MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by csomar | 2025-09-08 14:43:25+00:00
Software, done right, is both extremely hard and expensive. Hardware was cheapened by China/Asia but it is not happening for software (theirs generally sucks and they lack many fundamentals). Europe completely lost the race.

The current breed of managers in the US have decided to fire developers, abuse customers (you have nowhere to go) and burn all the money on AI (they believe it’ll solve all their problems).

Morale will remain low until an alternative spawns. Kinda with electric cars. Europeans, Japanese and Koreans are now forced to up their game and lower their prices.
by dsego | 2025-09-08 14:43:40+00:00
Peterson is the most known for their strobe tuners I believe. There are nowadays many other desktop and smartphone apps and pedals that have a strobe mode, but some are real strobes and some are only simulated. As far as I can tell, a real strobe will recreate the effect based on comparing the input signal frequency to a generated reference. A fake one will just use the estimated frequency (done by a pitch detection algorithm usually based on FFT) but instead of a needle offset or LED meter it will show a steady moving pattern, but it's not as responsive or as reliable as the real thing.
by PaulHoule | 2025-09-08 14:43:44+00:00
Looking at it. Which is what really matters.

If you want to collect obsolete formats and you have a TV with analog inputs VHS is probably your best thing to get into. This place

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114286077399818803

sells VHS decks for $12 and you can get pretty good movies for $2. Contrast that to compact cassette decks which start at twice that and have a good chance of being non-functional. That place has the complete works of Barbara Streisand but if you want music that anybody would want on cassettes the sky is the limit for collectables.

My impression is that the quality of VHS isn't terrible. The video is worse than DVD of course but a lot of DVDs have NERFed soundtracks because they mixed them assuming you're going to play their 5.1 mix on a 2-channel system. Any deck you get now is going to support VHS Hi-Fi and if you have a 5.1 system with some kind of Dolby Pro Logic the soundtrack of a good VHS can be better than the soundtrack of an average DVD. (Blu-Ray often has better sound not because the technology is better but because the 5.1 soundtrack is more likely to really be a 5.1 soundtrack)
by HankStallone | 2025-09-08 14:43:44+00:00
I dunno, I've been hearing for years that no one uses Facebook anymore, or it's just Boomers, but that's not how it is in my area. Most of the small businesses use it as their main presence online, because it's so easy to toss up a post about a new product or sale or a picture of their new menu. All the small towns have active FB groups where people share community activities and help each other find lost pets and such. My own family uses FB messenger to plan events and keep each other informed about things, which is the only reason I still use it.

Maybe it's regional and I just happen to be in a FB-heavy region, or it's dying in the cities but still useful in small towns and rural areas, but it's doing fine here.
by mamcx | 2025-09-08 14:43:49+00:00
No, this is wrong, and the example of the database is the best example.

Very regrettably, RBDMS (traditionally) has not support for the complete relational model, neither the way to represent nested relations and for what we have as today with algebraic types.

Making impossible to TRULY model the domain. (plus other factors related to sql and such).

Is the same as old OOP languages that also were incapable of do the same.

The INHABILITY of TRULY model the domain is what is harmful. You need to impledance mismatch all the time, everywhere.

The second thing: What is the DOMAIN?

And here is where you are into something: The DOMAIN of the database and the DOMAIN of the transport protocols and the DOMAIN of the GUI, etc are DISTINCT domains!

Was VERY common in the past that the DBA (that actually understand RDBMS not like most current devs) know that he must model the DB in ways that support not only N apps (with different domains) and hopefully provide a abstraction for them (in terms of VIEWS and functions) but also for the operators.

The article point to this, but incorrectly say is a problem of trying to make the invalid unrepresentable, when, if you have doing DBs for decades, is the total opposite.

