MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Should I quit starting companies?
by failedagain | 2025-09-24 00:08:51+00:00
I'm 31. I've started 4 companies, 2 with VC. All of them have failed with middling levels of success. Internally, I am unfazed and my top priority in life is to build cool shit until I die. Externally, I think I look like a confused loser burning my bridges.

For context:

- No formal education, no big logos, but worked my way up in design/eng at VC-backed SaaS for most of my 20s, then:

- 1st company was a simple consultancy. Did modestly well for myself. I shut it down to start the next startup.

- 2nd company was a consumer SaaS app. Had a fantastic launch, made enough to pay me, but I raised a pre-seed, got a cofounder, hired a team, and we fizzled out doing performative hyperscale bullshit (should've just kept doing what worked).

- 3rd company was a design agency. Actually did really well, consistently $3m+/year with <10 people until covid turned us upside down, we never recovered. Shut down last year.

- 4th company was a b2b SaaS app. Raised pre-seed and started to raise seed. Did well in our niche but when momentum slowed, domain expert co-founder threw in the towel and the rest of us couldn't maintain it. Shut down 6 months ago.

My team is loyal to the game, they won't quit until I do. We're now hacking on edge-level RL & robotics and we're close to having a rad demo. But after being modestly rich for years, I'm now 6 months from total broke. A lot of people tell me to take a high paying full-time job to stabilize my career, but I can't give a fuck about comfort when it feels like we're on the edge of something great. Nonetheless, I have to figure out my runway asap. Trailer park is looking like the top option.

We need a lab and at least a million to survive working on this. I'm close with all my VCs, but I'm still their serial loser, and now I'm playing in capital-intensive hardware instead of the internet hypeware I have experience in. Also this isn't like an obvious $100m ARR in 24 months thing. I'm just a weird founder doing weird things. But my only interest is grinding out a robotics platform that I think paves the road for the next million (robotics) devs.

- Has anyone else failed VC backed startups 3+ times?

- After 2 VC failures should I just get a job?

- How fucked am I in general?
by JdeBP | 2025-09-24 00:09:39+00:00
Please don't confuse the novices. A console is either a special kernel device or a UI subsystem; a terminal is a physical piece of kit; and a terminal emulator is an application that runs on a general purpose computer that emulates one of the aforementioned pieces of kit.

* https://jdebp.uk/FGA/tui-console-and-terminal-paradigms.html

* https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/freebsd-conso...

* https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/linux-console...

* https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/linux-vt.xml

* https://blog.bruchez.name/posts/televideo-912-terminal-1/
by leakycap | 2025-09-24 00:09:41+00:00
I see a human counselor, but I know at least two people in my close circle that talk to chatbots already to get through their thoughts.

Anthropic's recent data release shows that many users seek counsel from Claude.

There are at least three large offerings to companies as a counseling-like mental health benefit offering that costs companies much less than when employees seek traditional medical billing counseling.

I think the answer to how close is obvious: it has happened. And for some people who do not want to talk to a human counselor for whatever reason, this might be an angle to help meet mental health needs that reaches a new audience.
by pneill | 2025-09-24 00:10:09+00:00
The story of scurvy is way more complicated that this article would have you believe. Lind partially shot himself in the foot by attempting to a make lemon juice more portable (and easier to store on a ship). He did that by boiling down the lemon juice to form a "rob." But he never tested his rob and had he done that, he would have realized that the boiling of lemon juice destroyed that vitamin C inside (this is in addition to the issue of copper pots, etc). So folks at sea, used the rob, and it didn't work. And then there is how Captain Cook muddle the issue, but because he had a big reputation and that carried way.

The history here is complex and very unsatisfying due to gaps in the historical record, but it' darn interesting.
by maxdo | 2025-09-24 00:10:14+00:00
You westerners are way too delusional about the world we’re living in.

I just had a conversation with American colleagues about life in Europe. And the things that stood out were “cookies policy,” trash recycling, and such trivialities.

