MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by branko_d | 2025-09-10 15:41:54+00:00
I think you have a specific class of race conditions in mind where tight control of the hardware is desirable or even possible.

But what to do if you have a race condition in a database stored procedure? Or in a GUI rendering code? Even web applications can experience race conditions in spite of being "single-threaded", thanks to fetches and other asynchronous operations. I never heard of somebody using ICE in these cases, nor can I imagine how it could be used - please enlighten me if I'm missing something...

> You're changing the conditions that prevent accurate measurement without modification.

Yes, but if the race condition is course-enough, like it often is in above cases, adding print/logging may not change the timings enough to hide the race.
by avian | 2025-09-10 15:42:27+00:00
Storage Box with Borg backup can be setup to work almost identically to tarsnap.

The only real security feature missing is write-only access to the repository (Borg backup in theory supports it, but in practice it's impossible to use it in a way that prevents a compromised host from deleting it's backups - like tarsnap does).

In theory it is less reliable than tarsnap (AWS S3 compared to a single copy on a Hetzner's drive).

Storage Box is significantly cheaper for any kind of real-life backup sizes in my experience.

Borg requires more work to setup and configure compared to tarsnap. There's typically some scripting involved that's unique to your setup and I found that I had more documentation to study before I understood how to use Borg correctly.

A know a few people that have very low opinion of Borg's code quality and stay away from it because of it (I haven't studied it first hand)
by bix6 | 2025-09-10 15:43:07+00:00
I hate public transit because it takes 2x+ the time to get anywhere since it’s such an afterthought. The routes are horrible and the vehicles too infrequent.

When I lived in Berlin I could get anywhere in the city within 15-30 mins, it was insane.

I ride my bike or e-bike everywhere I can. Cars are the worst.
by Saline9515 | 2025-09-10 15:43:08+00:00
I love quality public transportation. The problem is that most of the time people make cities less car-friendly, but don't improve public transport, as it's expensive and their electorate wants bike lanes, making the situation worse for everyone. In my city, they removed the parking space near the farmer's market, but didn't add any bus line or renovate the tram, which doesn't allow disabled people or just strollers to hop in. How are we supposed to come there?
by GolfPopper | 2025-09-10 15:43:23+00:00
>our entire system of government is basically forfeit.

<looks at America's current government>

Yep, that seems accurate. Like it or not, the current US government is full of crackpot theories.

The "evidence" of "aliens" inevitably turns out to be blurry footage where people with bias tell you what you're supposed to think it is.

As for the U.S. Congress, you're talking about a body that has been avoiding it's own responsibilities for decades, particularly so right now. Invoking "Congressional hearings" here is an appeal to an unqualified authority. (Congressional representatives presumably has some experience with laws. I do not believe they are qualified for video forensics.)
by etskinner | 2025-09-10 15:43:27+00:00
I'd argue that tourists are the main untapped market in terms of transportation on the strip. Workers and residents might already be familiar with the public transport that exists, but most visitors would probably rather get a private car at the exact time they need it (going to the exact place they want to go) rather than figure out the bus schedule. That's proven by the fact that lots of people grab Ubers/similar to get around there.

Of all the places to try a gimmick, Vegas is the right place.
by vjvjvjvjghv | 2025-09-10 15:43:31+00:00
It’s the same with math. A lot of people say they don’t need to be able to do basic arithmetic because they can use a calculator. But I think that you can process the world much better and faster if at a minimum you have some intuition about numbers and arithmetic.

It’s the same with a lot of other things. AI and search engines help a lot but you are at an advantage if at least you have some ability to gauge what should be possible and how to do it.
by martythemaniak | 2025-09-10 15:43:43+00:00
What's interesting is that about 80% Tesla's entire valuation is FSD and Optimus, and the underlying assumption with FSD is that it'll magically turn on for all Tesla's in a day and they'll have a monopoly and extract all the profit needed for that valuation. Apart from any comparisons with Waymo, I suspect self-driving will broadly follow other AI tech, where we'll see a proliferation of competitive self-driving tech on the heels of first movers. Local protectionism will also probably play a big role in this.
by hiAndrewQuinn | 2025-09-10 15:44:09+00:00
I love thumb drives, but Tarsnap is cheaper than the expected 10 year lifetime of a fresh and well maintained thumb drive for the kind of data I hold in there by about a factor of 20 (50 cents vs $10).

It also doesn't require a UL Class 125 fireproofed safe to survive a house fire, but that's splitting hairs and getting into hobbyist territory.
by ckemere | 2025-09-10 15:45:02+00:00
Addressing the second paragraph here - while conflation and reconsolidation are real phenomena, it's also quite clear that most humans form episodic memories. Some quite clearly have incredible abilities in this regard [2].

