MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Arnavion | 2025-09-21 21:18:02+00:00
Doing things based on exe filename is quite standard in Windows land. There's literally a registry key called "Image File Execution Options" where you can add a subkey with the name of the exe and then add values to control things like what interpreter to launch it under by default. Similar to Linux's binfmt registration, but based on filename rather than magic bytes. Very useful for attaching debuggers to specific subprocesses that you can't launch manually, as long as the process is named sufficiently uniquely.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/askperf/two-minute-...
by southernplaces7 | 2025-09-21 21:18:11+00:00
And nuclear could have drastically reduced that production of "poison" by the way. Arguments about how much we've contaminated with X are sort of immaterial to arguments in favor of a different thing with its own much more specific (and useful) dynamics.

It's a bit absurd, what you say, like arguing that it's good to stop using a stove in your apartment and just eat food raw, because one of your neighbors already did enough bad because they burned their entire house down while trying to make a bonfire with piles of coal in their yard.
by madars | 2025-09-21 21:18:29+00:00
arcsin(arccos(arctan(tan(cos(sin(9)))))) = 9 (in degrees mode - when regular trig functions output pure numbers, those numbers get interpreted as degrees for the next function and similar for inverses - calculator style), because each intermediate lands in the principal-value domain of the next inverse (e.g., arctan(tan(x)) = x when x \in (-90°, 90°) and the intermediates happen to be in those ranges). Specifically, sin(9°) ≈ 0.156434, cos(0.156434°) ≈ 0.999996, arctan(tan(0.999996°)) = 0.999996°, arccos(0.999996)≈0.156434°, arcsin(0.156434)≈9°.
by leptons | 2025-09-21 21:18:33+00:00
I controlled both ends. There is nothing "insane" about JSON. It's used far and wide for many purposes. The system sending the JSON was based on Nodejs, so it was pretty natural to use JSON. And I did it with JSON just because I wanted to. I'd have had to invent some other protocol to do it anyway, and I didn't feel like reinventing the wheel when it was quite simple to write a basic JSON parser in assembly language, which is what I am comfortable with on the embedded system (been coding assembly for 40 years).
Show HN: Tips to stay safe from NPM supply chain attacks
by bodash | 2025-09-21 21:19:47+00:00
Hi everyone, given the recent increase of attacks on the NPM supply chain, I've put together a list of tips and tricks to help developers stay secure on this specific topic: https://github.com/bodadotsh/npm-security-best-practices

I'd love for you to check it out, and contribute your own insights and best practices to make this a comprehensive resource for the community.

Cheers!
by lioeters | 2025-09-21 21:19:50+00:00
Aside from the posted library sj.h which is in public domain (compatible with the definition of "free software"), the author's other projects mostly use the MIT license.

The MIT license upholds the four essential freedoms of free software: the right to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

It is listed under "Expat License" in the list of GPL-compatible Free Software licenses.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
by monkeyelite | 2025-09-21 21:20:39+00:00
Why are you casting it only in material terms? Freedom and a good life is also what other people want. Rich people don’t fight over cars, they fight over Harvard acceptance for their kids, or play in the Olympics, etc.

Our political system is built on coalitions fighting for things for their groups: credentials for jobs, taxes for projects, space for their people and families, status in community.

When the supply of those things becomes fixed it’s a zero sum fight for what’s left. You can’t lose without another side winning.

The point is that growth alleviates the bitterness because there is a belief that in the future there will be more and I will have a chance to get what I want. When that belief goes away power is the only game in town - and that tends to manifest as violence.
by timmg | 2025-09-21 21:21:02+00:00
I (vaguely) think what the Mojo guys' goal is makes a lot of sense. And I understand why they thought Python was the way to start.

But I just think Python is not the right language to try to turn into this super-optimized parallel processing system they are trying to build.

But their target market are Python programmers, I guess. So I'm not sure what a better option would be.