Meanwhile, Europe is already at war. China openly wants to dismantle the good life Americans take for granted. Their news is full of militaristic propaganda, day after day.

This isn’t the 90s. It’s not the 1950s either. You didn’t “win” the war. You cant build, you can’t manufacture. And yet you talk about freedom?

Reality is going to catch up very soon. Many of you will lose not just your comfortable lives but your freedom too.

Take Denmark’s policy with LLM monitoring. What’s wrong with that? China and Russia do it already — and they benefit. That’s how you prevent both external and internal threats. That’s how you build a strong state.

If your adversary monitors and you don’t, you’re already in a losing position.

And don’t forget — the subject country is directly part of the brewing conflict in the Baltic Sea with Russia.
by ants_everywhere | 2025-09-24 00:10:18+00:00
I have LLMs write and review design docs. Usually I prompt to describe the doc, the structure, what tradeoffs are especially important, etc. Then an LLM writes the doc. I spot check it. A separate LLM reviews it according to my criteria. Once everything has been covered in first draft form I review it manually, and then the cycle continues a few times. A lot of this can be done in a few minutes. The manual review is the slowest part.
by simonask | 2025-09-24 00:10:31+00:00
You know, the `unsafe` keyword exists. You’re allowed to use it. If your algorithm is truly safe, and as you say, there are many safe things the borrow checker cannot verify, that’s exactly what `unsafe` is for.

Ideally you can also design a safe API around it using the appropriate language primitives to model the abstraction, but there’s no requirement.
by gnabgib | 2025-09-24 00:12:43+00:00
Title: Legal fights are brewing over which online social platforms will have to ban under-16s

(Not Australian government may require age verification for GitHub access - this phrase isn't in the article)

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
by mehdibl | 2025-09-24 00:13:03+00:00
I'm in the security space so? And been deep in this MCP thingy.

Did you check where I pointed the root issues?

All I'm trying to say there is shortcuts, and confusing over the hype buzz too that is on going in AI, as MCP took off, I so a lot of of papers with IF IF IF condition to point security issues in MCP, while most of the them expect you to pick random stuff at the start. This is why I'm saying "Supply chain" is not MCP. As you can't blame MCP for issue coming from random code you pick. MCP is a transport protocol, you can do similar without MCP but you have to bake your tools inside the AI app, thus loosing the plug & play ability.
by Jensson | 2025-09-24 00:13:04+00:00
You do realize Arabs also massacred a lot of Jews at the same time? Both sides were absolutely abhorrent at the time, it was war between quickly assembled militias and civilians fighting for survival, that is never going to end well.

Example of Arabs lynching Jews, they started killing each other before the partition happened, so everyone knew it would be all out war after the British left:

> Arab workers stormed the refinery armed with tools and metal rods, beating 39[d] Jewish workers to death and wounding 49.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifa_Oil_Refinery_massacre
by api | 2025-09-24 00:13:05+00:00
The root problem is that people don’t trust authorities. Why? Because they burned that trust.

People don’t believe the scientific consensus on vaccines because there were no WMDs in Iraq, to give one of many huge examples.

“But those were different experts!”

No they weren’t. Not to the average person. They were “the authorities,” and “the authorities” lied us into a trillion dollar war. Why should anyone trust “the authorities” now?

Tangentially… as bad as I think Trump is, he’s still not as bad as George W Bush in terms of lasting damage done. Bush II was easily the worst president of the last 100 years, or maybe longer. He is why we have a president Trump.
by fhub | 2025-09-24 00:13:51+00:00
Some day the forward facing cameras on your car will read the street cleaning signs and warn you before you park and notify you if you are still parked there when street cleaning day/time is approaching. The nuance is that you are allowed to park after the truck has gone by (in SF).

https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/drive-park/how-avoid-pa...
by leakycap | 2025-09-24 00:14:13+00:00
What has surprised me is that "filling up" my electric vehicle at a fast charger, for example the common Electrify America stations, costs as much or more as fossil fuels in my other vehicle when you compare per-mile costs.