A distinction between semantic (facts/concepts) and episodic (specific experiences) declarative memories are fairly well established since at least the 1970s. That the latter is required to construct the former is also long posited, with reasonable evidence [1]. Similarly, there's a slightly more recent distinction between "recollecting" (i.e., similar to the author's "I can remember the event of learning this") and "knowing" (i.e., "I know this but don't remember why"), with differences in hypothesized recall mechanisms [3].

[1] https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.277.5324.33... or many other reviews by Eichenbaum, Squire, Milner, etc

[2] https://youtu.be/hpTCZ-hO6iI?si=FeFv8MGmHTzkLd8p

[3] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1995-42814-001
by darkwater | 2025-09-10 15:45:14+00:00
> GP?

Grand parent, the person you were responding to

> Sure but I mean in terms of the abstract. The idea that those most successful may have to pay more in taxation, the idea that justice should be blind and that everyone deserves a trial. I guess the tipping point is when your belief in the part of society that are wrong are so extreme that you think its ok to undermine society (e.g. steal public money, push infront of queues, etc) in order to combat that "wrong".

There are much more nuances and rules in (today's?) society. Just a quick examples of things that can be considered good but are actually controversial if you stir it a bit: there are concepts considered "rights" almost everywhere, yet you have to pay money to actually enjoy them, and if you don't have money, you lose the "right" (i.e. home). You can be in favor of the right but not of the implementation.
by lionkor | 2025-09-10 15:45:49+00:00
Im counting all the lives lost by natural disasters, by the resulting depressions, financial issues, etc.

Its not as simple as "N people died from literally being inside the storm, therefore the number of potentially saved lives is N". There is always a domino effect from a massive disaster, even if "just" a couple of people die directly at the hand of the disaster.
by dogleash | 2025-09-10 15:46:01+00:00
> collaboration, watercooler chat

I've been wondering what this really means. So I've been actively observing our open office recently. As far as I can sus out, it's the phenomenon where enough people are subject to conversations they weren't invited to, that someone will always step in and steer obviously wrong/uninformed conversations.

As an operating theory, it also explains why management wants us to make more use of the large slack channels. I've previously made the joke that slack is just the din of an open office for remote workers, and, well, I guess that is the literal deliberate intent.
by zahlman | 2025-09-10 15:46:26+00:00
> I’m just saying that, once they exist, white people getting upset about it and refusing to switch away from yellow is a weird hill to die on.

It isn't, because they know they won't be treated fairly if they do. This is why you can immerse yourself in a context where the large majority of people are white, but see brown and black skin tone emoji vastly more often than you see white skin tone emoji. And describing this reluctance to use the white emoji as "getting upset" is a part of the same memeplex that discourages them from taking part in the first place. Someone can argue that you, as a white person, are wrong no matter what you do (see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-emoji-skin-tone-you-choo... — and please note how condescending and unhelpful the conclusion is, and the frankly antagonistic worldview it presents), but at least by sticking with the default you can say that you didn't put conscious effort into being wrong.

But even beyond that, the so-called "colour-blindness" is supposed to be a core liberal value, and I'm not giving it up. If I am called racist for doing what I used to be counseled to do so as not to be racist, then I am being abused.
by steveBK123 | 2025-09-10 15:46:29+00:00
I mean we still have headlines coming like this

https://fortune.com/2025/09/05/paramount-skydance-ceo-david-...

A 10 day notice requiring agreement to full 5 day RTO or take a voluntary package. This from a CEO talking bout 'efficiency' and cost cutting, where I know people who have been 100% remote for 5 years.

What are the odds those voluntary packages are worse than whatever contract & law specific in the case of layoffs. And I am sure the (very X/Musk/extreme hardcore coded) agreement employees sign agreeing to RTO means if they are fired later for office attendance its for-cause.
by maxdevai | 2025-09-10 15:46:34+00:00
After yet another failed interview where I knew the answers but couldn't articulate them under pressure, I decided to build something to help.

The journey was harder than expected:

Month 1-2: Basic Chrome extension + audio capture. Harder than anticipated—browser security restrictions around audio are intense.

Month 3-4: Real-time transcription pipeline. Tried several approaches before settling on Whisper. Latency was the killer.

Month 5: AI response generation. Prompt engineering for interview context took forever. Generic responses suck.

Month 6: Polish, privacy features, multi-platform support.

The result: VoiceMeetAI, which listens to interview questions and provides real-time coaching suggestions.

First real test: Used it in 4 interviews, got 3 offers. The confidence boost alone was worth the development time.

For other developers with interview anxiety—you're not alone. Sometimes we need to build our own solutions.

