MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by palata | 2025-09-23 19:56:45+00:00
It's bad faith to talk about greenhouse gas emissions without taking into account the indirect contributions. When you use a computer, you cannot only account for the electricity that goes into the computer that is sitting on your desk.

You have to account for all the energy that went into extracting the materials from the ground, building the electronics, shipping it accross the world, and then the electricity to operate it.
by leakycap | 2025-09-23 19:57:05+00:00
> When every company does the same thing, that tells you nothing about what the public wants.

Widespread adoption across an industry is a classic market response to satisfying demand.

> By your logic, every authoritarian thing governments do is what people want, but all of those are highly contentious

Discussing software feedback forums and jumping to how I would respond to a conversation about a authoritarian "thing" governments do is irrelevant and didn't go anywhere

> Clearly you haven’t been closely following the release of macOS Tahoe.

You have jumped to an entirely incorrect conclusion here. I have made dozens of comments and been involved in the beta testing of Tahoe.

It is generally best in a conversation to try and engage with the information others post.
by kelnos | 2025-09-23 19:57:16+00:00
> if your government is still in power, you as a colective are fine with whatever they are doing

"You as a collective" is not a thing, though. We are not Borg; we are individuals. I live in the US, and I am absolutely not fine with what Trump and the GOP are doing, but... well, they are still in power. And I do have some (albeit fairly minimal) ability to affect the actions of my government through voting.

Someone who lives under a dictatorship like Iran has zero say in what their government does, and zero say in what government is in power. The only way for someone like that to change their government is to engage in armed rebellion, but asking someone to put their life on the line like that is way more than I would presume to ask of anyone.
by roadside_picnic | 2025-09-23 19:57:24+00:00
> after an observation you are absolutely at a new state

The essential property of a Markov chain is maintaining the Markov property:

P(X_n+1 = x_n+1 | X_n = x_n, ..., x_1) = P(X_n+1 = x_n+1 | X_n = x_n)

That is the future, given the present state, is conditionally independent of the past states.

It's worth recognizing that decoder only LLMs (which are most the major LLMs used by people) maintain the Markov property and can be properly understood as Markov chains.

> The attention mechanism is the best we have for this and Markov chains struggle beyond stringing together a few syllables.

Attention has nothing to do with the maintaining the Markov property but allows for a fantastically more complex representation of state which is where decoder only LLMs derive the majority of their power.

tl;dr most of the LLMs people use are effectively Markov Chains.
by init2null | 2025-09-23 19:57:29+00:00
But it shouldn't have been conceived with that design. Adobe products blend a timesaving tool into a truly productive workflow. Photoshop, a layer or a filter. Lightroom, a brush. Mystery-meat autocorrect/enhance buttons only get you so far and may alter far more than you want, which is dangerous when you want to want to present a slightly polished version of reality.
by ratelimitsteve | 2025-09-23 19:58:17+00:00
you used the word "entitled" though, and that has a specific meaning. why would nimbys be "entitled" to stop high density housing but yimbys not be "entitled" to do it? this contradiction resolves itself very neatly in a system where yimbys get to do what they want with their property and nimbys get to do what they want with theirs. It only gets complex when one person wants complete control of their property and also partial control over someone else's, and they dress up their own personal best interest as "the desires of the community".
by palata | 2025-09-23 19:58:48+00:00
> Do we use more electricity because of 5G? I confess I'd assume modern phones and repeater networks use less power than older ones. Even at large.

If we did exactly the same with 5G than what we did with 4G, it would be more efficient.

But why do we develop 5G? Because we can do more. It is more efficient, but we do much more, so we increase our energy consumption. This is called the "rebound effect". It's observed for every. single. technology.
by gjsman-1000 | 2025-09-23 19:59:32+00:00
It is a joke, heavily sarcastic ("common-sense tech control"), but there is a grain of truth.

It's inspired after all the victory laps HN had about the EU's moral superiority after GDPR, sideloading, USB-C, not being America in 2024, only for this to shatter all illusions.

Flagged now, but HN has always been terrible at anything not delivered in a mundane tone of boredom.
by rimunroe | 2025-09-23 19:59:36+00:00
I don't understand this attitude. Tests are important parts of the codebase. Poorly written tests are a frequent source of headaches in my experience, either by encoding incorrect assumptions, lying about what they're testing, giving a false sense of security, adding friction to architectural changes/refactors, etc. I would never want to review even 2k lines of test changes in one go.
by MisterTea | 2025-09-23 19:59:37+00:00
> And in New York, our solution is for folks to park illegally, the meter maids to print tickets which are treated as a business expense.

Its a sad game that has to be played. Used to have a family business and a good chunk of our business was in Manhattan. The fucking parking games were insane and it got to the point where we gave up and started charging a Manhattan fee that was the cost of a parking ticket. Another issue was dealing with cops directly chasing you when double parked which was unfortunately another commonly needed tactic. Even UPS and FedEx play the game. You see a driver got out, load up a cart with a few dozen boxes and head down the street all while a traffic cop is writing up a ticket. It's such a bozo city sometimes.
by renewiltord | 2025-09-23 19:59:42+00:00
Unfamiliar with SF? Uber Eats drivers don't "find parking". They drive two wheeler electric bicycles and scooters with a big box on the back. When they 'park' they stop their vehicle on the sidewalk.