It would be interesting for them to develop their own language and make it all work. But "yet another programming language" is a tough sell.
Show HN: Gocd – a lightweight Go-based CI/CD tool that runs on your dev machine
by soxprox | 2025-09-21 21:21:42+00:00
I built a small project called gocd because I wanted an easy way to deploy changes from GitHub pull requests without spinning up a full CI/CD stack.

The idea is simple: instead of setting up runners, servers, or cloud infrastructure, you can just run it on your laptop (or a small server). It integrates with GitHub issues and PRs, automates builds and deploys, and makes it easy to access the running app remotely (e.g. over something like Tailscale).

For me, this solved the problem of quickly testing and deploying code from issues/PRs in a lightweight way. Existing CI/CD systems felt like overkill for that use case.

Repo: https://github.com/simonjcarr/gocd

I’d love feedback from the community — especially on whether this minimal approach to CI/CD is something others would find useful, and what features you’d expect in a tool like this.
by basisword | 2025-09-21 21:22:27+00:00
>> Pearl Harbour and 9/11? (Both of which were smaller in relative terms than 7th October

Curious how you're determining this? Unless I'm checking the wrong thing both had higher numbers of deaths than Oct 7. Pearl Harbour I think is different from the other two as it occurred during a world war (albeit the US hadn't entered it yet) and was an attack on the military primarily. And if anything is to be learnt from the reaction to 9/11 it's that it was a total waste of life. Invade a country, destabilise the entire region leading to an explosion in terror attacks in the west, and then hand that country over to the Taliban a couple of decades later. Oh and find Bin Laden in a completely different country a decade after starting the war.

I would say Afghanistan was disproportionate. Interestingly in 20 years of war there, there were less civilian casualties than just two years in Gaza. I think that tells us something about the proportionality of the current war.

>> Should the response to such attacks even be proportionate?

Yes, according to agreed international law.

>> What is a proportionate way to respond

I don't know the answer to that. But 50k+ dead civilians is disproportionate. Preventing aid from entering to the point of famine - disproportionate. Genocide - disproportionate. I think it's also critical to remember that, as despicable as Hamas actions were, they didn't come from nothing. That doesn't justify them, but it does help explain them. If you treat people worse that dogs for generations they might bite.

>> I don't know what response Hamas expected but I suspect they did seek a very bloody one.

No idea but my guess is they thought the hostages would help minimise the damage at least short term. It would be reasonable to assume that if you had innocent hostages in tunnels their government would be hesitant to bomb you from the skies. Sadly the Israeli government has shown they do not care about the hostages. The worst part of all of this is that the civilians killed in Gaza and the abandoned hostages are cared about so little by the people supposedly fighting 'for them'.
by pcmaffey | 2025-09-21 21:23:03+00:00
Hey, I appreciate your writing and the logical development from A to B to RSC. I just don’t think that 95% of react applications care about this use case, or want to introduce the complexity necessary to support it. But history will tell, I could certainly be wrong.

As for the origin story, didn’t Next run an experimental release of RSC way before it was GA in react 19? I don’t want to take anything away from your contributions to it, and if you can tell me that react 19 was not at all shaped by Vercel I’ll accept that. But it goes against the general perception that RSC is heavily supported by Vercel, to feed into their hosting business.
by alephnerd | 2025-09-21 21:23:32+00:00
> but its not based on real law either. Its just whatever the leadership thinks it can get away with.

I agree. We've ended up adopting the worst aspects of SpAds with none of the checks that come from a PS. DOGE lead to a large portion of the SES (our equivalent of the SCS except they don't make tea, bring biscuits, and act as bagmen for ministers) clamming their mouths.
by PaulHoule | 2025-09-21 21:24:03+00:00
So your DNA is supposed to be in your chromosomes but when your cells are damaged some of the DNA forms these little circles called plasmids

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrachromosomal_DNA

this causes the cell cycle to go bonkers and thus you get cancer. Glioblastoma is a super aggressive cancer that is hard to treat so any progress on it is important.

