MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Defletter | 2025-09-21 16:21:51+00:00
Even though I understand why you prefer that, I feel like you're painting too rosy of an image. To quote Tom Delalande: "There are some projects where if it was 10% harder to write the code, the project would fail." I believe this deeply and that this is also true for the build system: your build config should not be rivalling your source code in terms of length. That's hyperbole in most cases, sure, and may well indicate badly written build configs, but writing build configs should not be a skill issue. I am willing to bet that Rust has risen so much in popularity not just because of its memory safety, but also because of its build system. I don't like CMake, but I also don't envy its position.
by bborud | 2025-09-21 16:22:21+00:00
The shocking thing isn't that fascism would come back. The shocking thing is that the people I thought were smart would allow it to normalize so fast and give up without a fight. And that even some people I know are apparently fascists at heart - they just needed "permission" to show themselves.

For most of my teens I wondered what side I would have been on in 1930s Germany. If I would have had the courage to stand up to fascists. Even when they emerge among your friends. I used to wonder what side other people would end up on. Who would recognize fascism for what it was. Who would have the guts to call people out.

I read extensively about fascism. About the war. About the camp. About where all this came from.

Almost everyone has disapponted me in the past year. Not only the shits who turned out to be closeted fascists, but the cowards who do not dare to speak up. Because this time there was no excuse. Our history should have warned about this. And we failed. Almost all of us. Almost everyone makes excuses for themselves. For why they can't stand up to this.

The excuses are worse than the stupidity.

I do not despise people for being stupid. I despise people for being having had every opportunity to not repeat past mistakes and still
by lapcat | 2025-09-21 16:22:54+00:00
> The year is useful in the title when the article provides out of date information.

No, that's not the reason for the HN convention. Why would someone even submit an article with out of date information?

The reason for the convention is that "news" is generally expected to be new, so when it's not new, HN readers want to be informed of that fact, and they can react to the submission accordingly. It's a simple courtesy to readers.
by fuzzehchat | 2025-09-21 16:22:59+00:00
Amazon don't check returns either. It's a nightmare if you use their FOB service. We've had product returned, not checked and then shipped to another customer who then pputs in a claim because they didn't get what they ordered - because Amazon didn't check the return. Amazon then claim you're selling counterfeit goods.

Entirely why we no longer use their service and ship direct for amazon orders. Some people still try the trick but we always put a claim in and amazon after they automatically give a refund to the buyer, and Amazon pay it. So Amazon pay twice. Maybe the cost of just accepting that loss is less than having someone check the return.
by Lapel2742 | 2025-09-21 16:23:03+00:00
> you are standing in front of your dishwasher waiting for it to grow arms and do your dishes in the sink.

No. I'm standing in front of the dishwasher and the dishwasher expects me to tell it in detail how to wash the dishes.

This is not about if you can find any use for a LLM at all. This is about:

> LLMs are still surprisingly bad at some simple tasks

And yes. They are bad if you have to hand feed them each and every detail for an extremely simple task like comparing two lists.

You even have to debug the result because you cannot be sure that the dishwasher really washed the dishes. Maybe it just said it did.
by crazygringo | 2025-09-21 16:23:15+00:00
The articles don't seem to have gotten any basic facts wrong.

She had director in her title and reported directly to a vice president, Joel Kaplan, who is now a C-level officer. She managed staff.

That's seriously high up in the corporate hierarchy at Facebook. Feel free to read more:

"She managed a growing staff and oversaw government relations for entire continents, including Asia and South America. She reported to corporate vice presidents and had direct contact with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, then the chief operating officer."

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-alleges-h...

So again, I don't what you mean by "wasn't an executive in the sense you're thinking". She's seems to be exactly an executive in the sense that everyone thinks.
by dimal | 2025-09-21 16:23:48+00:00
Eh, since the founders were explicitly inspired by the Roman Republic, it’s always been fun to wonder “where are we on the Roman timeline”. But it was about 150 years from when the Gracchi brothers were murdered until Augustus seized power. These things happen over time, not all at once.