For example, being unable to eliminate the mistake of NULL is a headache with not end. Or try to use `1 0` as bools, or need to fill the table with a lot of NULLables columns because you can't represent a algebraic OR.
by anal_reactor | 2025-09-08 14:43:56+00:00
This makes me think that the Chinese model where a company beyond certain size simply becomes a branch of the government actually does have decent upsides. Of course I don't have any specific suggestions about the process of transfer of power and we shouldn't judge the Chinese companies from the point of view of western liberal ideals, but my point is, imagine Gmail, Android and YouTube being public services maintained by the government. Like, from technological point of view, these services are virtually solved, there's nothing much to do to improve them besides basic maintenance, which is exactly what government is great at. Moreover, being public service, we'd accept better quality even if it's a money sink, instead of bitching about endless ads and slop and dark UI patterns and bad customer service. Meanwhile let the private companies innovate in areas that truly do need invitation.
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-09-08 14:44:20+00:00
Like using a vending machine? Having worked at McDonald’s for 4 years before I started my long tech career, why do you think you’d known anyways after the food goes from grill to front counter via a bin? Double that via drive thru, there is always a division of labor anyways…it’s fast food after all.

Having had unhoused neighbors steal my order at Starbucks, I find the system they use in China reassuring.
by 10111two | 2025-09-08 14:44:35+00:00
At JN Research, we are exploring a third path between mainstream traditional AI and descriptive neuroscience. Instead of scaling or optimizing trained function approximators, we build Adaptrons; artificial neurons that behave like biological neurons (subthreshold + graded + Action Potential) and autonomously adapt internally and with other Adaptrons in a system. On this substrate, our small artificial brain Primite 1.03 (1,800 Adaptrons) now shows: • Autonomous sleep states (no external input), with internal “dreams” and some shared as outputs. • Original thoughts (novel images not seen as stimuli) arising during sleep and while awake. • Memory formation and consolidation (short/intermediate/long-term), including memories of dreams later recalled while awake. • Anticipation: outputs that appear before the corresponding stimulus is presented. We ran 7 independent experiments with different genetic parameters and share detailed counts, timing, and example outputs. This is not ML training; it’s a principles-first cognitive substrate where higher functions emerge from the interaction rules. Furthermore, we also show that higher cognitive functions do not need bigger models or scale to emerge, we can see their early signs if the fundamental framework allows for it. If you are curious (or skeptical), we have included the full technical report and a data repo with outputs for verification, plus our prior 1.02 report on original thought and memory. Github Repository: https://github.com/10111two/primite-1.03
by DDerTyp | 2025-09-08 14:45:16+00:00
The discrepancy comes from how npm packages are published. What you see on GitHub is whatever the maintainer pushed to the repo, but what actually gets published to the npm registry doesn’t have to match the GitHub source. A maintainer (or someone with access) can publish a tarball that includes additional or modified files, even if those changes never appear in the GitHub repo. That’s why the obfuscated code shows up when inspecting the package on npmjs.com.

As for the “0 downloads” count: npm’s stats are not real-time. There’s usually a delay before download numbers update, and in some cases the beta UI shows incomplete data. Our pipeline picked up the malicious version because npm install resolved to it based on semver rules, even before the download stats reflected it. Running the build locally reproduced the same issue, which is how we detected it without necessarily incrementing the public counter immediately.
by pandaman | 2025-09-08 14:45:32+00:00
How do you physically "extend" a visa? Do other countries have visas where you can print a new expiration date? You mentioned China, and I looked up images of a Chinese visa, there doesn't seem to be a place to put a new date, it has one field after 'Enter before', are you sure you got a new visa stamp with your extension of status?

i also reject the claim that there is no one inside any country that could verify the status of a foreigner

That's good since I haven't made such a claim!
by 10111two | 2025-09-08 14:45:42+00:00
Few Anticipatory Questions • “Isn’t this just ML/randomness?” - No training or gradient descent is used. Only neuron-like rules (graded, subthreshold, action potentials). Outputs are logged and timestamped; anyone can verify them. • “How do you define ‘original thought’?” - An output is “original” if it was never presented as a stimulus during that system’s lifetime, yet emerges autonomously. • “What about controls?” - We ran multiple experiments with different genetic parameters; each yielded different system behaviors. One run was deliberately configured as a pure input/output machine, confirming that adaptability is essential for higher functions. • “Independent replication?” – We are open to live demos (reviewers choose inputs) and will provide full raw outputs. Under NDA, reviewers can also set genetic parameters and observe the system’s lifetime behavior. • “Why 1,800 Adaptrons?” – Our approach is milestone-driven: we demonstrate emergence at small scales first (memory, dreams, anticipation), then scale gradually (20k, multimodal, 1M).

