MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by brokencode | 2025-09-23 22:50:44+00:00
Who gets to decide who’s naughty? One day it’s the Biden admin, and the next it’s the Trump admin. That’s the tough part about censorship.

You can leave it up to companies, but what happens when Trump allies like Elon Musk and Larry Ellison buy up major platforms like Twitter and TikTok?

Do we really trust those guys with that much power?
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-09-23 22:50:56+00:00
> What are your suggestions on accomplishing this while also bent compatible with the idea that government and big tech should not control ideas and speech?

Time delay. No content based restrictions. Just, like, a 2- to 24-hour delay between when a post or comment is submitted and when it becomes visible, with the user free to delete or change (in this case, the timer resets) their content.

I’d also argue for demonetising political content, but idk if that would fly.
by Lammy | 2025-09-23 22:51:02+00:00
> The SF Van Ness BRT is an excellent example - I used to routinely get off the 49 bus and walk faster than it stuck in car traffic

It's funny that you use that particular example considering the SF Supervisors of 1958 are the ones who created that problem by refusing to build the elevated freeway that transit planning engineers correctly envisioned we would need. Tearing down the stub end of it also created the most dangerous intersection in the city at Market & Octavia. As a pedestrian it would be so nice to have cars elevated up off the ground instead of having to wait to cross on foot. A lot of intersections of Octavia and its cross streets don't even allow pedestrian crossing at all lmfao
by matheusmoreira | 2025-09-23 22:51:05+00:00
I love thinking about life as computation. Cells are computers, enzymes are functions, ribosomes are compilers, nucleic acids are source code...

Enzymes in particular are a lot like unix pipelines. An enzyme catalyzes its substrate's conversion into its product which is the substrate of another enzyme. When cells ingest glucose, it flows through the glycolysis metabolic pathway until it becomes pyruvate, and may be reduced even further depending on available resources. It's a huge pipeline of enzymes. They just kinda float around within the cell and randomly perform their tasks when their substrates chemically interact with them. No explicit program exists, it emerges from the system within the cell.

Cell - Computer Enzyme - Function / Process / Filter Substrate - Data Product - Data Metabolic pathway - Program / Script

I've been playing in my mind with an idea for an esoteric programming language modeled around enzymes. The program defines a set of enzymes which are functions that match on the structure of data, automatically apply themselves to them and produce a modified version of the input which may in turn match against other enzymes. The resulting program metabolizes input by looping over the set of enzymes and continuously matching and applying them until the data is reduced to its final form. If no enzymes match, the output is the unmodified input.
by heavyset_go | 2025-09-23 22:51:29+00:00
> Also, evolution itself is constantly optimizing organisms to best adapt to their environment, just like a computation.

There is no optimization, if organisms can reproduce, they'll continue to exist. That does not mean they are the "best adapted" or on a trajectory toward better adaptation.

It's entirely possible for a germ line to become less fit over time, even to the point of extinction, and that's still evolution. Time has shown that is the case for most germ lines.
by carlosjobim | 2025-09-23 22:51:53+00:00
How are then countries which are poorer than the USA ranking higher in education?

I completely reject the notion that wealth is at all a factor in the intelligence or educational success of a child. Wealth is just a correlation. Neither does national educational systems or policies have more than a tiny effect on education success.

What matters for educational success is the genetical and cultural material of the children. If they are born smart, or are brought up in families who value intelligence or brought up in cultures which value intelligence. Even poverty and schooling become small factors if the child has any of these foundations.
by unclad5968 | 2025-09-23 22:52:45+00:00
> The Nazis in 1933 hadn't done anything within an order of magnitude of the evil they would perpetrate in 1943. They nevertheless were still Nazis, and everyone who did not actively condemn them then was in part responsible for what they did later.

Only because what they did in 1943 surpassed anything imaginable. In 1933 the Nazi party immediately banned all political parties, arrested thousands of political opponents, started forcing sterilization of anyone with hereditary illnesses, and forced abortions of anyone with hereditary illness. Evil is absolutely an identifying part of Nazis. The idea that Nazis are just anti-liberals is exactly why we cannot go around calling everyone we don't like Nazis. The Nazis were not some niche alt-right organization.

