it is a verifiable fact, but it also can be a personal belief. Does L.E. provide any evidence, or is he stating it authoritatively?

In any case, one big piece of evidence we have for the claim is that Israel doesn't allow any foreign journalists in Gaza, and is trying to control Tiktok, in which L.E. seems to be involved.

So by pointing that belief out, L.E. indicates he is even a worse guy, because in some cases he disagrees with such independent monitoring.
by Aurornis | 2025-09-29 14:08:42+00:00
> Guys, this isn't Twitter, we don't have to be obtuse just to ramp up engagement.

I agree, but by the same notion jumping to the conclusion that this was a bad faith move from Google is overlooking the fact that the ad transparency site is still up and working for other countries.

This only impacts EU countries, even though most of the comments have assumed the entire ad archive is gone (meaning they didn’t even skim the article). A true good faith curiousity perspective would be to wonder why it’s the EU specifically.
by echelon | 2025-09-29 14:08:46+00:00
It's in the name. Why not name themselves ModelRouter or something similar?

If they lead the market, they'll extract value in lots of ways that an open company could at least be compelled not to. Plus there won't be competition.

They're probably selling your data to LLM companies and you don't even see what they're doing.

Without competition, they'll raise their rates.

If they were open, you could potentially run the offering on-prem. You could bolt on new providers or use it internally for your own routing.

Lots of reasons.
by nradov | 2025-09-29 14:09:17+00:00
Right so there's currently a mismatch between higher education and industry. Ideally Computer Science is a branch of Applied Mathematics primarily concerned with the theory of computation. But due to demand from students who want to get industry jobs instead of doing research, many schools have "polluted" their CS majors with more practical programming courses. This confuses the issue and doesn't do anyone any good.

A better approach would be to have separate majors targeted towards students who want industry careers. I would suggest two separate tracks: Software Engineering which would take a disciplined, analytical approach and Software Development which would treat software construction for like a fine art, akin to sculpture or music performance.
by _1tem | 2025-09-29 14:09:18+00:00
I, as an engineer, absolutely support keeping private APIs private in order to preserve the performance of products. This is a good policy decision and a good engineering decision. Allowing others to build products on top of private APIs creates false user expectations. The user doesn't know the difference between a public or private API, they just expect their devices to work properly. If you allow a private API to be abused, then third parties may create crappy products (such as fake AirPods) which will ruin the battery life and security of Apple devices. The user doesn't know who to blame, Apple or the third party. It is absolutely within Apple's rights to protect their private APIs from misuse in order to preserve security and performance of their products for all users. The user is free to choose a different brand if they want interoperability. I, as an Apple user, want security and performance, not interoperability. If I wanted interoperability I would choose Android. The EU has no right to force Apple to become crappier like Android.
by tycho-newman | 2025-09-29 14:09:55+00:00
Maybe we should let people work wherever they want?

The tech companies will just offshore the jobs they’d otherwise use for visas. India is a cool place. Lots of Americans would do well to live and work there. They’d probably even be a bit happier. But they can’t because of visas.

For most of human history, you were free to decamp to greener pastures. Cultural chauvinism still existed and thrived in this more porous world. Why do we accept limitations on our freedom of movement?
by swiftcoder | 2025-09-29 14:10:58+00:00
> But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.

And pretty much your job as an engineer is to mitigate the risk that poses.

We don't build new architectures in a vacuum. We build on what has worked before in similar situations, and we adapt it to the problem at hand.

That adaptation is an ongoing process - but it's not the same as saying "fuck it, let's vibe-code our architecture"
by reactordev | 2025-09-29 14:11:29+00:00
In Airsoft, there's a niche audience for people wanting to see other people get hit. Just like there's a niche audience for people who like watching car crashes. Just like there's a niche audience for people who like...

While you may not like being recorded, the player is well within their right to do so. Just label them a "mech" and award 5 points for the take down. If you have a squad of filmers, put them all together. Your problem is now isolated to the roaming mech beast in the woods. Flank right and live out your day.
by hvb2 | 2025-09-29 14:11:56+00:00
> Almost every country short of Liechtenstein would be bankrupt if other countries stopped buying their debt.

Sure but not many countries never seem to run a deficit.

> and India should welcome Americans just as well.

Somehow I've met 10+ Americans who all seem to think you just submit a form and get an H1B... Being a non resident alien is no fun.