If you don't live where you park with access to low-cost charging, electric trucks may cost a new buyer a lot more than they expect.

The #1 thing people express interest in when I pull up in electric is the cost savings. Maintenance savings are significant, but fast charging is about the same as gasoline in my area.
by prisenco | 2025-09-24 00:14:48+00:00
Right, engagement algorithms are like giving bad takes a rocket ship.

The words of world renown epidemiologists who were, to be frank, boring and unentertaining could never possibly compete with crunchymom44628 yelling about how Chinese food causes covid.

Bad takes have the advantage of the engagement of both the people who vehemently agree and the people who vehemently disagree. Everyone is incentivized to be a shock jock. And the shock jocks are then molded by the algorithm to be ever more shock jockish.

Especially at a time when we were all thrown out of the streets and into our homes and online.

And here I'll end this by suggesting everyone watch Eddington.
by tabbytown | 2025-09-24 00:14:49+00:00
> 'Hi, my name is Louise. I can’t stop using drugs, so I need your program,’” she told The Greensboro News & Record in 2021. “‘Oh, you’re going to kick me out because I can’t stop using drugs? Funny. I just told you that was my problem.’”

Something about perfect being the enemy of the good... :)

What a kick-ass and beautiful human being. Here's another more resonant obituary:

https://filtermag.org/remembering-louise-vincent/
by AfterHIA | 2025-09-24 00:14:55+00:00
Another way of articulating this: "concentrations of power and wealth should not determine the speech or political sentiments of the many."

My fear is that this is incredibly uncontroversial this is until it's not-- when pushes becomes shoves we start having debates about what are, "legitimate" concentrations of power (wealth) and how that legitimacy in itself lets us, "tolerate what we would generally condemn as intolerable." I feel we need to take a queue from the Chomsky's of the world and decree:

"all unjustified concentrations of power and wealth are necessarily interested in control and as such we should aggressively and purposefully refuse to tolerate them at all as a basic condition of democratic living..."

This used to be, "social democracy" where these days the Democratic Party in the United States' motto is more, "let us make deals with the devil because reasons and things." People have the power. We are the people. Hare fucking Krsna.
by joquarky | 2025-09-24 00:14:58+00:00
> Maybe there's something weaker than transformers, but good enough for practical applications, while being more resource-efficient?

I wish! Gboard is terrible at predicting the correct form of a word.

It generally knows the best word, but it doesn't get from context that (e.g.) a gerund form of the verb is the most appropriate next
by skydhash | 2025-09-24 00:15:20+00:00
Long story short: Terminals were the result of moving teleprinting stuff from paper to the screen. The shell is program that accept commands and execute the relevant program and I’m pretty sure console was the whole apparatus.

But now we moved the whole protocol to a program (an emilator) instead, and console refers to the initial boot environment, the attached display, keyboard pair (because you can still use another computer as the interface for control).

But the protocol is fairly old and some stuff clashes with current paradigms for using a computers.
by ncallaway | 2025-09-24 00:15:56+00:00
As with others, I think your "and/or" between government and "big tech" is problematic.

I think government censorship should be strictly prohibited. I think "company" censorship is just the application of the first amendment.

Where I think the problem lies with things like YouTube is the fact that we have _monopolies_, so there is no "free market" of platforms.

I think we should be addressing "big tech" censorship not by requiring tech companies to behave like a government, but rather by preventing any companies from having so much individual power that we _need_ them to behave like a government.

We should have aggressive anti-trust laws, and interoperability requirements for large platforms, such that it doesn't matter if YouTube decides to be censorious, because there are 15 other platforms that people can viably use instead.
by westurner | 2025-09-24 00:16:28+00:00
By comparison, Python has removed PGP signature support with PEP 761 and instead depends upon sigstore fulcio.

/? https://www.google.com/search?q=removed+gpg+and+sigstore+onl...

IIRC OpenPGP signatures do work with W3C VC; there's a URI for the key type and algorithm?