If you genuinely think there are Nazis controlling youtube or the government, and all you're doing is complaining about it on hackernews, you're just as complicit as you're claiming those people were.
by dcrazy | 2025-09-23 22:52:50+00:00
They were not open source. They were essentially NeXT’s only successful product. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebObjects

WebObjects was rewritten from ObjC to Java in the 2000s. EOF, the ORM layer it shared with NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, was rewritten as Core Data and released in Mac OS X Tiger.
Ask HN: Do you find AI code review tools useful?
by asdev | 2025-09-23 22:53:05+00:00
I'm struggling to understand how these tools are actually useful. The AI doesn't have the product knowledge to catch logic bugs, and basic tests should eliminate syntactic bugs/endless loops etc. Perhaps codebase indexing could help, although it still wouldn't be able to understand the "why" behind the code. Curious if others feel the same
by ok_dad | 2025-09-23 22:53:27+00:00
In what sense? I agree the tech industry fucking sucks right now, but I don't see how this has anything to do with that.

A physical computer is still a computer, no matter what it's computing. The only use a computer has to us is to compute things relative to physical reality, so a physical computer seems even closer to a "real computer" or "real computation" to me than our sad little hot rocks, which can barely simulate anything real to any degree of accuracy, when compared to reality.
by LeafItAlone | 2025-09-23 22:53:43+00:00
>The best disinfectant is sunlight.

Is it? How does that work at scale?

Speech generally hasn’t been restricted broadly. The same concepts and ideas removed from YouTube still were available on many places (including here).

Yet we still have so many people believing falsehoods and outright lies. Even on this very topic of COVID, both sides present their “evidence” and and truly believe they are right, no matter what the other person says.
by mandevil | 2025-09-23 22:54:15+00:00
WebObjects was demo'd in 1995, and Version 1.0 was released in March 1996, by NeXT (Steve Jobs and crew). In 1997 when Apple bought NeXT and made Jobs its CEO again, it became part of Apple who open sourced it in 2006 and maintained it until 2009 (it powered iTunes, among other things).
by lkey | 2025-09-23 22:55:48+00:00
I think you are granting false neutrality to this speech. These misinfo folks are always selling a cure to go with their rejection of medicine. It's a billion dollar industry built off of spreading fear and ignorance, and youtube doesn't have any obligation to host their content. As an example, for 'curing' autism, the new grift is reject Tylenol and buy my folic acid supplement to 'fix' your child. Their stores are already open and ready.
by leakycap | 2025-09-23 22:56:08+00:00
AI code review is like asking an intern with lots of time or a serious dev with very little time to review your code and give you their first feedback: sometimes incredibly useful, sometimes not

> The AI doesn't have the product knowledge to catch logic bugs

If catching logic bugs in your solution requires context such as product knowledge, provide this information to the AI (a person working on this would also need it, so writing the info down isn't a waste of time)

> and basic tests should eliminate syntactic bugs/endless loops etc

AI is worlds better at these kinds of tasks than almost every human programmer I've met - use the tools and become proficient with them and over a short period of time going back to old basic testing methods will feel archaic

> it still wouldn't be able to understand the "why" behind the code.

Add some comments if the why needs explanation. But the silicon and electrical impulses running your code don't get the "why" either, and it works fine.
by diego_sandoval | 2025-09-23 22:56:43+00:00
At the time, YouTube said: “Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy.” [1] which, in my opinion, is a pretty extreme stance to take, especially considering that the WHO contradicted itself many times during the pandemic.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52388586
by majkinetor | 2025-09-23 22:57:16+00:00
Everybody, who thinks this is OK, should think again - what if Anna genuinely didn't like parties, you at parties, music at parties or whatever else. Re-invating in that case is disrespectful, intrusive and even rude as all interactions need to be feedback controlled. Sure, any generalization will lack the subtle cues of context but its safe to say that this was an exceptional situation rather than representative.