I don’t see any way to view today’s politics as normal. There is nothing but naked greed and hunger for power at play now. It wasn’t like this even 15 years ago. We’ve been a frog in a pot of water and it’s just starting to boil.
by naravara | 2025-09-21 16:24:02+00:00
Surely the fact that the current ruling party has an influential faction who explicitly reference Nazi Germany as an ideal worth striving for is relevant to setting the current moment in historical context. Yes we're not LITERALLY Nazi Germany for a variety of reasons but that doesn't mean it doesn't paint a picture of what they want to do, regardless of how successful they will be or what that will look like in practice.

Personally I think the most apt historical comparison is the Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, but since we don't LITERALLY live in the Middle Ages and have ethnic divisions between Greeks and Latins one might say that's not a relevant comparison either.
by biimugan | 2025-09-21 16:24:03+00:00
Are we already forgetting the Lebanon pager incident? It only happened last year. It seems perfectly rational to question the home country of a spyware company (of all things) when that country has in recent memory infected the supply chain of commodity electronics to booby-trap pagers and walkie talkies to explode and kill their putative enemies.

Let's also not forget that that country's paid spokesmen (both Israeli and American) were joking for months about those explosions, even lobbing it as a threat to their perceived enemies -- on live TV no less!
by Aurornis | 2025-09-21 16:24:22+00:00
> Zika virus. This was before Covid.

Thanks! My mistake.

> Which is very much 1st amendment (yes I know private company etc. etc.).

1st amendment to say it, yes, but 1st amendment does not guarantee freedom from repercussions as agreed upon by private contracts.

This detail from the article is also important:

> Meta has emphasised that Wynn-Williams entered into the non-disparagement agreement voluntarily as part of her departure.

> Meta said that to date, Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement.

Given that Meta hasn't actually forced her to pay anything for the agreement, this whole "faces bankruptcy" article is starting to feel like another round of the PR tour for her book sales.

> I get that you don't like her

I'm just tired of people abusing the "whistleblower" label for personal profit with little substance. It undermines the importance of real whistleblowers who do actual whistleblowing activities.
by mikestew | 2025-09-21 16:24:23+00:00
If your 100W light bulb is a USB bulb running at 5V (to make the math a bit easier), with 20 Ah you’ll get 100Wh, ergo it’ll run your bulb for a hour. You just need to specify the voltage. There are numerous online calculators to do this math for you.

https://www.inchcalculator.com/ah-to-wh-calculator/

Watt-hours won’t save you, because we don’t know what voltage your bulb needs. Don’t assume it’s 120/240V.
by KaiserPro | 2025-09-21 16:24:40+00:00
> pretty easy to avoid for most former employees.

Actually its not. its just facebook doesn't enforce it. There is a difference between leaving voluntarily, and being given n months wage.

The agreement _must_ be kept secret from everyone apart from your designated spouse and legal representative.

The only thing you are allowed to talk about in relation to meta is that you worked for them, and the dates.

You cannot, using any written or recorded medium give an opinion about meta, its products, employees past and present, positive or otherwise, without prior written agreement.

In return facebook promises not to disparage you, and pays a peppercorn to guarantee that.

the only difference between the pleb agreements and hers is that pleb agreements are only liable for the money that they paid you, (ie 3-9 months wage, but that could also be country agreement)

So everyone of those 40k employees that have been fired in the last 2 years will have been "offered" one of those contracts.
by AlexandrB | 2025-09-21 16:25:00+00:00
This is basically 100% backwards. In Canada it's large corporate lobbies pushing for more immigration. Why? Because it lets them keep wages low and makes unionization impossible.

See also, Bernie 10 years ago: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0&pp=ygUVYmVybmllIG9...