Cancer is usually not just one mutation because there are multiple checks on the cell cycle and this study finds the ecDNA appeals in cells before they are cancerous which opens the possible of early detection and early treatment.
by F3nd0 | 2025-09-21 21:25:48+00:00
‘Free software’ and ‘open source software’ (as respectively defined by the FSF [1] and the OSI [2], which is how they’re usually used in practice) have overlapping definitions. The project in question is released into the public domain via the Unlicense, which qualifies as a free software ‘licence’. Many of the other projects use the MIT/Expat licence, which also qualifies as a free software licence.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html [2] https://opensource.org/osd
by p_ing | 2025-09-21 21:25:50+00:00
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folinic_acid

> used to decrease the toxic effects of methotrexate and pyrimethamine

> Pyrimethamine [...] is a medication used with leucovorin (leucovorin is used to decrease side effects of pyrimethamine; it does not have intrinsic anti-parasitic activity) to treat the parasitic diseases toxoplasmosis and cystoisosporiasis

OH ffs! Brain worms again?!

These people are very unserious people in serious positions of power.
by sdeframond | 2025-09-21 21:25:52+00:00
If the problem can be solved efficiently with simple, write simple code by all means. Heck, if it can be solved with a spreadsheet, please use a spreadsheet. Even your boss can read it.

But, at some point, spreadsheets crumble and become unmaintainable. And so does "basic" code.

Should people keep on using spreadsheets ? Depends.
by rglullis | 2025-09-21 21:26:24+00:00
> it's hard to see how expanding transport more is going to fix that when they don't care for what we have now.

Improvements in public transport could be made simply by having more frequent buses on a route, for example. Or longer hours of operation. Or (in the cities that have them) getting streetcars to be properly isolated from the cars. Sometimes it can be as simple as having the bus stops properly illuminated so that people feel more safe waiting for the bus at night.

Any of these improvements can make a big difference in ridership numbers, and any increase in public transit adoption is better for everyone. More people using public transport means less cars on the road and less traffic for those who still depend on a car.

To go back to the original point: I'm hoping you realize that what I'm trying to do is that we are exactly part of the pendulum that my History teacher was talking about. If you wish to live in a less car-centric society and if you wish that more people had access to fair, safe and affordable public transit, then it's up to people like you to push for this change.
by epistasis | 2025-09-21 21:26:41+00:00
The "extra chromosomal" part of ecDNA means that the gene is located on a circular plasmid, that copies on its own. In normal human genetics, we think of genes having two copies, one per chromosome. In cancer (and pre-cancer) that all goes out the window. There are large chromosomal rearrangements resulting in the number of the copies of genes going up and down.

Having a higher or lower copy number of a gene can change its dosage: how much of the protein gets expressed. For chromosomal changes, changing the copy number and gene dosage takes big mutational events. But with ecDNAs, it's extremely flexible to dose the amount of the gene. Because the plasmid gets copied some number of times inside the cell, and the copy number could be very high or very low.

And now, when a cell with an ecDNA in it divides, the copies get split into the two daughter cells with a stocastic amount in one versus the other. Which is another time that the gene dosage can be optimized for greater cell division. Those cells that divide the most are those that have the perfectly tuned about of the ecDNA for the right gene dosage.

This is a pattern in cancer that used to be in text books in the 1980s, then fell out of textbooks as its significance wasn't fully understood and it didn't seem to provide many therapeutic options. The first time I saw it again was in glioblastoma samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas that had whole-genome-sequencing and could find stuff like this easily. The people who found it had not been around in the 1980s to read those textbooks!

Now, we have more diagnostic tools that can detect these ecDNAs in, say, blood. And because they tend to be at very high copy number, it can be easier to detect these in blood than other DNA from cancer cells. Also, there's potential for these ecDNAs to hop from one cell to another, without direct descent. Which has concerning implications for controlling cancer, perhaps.

So, that's all background. What's new to me in this paper (and I haven't looked at ecDNA in a decade, so maybe not all of this is new to the field): ecDNA is showing up in pre-tumors. For the gene EGFR, these ecDNAs show up without one of the common mutations to EGFR that usually only happen in cancer (called EGFRv3). And the ability for the ecDNA to accumulate with a non-mutated (i.e. wild-type) sequence means that there's many more chances for the EGFRv3 mutation to happen.