People who seem to like this story for the feeling of warmth seem to me to be the similar ones as those who "save food" for the children of Africa - disconnection from the reality is huge.
by FartinMowler | 2025-09-23 22:57:23+00:00
I've been doing IT for decades. Many times I've come across something that seems stupid yet also has a non-trivial number of supporters. When this happens (and it will many times), don't just continue to think it's stupid. Question if you are stuck on some paradigm or mindset that makes the thing seem stupid to you. That might call for a good head shake, a walk in the park, or a weekend-long bender to open your mind to new ideas. You don't have to jump on their bandwagon, but at least you'll increase your understanding and strengthen your position.
by altruios | 2025-09-23 22:57:39+00:00
Censorship is a tool to combat misinformation.

It's taking a sword to the surgery room where no scalpel has been invented yet.

We need better tools to combat dis/mis-information.

I wish I knew what that tool was.

Maybe 'inoculating information' that's specifically stickier than the dis/mis-info?
by dang | 2025-09-23 22:58:04+00:00
If you (or anyone) run across a flagged comment that isn't tediously repeating ideological battle tropes, pushing discussion flameward, or otherwise breaking the site guidelines, you're welcome to bring it to our attention. So far, the flagged comments I've seen in this thread seem correctly flagged. But we don't see everything.

On this site, we're trying for discussion in which people don't just bash each other with pre-existing talking points (and unprocessed rage). Such comments quickly flood the thread on a divisive topic like this one, so flagging them is essential to having HN operate as intended. To the extent possible at least.

(oh and btw, though it ought to go without saying, this has to do with the type of comment, not the view it's expressing. People should be able to make their substantive points thoughtfully, without getting flagged.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
by bediger4000 | 2025-09-23 22:59:08+00:00
Thanks, I guess. That article is a weird ride, making me ask where is the avalanche of Trump's Age Problem articles? We all justifiably questioned Biden's fitness after his terrible debate performance, and the press is still rightly reminding us of how ill Biden was, even though he withdrew from the race, and has left public life. With all due respect, this article makes Trump sound like he's in worse shape.
by dylan604 | 2025-09-23 22:59:10+00:00
And devs that have this line of thinking is precisely why there's a back log when it can only be done by one person. Instead, create style guides or other structured documentation that can be referenced in the rejection so you don't have to do it would be time much better spent. It helps contributors to be better contributors. It makes contributors want to continue contributing. Having every submit rejected gets to the point of not wanting to contribute.
by TeeMassive | 2025-09-23 22:59:13+00:00
> It's their private property, they can ban or promote any ideas that they want to. You're free to not use their property if you disagree with that.

1) They are public corporations and are legal creation of the state and benefit from certain protections of the state. They also have privileged access to some public infrastructures that other private companies do not have.

2) By acting on the behest of the government they were agent of the government for free speech and censorship purposes

3) Being monopolies in their respective markets, this means they must respect certain obligations the same way public utilities have.
by LeafItAlone | 2025-09-23 22:59:34+00:00
>SEA and others are still better educated than us.

Honest question: is this true? What’s the data around this? If it is true, why are there so many people from SEA in American universities? Wouldn’t they stay in their home country or another in the area?

I’m truly trying to learn here and square this statement with what I’ve come to understand so far.
by lkey | 2025-09-23 22:59:42+00:00
To finish the thought, scientists at the CDC (in the before times) were not making money off of their recommendations, nor were they making youtube videos as a part of their day job. There's a deep asymmetry here that's difficult to balance if you assume the premise that 'youtube must accept every kind of video no matter what, people will sort themselves out'. Reader, they will not.
by dhorthy | 2025-09-23 22:59:49+00:00
yeah its kinda funny how some bigger more sophisticated eng orgs that would be called "slow and ineffective" by smaller teams are actually pretty dang well set-up to leverage AI.