We know this is unconventional and expect skepticism. Our goal isn’t to make hype claims but to provide verifiable outputs, invite critique, and refine the framework. Happy to engage with specific test suggestions from the community.
by Centigonal | 2025-09-08 14:45:59+00:00
I was going to write a more critical post about how PoW cryptocurrencies and AI are probably better targets to go after than Javascript execution on the edge. Upon further reflection, though, this might actually be a good idea.

1. This is about demand response (using less power during times of peak fossil fuel demand), while AI and crypto mostly affect base load.

2. Crypto and AI operators make too much money from their depreciating hardware to consider implementing demand response, but website operators would probably care less about externalizing the inconvenience of their demand response to their users and taking credit for the environmental win.

The only question left is "if you divide power usage from unnecessary JS execution by the difference between base and peak demand, is that ratio significant enough to warrant the extra SWE and infrastructure overhead?" To me, this feels like the kind of question to answer before even embarking on developing this kind of standard, so I'm sure the GAW AG can point me to an estimate of the total addressable impact. Right? Right?
by k310 | 2025-09-08 14:46:09+00:00
It's good to see more efforts like this. So far, only two notebooks are real. Only Linear Algebra and Calculus are available now. (Looking forward to more!)

In the meantime, consider HELM [0]

> HELM - Helping Engineers Learn Mathematics - is a major 3-year curriculum development project to support the mathematical education of engineering students. The project is sponsored by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) through phase 4 of the Fund for the Development for Teaching and Learning (FDTL4).

> HELM Workbooks

> This page allows you to access all currently available HELM workbooks (in pdf format).

Some are interactive. [1]

In STACK/Moodle Quiz format.

[0] https://nucinkis-lab.cc.ic.ac.uk/HELM/helm_workbooks.html

[1] https://stack-assessment.org/CaseStudies/2021/HELM/

Thanks to pillars for originally posting this site here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45099747
by peterldowns | 2025-09-08 14:46:20+00:00
Well-written blog post about something I had never, ever, considered. Maybe one day this will come up and I'll remember that something like this is possible. The general trick of "rewrite the entire webpage based on some external API status" seems like an interesting and powerful (... and dangerous) tool.

In terms of achieving the overall goal of "greening" the web, I would be very interested to see even some back-of-the-envelope math explaining how much energy this technique saves and how much of an impact that would have. Understanding the energy cost of webpages and massive edge rewriting serverless platforms like Cloudflare is unintuitive to me.

Cynically, my impression is that the overall approach is more like "greenwashing" than "greening" — at best I would guess it "raises awareness", with all of the implications to efficacy that such actions usually have. I followed the links through from the blog to The Green Web Foundation's FAQ [0] and did not find any tangible estimates of energy impact nor any attempts at measuring such an impact. The success metrics [1] they list do not include any measure of energy saved or understanding of the potential to save energy; rather, basically just attention.

[0] https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/tools/grid-aware-websi...

[1] https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/tools/grid-aware-websi...
by tacitusarc | 2025-09-08 14:47:03+00:00
Did you read the example pietnas gave? The changed formatting ruined the communicative intent of his code. Formatters do that a lot, and it makes the code unambiguously worse.

I don’t really care about whether the back is plywood or whatever. I don’t know how to write plywood code. I do care about creating clear, readable code that communicates my intent. Sometimes formatters help with that. Often they hinder, as they reflect the arbitrary aesthetic preferences of their creators.
by speedylight | 2025-09-08 14:47:29+00:00
I think there will come a point where people realize that we will need several ground breaking research papers (not unlike the “Attention is All you Need”) in order build a truly conscious intelligence.