This also provides a basic survey of what's out there in a variety of pre-tumor and tumor samples. Which helps to understand what these things are.

I'm not sure why this was posted to HN. I love it, but I can't imagine that many people get much out of this!!
by cleartext412 | 2025-09-21 21:26:41+00:00
Was able to correctly guess it's about Therac-25 from title alone. I can't help but think this specific story is being overtold, while other software-related accidents doesn't get enough attention.

Software controlling a safety-critical equipment doesn't even need a bug to cause deaths, bad user interface can do it just fine. "Behind Human Error" gives an example of device used to assist a surgery, that required complicated procedure to set up, which had a step unrelated to device functions in context and was easy to forget (rendering the device non-functioning) and would not indicate in any way it wasn't working when it was expected to. As for a more modern example, many of recent aviation accidents involve pilots failing to correctly interact with cockpit systems.

In the Therac-25 case the core issue (leaving aside procedures put in place to prevent the exact thing) was an error in the code, that could eventually be found and corrected, but software with badly designed interface can kill people while working exactly per specification, shifting the blame on the operator.
by richardatlarge | 2025-09-21 21:26:45+00:00
I updated on an iphone 13 pro and had to go back to my old iphone with an older OS. I write on my phone (substack), and it cannot be done with this OS. Together the two have become inoperable. And to think I updated because of how bad the experience was on the old OS. Buying a new "nothing phone" later today
by mschuster91 | 2025-09-21 21:27:21+00:00
> I don't really understand why because their main audience is rural people and those are the worst hit.

For rail specifically: for rural Americans, passenger rail worth the name (aka what we get in Europe) is something that they see as unachievable, something for "librul city dwellers". When all they get from rail is noise and crossings blocked for hours [1], it's hardly a surprise that rail ends up being yet another culture war issue.

> Ps can't read the article as it's paywalled

Go to archive . today, enter the URL of a paywalled site, pass a CAPTCHA, off you go. It works with a bunch of popular news sites to bypass their paywalls, and for free but ad-infested, you'll get an ad-free experience.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/business/blocked-rail-cro...
by k310 | 2025-09-21 21:27:47+00:00
Two factors in play, IMO.

1. The hubris of big companies deciding that they know what you want better than you do. I used to chide Microsoft, not that they were listening, that their motto was "We will optimize you (if you change your life to do things our way)", like the ubiquitous "Excel as a database." Only a visionary can anticipate your needs, and Steve Jobs is gone.

2. Change for the sake of change. Compare with the crazy expensive yearly cosmetic (if not comedic) changes in auto styling.

3 (of two). Well, you know that they're greasing the skids for some secret unified watch, computer, phone, AR, OS to run the world. But can't tell you because your future is a secret that we can't share with you, and most assuredly won't ask you about.

4 (of two) The only sane future is Free and Open Source, where people outside the castle have nonzero say.
by basisword | 2025-09-21 21:27:54+00:00
"Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, UN commission of inquiry says"[1]. I'm going to assume that a man who was president of the international tribunal on Rwanda's genocide has more experience in what defines genocide that you do. It's worth reading if you wish to learn and are open to changing your mind.

>> Interesting to note is how the "victims" of this genocide can end it immediately by simply returning the hostages but refuse to.

How it 'can end' doesn't determine whether or not it is genocide.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8641wv0n4go
by pkulak | 2025-09-21 21:29:00+00:00
Whenever I go to the East coast, I make a point of finding some reason to ride Amtrak, preferably Acela. There's just something magical about staying anywhere between Boston and DC, and yet only being one relaxing, couple-hour trip away from central Manhattan, downtown Philly, etc.

I wish the West Coast also had frequent service between Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, and points between. Driving and flying stresses me out and is generally an awful experience. When I arrive by train, I'm more relaxed than when I started.
by leakycap | 2025-09-21 21:29:39+00:00
"They're" right here in the comments section with you and simply a person who disagrees with you.