Being forced to leave the country to renew your visa? Makes sense but there's a certain uneasiness that goes with it every time

Switching employers is much harder, because the new one needs to be willing to sponsor

The pathway to staying in the US long term is super long. If you are this talented person from India and want to make America your home, getting a green card takes over 12 years... All those years you're essentially in limbo especially with current political circumstances.

That's what people are willing to put up with to be granted the ability to live and work in the US. I'm not saying that's unfair and you cannot require such things but don't think it's a walk in the park
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-09-29 14:12:05+00:00
> one big piece of evidence we have for the claim is that Israel doesn't allow any foreign journalists in Gaza, and is trying to control Tiktok, in which L.E. seems to be involved

This is relevant! Consider how much more interesting the top comment would be if it called out this hypocrisy instead of the same old 'so and so is pro X and herego a bad guy'.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-09-29 14:12:43+00:00
> How about he and CBS News and TikTok be neutral and truth seeking rather than being pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian?

I agree. But easier said than done. Especially when it comes to something as polarising as Gaza, playing the moderate essentially cedes the debate. (Both sources you mention are supported by ads. Their metric is engagement, not informativeness.)
by waste_monk | 2025-09-29 14:12:49+00:00
>My lay understanding of export is that the information would somehow have to leave the country;

It's not just physical items like munitions, but also things like transfers of information (blueprints, technical data, documentation, etc.) or services being performed, regardless of where (inside or outside the USA) or how (paper, electronic, verbal, etc.) it takes place.

Have a look at [1] § 120.50 (Export) and § 120.63 (definition of Foreign person).

>if someone looks at the T-shirt and transmits it out the country they'd be the exporter, not the person wearing the T-shirt.

I believe the person wearing the shirt would be considered the exporter, as that is the point where the information moves from (I'm assuming for the purposes of conversation) an USA citizen to a foreign person.

But again, I could be wrong. Safest bet is not to print the shirt to begin with :)

[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M...
by mothballed | 2025-09-29 14:13:01+00:00
>What's at the end of those miles and miles of privately funded roads?

Sometimes other private roads, sometimes private property/houses, sometimes public roads. Sometimes people travel exclusively on private roads, sometimes not. I don't understand your point here, a private road isn't allowed to connect to a public road but a public road is allowed to connect to a private road? It doesn't pass any sort of symmetrical test.

>Separately, how do you handle it when a neighbor decides to neglect their portion of a road?

If they neglect their road they can't go buy groceries or use their property. So it is extremely rare, as they're basically forced to do it out of practicality, they would be hurting themselves more than anyone else. Down to the point it's well within the tolerable amount of charity. Usually some retired person comes along with a backhoe because they have nothing else to do, and until then the roads are large gridded so the roads never become impassable. In practice your concern hasn't become a problem in my years of living on private roads.
by breadwinner | 2025-09-29 14:13:52+00:00
H-1B workers at companies such as Google, Meta or Microsoft are not treated any different, they are not taking abuse or being exploited. There may be smaller companies where this is happening though.

One of the issues is conflation of IT jobs and High Tech jobs. Those making laws don't understand the difference -- they are all "computer jobs" to them. IT does not require immigrant labor. Companies such as Infosys and Tata don't need to be operating in the US. There are plenty of US workers available to do the job.

But High Tech is different. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US. The US leads the world in tech not because the best ideas were all American but because the best people in the world immigrated to the US. Stopping this will be ruinous to American prosperity.

The seminal research paper that kicked off the AI revolution (titled "Attention is all you need") was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. These people came to America, worked together and changed the world as we know it. Why would we want to stop it? Has this immigration undercut Americans? Far from it. These immigrants are the lifeblood of the tech industry, and their innovations create jobs.
by dgfitz | 2025-09-29 14:14:02+00:00
I have most of the skills you list, and I am extremely confident I could fill in the gaps within weeks.

Given your presentation here, I'd like to know where you work so I don't accidently end up working for you, or with you. The elitism is at an 11. We're not special, we just have a skillset that isn't exclusively webdev. BFD.
by lapcat | 2025-09-29 14:14:10+00:00
People can and do drink and smoke alone. Indeed, lonely people may turn to alcohol for self-medication. And of course those addicted to nicotine have to smoke regardless of whether other people are around. That will just make the problem worse.

Besides, smoking has largely been banned from buildings, so that habit doesn't make it convenient to gather with others, except perhaps huddled outside the door.