Try it: https://voicemeetai.com
by BrawnyBadger53 | 2025-09-10 15:46:51+00:00
Personally I strongly detest ip law, but I see it as problematic for its implementation rather than its intent. So much so that I would rather it be abolished than hold its current form. I feel this from the perspective of a creator and a consumer because I so often see works that are unfairly removed or have their profits stolen as a result of the guilty until proven innocent style enforcement. This makes me fearful of publishing works that build upon previous work (which many creative fields naturally do). The most blatant abuse I've seen recently was the Gamer's Nexus documentary being taken down by Bloomberg. However, IP is arguably more problematic in industries like medicine where patents are renewed ad infinitum by evergreening to milk a protected monopoly.
by lucb1e | 2025-09-10 15:47:18+00:00
> Just 1 in 3 (32.7%) [of] children and young people [...] a 36% decrease

So was it half of the kids before or two thirds?

51.1% - 36% = 32.7% 68.7% - 36%. = 32.7%

I know it doesn't really matter but this sort of wording does make me curious

Since they do use "percentage points" further down, presumably it was 51% in 2005
by toss1 | 2025-09-10 15:47:20+00:00
Yup, I always take editing suggestions and implement them manually, then re-feed the edited version back in for new suggestions if needed. Never let it edit your stuff directly —— the risk of stealth random errors sneaking in is too great.

Just because every competent human we know would edit ONLY the specified parts, or move only the specified columns with a cut/paste operation (or similar deterministically reliable operation), does not mean an LLM will do the same, in fact, it seems to prefer to regenerate everything on the fly. NO, just NO.
Ask HN: Tips to make outlook sync on Apple
by bix6 | 2025-09-10 15:47:43+00:00
Hello I am hoping someone has tricks to help Outlook calendar sync on Apple calendar / devices. My calendar constantly falls out of sync. Only solution I’ve found is totally deleting the account and restarting and re-adding it but even that can take a few tries and significant time. Right now my Apple calendar on computer and phone won’t stay synced and this happens constantly it’s so frustrating. I use Outlook as a fall back but I have other calendars in Apple Cal so I really need a unified system. Any advice? Tia
by johnisgood | 2025-09-10 15:47:46+00:00
This is the reason for why I refrain from commenting on medications, especially opioids. Why would anyone be against, say, someone taking Kratom? Let people with chronic pain and/or anxiety and/or depression take it. Why would I be against them improving their quality of life as long as they are not posing any harm to society or even themselves? Some people really just want others to suffer, it seems.

And yeah, I do not think there is much harm in drinking alcohol socially either. Get a buzz, take a cab / Uber home, etc. If someone starts a fight because they are piss-poor drunk, or drives under the influence, that does pose harm to society, which changes a lot, IMO. But if you go home and grab a beer, why would I be against that? Not my business. I especially hate it when people think it is their business and they want to control other people's lives.

Like damn, come, swap with me (not you), have a chronic pain with severe anxiety and depression and we will see if you could just think it away like I am sometimes being told to do, or you know, just let me take what works for me without harming anyone, including even myself.
by nightpool | 2025-09-10 15:48:19+00:00
Agree with this—the A/V media system has some of the most active patent trolls around. https://aomedia.org/license/patent-license/

The relevant patent license is the following:

> 1.3. Defensive Termination. If any Licensee, its Affiliates, or its agents initiates patent litigation or files, maintains, or voluntarily participates in a lawsuit against another entity or any person asserting that any Implementation infringes Necessary Claims, any patent licenses granted under this License directly to the Licensee are immediately terminated as of the date of the initiation of action unless 1) that suit was in response to a corresponding suit regarding an Implementation first brought against an initiating entity, or 2) that suit was brought to enforce the terms of this License (including intervention in a third-party action by a Licensee).
by EE84M3i | 2025-09-10 15:48:39+00:00
One thing that contributes to cars being non-intrusive in Tokyo is just that there are many less of them than in American cities as there are many systems that de-incentivize having a car in the city.

To buy a car you need a certificate from the police attesting that you have a free parking spot of a certain size. The expressway tolls in Japan are often more expensive than gas for any long distance travel (and even the gas is expensive because there is basically no domestic oil production). The process of getting a license is much more intensive than in America. Japan has significantly more strict drunk driving laws than America (>0.03% for up to 3 years in prison, >0.05% is up to 5). Many workplaces don't allow you to drive to work (even if you could find parking) because by law their workman's comp insurance has to cover commuting and getting a policy that covers driving costs extra. There is absolutely no on-street residential parking.

All of these are deliberate policy choices that contribute to making the majority of road traffic in Tokyo be commercial and for most residents to default to some other form of transit.
by antiframe | 2025-09-10 15:48:53+00:00
> That’s just a bad syntax choice on Gruber’s part.

I believe Gruber was inspired by how people wrote emphasis in plain text emails and other text documents. Most MUA at the time would treat trailing whitespace as a hard rather than soft line break. This is from my--now aging--memory, and I can't find a source to corroborate. I do recall, though, there were clients that didn't do it well (ahem, Outlook), and would break plain text formatting of deeply-nested quoted text. (Don't even get me started on how Outlook single-handedly changed culture from bottom posting to top posting).
by bitpush | 2025-09-10 15:48:56+00:00
Excellent write up that touches on a lot of things, and the thinking is sound.

