MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pqtyw | 2025-09-14 09:31:51+00:00
Its tricky, though. There might be people who are doing a perfectly good job and kicking them arbitrarily might be suboptimal.

Then there is room for quite a lot of direct or indirect corruption. e.g. if you know you won't have a job in 4-8 years major corporations and other organizations offering you a cushy job if you do the "right things" might become quite a bit more appealing.

But yes, having a distinct class of career politicians has some significant downsides as well..

> The opposite is requiring people to ascend through the ranks (perhaps starting as low as a mayor of a town)

Might work fine or there might be a lot of gatekeeping if you just want to get on the first step since that will likely be controlled quite tightly by the established parties/cliques.
by neiltalap | 2025-09-14 09:32:43+00:00
I have built a production-ready validator API to help stop prompt-injection, jailbreaks, unsafe tool calls, and system prompt leaks.

Endpoints: POST /validate and POST /validate_output

Actions: pass, block, sanitize, escalate

Check it out if you want to, I would be grateful for any feedback support@patrei.com

Docs: https://backend.patrei.com (RapidAPI listing is just for onboarding)

Happy to answer questions or dive into the design choices in the comments.
by somenameforme | 2025-09-14 09:34:12+00:00
The point of debate is not to change the other person's mind. That's very rarely going to happen, and even less commonly immediately. The point of debate is to provide context and information that somebody may not have been aware of. The reason for this is that the views we decide to adopt are not entirely conscious. They're driven by a large number of issues that coalesce on a subconscious level, but that takes time to change.

For instance people trend more conservative as they age, but there's no real simple point where you wake up one day and like 'ok, I now officially love guns, babies, and 'Merica.' It's a very gradual process that's driven by things like life experience and the accumulation of knowledge, all processed on a subconscious level. As you age you'll find that you often will think the 'you' of 10 years ago was a naive idiot, and this never really seems to stop. Yet if the 'you' of 10 years from now talked to you today, it's unlikely he could change your mind on a single thing, even though he is literally you.

When people are young we naturally have this confidence that the views we hold must be true and just, because we are absolutely certain that they are. And so we if we just had the time and attention, we could convince anybody of their correctness, so long as they remained logical. But over time, one learns that people who may believe the exact opposite of you think the exact same thing, and it's not necessarily the case that one side must be wrong. People, no less intelligent than one another, can see the same evidence and simply come to different conclusions.
by ant6n | 2025-09-14 09:34:13+00:00
Love this project. Back in my transit blogging days, one of the themes was short and long transfers. And here this idea immediately starts surfacing just looking at the stations - the crazy mazes with long tunnels are cool to explore on paper, but suck for actual transfers. It adds slogs in the middle of the trips, and kind of discourages transit use because trips seem longer and more work.

When scrolling down, the author actually includes a long discussion on the best possible transfer layouts! Many of the terrible stations over time are of course historically grown, evolved over time, and weren't the result of some maniac evil genius deciding to create miserable transfers. Systems are built sometimes over a hundred years, so a later station is added mostly where it can fit, not a as a result of some master plan.

But there's also ways to deal with these issues, which can be found in Berlin.

1) for the recently opened "Unter den linden" station, which is a transfer between a new extension (u5) and a 100-year-old line (u6), a station on the old line was actually moved by 180m so that the transfer would be good. (That is, the old station was closed and a new station built a bit a distance away)

2) in general in Berlin, especially after WWII, a lot of the subway construction followed a very long term master plan (to the extend that West Berlin actually planned a network for all of Berlin, even though the East was in another country behind the iron curtain). When stations were built, the planners "knew" it would be a transfer some day, so they added in accomodations ("Bauvorleistung" or preparations ahead of actual construction), often whole station shells for the future line it would connect to. This resulted in a lot of short transfers even when lines were built decades apart. And it also resulted in a bunch of ghost stations, which have yet to be connected to lines.
by skissane | 2025-09-14 09:36:00+00:00
I think for the US, they should ensure tzdata contains at least one city for every state. That’s what they do for Australia. Now, it so happens their current rules-only add city if in recent decades it had distinct time zone rules-happen to produce that outcome for Australia, because in Australia time is a state issue and historically every state decided for itself whether to have daylight savings and when to begin/end it. Still, I think they should amend their rules to say “capital and/or largest city for every first-level subdivision of major countries”, given some reasonably objective definition of “major” (e.g. G20 nations)
by wtbdbrrr | 2025-09-14 09:36:28+00:00
> some people experience too much metacognition/reflection and that is actually correlated with depression/anxiety.

