MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mhitza | 2025-09-29 23:36:23+00:00
You do not. But the people who eagerly jumped to smart homes, and voice assistants that are always on, to which privacy might as well not exist... Are going to love their own "Jarvis" which they can give shopping orders to while in the kitchen.

Basically, the Sillicon Valley "smart fridge" episode. Or even better, the Modern Family "smart fridge" episode.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-09-29 23:38:23+00:00
This move will only lay off thousands more, sadly. Like the gaming industry needed even more veterans kicked out.

It's definitely not good times at all, no matter how you feel about the companies. Three of the largest 3rd party western studios in the last 3 years are being bought out. This doesn't bode well no matter where you are or what you consume in the industry.
by zeroq | 2025-09-29 23:38:51+00:00
Yet another online cycling calculator, this time with an emphasis on power/speed difference between different tires.

I'm sick and tired of audiophile level bs floating around online forums and I want to create a simple tool for people to fiddle around with different settings to see what really impacts their speed while cycling.

As usual - no plans for monetization whatsoever. Nothing fancy either, just an elaborated weekend project.

If you like the idea and want to help with graphic design and or html just let me know. :)
by jcranmer | 2025-09-29 23:38:52+00:00
As someone who generally agrees with the thesis, I still find the length of the article quite frustrating, since it's definitely quantity over quality for text here.

The core issue is that OpenAI is committing to spending hundreds of billions on AI data center expansion that it doesn't have and that it doesn't appear able to acquire, and this basic fact is being obscured by circular money flows and the finances of AI being extremely murky [1]. But Zitron is muddying this message by excessive details in trying to provide receipts, and burying all of it behind what seems to be a more general "AI doesn't work" argument that he seems to want to make but isn't sufficiently well-equipped to make.

[1] The fact that the Oracle and Nvidia deals with OpenAI may actually be the same thing is the one thing new to me in this article.
by rmason | 2025-09-29 23:39:23+00:00
I really liked this guy. Maybe it's Boston but here's a guy with two wildly successful startups in robotics and he's having trouble raising money because his idea isn't sexy enough!

I thought investors were smart and knew how to calculate odds. There is never any absolutely sure thing. But if a guy has been wildly successful twice aren't the odds pretty good he can do it a third time?
by PontifexCipher | 2025-09-29 23:39:34+00:00
This is not just PR and is very interesting. However, in my view, (and from a quick read of the paper) this is actually a very classical method in applied math work:

- Build a complex intractable mathematical model (here, Navier-Stokes)

- Approximate it with a function approximator (here, a Physics Informed Neural Network)

- Use the some property of function approximator to search for more solutions to the original model (here, using Gauss-Newton)

In a sense, this is actually just the process of model-based science anyway: use a model for the physical world and exploit the mathematics of the model for real-world effects.

This is very very good work, but this heritage goes back to polynomial approximation even from Taylor series, and has been the foundation of engineering for literal centuries. Throughout history, the approximator keeps getting better and better and hungrier and hungrier for data (Taylor series, Chebyshev + other orthogonal bases for polynomials, neural networks, RNNs, LSTMs, PINNs, <the future>).

You didn't say anything to the contrary, and neither did the original video, but it's very different than what some other people are talking about in this thread ("run an LLM in a loop to do science the way a person does it"). Maybe I'm just ranting at the overloading of the term AI to mean "anything on a GPU".
by AfterHIA | 2025-09-29 23:40:19+00:00
Yeah man I'm with you on the Kinect-- the WiiMote too. I remember how geeked out my family was when we finally got it to work as mouse on our computer. It was once again, "a hell of time to be alive."

Without being simple minded there might be fertility in, "can't we get the Kinect/WiiMote to control an AI?" Couldn't I swing my device around (giggidy) and have the AI analyze the movements to do something, "novel?" Food for thought. Thanks for commenting wellthisisgreat.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-09-29 23:41:44+00:00
>it was a few well placed ultra cynical bad apples that persisted in causing such enormous antagonism.

Too bad those bad apples were the ones all the way at the top. Kotick's "we'll charge for reloads during an online match" statements really were a harbinger on what those in power thought of gaming as.