I mean, I get your point that you can make rules that make other things costly. It's just that the SF adaptation doesn't have the characteristics that you describe so it's some kind of personal political erotica. What actually happens is:

> Dreams of a utopia with bike lanes everywhere and drivers ticketed left and right

> Delivery drivers double park their trucks and tickets are cost of business

> UberEats and DoorDash are delivered by electric bike with HMP logo on front
by senkora | 2025-09-23 20:00:14+00:00
I think that you might enjoy this (paid) zine: https://store.wizardzines.com/products/terminal

> The terminal seems simple at first (you type in commands and run them! no big deal!), but the more you learn, the more you notice a million little inconsistencies (why does pressing the arrow keys sometimes print out "^[[D"? why does selecting text sometimes not work? why are the colours sometimes unreadable?) that make it feel like an inscrutable black box. And it often doesn’t feel worth it to learn more because documentation about the terminal is so fragmented and full of obscure jargon.

> But! Understanding just a little more about the terminal can make your experience WAY better. You can quickly recognize what’s causing a problem (“oh, my arrow keys aren’t working because this is one of those annoying REPLs that doesn’t support arrow keys!”) and immediately fix it (“I’ll use rlwrap!). Or you can turn “wow, this text is unreadable” into “oh, my terminal emulator is responsible for colours! I’ll just go into the settings and reconfigure my colours!”.
by snerbles | 2025-09-23 20:00:24+00:00
A guide on llama.cpp's grammars (nine hours and not a single mention of "GBNF"? HN is slipping) is here:

https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/blob/master/grammars/R...

There's also a grammar validation tool in the default llama.cpp build, which is much easier to reason about for debugging grammars than having them bounce off the server.
Show HN: I built an AI in 3 days at 16 y/o that lets you chat with your PDFs
by safwanbouceta | 2025-09-23 20:00:30+00:00
Hey, it's Safwan

I'm 16 and obsessed with AI and coding. Last year, I was struggling with my homework - especially when teachers gave us long PDF documents to analyze for history and literature classes.

The problem? I'd spend hours scrolling through 30-page PDFs trying to find specific quotes or information for my essays. My friends had the same issue - we were all wasting time instead of actually learning.

I tried Ctrl+F, highlighting, even printing everything out... but I realized what we really needed was to ask questions to our documents like we would to a teacher.

So during summer break, I taught myself more about AI and built the first version of PDF Chat.

Now I can finish my research in minutes instead of hours, and I'm helping students and professionals worldwide do the same. Pretty cool for a high schooler, right?
by scottbez1 | 2025-09-23 20:00:31+00:00
In commercial loading zones! We've allocated the color yellow for this in SF.

If commercial drivers petitioned SFMTA to convert more private parking spaces into commercial zones I'd be signing petitions and backing them in their goal 100% of the way.

But generally I've found that commercial drivers would rather just violate the law and endanger others rather than engaging in activism for better infrastructure on our streets, so it's hard to feel sorry for them if they're cited and fined as a result.
by fpsvogel | 2025-09-23 20:01:01+00:00
I agree that these are useful frameworks. When I said they're not equally attainable by all, I meant that for people who are better off, these things can sort of just fall in their lap, whereas poor people more often have to struggle for them. I know I'm saying something that is common sense, but I just wanted to make the point that inspiring people to be more virtuous is great, but a lot of people face material and psychological obstacles which make attaining these things "without much difficulty" (quoting the parent commenter) not very realistic. I think we agree there.

Not many people would openly say that poor people deserve to be poor. Those aren't the words that the parent commenter used, and maybe that wasn't even the intention. But this line of thinking can encourage people who feel this way, by giving their feelings a moral justification.

All I mean is, we should be empathetic toward people who have fewer resources than we do, and not be too quick to credit our accomplishments to our virtuous living.
by cestith | 2025-09-23 20:01:22+00:00
It’s such a nice language, too. It’s too bad it doesn’t get more attention. I know someone who regularly runs a couple of utilities written in Haskell, but they’re the only Haskell code in his entire organization. It’s a shop that has C, C++, Rust, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, and Go in production, Java in legacy production, and has half a dozen other languages in production support situations. Haskell has not caught on there, though.

I’m aware a few companies use primarily OCaml just as a few use primarily some form of Lisp. It’s just that some of these really nice languages don’t see as much use as they could.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2025-09-23 20:01:29+00:00
I kinda appreciate it tbh!

I had done something similar about having a discussion from systemd to what is the software that has done the most good while still being hated on

https://gist.github.com/SerJaimeLannister/36b4cdc7e9bb790929...