I don't know at what point people were convinced that the push against immigration is some kind of billionaire plot, but is has been great cover for said billionaires.
by jansan | 2025-09-21 16:25:02+00:00
I compared this to the QS ranking, where Oxford is still second in the world, and Durham, the new third place in the ranking mentioned in the article is 341. QS ranking does not even rank the first two, London School of Economics and University of St. Andrews. Does anybody know why?

Edit: Sorry, I only looked at the Engineering ans Technology ranking. Anyway, QS ranking is vastly different from the Times' ranking.
by ksec | 2025-09-21 16:25:45+00:00
I wasn't even aware Oxford has ever loses top 2. May be I am way too stuck in the past. Also surprised Imperial and UCL are lower than what I expected.

I remember the joke in "Yes Minister" about LSE. How times have changed.

I also wonder the world is now more American focused, how do they rank against Harvard, MIT or other US Universities.

1. LSE 2. University of St Andrews 3. Durham University 4. Oxford and Cambridge 6. Imperial College London
by rglullis | 2025-09-21 16:26:04+00:00
You are already grasping at straws if you refuse to see something that could quickly give you the information that challenges your preconceived notions. The video I linked to talks precisely about the study done by a consulting company showing how suburbs are net-negative to a city's budget and they do it for multiple cities across the country.

> Financial problems are local.

There might be differences in the particulars among cities, but they share a lot of common causes and one of them is that suburban sprawl is cheap to begin (acquiring and building on the land) but expensive to maintain.
by lillecarl | 2025-09-21 16:26:11+00:00
The real technological marvel here is the tire manufacturers.

I took an RC car (Traxxas Rustler 4x4) designed for 11.1V(3s) and strapped a 22.2V(6s) system to it, upgraded all transmission parts and it holds up well.

However you can't go full throttle without full ground contact (and barely even then) without shredding the tires into atoms. I've tried reinforcing with glass fibers and various glue compounds but it always finds a weak spot and propagates.

I think the car does around 160kmh, I've GPSed it to 140 but since it's an off-road vehicle it just takes off at those speeds. I assume free-rolling the tires reach over 200kmh, with some napkin math the tires rotate at over 9000RPM (150 per second).

Napkin AI math says the tire could experience as much as 4000G.

It's honestly "easy" to build an "unlimited horsepower" car with EV technology, high-quality cells, high-voltage, expensive components takes you there, tires though...
by afavour | 2025-09-21 16:26:38+00:00
> I provided a citation for the ABB grades, which is relevant to the comment I replied to.

An extremely tenuous connection. Abaraonye (and even less his words on Kirk) had absolutely no relevance to the criteria by which the Times assesses universities, thus had no impact on Oxfords placement, thus has no relevance to the conversation.
by g-b-r | 2025-09-21 16:26:38+00:00
I'm sorry for your people, but most recognized genocides look very different from every other.

And despite your history you don't seem very knowledgeable of what a genocide is, or willing to listen who actually studied the matter.

Hamas is not the victim of the genocide, but I guess you don't think there's any victim here, given the quotes.

The Israeli government said countless times that having all the hostages back wouldn't end the military operation.

And frankly, if all this abomination would actually succeed in forcing the hands of hamas, it would set a terrible precedent.

Others would have an argument to repeat it everytime someone holds hostage something.

Interesting to note, instead, how the Israeli government could have freed all the hostages for years, had it accepted any of the many offers of hamas.
by dghlsakjg | 2025-09-21 16:27:25+00:00
This is my problem with a lot of literature and movies. The Nazis are always unfathomably evil, when in reality, most of them were just people doing their jobs.

I read Eichmann in Jerusalem recently, and the reality is that what Eichmann did was incredibly mundane for the most part. There is someone in ICE right now doing exactly what Eichmann was doing: Coordinating roundups of people made "illegal" by law, and then transporting them to foreign camps and foreign countries. The final solution came very far into the whole sequence of events, and Eichmann presents that he didn't like it at all, but really had no choice in the matter if he didn't want to be made a pariah or face severe personal repercussions. I would be willing to bet there are any number of people inside the US federal government who are thinking exactly that line of thought.
by kaydub | 2025-09-21 16:27:36+00:00
> If you don't want to use LLMs, nobody is forcing you. Burning energy trying to convince people to whom the benefits of LLMs are self-evident many times over that they are imagining things is insulting the intelligence of everyone in the conversation.