That's a misconception pushed for profit. It pops up a lot in different forms like "don't be such an individual" and makes marketing and mass psychology so much easier.

tl;dr: the problem is not problem, it's your attitude, dude.

Your brain is "cultured" and was wired to echo voices and opinions of peeps who seemed to have more fun when you were having thoughts and doubts about the things in discourse and you held back for one or more various reasons ( most times it's false pity or unjustified disgust because you were too proud of your own opinion, but you don't notice at all or way too late ) and so your brain ends up hallucinating depressive/anxious versions of unspoken things and reactions that never got to manifest.

It has NOTHING to do with intelligence, but the higher proportion of HN readers still falls into this category because the bulk of people under any slice under the bell curve falls into this category.

You can be as meta and reflective as you like, while meditating or not, just don't make the mistake of being nice or holding back. You don't have to be brutal or radical but in most cases, even when you are, someone or some train of thought will easily keep you grounded, albeit sometimes, someone (again, or some train of thought) will attempt to candygrab you onto their (your) cutesy little roller coaster. (Just vomit all over them/it, as soon as you notice and get back to your self.)

If you don't hold back any thoughts, feelings, perspectives about what makes you feel depressed or anxious, you are going to have a good time. Letting go can work but when it comes to some (micro)-(traumatic) experiences, it's better to resolve "their" and your arrogance about the experienced and the never lived, never said, never heard. That way you, even though you don't break the loop right away, you create a simultaneous bypass or parallel circuit that fires up bunches of synaptic connections that find better, less crippling ways to deal with whatever the loop is focused on or around.

You don't read about this because even your favorite teachers are "cultured".

If talking to LLMs about stuff like that, make sure they are local and your system is secure. And you have to make sure your LLM doesn't sugarcoat you or any problem. Especially if you fine tune it for psychology. It's an LLM but it learned from texts of people who are for profit and who will go at lengths to self-preserve who they are and what they learned. Your LLM needs to be radically honest with you and the variety of ways one can think about stuff, which is not something they do by default or anywhere in the top 30-70% of the weights.

PS: Whatever gets to any company will be used for profit and to update profiles of entire population segments. It's not necessarily systemic but there are always individuals inside the companies, inside gov. institutions and MITM everywhere.
by awesome_dude | 2025-09-14 09:37:12+00:00
> Cross border payments with stable coin is way easier and faster than with USD.

Only when it's because the other methods are highly restricted.

I make cross border payments quite regularly, and it's cheaper, faster, and safer, using the regulated systems (denominated in fiat currency).

> When crypto is in a bull cycle demand for stable coins raise as short term interest, sometimes up to 50%/year (for a few hours or a day).

And, pray tell, what happens when the reverse happens, and a death spiral begins?

> Stable coins generate yield for their operators, they won’t run with your money due to the same reasons why a bank CEO won’t.

From Wikipedia: Tether's USDT is currently the world's largest market capitalization stablecoin. Tether initially claimed their stablecoin is fully backed by fiat currency. However, in October 2021, it failed to produce audits for reserves used to collateralize the quantity of minted USDT stablecoin.[44] Tether were fined $41 million by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for deceiving consumers.[45] The CFTC found that Tether only had enough fiat reserves to guarantee their stablecoin for 27.6% of the time during 2016 to 2018. Since then, Tether began issuing assurance reports on USDT backing, although some speculation persists regarding the use of Chinese commercial paper for reserves.[46] As at March 2025, Tether had never completed an audit by an accounting firm.