Calling someone names and making baseless accusations is a good sign that you're out of anything meaningful to add.

> I've been seeing interactions like that appear more and more on HN.

Is continuing to compare other commenters to LLMs an example of the type of helpful and beneficial interaction you'd like to see in comparison?
by cycomanic | 2025-09-21 21:29:40+00:00
Yes learning from China is banking on renewables. Their nuclear build out is behind schedule and the ambitions are being reduced because it makes so much more sense to build renewables.

China added 277GWh of solar (45% increase) and 80 GW of wind (+18%) in 2024 compared to 3.9 GW of nuclear (+3%).

While the percentage of nuclear power of overall electricity generation was increasing between 2012 and 2020 it is falling again. The national plan was for 200 GW of generation capacity from nuclear by 2035, that less than what was added from solar alone in 2024 and unlikely to happen (approved projects would add another 60 GW to the current 60 GW total in the next 5 years, but it is not clear if they will be build).

Sources https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/chin...

https://energyandcleanair.org/analysis-clean-energy-contribu...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
by mschuster91 | 2025-09-21 21:31:01+00:00
> Now with kids, I understand why "Americans love their cars" - it switched form a derogatory statement to one of understanding. There's a reason that "ban the cars" posters never mention a partner or children in their bios.

That's because the infrastructure doesn't exist in lots of the US, either it never existed or it got ripped out during the car boom phase.

Here in a suburb of Munich (Germany), almost everything one needs in life - all four large supermarket chains, a veterinarian, a hardware store, daycare and school for children - is walkable in less than half an hour, or 5-10 minutes with a bike.
by andrewmcwatters | 2025-09-21 21:31:16+00:00
A recommendation: we use rxi's json.lua at Planimeter, but upon benchmarking JSON implementations across all major languages, it was found to be the slowest by an order of magnitude when reading very large numbers of JSON files.

So if you can, try and at least use LuaJIT, which when using json.lua seems to bring it back down into range with other performant languages, or jump down into LuaJIT and use Sj.h there, through the C FFI or just simdjson.

json.lua is great for when you're restricted in some ways to use a pure Lua implementation, though. It's the de facto solution.
by F3nd0 | 2025-09-21 21:31:22+00:00
I think you are mistaken; neither is a subset of the other. At the very least, there are licences which are recognised as open source by the OSI, but not as free by the FSF, and vice versa [1]. I think it’s more appropriate to say they are two fundamentally separate definitions with a massive overlap.

[1] https://spdx.org/licenses/
by Archelaos | 2025-09-21 21:31:47+00:00
Radiation poisoning. Fossil fuels fall into the same category. The alternative is not nuclear vs. fossil. We should focus entirely on renewable energies. Of course Germany is now in a transition period, and there are a lot of conservative politicians who have been shying away from the high investments required for a fast transition. I think the main problem here is that the fossil-nuclear advocates shift the main problems to future generations (climate change, long-term storage of nuclear waste), the general public (large subsidies, minimal security standards, no or unsufficient insurance of power plants against desasters) or other countries (placing nuclear plants or waste deposits at the border, relaying on other countries for long term storing of nuclear waste). Together with extremely optimistic estimates, this makes their energy costs appear low on paper, when in reality the overall costs are immense. In contrast, there do not appear to be many cost elements of renewable energy installations that can be concealed or embellished. The reserve funds for their demolition are perhaps the only exception. But these only account for a small part of the costs at any rate.
by madars | 2025-09-21 21:32:22+00:00
There is no choice here - each inverse is uniquely determined. That's similar to how 3 and -3 are both square roots of 9 (i.e., solutions to x^2=9), but sqrt(9)=3 as it denotes the principal square root, which by convention is always the non-negative value. Of course, in a different context we might design functions to have multi-valued properties, like atan2(x,y) != atan(y/x) in general (atan2 takes quadrant in account and returns full range [-pi, pi], atan only returns principal values in [-pi/2, pi/2]) as practical applications benefit from preserving quadrant beyond just the principal inverse (or not failing when x=0!)