MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AlotOfReading | 2025-09-09 05:16:39+00:00
There's a bit of an impedence mismatch with Contracts in C because C++ contracts exist partially to rectify the fact that <cassert> is broken in C++.

Let's say you have a header lib.h:

inline int foo(int i) { assert(i > 0); //... }

In C, this function is unspecified behavior that will probably work if the compiler is remotely sane.

In C++, including this in two C++ translation units that set the NDEBUG flag differently creates an ODR violation. The C++ solution to this problem was a system where each translation unit enforces its own pre- and post- conditions (potentially 4x evaluations), and contracts act as carefully crafted exceptions to the vast number of complicated rules added on top. An example is how observable behavior is a workaround for C++ refusing to adopt C's fix for time-traveling UB. Lisa Lippincott did a great talk on this last year: https://youtu.be/yhhSW-FSWkE

There's not much left of Contracts once you strip away the stuff that doesn't make sense in C. I don't think you'd miss anything by simply adding hygenic macros to assert.h as the author here does, except for the 4x caller/callee verification overhead that they enforce manually. I don't think that should be enforced in the standard though. I find hidden, multiple evaluation wildly unintuitive, especially if some silly programmer accidentally writes an effectful condition.
by port11 | 2025-09-09 05:16:56+00:00
That seems to be about it. Our Tizen TV doesn't block the ads and we don't get any issues with playback.

As soon as I'm on Safari or Brave with an adblocker, YouTube is teeth-grinding irritating. I checked my screen time and I'm down to about 15 minutes per week, whereas before I'd watch my subscriptions for about 2h per week. Can't say I miss it.
by avmich | 2025-09-09 05:17:27+00:00
1. I think the author is wrong.

2. There is too little space :) to explain why - indeed, it's refuting one by one the points. A critical point is that, roughly, there is no "middle ground" between "correct" and "not correct".

3. A better solution - maybe one of a better solutions - would be to be able to redesign the whole system easier.
by Mikhail_Edoshin | 2025-09-09 05:18:23+00:00
I remember Spreadsheet ML, an older format compatible with Excel. It had a subset of features, I think, but it was a rather powerful subset: formatting, formulae, multiple sheets. And it was rather simple. (Had a silly design mistake: for some reason MS gave namespace to attributes, which is not necessary, only for rather specific purposes).

Another XML standard from MS that also seems relatively simple is XPS, a PDF alternative. But it uses Open Packaging and that is somewhat hard to read.
by johncolanduoni | 2025-09-09 05:18:56+00:00
“Very sunny” is doing a lot of work there. The storage required goes up dramatically once you run the numbers for somewhere that has seasons. The long-range HVDC lines between hemispheres idea is cute but probably geopolitically impossible; I don’t think the US will let its ability to literally keep the lights on depend on South America.

Storage could get there, but I don’t think it’s credible that manufacturing scale alone will solve the problem. We probably need some new, qualitatively different chemistries to become viable for solar to be viable for the whole grid. From a technical perspective the nuclear plants we could build in the 1960s could do it, whether we can still build them (no matter if the barrier is regulatory or practical) is another question.
by camel-cdr | 2025-09-09 05:19:07+00:00
> trace caches

They don't anymore they have uop caches, but trace caches are great and apple uses them [1].

They allow you to collapse taken branches into a single fetch.

Which is extreamly important, because the average instructions/taken-branch is about 10-15 [2]. With a 10 wide frontend, every second fetch would only be half utilized or worse.

> extra caches

This is one thing I don't understand, why not replace the L1I with the uop-cache entirely?

I quite like what Ventana does with the Veyron V2/V3. [3,4] They replaced the L1I with a macro-op trace cache, which can collapse taken branches, do basic instruction fusion and more advanced fusion for hot code paths.