(I had him as CEO too, I understand).
by cogman10 | 2025-09-29 23:42:07+00:00
Yeah, I have a 2 grandmas that didn't drink and both died in their 90s. One with dementia the other without. One grandpa died in his late 80s and I think he drank. The other died in his 90s. Neither had dementia.

What lesson can I draw from any of this? Dementia really sucks for the families. It's not so bad for the person who's brain is turning to mush.
by Chilko | 2025-09-29 23:42:22+00:00
This is information is generally stated on the module datasheets, which specify the Open Circuit Voltage (V_OC) at Standard Test Conditions (STC), and then provide a temperature coefficient for how that voltage changes with temperature. 'Maximum voltage' is very arbitrary as this is directly dependant on the lowest expected operating temperature, hence the industry has landed on stating these values at standardized conditions (STC and NOCT) allowing for direct comparison.

The label on the modules themselves tend to also provide these ratings at STC, e.g. this label from Jinko specifies the Open circuit voltage and also summarizes the conditions assumed for STC:

https://image.made-in-china.com/202f0j00LURcYuatWIqH/Jinko-M...

While I agree that the label could also add the temperature coefficient, I'm not sure if it's reasonable to expect that specialist electrical equipment details all of its operating parameters on an attached label without the expectation of consulting a datasheet or manual. For specific products that primarily target non-specialised consumers however, a different labelling approach may be warranted.
by vldszn | 2025-09-29 23:44:26+00:00
I have found them on X.com

This is the project from those guys https://x.com/githubprojects

They launched this new product, GitAds, a couple of months ago, and I decided to give it a try.

GitHub doesn’t seem to mind, and GitAds seems trustworthy, but I don’t see much value in having their ads in my repo, so I might remove them soon =)
by akudha | 2025-09-29 23:44:42+00:00
I agree with the author here.

Go to a restaurant with friends or family for dinner - someone has to request the waiter to take a photo of all our faces stuffed with food, can't even have a meal without modeling for stupid photos.

Go to any event - we have to take photos, we have to pose for photos. Back when meetup.com was a thing, every event people were more interested in taking photos than having meaningful conversations.

Go to any tourist place - flashes everywhere, photos everywhere. I used to live in Manhattan, you can't walk 10 feet without some tourist group posing for photos. You have grit your teeth and wait for their photo session to finish, or feel bad for interrupting it.

Couple of years ago (I forgot exactly when) I noticed the self checkout kiosks at WholeFoods had video cameras. I can't even buy half a pound of tomatoes without being on someone's camera/database. As if WholeFoods is some top secret nuclear facility...What crime am I gonna commit there? Steal onions?

And on and on and on...

Who even looks at these stupid photos anyway? Do we really need to document what we ate for breakfast along with our faces, as if we ate some exotic fruit that is only available once every 25 years? It is the same shitty toast and crappy coffee

Publishing someone’s photo online, without their consent, without another strong justification, just because they happen to be in view of one’s camera lens, feels wrong to me.

This makes perfect sense. I don't want to take anyone's photo (even those people I know very well, like family and friends) without their consent. Same way, I don't want anyone taking my photo either, and most certainly don't want anyone posting them online where it is gonna stay there forever.

We are just plain stupid, as a society
by worik | 2025-09-29 23:44:53+00:00
Has anything changed for the better?

Ten years ago the cleaners in the labs at The University of Otago had job security most of the scientists could only dream about.

I was in the business school (very low rankings!) and I was amazed at the infighting, back stabbing and general lack of collegiality amongst the academic staff.

I could not wait together out of there
by tomhow | 2025-09-29 23:46:03+00:00
Previously on HN:

Don't Become a Scientist (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17789844 - Aug 2018 (2 comments)

Don't Become a Scientist (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836622 - July 2015 (4 comments)

Don't become a scientist (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8702841 - Dec 2014 (33 comments)

Don't Become a Scientist (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763737 - May 2014 (159 comments)
by Dylan16807 | 2025-09-29 23:46:11+00:00
At merely freezing, that solar panel would hit 40 volts. In the coldest point of the US in a typical winter, it would get up to about 42 volts. At the record minimum temperature, in either montana or alaska since they have similar records, you'd get up to about 48 volts.