Hey man, I don't bother trying to convince them because it's just going to increase my job security.

Refusing to use LLMs or thinking they're bad is just FUD and it's the same as people that prefer to use nano/vim over an IDE or it's the same as people that say "hur dur cloud is just somebody else's computer"

It's best to ignore and just leave them in the dust.
by OptionOfT | 2025-09-21 16:27:39+00:00
Your choices make the car not a necessity.

I made different choices, and I am being taxed for those. But what I don't get is the hostility towards people who make this choice?

I choose to not live in a place with supermarkets within 150m. When I look outside I see the edge of my property and then I see untouched nature.

I pay for that, in land cost, and in fuel cost because I live (by choice) further away from everybody.
by IshKebab | 2025-09-21 16:27:43+00:00
> [LSE's] stellar academic performance was boosted this year by improvements in teaching quality and student experience.

The list is semi-bullshit and not just based on student performance, so I'd say he's talking out of his arse.

None of my Cambridge uni friends would have applied to go to America because of contextual admissions criteria.

In any case taking someone's background into account is actually the logical thing to do. Who do you think would do better: an Eton student who scored 50% on the test, or a comprehensive student who scored 49%? The answer is pretty obvious and they're right to try and get the best students; not just those that score best on admission tests.
by criddell | 2025-09-21 16:27:47+00:00
When I was 20 I couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than in the heart of a city. I loved the energy and all the things to do.

When I had kids, the suburbs suddenly made a lot of sense. Better schools, tons of neighborhood sports, lots of kids around, very dog friendly, etc…

Now that I’m an empty nester, I’d love to move further out of the city. Get more space around me, have a smaller home but a bigger workshop, sauna, and garden.

I can imagine that when I hit my 70’s or 80’s, I might want to be back in the city again closer to other people, healthcare, and other services that will be a bigger part of my life.

There really isn’t one ideal setup for me in all parts of my life.
by dns_snek | 2025-09-21 16:27:59+00:00
That was a treat to explore. All of those are based on self-assessment surveys or toy problems. The UK report reads:

> On average, users reported time savings of 56 minutes per working day [...] It is also possible that survey respondents overestimated time saved due to optimism bias.

Yet in conclusion, this self-reported figure is stated as an independently observed fact. When people without ADHD take stimulants they also self-report increased productivity, higher accuracy, and faster task completion but all objective measurements are negatively affected.

The OECD paper supports their programming-related findings with the following gems:

- A study that measures productivity by the time needed to implement a "hello world" of HTTP servers [27]

- A study that measures productivity by the number of lines of code produced [28]

- A study co-authored by Microsoft that measures productivity of Microsoft employees using Microsoft Copilot by the number of pull requests they create. Then the code is reviewed by their Microsoft coworkers and the quality of those PRs is judged by the acceptance rate of those PRs. Unbelievably, the code quality doesn't only remain the same, it goes up! [30]

- An inspirational pro-AI paper co-authored by GitHub and Microsoft that's "shining a light on the importance of AI" aimed at "managers and policy-makers". [31]
by wyldfire | 2025-09-21 16:28:11+00:00
That is not at all the right context. You have fabricated a context that suits some legitimate intent. The president wasn't talking at all about limited spectrum and I can't believe you keep going back there.

> A broadcast that consists of 97% demonization of a people on one side of an issue that splits the country 50-50 isn't serving the interest of the public.

It's almost as if you are calling for the return of the fairness doctrine (sometimes incorrectly referred to as "equal time rule")?

In any case: criticism of the current government is absolutely the intent and purpose of the First Amendment. Demonization is not what happened. Just go ahead and watch/read what Kimmel actually said. It's not trying to demonize, it's a critique of the party in power misrepresenting the truth.