[1] https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=223220

[2] https://lists.riscv.org/g/tech-profiles/attachment/353/0/RIS... (page 10)

[3] https://www.ventanamicro.com/technology/risc-v-cpu-ip/

[4] https://youtu.be/EWgOVIvsZt8
by charcircuit | 2025-09-09 05:19:55+00:00
>Your browser simply says "Hey, give me this content,"

The technical details do not matter. Social contacts are about societal expectations, not about your personal ones. Do you think a thief has a meeting of the minds about not stealing something from a shop keeper? It's not the theifs world view that matters here. Similar to your example the physics of the world say it's possible for a human to pick up an item without paying for it, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
by yawaramin | 2025-09-09 05:20:39+00:00
I'm angry about this. Large megacorps with the budget of medium-sized countries allocate the minimum amount of budget to maintain their auth systems and still allow the use of phishable auth methods. If npm disabled passwords and forced people to use passkeys, this huge problem just disappears tomorrow.

But instead, we're left with this mess where ordinary developers are forced to deal with the consequences of getting phished.
by tw04 | 2025-09-09 05:20:50+00:00
> it was a lot nicer than a mustang Mach e

Having owned both, I’m not even sure where to begin with how laughably inaccurate that is. We can start at functioning automatic wipers, 360 degree cameras, parking assist that actually works, a knob to control stereo volume, accurate marketing numbers for range, a dealership network that actually will fix the issue, insurance that isn’t insane, headlight brights that actually dim at an appropriate distance for oncoming traffic, cruise control that doesn’t phantom brake (slam on the brakes for no reason) traveling down the highway…

Need I continue? Because I can.
by akmarinov | 2025-09-09 05:22:12+00:00
So if you don’t look at the Cybertruck, which basically can’t be sold outside North America, they haven’t had a new vehicle in 5 years.

If you look at the existing vehicles:

- they no longer sell Model S and X in Europe and right hand markets

- Model S has had one external visual change since it was introduced, Model X has never had one

- the refreshed Model 3 and Y don’t really have any battery or charging improvements, last time they updated those was 8 years ago

- no V2L like others

- no increased battery capacity

- no 800V on anything outside CT

- Tesla’s charging curves compared to others are laughable

- no increased creature comforts, eg massaging seats, screens for passenger, air suspension, automated frunk, 360 view, etc

- no FSD worldwide

- Autopilot hasn’t seen an update in years

- park assist is horrible compared to USS

The market has really caught up and in a lot of places outpaced Tesla - Rivian, Audi, Polestar, Volvo, Hyundai, KIA have better products
by glitchc | 2025-09-09 05:22:27+00:00
Say what? Show some respect, son!

Hinton published the seminal paper on backpropagation. He also invented Boltzmann machines, unsupervised learning and mixture of ecperts models. He championed machine learning for 20 years even though there was zero funding for it through the 80s and 90s. He was Yann LeCun's PhD adviser. That means Yann LeCun didn't know ass from tea kettle until Hinton introduced him to machine learning.

Know perchance a fellow by the name of Ilya Sutskever? ChatGPT ring any bells? Also a student of Hinton's. The list is very long.
by gonzopancho | 2025-09-09 05:23:05+00:00
I ask that you provide evidence of your assertions:

- they’re shit at accepting contributions

- they’re shit at providing attribution

- they’re shit at providing any support whatsoever to anyone who prefers other hardware (even with their paid software).

In addition to pfSense (which is what I think you're criticizing) and all of its open source, we're upstreaming things to FreeBSD and fd.io VPP

Try this on a fresh copy of FreeBSD 'src':

% git log --first-parent --since="1 year" | sed -E 's/\^.*Sponsored.\[Bb\]y:\[\[:space:\]\]*//p' | grep -i Sponsored | sed -E 's/.*\[Ss\]ponsored\ \[Bb\]y://' | awk '{$1=$1};1' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head

or for VPP, look here:

https://www.stackalytics.io/unaffiliated?module=github.com/f...
by cyberax | 2025-09-09 05:23:54+00:00
> I'm amazed that the article doesn't discuss the end of ZIRP.