42-48 is not a big enough range to give up over. My impulse is to arbitrarily pick -40 and say the normal max voltage is 45.5 degrees. Now it's nice and obvious that you can only hook up 3 to a 150 volt input, and you'll have a 9% margin of error left over. On that "first cold and sunny day" you'll output 120 volts instead of 160.

And no don't worry about a heliostat.
by reactordev | 2025-09-29 23:46:15+00:00
Even the rich, get richer… this comment definitely misses the point.

The point isn’t about money, it’s about spending time doing the things you enjoy doing. Without commitment to doing so because it’s your job. Some people find their ikigai early. Some decide to work to provide for others and put their own ambitions aside. Selflessly. So sure, the kid genius who struck it rich at 22 that now lives in a mansion is “living his best life”. By what standards? We have different measuring sticks.
by pagekicker | 2025-09-29 23:46:25+00:00
Codexes Factory: algorithmic tools to create, operate, distribute, and market entire publishing imprints. This week I am launching my first imprint, Xynapse Traces, with 66 books in the Korean pilsa (筆寫) style. Later in October, Nimble Ultra, devoted to the history and practice of intelligence and espionage. Last week I built a giant collection of 575 imprints that are a shadow superset of the ~540 imprints operated by the Big Five publishing houses (Penguin Random House, the largest has ~300). Teeny weeny tip of the iceberg at NimbleBooks.com.
by johnnyanmac | 2025-09-29 23:46:26+00:00
>One of the reasons Activision outperformed EA was they have a better culture of co-operation between departments. Efforts to improve this at EA never ceased to actually make it worse.

Why do you think there was such a clash between departments? There's always some friction because different divisions have different interests, but EA seems to sound particularly bad at this.

I also heard that EA was run very "corportate" like, comparatively speaking. In an era where many other studios would still go for this "fun factor" to build relations. Would that more hard-lined bureaucracy wove distrust compared to the executives that felt like they were on the frontlines with the devs?
by martin-t | 2025-09-29 23:47:13+00:00
And now wait till you realize it's all built on stolen code written by people like you and me.

GOFAI failed because paying intelligent/competent/capable people enough for their time to implement intelligence by writing all the necessary rules and algorithms was uneconomical.

GenAI solved it by repurposing already performed work, deriving the rules ("weights") from it automatically, thus massively increasing the value of that work, without giving any extra compensation to the workers. Same with art, translations and anything else which can be fed into RL.
by drchopchop | 2025-09-29 23:48:21+00:00
" This group tended to agree with dark pronouncements, such as “I need chaos around me” and “When I think about our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking ‘just let them all burn.’ ” Petersen and his colleagues came up with an unforgettable term to describe this group’s psychology: “The need for chaos.”"

My take is that a lack of opportunity / class stratification / societal mobility plays into this. It's essentially the same reason people play the lottery. When you're stuck in a seemingly intractable situation, you need the world to suddenly change around you. Maybe you win Powerball, or maybe you decide to just burn everything down out of desperation. Social media just amplifies those thoughts.
by MangoCoffee | 2025-09-29 23:48:40+00:00
I'm vibe coding using GitHub Copilot and JetBrains AI Pro on a Blazor web app that tracks my investment in like index funds, stocks, ETFs, etc. It's a simple CRUD web app.

The app is nearly completed, and Grok (preview in Copilot, currently free) wrote most of the CRUD pages with Entity Framework. Of course, it does get things wrong, and I use Claude 4 to fix the issues. (i'm a C# dev, I review code generated by Grok sometimes.)
by brudgers | 2025-09-29 23:48:53+00:00
what defines it as a "community"

Norms and continuity maybe?

But my point is that air soft has norms and if video is among them, then that’s just how it is.

And for what it is worth your theoretical exercise of keeping private lists of birds is fine by me. But if it is just you, it is not a community because that’s not how we use the word community.