All because they have been forced to master technical communication at scale.

but the reason I wrote this (and maybe a side effect of the SF bubble) is MOST of the people I have talked to, from 3-person startups to 1000+ employee public companies, are in a state where this feels novel and valuable, not a foregone conclusion or something happening automatically
by __d | 2025-09-23 22:59:58+00:00
Agreed: a semi-colon is a bit stop-start, while a en-dash just flows.

I’ve used them, with spaces, for decades. Minus-minus in plain text, and autocorrect reads that nicely.

I sometimes use an em-dash, but mostly in LaTeX: they’re too awkward in plain text.

I use ellipses too …
by kimos | 2025-09-23 23:00:01+00:00
It’s easy to point at politics or people and some sinister motive. Maybe that’s what it is. But don’t underestimate what can be accomplished through incompetence.

Shopify is a multi-billion dollar company that has processed over a trillion dollars. They are a high value target for sophisticated attackers. It’s entirely possible they are trying to accomplish some security and supply chain goals to protect their Ruby pipeline, but completely messed up the execution and did not predict the community interpretation and backlash.
by dotnet00 | 2025-09-23 23:00:35+00:00
Anti-vax was enough of an issue that vaccine mandates were necessary for Covid.

It also isn't convincing to be claiming that racism isn't as big in the West given all the discourse around H1Bs, Indians (the Trump base has been pretty open on this one, with comments on JD Vance's wife, the flood of anti-Indian racism on social media, and recently the joy taken in attempting to interfere with Indians forced to fly back to the US in a hurry due to the lack of clarity on the H1B thing), how ICE is identifying illegals, a senator openly questioning the citizenship of a brown mayoral candidate and so on.

I agree that denying something is the easiest way to convince people of the opposite, but it's also understandable when social media companies decide to censor advice from well known individuals that people should do potentially harmful things like consume horse dewormer to deal with Covid. Basically, it's complicated, though I would prefer to lean towards not censoring such opinions.
by maroon_unperson | 2025-09-23 23:01:06+00:00
It sounds like a mix of good intentions, misunderstandings, and poor communication.

Shopify wanted to put in place better goverance and access control, to reduce the risk of a supply chain attack and put a deadline on that.

Part time maintenaners left it to the last minute, didn't consult or communicate well and then over exerted their influence by taking over things without consensus to do so.

Existing maintainers then rightfully alarmed, when it all could probably have been handled better.

Doesn't help that the rift over a competing tool being created probably played a part in some of the heavy handedness. DHH's drift to white supremacy probably hasn't helped either, but likely neither are the cause here.
by leakycap | 2025-09-23 23:01:16+00:00
This loss of knowledge of how to even do basic things is accelerated in tech

Just try to find someone today who knows how to deal with the layers of tech to get something off an optical SCSI WORM drive formatted as Macintosh HFS with invisible resource forks and Type/Creator codes

Nothing about this type of setup was esoteric or unsupported in the 90s, but today finding a technician to support it is like looking someone who can read ancient hieroglyphs.

The ATF was urgently looking for someone to read data off CP/M formatted diskettes some while back. Imagine a huge agency like that desperate for help opening a safe from 30 years ago as a comparison to how hard it is to work with technology after short periods of time.
by type0 | 2025-09-23 23:01:42+00:00
Alice and Bob are planning a party, they might invite Anna but don't want Mallory to show up and ruin everything so they turn to Facebook and create a closed group for party planning. Anna, being privacy conscious, doesn't use fb and expects to receive an invite on Signal. But Alice and Bob decide not to invite Anna because they're Danish politicians and Anna is against Chat Control.
Show HN: A Live Map for Running Seattle's Light Rail
by nickswalker | 2025-09-23 23:01:43+00:00
I host the Light Rail Relay in Seattle, an event where people run the length of the 1 Line. Over the years I've built a web map that includes an annotated on-foot route as well as live transit info. OSM Data, self-hosted PMTiles in MapLibre + One Bus Away API used from the client side to draw trains and arrivals.