There's a bigger culprit: NFTs. They sucked away a huge portion of art spending, with a promise of a fungible growth asset that you can just sell as needed. Art has always been considered a safe long-term investment (along with a means of conspicuous consumption), but it has always been non-liquid.
by js8 | 2025-09-09 05:24:03+00:00
When Hinton was asked, what's the solution, he simply said, "socialism". I am a socialist too. But if you believe his thesis (that AI will concentrate power in the hands of few), I think there is hope. Let me outline a positive vision of AI.

I assume it will be technologically possible to run "medium LLM" (for the lac of a better name) on your phone. A medium LLM is something that knows a limited vocabulary (say slightly larger than simple English), and perhaps doesn't remember the capital of France; but it can reason well with the limited vocabulary. So it can answer what's the capital of France by reading Wikipedia, and likewise, it can work with complicated words using their definitions in terms of simpler words.

Now, everybody would run an AI like that on their phone. It would help people solve real world problems of navigating the world and talking to others. Most importantly, it would help people unite by surpassing the Dunbar number. If you (with help of your phone AI) can keep track of 15 million contacts rather than 150, it is life changing and increases trust-building by orders of magnitude. And soon, machines will be able to do that for us.

Socialists have always emphasized education and communication, for everyone, because these are the true constituents of sovereignty and emancipation. We have, I believe, technological means (widely available universal computation and telecommunication) to provide a kind of mind extension for the mind that will surpass our neocortex and will allow everyone to engage with much larger number of people. Lot more human cooperation will result.

I think activists should look into building and embracing such app - a decentralized communication frontend agent, which would let you build trust with large number of people, without much effort, and help you by coordinating with them (really, learning from them their skills and their struggles). We don't need social media giants to do this for us in a centralized way.

So I posit this techno-anarchism as an antidote against techno-feudalism.
by simondotau | 2025-09-09 05:26:11+00:00
When it comes to new battery tech, I treat “shipping tomorrow” as identical to “our engineers came up with a crazy new idea yesterday”.

They have even been some next-gen battery products that actually launched and actually got reviewed by “legitimate“ YouTubers, and later turned out to be not as advertised. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all bullshit until it’s in the hands of independent labs.
by nikkwong | 2025-09-09 05:26:55+00:00
I've only tried mindfulness meditation, but as others have chimed in in the thread, other types may be easier depending on your circumstance. As I started, even being able to focus for 5-10s uninterrupted by thought was a huge win. It may be slow, but eventually you will be able to extend these periods and get to a point where it's actually 'working'.

Also, I don't think using stimulants or other adhd meds (like atomoxetine), if they're part of your routine is necessarily cheating. I like to think of them as 'training wheels', which will help you focus internally and less on your thoughts. It will still be difficult (like it is even for those who don't have ADHD), but it may help your brain start shaping those neural important pathways a bit sooner and more easily than it'd otherwise come unmedicated.
by EarlKing | 2025-09-09 05:27:06+00:00
No. I'd say their algorithm is just as bad as everyone else's since it's designed to promote ragebait (inasmuch as their goal is to increase the odds of "positive engagement" in the form of likes, retweets, and replies, and ragebait happens to maximize that). Engaged audiences stay longer and see more ads. That this results in the utter destruction of online discourse is, of course, not something that they care about. Consequently, I don't really use Twitter for anything other than staying in touch with friends... at least, those I'm not already in contact with through chat rooms of some kind (where we can share whatever we like without some Twat inserting themselves and deciding we didn't really want to share that and oh hey, how about this obnoxious thing Trump did the other day???).
by Krei-se | 2025-09-09 05:27:53+00:00
I keep reading articles about how you need to fit mental models of code in your head with analogies to spatial maps. This is not how your brain processes these. You have a spatial center mapping 3D objects to literally mini-3d-models encoded in neurons. You can grasp some(!) code with this if the structure is similar to what you code yourself, but most of the code in larger bases is a ruleset like your countries taxcode - it will only fit in your language processing center and need a lot of working memory.