Edit: The reason that crypto is most often presented as an alternative is because it's "Not regulated"

The reason I have faith in a fiat currency, and not crypto (of any kind) is the regulation - the handlers are regulated, the way that the banks invest the money that they hold is (supposed to be) regulated.

When banks have had the regulations on how they can use the money they hold relaxed is what has caused the last two DEPRESSIONS - 1930s, and 2010s (GFC)

There's zero advantage to use crypto except, as stated before, when the goods/services being exchanged are restricted, or the cross border trading is restricted.

Those border trades, you're dealing with countries where the banking system has failed (because the government has failed), or you are at risk of breaking sanctions or financing terrorism.

Edit: Used restricted where I'd previously used the word regulated to try and make the point clearer
by andai | 2025-09-14 09:37:28+00:00
All Turing-complete languages are technically equivalent in capability, but that doesn't mean the same task will cost the same effort in each language.

The closer a task is to the limit of your ability to handle complexity, the more you will benefit from tools that simplify the task.

The choice of programming language unfortunately what tools are possible to implement ergonomically (in terms of both implementation and interface).
by freakynit | 2025-09-14 09:39:17+00:00
The problem is the constant charge part that comes along with the percentage part of commissions that payment processors companies takes.

Spending 100$ in 1 dollar each transactions mean I end up spending extra 30$, on top of the percentage charges.

A system based on tokens only takes the percentage part(as expected), but the constant part is added just once.

It opens up per-request charging model, across service providers.

This benefits both: the consumers for obvious reasons, and sellers since now customers don't have to "commit" to subscription or a large charge for a servive they may or may not use or continue.
by johnisgood | 2025-09-14 09:41:07+00:00
There are actually quite a few viable alternatives to Rust for building these fast toolchains, such as Zig, Odin, OxCaml, and Ada.

Granted, not all of them are popular, but that is how Rust started off, too, right?

---

Ada would have been great as it is quite mature and used for serious and critical software, but lacks the "cool factor" that Rust has.

I would like to add, that there is clearly a disconnect between technical merit and adoption. Ada is a perfect example of this. It has been around since the 1980s with:

* Stronger safety guarantees than Rust in many ways (stricter type system, built-in contracts, formal verification support)

* Proven track record in safety-critical systems (aerospace, defense, medical devices)

* Native compilation with no runtime overhead

* Mature toolchain and decades of real-world deployment

* ... and much more.

If safety was truly the driving factor, Ada should have dominated systems programming decades ago. But it didn't, and that reveals what's really going on.

I believe that Rust was chosen over Ada because of:

* Timing - arrived when web developers were ready to try systems programming

* Community building - excellent documentation, welcoming culture, modern package manager[1]

* Aesthetic appeal - syntax familiar to C/Java/JavaScript developers

* Marketing narrative - "systems programming without fear", i.e. fuckton of hype

Ada had superior safety for decades but lacked the cultural momentum. It was associated with DoD contracts and enterprise software, not cool indie CLI tools.

[1] Ada has Alire now as its modern package manager.
by Syzygies | 2025-09-14 09:41:24+00:00
I met Charles Snead Houston, who lead the first two American attempts on K2 and became a doctor. (He fell the furthest in "The Belay", the most famous belay in mountaineering history.)

He asked me to explain my work on card shuffling, so we traded. He taught me about altitude sickness, for which he was the foremost expert. I then read his books before my own mountaineering, and his advice worked for me.

In a nutshell, where you sleep matters. 7,000' is free, and a conservative pace is to sleep 1,000' feet higher each night. (Good luck finding a Kilimanjaro ascent that climbs that slowly, but have you met anyone who was comfortable at the summit?)

My wife's brother lives at 10,000'. As it happens the last hotel is at 8,500'. One night does the trick for her.
by rbanffy | 2025-09-14 09:41:45+00:00
> First, IBM didn’t make the most of its dominance. It did little to make the IBM version of the PC truly unique.