The registration and results system (Pantograph, see links on page) are also homegrown. If you or your coworkers are looking for something fun to do together this weekend, come run (or walk) and try things out!
by nathan_douglas | 2025-09-23 23:01:48+00:00
I suppose I fail to see why evolution through natural selection is not optimizing. That was Darwin's big idea, right? That given heredity, selection, and variation you end up with life forms we'd consider optimized for their environments?

Or do you mean that optimization by definition must include intent, and evolution as a mindless process has no intentionality?

I'm just not sure what you're driving at.
by acidx | 2025-09-23 23:01:58+00:00
Programs running under any Valgrind tool will be executed using a CPU emulator, making it quite a bit slower than, say, running the instrumented binaries as required by sanitizers; it's often an order of magnitude slower, but could be very well be close to two orders of magnitude slower in some cases. This also means that it just can't be attached to any running program, because, well, it's emulating a whole CPU to track everything it can.

(Valgrind using a CPU emulator allows for a lot of interesting things, such as also emulating cache behavior and whatnot; it may be slow and have other drawbacks -- it has to be updated every time the instruction set adds a new instruction for instance -- but it's able to do things that aren't usually possible otherwise precisely because it has a CPU emulator!)
by xg15 | 2025-09-23 23:02:41+00:00
> There exist various extensions of json that extend it just enough to make it a usable config format without introducing too much complexity. Json with comments is probably the most widespread, as it is used as the config format for Visual Studio Code. The main downside of these is that they haven’t really caught on (yet!), so they aren’t as widely supported as json or yaml.

What blew my mind was learning that the entire JSON grammar is included as a subset in the YAML grammar. So every valid JSON document is automatically a valid YAML document.

But you don't have to stop there. You could also mix and match the JSON grammar elements with the additional "proper YAML" ones - including comments.

So this means any* software that accepts a YAML config would also accept the config as JSON or JSON-with-comments instead. No ecosystem bootstrapping necessary!

(*or almost any, as long as they don't use dicts with non-string keys)
by oblio | 2025-09-23 23:03:03+00:00
You made me look into HashiCorp again. It's a great company from a developers perspective, in terms of the many useful tools created: Vagrant, Packer, Nomad, Consul, etc

However their financials are... LOL

Revenue US$583 million (2024)

Operating income US$−254 million (2024)

50% loss margin :-)))
by kotaKat | 2025-09-23 23:03:10+00:00
The bar to getting access to MVNO sales is actually extremely, extremely low.

They're ordering and activating maybe 20-50 at a time, and ordering that number of SIM activation kits from dealer supply houses is extremely normal. Activation typically also is at little to no cost as well to dealers in this market.

FWIW: at sixteen, I somehow managed to get dealer access to a CDMA MVNO. I was able to activate accounts on the fly with $2 of "free" credit to start the user off, with zero cost to me. I still get emails to this day over a decade and a half later from various cellular resellers offering me bulk cellphones...
by LeafItAlone | 2025-09-23 23:03:10+00:00
Ok, but how does that get implemented? Not technically, but who makes it happen and enforces the rules? For all content or just “political”? Who decides what’s “political”? Information about the disease behind a worldwide pandemic isn’t inherently “political”, but somehow it became so.

Who decides agar falls in this bucket. The government? That seems to go against the idea of restricting speech and ideas.
by conception | 2025-09-23 23:03:11+00:00
Here’s where the “bad ideas out in the open get corrected” now is tested. There are 4 really good refutations of your evidence. Outside of the unspoken “perhaps vaccines cause some measurable bad outcomes but compare then to measles. And without the herd immunity vaccinations aren’t nearly as useful” argument.

So the important question is: Are you now going to say “well, I guess i got some bad data and i have to go back and review my beliefs” or dig in?
by ksec | 2025-09-23 23:03:22+00:00
The interesting part is the E-Core on A19 Pro are nearly as good as the previous ARM Big Core while only using half the power. I would love to know the die size of the cache and E-Core.

ARM were catching up to Apple in terms of big core, now Apple has leapfrogged in E-Core again. But competition is good. ARM should have some announcement coming in next few months.