Now some people might be able to fit more than millers number 7+-2 there and juggle concepts with 20 interconnected entities, but this is mostly done by people having this as their main work / business logic.

These articles mix up same-form dimensional mapping like audio or visual to distinct data, it's similar to why its easy to replicate audio and images, but not olfactory / smell. Your nose picks up millions of different molecules and each receptor locks onto a certain one.

Thinking you can find general rules here is exactly why LLMs seem to work but can never be inductive - they map similarities in higher dimensional space, not reasoning. And the same mix up happens here: You map this code to a space that feels home to you, but it will not apply to reading another purpose software outside your field, a different process pipeline, language or form.

If your assumption would be correct all humans needed to train is reading assembly and then magically all bugs will resolve!

Maybe if you want to understand code with both hemispheres map it to a graph, but trying to make strategies from spatial recognition work for code is like trying to make sense of your traffic law rules by length of paragraphs.
by nurettin | 2025-09-09 05:28:14+00:00
Frankly, this all sounds like hero worship and the language is very cringe.

I know the backprop paper. I've read it in the early 2000s. And I remember Hinton as a co-author. Same with Boltzmann machines. Co-author. "Advisor to that great guy", "Teacher of this great guy", "Nobel price together with that guy" <- all of this leads me to the above conclusion. YMMV
by southernplaces7 | 2025-09-09 05:28:25+00:00
If you really think that some sort of unknown ancient supertechnology was used for creating the Egyptian's artifacts and giant structures, I'd strongly suggest you watch these two videos. They do an excellent job of completely demythifying all of those poorly substantiated speculative ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mysYT260dqU&list=PLuROoe7EZ3...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_NguZUDku4&t=9216s
by smokel | 2025-09-09 05:28:27+00:00
When buying etchings, beware of fakes. Since Rembrandt is very popular, people have found ways to make additional prints, by using the same copper plates in or after his lifetime.

The Rembrandt House in Amsterdam sells new prints that are made with copies of the original plates. They do add a big sign on the paper, but they are genuine prints, and look very pretty indeed. But the original works are made by the master himself and once you get into etching you get to see very minor nuances in the print that you may grow to like.

One thing to look for is whether the paper is original, but even here people use old paper from his period, for instance by ripping the first empty page from an old book.

Another interesting thing is that Rembrandt often reworked his plates, so there are multiple "states" of his etchings. If you ever find a non-final state of some print, you can be fairly sure that he or a student of his printed it. Which adds to the value :)
by kstenerud | 2025-09-09 05:28:56+00:00
I'm not sure I'm understanding this correctly...

Given the examples, the author wants to ensure that 0 is not a possible input value, and NULL is not a possible output value.

This could be achieved with a simple inline wrapper function that checks pre and post conditions and does abort() accordingly, without all of this extra ceremony

But regardless of the mechansim you're left with another far more serious problem: You've now introduced `panic` to C.

And panics are bad. Panics are landmines just waiting for some unfortunate circumstance to crash your app unexpectedly, which you can't control because control over error handling has now been wrested from you.

It's why unwrap() in Rust is a terrible idea.

It's why golang's bifurcated error mechanisms are a mess (and why, surprise surprise, the recommendation is to never use panic).
by fulafel | 2025-09-09 05:29:22+00:00
No, it's about the same bottleneck that also explains the tapering off of single core performance. We can't extract more parallelism from the single flow-of-control of programs, because operations (and esp control flow transfers) are dependent on results of previous operations.

SMT is about addressing the underutilization of execution resources where your 6-wide superscalar processor gets 2.0 ILP.

See eg https://my.eng.utah.edu/~cs6810/pres/6810-09.pdf
by ryandrake | 2025-09-09 05:29:24+00:00
I disagree that there is a societal expectation in this case. If I request HackerNews, it will start sending me bytes. There is no societal expectation around what I do with those bytes. Maybe I'll have my browser render them as-is. Maybe I'll strip out the HTML and render them as plain text in a green 80x24 terminal. Maybe I'll drop every second character and print out the result as wall art.