"Chapter 8. Signing container images" and any other OCI artifact: https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_... :

> You can use a GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) signature or a sigstore signature to sign your container image

--

"What does a PGP signature on a Git commit prove?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26640915

"Git-signatures – Multiple PGP signatures for your commits" (2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19183803#19186012

"Linked Data Signatures for GPG" > GpgLinkedDataKeyClass2020, GpgSignature2020: https://gpg.jsld.org/ .. spec: https://gpg.jsld.org/contexts/

"PGP Vocabulary v1" (2021) > PgpVerificationKey2021, PgpSignature2021:https://or13.github.io/lds-pgp2021/

"Verifiable Credentials with PGP" (2022) https://transmute-industries.github.io/vc-pgp/

--

A blog post from 2022 on how to do artifact key revocation with Sigstore Fulcio, Rekor, and AWS Lambda; but revocation transparency https://blog.sigstore.dev/dont-panic-a-playbook-for-handling...

"Why you can’t use Sigstore without Sigstore" (2023) https://blog.sigstore.dev/why-you-cant-use-sigstore-without-...

"Model authenticity and transparency with Sigstore" https://next.redhat.com/2025/04/10/model-authenticity-and-tr...

sigstore/model-transparency: https://github.com/sigstore/model-transparency
by rogerrogerr | 2025-09-24 00:16:30+00:00
As super low hanging fruit:

June 8, 2020: WHO: Data suggests it's "very rare" for coronavirus to spread through asymptomatics [0]

June 9, 2020: WHO expert backtracks after saying asymptomatic transmission 'very rare' [1]

0: https://www.axios.com/2020/06/08/who-coronavirus-asymptomati... 1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/who-expert-bac...

Of course, if we just take the most recent thing they said as "revised guidance", I guess it's impossible for them to contradict themselves. Just rapidly re-re-re-revised guidance.
by aw1621107 | 2025-09-24 00:16:39+00:00
> Under the assumption that you are maximizing both.

I'm not sure that changes anything about my comment? GC'd languages can give you safety and* ergonomics, no need to trade off one for the other. Obviously doing so requires tradeoffs of their own, but such additional criteria were not mentioned in the comment I originally replied to.

> I often hear complaints that Rust's semantics actually haven't maximized ergonomics, even factoring in the added difficulty it faces in pursuit of safety.

Well yes, that's factually true. I don't think anyone can disagree that there aren't places where Rust can further improve ergonomics (e.g., partial borrows). And that's not even taking into account places where Rust intentionally made things less ergonomic (around raw pointers IIRC, though I think there's some discussion about changing that).

> It's totally possible languages as ergonomic as Rust can be more safe

It's definitely possible (see above about GC'd languages). There are just other tradeoffs that need to be made that aren't on the ergonomics <-> safety axis.
by stockresearcher | 2025-09-24 00:16:49+00:00
> Not that dissimilar from the working class areas here in Berlin

Interesting fact. The public library in Michigan City was designed by a very young Helmut Jahn. Yes, the same architect that designed the Potsdamer Platz.

Also, both the power plant and the prison are going away. The power plant is already in the process of being decommissioned.
by mac-attack | 2025-09-24 00:17:06+00:00
It's poorly thought out logic. Everyone sees how messy and how mistakes can be made when attempting to get to a truth backed by data + science, so they somehow they conclude that allowing misinformation to flourish will solve the problem instead of leading to a slow decline of morality/civilization.

Very analogous to people who don't like how inefficient governments function and somehow conclude that the solution is to put people in power with zero experience managing government.
by martinpw | 2025-09-24 00:17:08+00:00
That is a very high quality video.