Language is only one aspect of a conscious mind, there are others like the ones that handle executive function, spatial and logical thinking, reasoning, emotional regulation, and many others. LLMs only deal with the language part and that’s not nearly enough to build a true AGI— a conscious mind that lives inside computer that we can control.

Intelligence is an emergent property that comes as a result of all distinct functions of the brain (whether biological or artificial) being deeply intertwined.
by acuozzo | 2025-09-08 14:48:06+00:00
> What is the actual rationale behind some companies literally shoving AI down people’s throats?

It's propping up the US economy and businesses mostly look at B2B signals. Keeping "demand" for AI high at e.g., Microsoft, keeps "demand" high on NVIDIA, CoreWeave, et al.

All of the boats are floating in the bathtub and nobody wants to be the one to pull the drain plug.
by stego-tech | 2025-09-08 14:48:07+00:00
Talos is on my shortlist but its core “grease” features remain locked behind a (reasonable, but still existent) subscription, which throws it into “premium management layer” territory for me and my odd slide deck for executives. The narrative for the past fifteen years has consistently been “we have no money for what we need because we spent it all on what Gartner suggested and a consultant told us we should have”, which means we’re constantly having to not only do more with less, but also rely heavily on “pre-greased” products like hypervisors.

I don’t like it, but that’s how the current technology environment is unfortunately setup.

God help the enterprise software segment if customers realize 90% of their needs are served perfectly well with KVM+QEMU and VMs.
by thepryz | 2025-09-08 14:48:25+00:00
I'm familiar with site in question and not surprised. The location of the first campus built in Hilliard is extremely problematic, but more due to traffic patterns than anything else. The entrance is along a road that gets busy and trucks going into and out of the campus have been known to cause backups while they wait to get access through the security gates. They alienated a lot of the local residents from that alone.

As for the safety record, I think it's fair to say that the issues are largely due to AWS leadership in the central Ohio region not taking safety seriously and internal politics where leaders tend to be more concerned with their own self-interest, avoiding a PIP, managing perception, and advancing their careers.

There's a lot of talk about prioritizing safety but there's a distinct lack of ownership from the senior leaders. The relationships between Safety, Security and Operations are more adversarial than collaborative but it's easy to simply ignore the problem and/or push the blame to others while nothing gets solved. I have plenty of anecdotes I could share but it would just be airing dirty laundry and ultimately not productive.
by gf000 | 2025-09-08 14:48:47+00:00
This is a misunderstanding of what essential complexity is.

If it could be subdivided into its own small, manageable piece, then we wouldn't really have a problem as human teams either.

But the thing is, composing functions can lead to significantly higher complexity than the individual pieces themselves have -- and in the same vein, a complex problem may not be nicely subdivisible, there is a fix, essential complexity to it, on a foundational, mathematical level.
by yndoendo | 2025-09-08 14:49:07+00:00
You don't need Excel. Have not used it in over 10 years.

Teams, that application IT is forcing me to use because they are a "Microsoft" house. Same application currently stating I'm on the _Calendar_ screen on the Task bar but actually in the _Chat_ screen; _Calendar_ bloatware feature and others have been removed and will always. Even when _Microsoft_ screws the user and force a reinstall of features after a Teams update.

Microsoft is a trillion dollar company that rejects quality user experience, QA, and is great at producing crap-ware. There is not a single product sell that I will spend a penny on. Still waiting on that 7+ year request to destroy | delete dangling pull request in Azure.
by itvision | 2025-09-08 14:49:16+00:00
> I mention that since you seem to be on Windows, which itself has a hard time to just shut up, but that is also easily paired with bad drivers, stupid software and bad peripherals.

I happen to be on Fedora Linux 42 and Windows 11 but my primary OS has been Linux for almost 30 years now.

Idle power consumption under Windows and Linux is exactly the same. Linux doesn't have any magical tricks to make it lower.