> Anyone who's listened to him knows what he meant.

I am finding it harder and harder to take you seriously. Anyone who's listened to Trump knows that he is thin skinned and abuses his power to retaliate against those who critique him. Anyone who's listened to Trump knows that he can't spell the word "spectrum" much less think about how the government should help judiciously guide civil discourse without infringing on free speech.
by JCM9 | 2025-09-21 16:28:13+00:00
I don’t think many people place much stock in these rankings, and if they don’t have “shocking” moves then how are they gonna sell papers and get people to click!?!

An article on the site says “Durham wins University of the Year and dismisses Oxbridge reject stereotype.”

Not to be cold, but willing to bet that a good chunk of the Durham student population are those that were passed over by Oxbridge.
by ajross | 2025-09-21 16:28:40+00:00
> people are nervous that this is becoming true

It seems abundantly clear that there will be no peaceful/rule-of-law transfer of executive power in January 2029 to anyone but a hand-picked Trump successor that wins an election. A democratic victory (or even a Republican primary winner that isn't appropriately selected) will be resisted at all levels of the executive, and... we'll just see. Whatever the result, the losing party will call it a coup and illegitimate, and such an administration will survive only so long as it can hold control of the government by authoritarian means.

It may even happen earlier. A lot of the kerfuffle around redistricting is being presented to right wing audiences in a way that would be very easy to spin as "cheating". What do we do if democrats win the house next year and Johnson simply refuses to seat the California delegation to keep power? Are we prepared?

Basically, the End of the American Experiment may have already occurred.
by yodsanklai | 2025-09-21 16:29:17+00:00
But does Oxford want the best student or some that had to work harder but ultimately aren't as good?

In France, our elite scientific schools recruit students based on anonymous nationwide tests. It turns out most of the recruits come from privileged backgrounds, and I've heard this is more the case today than it was several decades ago.

I'd love to see more diversity in these schools, but I prefer to maintain our educational excellence rather than dilute it artificially with worse students. I'm all for paying tutors to poorer but promising student, but they should be admitted against the same criteria as anyone else.
by MrJohz | 2025-09-21 16:30:11+00:00
Eh, I think that's a bit overblown. In theory, Germans are famously methodical and precise, in practice the rail network is falling apart, a major bridge in my city recently collapsed due to lack of proper maintenance, and "made in Germany" is mainly an encouragement to buy local, rather than buying for quality.

My experience of Germans, having lived among them for almost a decade, and having married one of them, is that you can usually find a counterexample to any supposed German characteristic just by looking around the room. If there is any overarching theme to the German psyche, it might be a tendency to conservatism (in the sense of preferring to do things as they've always been done), but at the same time you've also got radical groups on the left and the right that are a fundamental part of the democratic fabric of Germany.

I think there are some cultural touchstones that are very German, and those have an influence on how Germans think and act, but I think this can be very contradictory and it's difficult to draw a single picture here. For example, people are very conscious of antisemitism here because of how much it's talked about in schools and the media, and that informs national foreign policy. But at the same time, Germans, like most Western Europeans, have grown up in a time of peace and see war and aggression as a cardinal sin. Both of these inform the German response to something like the situation in Gaza, but the result averages out to a policy that's broadly in line with many other liberal European states.

All in all, I think you'll get more insight from phrenology than from trying to figure out the German character in too much depth.
by bentt | 2025-09-21 16:30:37+00:00
I don't think it replaces a junior, but it raises the bar for the potential that a a junior would need to show early, for exactly the reason you mention. A junior will now need to be a potential senior.

The juniors that are in trouble are the low-potential workhorse folks who really aren't motivated but happened to get skilled up in a workshop or technical school. They hopped on the coding wagon as a lucrative career change, not because they loved it.

Those folks are in trouble and should move on to the next trend... which ironically is probably saying you can wrangle AI.