Or (back on topic) when I'm watching cable TV and they send an ad over the wire. There's no societal expectation that I watch that ad. I could hit the mute button. I could get up to take a piss or grab a beer. I could record the broadcast and watch it later, fast forwarding through the ads.

This is not like a store where there's a clear societal expectation that I don't go in and rob them. I don't think anyone would equate leaving the sofa during a commercial with robbery.
by mytailorisrich | 2025-09-09 05:29:44+00:00
People who know those roads drive fast, indeed, but it is not safe.

Visibility is poor and you cannot safely go through a bend at 50+ mph when you cannot see what's beyond it. There might be a stationary vehicle, a horse, a cyclists, even a pedestrian and you wouldn't know or be able to stop in time. This is how lethal collisions happen in those roads.
by Animats | 2025-09-09 05:30:11+00:00
Why the custom computer keyboard? Why not practice on a real soroban? They cost about US$10. You need to practice the finger motions, after all. They're not bad for addition and subtraction. For adding up small numbers, such as at a store checkout, a soroban is still useful. Multiplication, division, don't go there.

With a soroban and a slide rule, you can do most basic engineering problems.
by ACCount37 | 2025-09-09 05:31:31+00:00
I see no reason why not.

There was a lot of "LLMs are fundamentally incapable of X" going around - where "X" is something that LLMs are promptly demonstrated to be at least somewhat capable of, after a few tweaks or some specialized training.

This pattern has repeated enough times to make me highly skeptical of any such claims.

It's true that LLMs have this jagged capability profile - less so than any AI before them, but much more so than humans. But that just sets up a capability overhang. Because if AI gets to "as good as humans" at its low points, the advantage at its high points is going to be crushing.
by EarlKing | 2025-09-09 05:31:58+00:00
If you really want to know: Go take a look at what things they think interest you. Go to Settings, Privacy and Safety, Content You See, Interests. You'll find they've probably randomly inserted some interest in there because you engaged with someone who had that interest and it never ever gets turned off. I followed an actor because I liked his stance on some topic or another and it decided I must be interested in his latest project... which I'm not... and no matter how many times I uncheck that interest it will just get set again within a week or so.

So, yeah, they try to make inferences about what you'll like based on who you interact with, they invariably prove to be wrong, and here we are. I suppose they may also be paid to astroturf interests to other people, but who knows?
by bigfudge | 2025-09-09 05:32:01+00:00
When sites like these host a large part of our culture, I think it’s reasonable to think about non compliance because the alternative is essentially to become a digital hermit and not to be able to understand the world one is in. I never agreed to have all public spaces for Dr age ad-supported, for example. These illegal monopolies have made it impossible to talk to large chunks of the population without either watching ads or using an ad blocker. That feels wrong.
by mitchbob | 2025-09-09 05:35:34+00:00
When Bob Pariseau was the head of software development at Amiga, he had a Lisa as his daily driver. I was especially impressed by the enormous 5MB ProFile hard drive it had on top. The drive sold for US$3,499 when it was introduced in 1981, which works out to more than US$12,000 in today's dollars.
by perihelions | 2025-09-09 05:35:40+00:00
I don't see how this isn't dispositive on the economics question. That markets (overwhelmingly) choose to build combined-cycle natural gas plants, choose to add the Rankine bottoming cycle, means the marginal cost of the steam turbine is *less* than the marginal cost of the fuel saved by the efficiency gain. That's the case even in the USA; and natural gas elsewhere in the industrial world is integer-multiples more expensive.

The natural gas plants without steam turbines are precisely the load-following plants that run for a fraction of the time (or at a fraction of their capacity); the relative weight of capital vs. fuel costs is inverted. (Or those, like xAI in Memphis, which are rapidly assembled in rushed desperation. I wonder if that will be a trend in the datacenter boom: designs limited, not by costs under normal market conditions, but bottlenecks affecting rushed projects. Nuclear SMR's would seem to be worst at this—the designs they expect to use haven't even been built yet!)
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