One thing I am curious about - how many generations of process shrink is one of these machines good for? They talk about regular EUV and then High-NA EUV for finer processes, but presumably each machine works for multiple generations of process shrink? If so, what needs to be adjusted to move to a finer generation of lithography and how is it done? Does ASML come in and upgrade the machine for the next process generation, or does it come out of the box already able to deliver to a resolution a few steps beyond the current state of the art?
by nico | 2025-09-24 00:17:35+00:00
Yup, just got it in my email. At first I was intrigued, then I read the part where they say the application requires a refundable deposit for verification

> Next step: To confirm your preliminary registration and secure eligibility, please verify your wallet through Y Combinator. This step ensures fairness, safeguards against Sybil attacks, and does not require personal information. The process takes less than a minute: simply connect your wallet and sign a verification message.

> Important: A refundable deposit is required for authorization. The full amount will be returned once verification is complete
by boxerab | 2025-09-24 00:18:49+00:00
Yes! This MUST be why the VAERS adverse event tracker went through the roof right after the rollout began, and why excess death remains sky high in many countries to this day - because a product that didn't stop you from catching or spreading the virus was one of the only things preventing deaths. Couldn't have been our, you know, immune system or anything like that, or that the average age at death was 80 along with several co-morbidities.
by godelski | 2025-09-24 00:19:41+00:00
> In modern math, _algebra_ or _modern_ algebra or _abstract_algebra, is the study of structures over sets with defined operations on the elements of that set.

To add to/extend this there's a very famous quote from Poincaré that I think is helpful:

> Math is not the study of numbers, but the relationships between them.

I'd say more modern math has replaced the word "numbers" with the more abstract concept of "objects". This makes math truly the study of abstraction.

I actually wish we taught more of this math early on[0]. Children seem to be quick to grasp many of the fundamentals of important structures like groups, fields, and algebras. I find that many of these concepts have fundamentally shifted how I think and can be used on a daily basis, without the need of writing formulas or using formal semantics.

It's odd that it takes getting up upper division undergraduate education in math (or sometimes from neighboring fields) to learn what the field is even fundamentally about. It's akin to teaching people that programming by teaching people how to use a word editor. It's such a narrow aspect and no surprise so many are so fundamentally confused.

[0] I'm unconvinced the "new maths" programs were a complete failure. Just because we didn't get it right on the first attempt doesn't mean we should have thrown the baby out with the bath water.
by Jensson | 2025-09-24 00:19:47+00:00
Common carrier also applies to phones and electricity and so on, it is what prevents your phone service provider from deciding who you can call or what you can say. Imagine a world where your phone service provider could beep out all your swear words, or if they prevented you from calling certain people, that is what common carrier prevents.

So the equivalent of Google banning anyone talking about Covid is the same as a phone service provider ending service for anyone mentioning covid on their phones. Nobody but the most extreme authoritarians thinks phone providers should be allowed to do that, so why not apply this to Google as well?
by palata | 2025-09-24 00:21:21+00:00
Ok, you show me a line. Where does it explain what it measures? It says "Energy used per capita", it doesn't say what energy it accounts for.

It most definitely does NOT account for the commute of the employees in China who worked on parts of your smartphone. Does it account for the use of TikTok? To what extent? Does it account for the AC in the datacenters used by TikTok outside the US?
by AfterHIA | 2025-09-24 00:21:42+00:00
There's a literal world of literature both contemporary and classical which points to the idea that concentrations of power in politics and concentrations of wealth and power in industry aren't dissimilar. I think there are limits to this as recent commentaries by guys like Zizek seem to suggest that the, "strong Nation-State" is a positive legacy of the European enlightenment. I think this is true, "when it is."

Power is power. Wealth is power. Political power is power. The powerful should not control the lives or destinies of the less powerful. This is the most basic description of contemporary democracy but becomes controversial when the Randroids and Commies alike start to split hairs about how the Lenins and John Galts of the world have a right to use power to further their respective political objectives.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm (Leviathan by Hobbes)

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50922 (Perpetual Peace by Kant)

https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societie...
by nitwit005 | 2025-09-24 00:21:43+00:00
Worth noting that Trump directly threatened to put Zuckerberg in prison for life in relation to this: https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/31/politics/video/smr-trump-zuck...

I wouldn't trust any public statement from these companies once that kind of threat has been thrown around. People don't exactly want to go to prison forever.