Likewise, the community of birdwatchers typically uses the word birdwatching to include the kind of activities I mentioned.
by recursive | 2025-09-29 23:48:58+00:00
I don't know much about 3d stuff or shaders or this language, but I know golf, and I think I found a byte to save.

w = g-g*exp(-mix(h*3e2,d*2.5,a=h<.001?0.:1.)) w = g-g/exp(mix(h*3e2,d*2.5,a=h<.001?0.:1.))
by rbbydotdev | 2025-09-29 23:49:22+00:00
markdown and image cms in the browser. run and store documents totally offline and static. requires no server. not a pwa or electron

https://opaledx.com

- rich markdown editor (via mdxeditor.dev) and source (codemirror6)

- uses indexeddb and optionally opfs (select a directory on your local hd)

- some service worker hacks to do seamless image processing (jpg/png -> webp), storage and retrieval

- document snapshot history, thumbnail preview with iframe and snapdom: html->img sorcery

- live previews and compilations

- loads very quickly, navigation and cold starts, images make heavy use of the Cache api

- use in-browser git (thanks isomorphic-git) for version control; optionally sync with github via cors proxy (host your own if you want)

- best of all completely free to use. 99.5% finished MIT github repo dropping soon ;)
by OhMeadhbh | 2025-09-29 23:49:47+00:00
I got the monitor to work. Turns out you CAN'T drive it with a Pi 500+, even though the insert in the monitor box says you can, but at lower brightness settings. (I turned the brightness all the way down and tried powering it from the 500+ but no dice.) If you get one of these, you will DEFINITELY require an external power supply, at least if you're using it with a 500+. I'm using the (I think) 95w power supply from an old MacBookPro, seems to drive the monitor like a champ.
by gprok | 2025-09-29 23:49:57+00:00
I'm working on Macscope (https://macscope.app), a better Cmd+Tab for macOS. I built it because macOS window management feels slow compared to the keyboard-driven speed of a terminal or code editor.

It augments your existing muscle memory: a quick tap of a shortcut switches apps like normal, but holding it opens a powerful interface with features like:

Unified Search: Instantly find any window, app, or browser tab.

Scopes: Save and restore entire window layouts for different projects (perfect for after you unplug a monitor).

Placement Modes: Snap windows to screen halves as you switch to them.

The goal is to make the OS feel as fast as my other tools. I'm always looking for feedback on how to make window management less frustrating!
by warthog | 2025-09-29 23:50:36+00:00
Banker (banker.so): An AI spreadsheet that excels at spreadsheet understanding (pun intended).

There are some AI spreadsheet products out there mostly as plugins along with MS Copilot. However my experience with them showed that they are bad at understanding spreadsheets.

The reason is that sheets are 2D data models. Because LLMs are trained on 1D data models (simply text), translation of 2D data models to formats an LLM can consume is a big context engineering task.

I read and implemented some of the algos mentioned in SpreadsheetLLM paper released by Microsoft. Ironic, isn't it?

Got it to a nice working state. Give it a go - if you need more tokens, let me know!
by hodgehog11 | 2025-09-29 23:50:41+00:00
This is absolutely true, but it still makes use of the advantages and biases of neural networks in a clever way. It has to, because computationally-assisted proofs for PDEs with singularities is incredibly difficult. To me, this is not too similar from using them as heuristics to find counterexamples, or other approaches where the implicit biases pay off. I think we do ourselves a disservice to say that "LLMs replacing people" = "applications of AI in science".

I also wouldn't say this is entirely "classical". Old, yes, but still unfamiliar and controversial to a surprising number of people. But I get your point :-).
by dota_fanatic | 2025-09-29 23:50:49+00:00
I have this in my CLAUDE.md and it works better than 50/50. Still not 100% though:

### Development Process

All work must be done via TODO.md. If the file is empty, then we need to write our next todo list.

When TODO.md is populated:

1. Read the entire TODO.md file first 2. Work through tasks in the exact order listed 3. Reference specific TODO.md sections when reporting progress 4. Mark progress by checking off todos in the file 5. Never abbreviate, summarize, or reinterpret TODO.md tasks

A TODO file is done when every box has been checked off due to completion of the associated task.
by churchill | 2025-09-29 23:50:59+00:00
Don't worry; the recent TikTok acquisition will take care of that.