The money quote is at the bottom, and is worth sharing here.

> While the narrative of Google’s decline makes for compelling headlines, it overlooks a deeper truth: Google isn’t standing still. In fact, it’s already evolving — and it may be better positioned than any competitor to define the next era of search.
by alphazard | 2025-09-10 15:48:59+00:00
> Rowlands et al. wrote about the so called “digital natives” that they lack the critical and analytical thinking skills to evaluate the information they find on the internet.

This doesn't match the cultural shift in the last 20 years. A generation of people grew up with chat rooms and immediately discovered the ability to misrepresent oneself on the internet. "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog", as they say. That whole demographic assumes that media is lying by default. Compare that to previous generations that trusted certain media institutions like cable news, newspapers, radio shows, etc. because the production value and scarcity of media instilled trust.

Trust in media institutions is at an all time low, and will likely never recover. That has to be attributed to the newer generations. They are more skeptical of propaganda than ever before. To them, the high production value media outlets are just a quaint legacy variety of content slop.
by jacobolus | 2025-09-10 15:49:01+00:00
SAT prep per se is an unbelievably shitty thing for people to waste their time on. It's largely mindless and uninteresting, stifles rather than encourages curiosity, emphasizes judging people by substantially arbitrary numerical scores, gives the false impression that some people are inherently better than others, and, in the medium to long term, is a grossly inefficient way to improve performance on the SAT.

If you want your own kids to get a high SAT language score when they are high school students, the top things you can do to help them are: (1) read aloud to them when they are very young, as much as you have time for, ideally choosing excellent books of wide variety, (2) keep reading aloud to them when they are older, (3) encourage them to read for pleasure, (4) converse about the world with them, without condescending.

If you want your own kids to get a high math score, (1) surround them with technical materials (construction toys, logic puzzles, board games, circuit parts, programmable robots, or whatever) and play with them together – or if on a tight budget, improvise materials from whatever you have at hand, and (2) spend time working non-trivial word problems one-on-one. Start from https://archive.org/details/creativeproblems0000lenc

If you have the personal time to do these steps, you won't have to give a shit about what their SAT score is, because it will be good enough for whatever they need it for. (Sadly as a society we don't have the resources or motivation to get every child enough listening-to-books-read-aloud time or enough playing-with-technical-materials-with-adult-help time, so we try to replace it with cheaper and more scalable vacuous alternatives like multiplication drills, spelling quizzes, and SAT prep.)
by foltik | 2025-09-10 15:49:04+00:00
Me too, and I’m planning the same upgrade. Always wanted to downsize but 60Hz was a deal breaker for me. Been using 120-144Hz+ displays exclusively since the VG248QE in 2013.

I was quite surprised to see this entire thread full of HN users who apparently want some brick phone to doom scroll lying flat on a table all day until the battery dies.
by homebrewer | 2025-09-10 15:49:07+00:00
In some regions of the world a phone that is not considered "certified" by Google is only useful as a paperweight. For example, I wouldn't be able to interact with government services or use any banking with such a phone. (Notice the any and with — no, I can't switch to another bank except by emigrating somewhere, and banks are only available as mobile applications. No web.)

So unless you're willing (and can afford!) to buy and carry multiple phones, the new severely downgraded Android is about as open as iPhone, but with zero expectation of it respecting your privacy.
by nightpool | 2025-09-10 15:49:10+00:00
(er, surely it's the other way around? the 3-clause one is OSI approved and the 4-clause one is not)

Anyway, I'm not sure this is true. Having a separate software license + secondary patent grant license is very very common in open source projects where patent trolls are common. See e.g. https://aomedia.org/about/legal/

I would just put them in separate files and then you're good to go.
by hiAndrewQuinn | 2025-09-10 15:49:15+00:00
That's actually one of my favorite features. That should never happen under the limited circumstances I use it for. If something goes so wrong that my account actually runs out of money before I notice, then I far prefer the default to be "intruder alert, intruder alert, wipe everything". There's a reason it's marketed as backups for the truly paranoid.
by sleepyguy | 2025-09-10 15:49:19+00:00
The the big ironies of North Texas school districts — taxpayers foot the bill for those multimillion-dollar stadiums, turf fields, courts, and gyms, but the second class is out, the gates get locked like it’s Fort Knox. Meanwhile, kids are dodging cars in the street because they can’t set foot on the pristine facilities their parents literally paid for.

It’s not even just a summer thing — a lot of districts have blanket “no public use” policies year-round. They’ll cite liability, vandalism, or “preservation of facilities” as the reason, but the result is the same: empty fields, fenced-off courts, and taxpayers staring at what they bought but can’t touch.