Remember IBM had gone through a very painful antitrust case and was still subject to the consent decree. I’m not sure right now of the terms, but it certainly limited the leverages IBM could apply against third parties profiting from the PC.
by TheOtherHobbes | 2025-09-14 09:41:56+00:00
There's plenty of research. Plenty. None of it is positive.

Summaries with links here. https://socialmediavictims.org/effects-of-social-media/

It's really not hard to confirm this.

The problem isn't that "building political momentum is more important than accuracy", it's that social media is a huge global industry that pumps out psychological, emotional, and political pollution.

And like all major polluters, it has a very strong interest in denying what it's doing.
by selcuka | 2025-09-14 09:42:10+00:00
> You've given irrelevant data

In fact, calling it "irrelevant" is pushing the boundaries of good faith. It definitely includes "third world" immigrants, too. Apparently we haven't been able to find any statistical significance of the country of origin [1]:

> According to the study, this is the case for almost every region in the world that is a major source of immigrants to the United States. As of 2019, immigrants from China and eastern and southern Europe were committing the fewest number of crimes — as measured by incarceration rates — relative to U.S.-born individuals.

The exception is Mexican and Central American immigrants, but their incarceration rates are similar to, not _higher_ than U.S.-born individuals:

> The exception is Mexican and Central American immigrants, [...] Incarceration rates among Mexican and Central American immigrants were similar to those of U.S.-born individuals between 1980 and 2005.

> Hiding problems with bs stats isn't going to help anyone.

You've given no data at all. As it stands, everything you posted are your personal opinions.

[1] https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/mythical-tie-between-immigra...
by ViewTrick1002 | 2025-09-14 09:42:48+00:00
I think this line of thinking comes from a westernized world where all water is controlled.

Many dams have been built around the world not for power generation, but to control flooding. The power generation is a secondary concern.

In aggregate dams have saved far more lives, by managing flood waters.

The great thing in 2025 is that we don’t need either the dam or nuclear risk for our electricity needs.

Just build renewables and storage and the risk for the general public is as close to zero as we can get. The only people involved in accidents are those that chose to work in the industry installing and maintaining the gear.

We should of course continue to focus on work place safety but for the general public the risk of a life changing evacuation, radiation exposure or flood from dam failure does not exist.
by hedayet | 2025-09-14 09:43:21+00:00
I used to spend 4+ hours a day glued to Facebook. Last November I hit a tipping point and quit social media altogether:

Facebook: deactivated Twitter: deleted my account altogether LinkedIn: removed the app—now I only post and check messages via desktop with a news-feed eradicator Google + Chrome + Youtube on mobile: deleted. now I just use Safari in incognito mode.

Once the apps were no longer at my fingertips, quitting was surprisingly easy. I don’t miss them at all and I’m enjoying life much more.

As for HN, I browse only sporadically—and it’s never felt addictive to me anyway.
by itsoktocry | 2025-09-14 09:44:21+00:00
The fact that you think Trump is running a scam on foolish people, while the natural state of things is an altruistic Democratic government is why you lost and will likely continue to lose.

The "Democratic"/"left wing" platform is not as popular as you believe; not in the US, not in England, not in Canada, not in Germany...

This all stems from backlash against those policies. You need to fix the issues, not tell people "you voted for the wrong guy".
by Joker_vD | 2025-09-14 09:46:10+00:00
> you would need to redesign the process API.

Not really, PIDs are unstable, so only the immediate parent of a child can reasonably do anything with a child's PID anyway, PPID is mostly useless; so when a process exits, set PPIDs of all its non-exitted children to 0 or -1, and reap all of its already dead children, recursively. Done!

> Reparenting is needed for standard Unix utilities that want to run in the background.

Well, okay? You don't need any changes in APIs for that.
by K0balt | 2025-09-14 09:48:07+00:00
White space around each letter is completely critical for fonts like this. That makes this font 4x4 as presented, or 3x4 but you lose a lot of readability—too much imho.