Windows has more services running in background but they don't meaningfully affect idle power consumption at all.

The entire Reddit topic confirms my statement, multiple over hundreds of reviews confirm what I said, yet it's

> paired with bad drivers, stupid software and bad peripherals.

It's kinda hard to be an AMD fan when you live in an alternative reality, huh?
by Verdex | 2025-09-08 14:49:35+00:00
I grew up on star trek TNG. However at a certain point in the past I was having kind of a hard time rewatching episodes. "We have the Internet and social media now, and they're obviously not going anywhere so why doesnt star trek have either? It is simply scifi of the past and now we need new scifi to incorporate new technological and social advancements."

These days though. Yeah, it's kind of obvious that you can't have a space faring civilization with the Internet and social media weighing you down. Honestly the Eugenics wars probably get kick started by social media.
by markbnj | 2025-09-08 14:49:41+00:00
I once found a bug in code that was read to me over the phone while I sat in an airport waiting for a flight. So I agree that constructing a model of the program in your head is the key, and you can use various interfaces for that. Some are more optimal than others. When I first started learning to write programs we very often debugged from printed listings for example. They rolled up nicely but random access was very slow.
by esperent | 2025-09-08 14:49:46+00:00
I would love to use Immich but I'm not into running a home server - electricity isn't that reliable here and putting in backup power is more expensive than I want to pay. Also I just don't want to manage the hardware.

I've looked into cloud hosting. But of course, photos and videos take up a lot of space. Object storage is cheap but not supported by Immich. Block storage is not cheap.

I did look into s3fuse but the concensus seemed to be that lots of tiny files like thumbnails wouldn't perform well.

Does anyone cloud host it? What's your solution?
by Supermancho | 2025-09-08 14:49:51+00:00
I'm not saying your gut feeling is incorrect, but these arguments aren't compelling.

> Have you ever considered many people actually enjoy driving a car?

This has nothing to do with industry. Calculators were actually a PAID position and they went away, regardless of the number of people that enjoy mathalons.

> Regulation cannot simply be imposed on people against their will.

This is incorrect, historically and practically.

Roads and highways, in an economic metaphor, are rivers of money. They provide capital velocity as well as smoothing labor and consumer availability.

Due to the economy of scale, mass transportation and self locomotion is the only practical transport for people at the highest densities. GOODS, on the other hand, require a powered engine to move in and out. Those stacks of soda can't be transported by subway. The sodas produce trash, that also can't travel by subway. Roads themselves and trucking, in general, have kept personal vehicles in service. Cars still exist in London and New York, over a century later for this very reason.

Motorized bikes dominate many cities in Asia. I can see that becoming a preferred mode in western cities, over time. After that, I could also see personal driving becoming regulated out of existence (ie huge fees to run a personal vehicle in a hyper-urban area). Maybe, just maybe, grassroots political will could have pushed cars off the road (so to speak) when the climate crisis was a meager priority, but I have lost faith in that avenue.
by numpad0 | 2025-09-08 14:50:09+00:00
Who cares. It's viable so long llama.cpp works and does 15 tok/s at under 500W or so. Whether the device accomplish that figure with a 8b q1 or a 1T BF16 weight files is not a fundamental boolean limiting factor, there will probably be some uses for such an instrument as proto-AGI devices.

There is a type of research called traffic surveys, which involves hiring few men with adequate education to sit or stand at an intersection for one whole day to count numbers of passing entities by types. YOLO wasn't accurate enough. I have gut feeling that vision enabled LLM would be. That doesn't require constant update or upgrades to latest NN innovations so no need to do full CUDA, so long one known good weight files work.
by Keyframe | 2025-09-08 14:50:33+00:00
Friend of mine just finished a few year-long journey of developing and releasing a game, soon in physical format as well for Commodore 64 https://delta-machine.itch.io/tantooman There's still something magical in developing for ye olde machines, even by using modern tools like you know, text editors :), cross-compilers, etc.