As an aside, it's funny/interesting how the Gaza War has completely consumed the political capital Israel spent decades accumulating in the West. A significant percentage of people who used to have no political opinions whatsoever now see Israel as a transparently genocidal terrorist state.

I mean, what other conclusion can they reach: the average human might say nasty things on the internet but they don't like bombing tens of thousands of babies, women, healthcare workers, journalists, and civilians. When you do that, repeatedly, you're going to attract displeasure.

The last bastion of support for Israel I see are the American evangelicals who believe the whole 'chosen people' shtick. But, their children's generation are mostly either irreligious, Israel-skeptic, or outright embracing people like Fuentes.

If Israel doesn't secure a lasting solution to their misadventures in their region, once this generation dies off, that'll be the end of the rope for them.

Also, the upsurge in criticism of Israel has forced them to show their cards. A few years ago, if you implied Israel & its proxies exercised significant control of the media, you'd have been called an antisemite. Now, you have Netanyahu bragging about the TikTok acquisition (by a card-carrying Zionist) and fmr. congressman Gallagher confirming that forcing the sale was because of Israel, and the only conclusion you can reach about Ellison's media purchases and the silencing of Israel-critical voices is that, yep, Israel definitely has too much power in Western media spaces.

PS: copied this comment from another thread. Relevant, so i thought I'd share.
by createtoken | 2025-09-29 23:51:00+00:00
When I try to market on Reddit, I often don’t know which community I should post my content in, and Reddit’s search results never give me the right subreddit. So, I developed this and discovered that vector databases can be very helpful in finding similar communities.

However, there’s a problem: right now the vector database only contains subreddit names and partial descriptions. If those descriptions aren’t written well, the results often aren’t very accurate. In the future, I think I might rebuild this model and scrape a certain amount of forum content, so the model can more precisely match users with the most relevant communities.
by a1pulley | 2025-09-29 23:51:03+00:00
"I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs."

This seems a bit hyperbolic. In the mid to late 2000s, only 5 of the 15 close grad student friends I had at Caltech didn't get a tenure track position somewhere. Four of the five work in tech, and the fifth is a government electrical engineer. 4/5 were homegrown, the fifth is an immigrant, and all ten tenure track (now mostly tenured) profs are immigrants.
by brigade | 2025-09-29 23:51:38+00:00
“Unreasonable” in the context of the 4th amendment means whether they have sufficient reason to execute the search and seizure, which they did here. Evidence of smuggling was in plain sight.

He is appealing to the supreme court on 8th amendment grounds of excessive fines, but the Supreme Court has thus far left it to individual states to determine whether individual fines are excessive. To which Alaska’s Supreme Court has already said “nope” in this case.

At any rate, this case is rather unrelated to why civil forfeiture should be abolished.
by ksr | 2025-09-29 23:52:08+00:00
I'm pursuing my vision of "music-i18n": Open source music software that works for microtonal music and worldwide musical cultures.

It's not a from-scratch effort, quite the contrary: I'm trying to tie in existing music standards (MIDI, MusicXML, SMuFL, MEI, etc.) and ensure that FOSS systems (MuseScore, Verovio, smaller components) implement enough of those standards to support music-i18n.

Sometimes, this also includes extending the standards themselves when they are not fully capable of representing some non-mainstream musical aspect. For example, MusicXML lacks the ability of representing multiple accidentals per note (whereas MEI does), which is a must for microtonality.

I started down this path around 2018, as a music player who got interested in arranging Arabic songs in a "Real Book" style. It opened a giant rabbit hole that I'm still far from having fully explored.

Now and then, I collaborate with other devs who are interested in adjacent topics. I would love to hear from some of you here!

As an entry point, I recommend checking out the "progress report" I wrote last October: https://blog.karimratib.me/2024/10/01/music-grimoire-progres... - I'm currently drafting this year's update. My main demo is at https://blog.karimratib.me/demos/musicxml/