The exception to this would be a physical manifestation, where each 2x3 pixel block was surrounded by a dead space, so that the display was actually optimised for this font configuration.

Still, that’s an impressive accomplishment, allowing a 16x32 character display on a sub 1$ oled, and 10x18 on a 3$ integrated computer with built in display.

Nice work.

For anyone actually thinking of using tiny fonts in a practical project, imho 4x5 (3x4 plus padding) is about as small as it gets for a font that doesn’t require extra work to read, giving 1 pixel of (violable) padding bottom and right. Unlike the OP font, it only needs 1px of top padding to be perfectly readable, so you are actually getting “free” readability compared to needing top+bottom padding like the OP font.
by jraph | 2025-09-14 09:48:14+00:00
> JQL only lets you write severely limited "where" clauses that plug into something that probably isn't SQL at all.

That's right. JQL (Jira Query Language) is based on AQL (Atlassian Query Language), same as CQL (Confluence Query Language), and targets Lucene (IIRC), not SQL, and CQL and JQL are (I suppose!) translated to Lucene queries.

These query languages are a subset of what you can do with a Solr / Lucene query string (basically the same thing as Solr is a fork of Lucene; Lucene is what is behind Atlassian products' search features IIRC). If you squint a little, you can liken it to some limited SQL where clause without the joins and the sub queries, but the target is a search platform, not an SQL database.

AQL fields map to Lucene fields, and there are functions that are also (likely) translated to Lucene expressions or replaced with some stuff from the context (currentContent() for instance in CQL is replaced to the id of the current Confluence page, and parentContent() to the id of the parent of the current page - again, this is a guess).

I suppose they invented this family or query languages to provide something more high level / user-friendly than raw lucene query strings, or possibly didn't want to give full access to the Lucene search capabilities for some reason.

There are Maven packages provided by Atlassian to deal with AQL [1], but they are not open source (and I have not studied their code, disassembled or otherwise).

I have reimplemented an AQL parser [2] from scratch using their limited docs and guesses, and, with this, implemented a CQL to Solr query translator for XWiki, mapping Confluence features to corresponding XWiki features [3]. Because people are migrating from Confluence to XWiki and their content is sprinkled with CQL-based macros that we needed to make work.

If you are curious about how a CQL statement can be translated to a Solr query (although querying fields in XWiki, not Confluence), you can look at the tests [4].

I actually find AQL pretty elegant, although I'll admit I haven't used it much.

[1] https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.atlassian.querylang

[2] https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/cql/tree/master/aqlparser

[3] https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/cql/tree/master/query

[4] https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/cql/blob/master/query/src/t...
by coderatlarge | 2025-09-14 09:48:55+00:00
consumers are harmed because Apple is forced to build in a way that expands its qa surface to include hypothetical tbd third-party integrations thus worsening their products, and surely opening up to more fines by the same EU who set them up like this in the first place.

those who stand to benefit from unjust laws are rarely the ones who acknowledge their nature.

in your previous response you seem to claim that samsung is an insignificant player in the smartphone market, and that integrating third-party app stores doesn’t require divulging security-related IP so i’m going to drop the mic right here.
by simianparrot | 2025-09-14 09:49:44+00:00
Most boomers I know don’t deny the climate is changing — they can (quite literally) feel it in their bones.

What they’re less convinced about is what to do about it. I agree with those who say we need to do practical preparation for the inevitable consequences rather than try to turn back the clock in a fit of fear and futility.

Norway can exit oil today and return its entire population to pre-WW2 poverty and last time I checked the effect on the world’s climate would be a .1% reduction in Co2 emissions, rounded up.

Meanwhile nobody, and least not a western country, is going to tell India and China to reverse course back into the obscurity of underdevelopment.

So any sane conclusion is that oil will eventually run out, so let’s use it as efficiently as possible to prepare for the inevitable change in climate we’re already seeing, regardless of its cause because it’s an unstoppable object.