I hadn't thought of creating an ask hn or smth tho, maybe I should've done that! But I really approve the sentiment that you share in this comment, so thanks!
by hereme888 | 2025-09-23 20:01:50+00:00
Since the left has moved so far left, and Trump is closer to historical center, I believe the West is now closer to what it's been from a historical perspective.

I'd agree that the FCC's threat exceeded their authority. But between Kimmel's factually-stated (and sick) assertion, which opens ABC/Disney to defamation claims, and massive public and affiliate backlash, ABC faced concrete distribution risk, hence placing him on indefinite leave (not fired).
by LinuxAmbulance | 2025-09-23 20:01:55+00:00
"When the measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure." Something something something.

Forwards looking earnings guidance is also a pet peeve of mine - I've had plenty of stocks take a significant decline because a given company was a few or even a single percentage point shy of what they'd predicted from the previous quarter.

Assuming accurate predictions can be made is foolhardy, and if a company actively makes changes to meet the prediction that are at the cost of long term profits, it doesn't help anyone but day traders, the worst of the worst.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-09-23 20:02:18+00:00
> It's such a bozo city sometimes

It’s a weird little ecosystem. If tickets were made more expensive, parking in lots and having smaller vehicles (probably bikes) fan out would make sense. If they were cheaper, you wouldn’t have all the meter maids.

As a former Manhattan resident, I have to say, this was never a point of frustration. The illegally parked trucks tended to make quick stops on two-lane roads. Contrast that with getting stuck behind a fucking garbage truck going cross town…
by codedokode | 2025-09-23 20:02:28+00:00
Wikipedia says that autism is caused by DNA errors, so the only perfect cure would be, as with many other incurable diseases, DNA editing? I wonder if we come into the future where parents will be able to buy DNA fragments for example, for certain eye color or size, or for thin hands and legs, and collect future child's DNA from pieces. Or DNA will be considered non-copyrighted and owner of elf ears won't be able to sell his unique feature? Seems not fair to me. Also whether there will be pirate sites with DNA.
by Seattle3503 | 2025-09-23 20:02:45+00:00
Yeah I understand that if someone generates a key then burns it, there's no way to know. But it was shocking for me to realize that there doesn't seem to be a universal mechanism to ensure you are sending something to *the correct blockchain*. The sender should know what chain their coins are on, so if the recipient embeds that metadata in the address or QR code, some basic validation should be possible.

In L2 it seems like a "handshake" should be possible as well. Eg Where the sender sends in infinitesimal amount of coins, and the recipient moves the funds in a way the sender can see, so the sender knows the funds sent were accessible.
by shemar123 | 2025-09-23 20:02:47+00:00
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by bahmboo | 2025-09-23 20:02:47+00:00
Ok. I understand bike lanes. I didn't say anything about more lanes, bro. I am talking about delivery vehicles and the challenges they face in urban environments. Keep in mind that a delivery driver can spend as much time on foot as they do in their vehicle. This means interacting with vehicles and bikes as a laden pedestrian. They are compromised and it can be dangerous.
by hombre_fatal | 2025-09-23 20:03:04+00:00
Sure: importing migrants with no end in sight while shutting down any convo over what the limit should be; there is no limit and you're racist if you disagree.

And it's not a principled position on open borders nor open migration but instead part of a double standard. These same people probably cheer on the protests in Mexico City against white gringos in Condesa.

That's how I'd summarize the far left position. The far right one is probably that migrants are bad. And I suppose the middle position is that there's a problem when immigration rate outpaces cultural assimilation.
by rybosworld | 2025-09-23 20:03:44+00:00
TLDR:

We're taking a profession that attracts people who enjoy a particular type of mental stimulation, and transforming it into something that most members of the profession just fundamentally do not enjoy.

If you're a business leader wondering why AI hasn't super charged your company's productivity, it's at least partly because you're asking people to change the way they work so drastically, that they no longer derive intrinsic motivation from it.

Doesn't apply to every developer. But it's a lot.
by chmod775 | 2025-09-23 20:04:28+00:00
Are you in the habit of just making shit up as you go?

>The EU has no real free speech protections

Yes they do[1] and even certain EU bodies expect that the law as proposed will likely be invalidated by courts[2].

>and many countries have been developing increasingly aggressive speech laws and police.

I'd say invasive, rather than aggressive, but yes. This has always been true and will likely always be true. Governments try to expand their own powers. News at 11.

>You can be arrested or fined for speaking objective truths in countries like

Name a country in which this doesn't hold true. Revealing classified information, trade secrets, court-protected information, doxing, obscenity, ..., will get you in trouble in many places.

>like Germany or the UK

The UK isn't even in the EU anymore. In fact while they still were in the EU, the ECJ ruled parts of their Investigatory Powers Act unlawful[3]. I don't know how that adds up with the picture you're trying to paint.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12... [2] https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8787-2023-I... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/dec/21/eus-highest-cour...
by JohnBooty | 2025-09-23 20:04:32+00:00
As far as I can tell, the direct chain of events preceding this coup-like event was:

Ruby Central hosts DHH at RailsConf in July --> Sidekiq withdraws funding from Ruby Central --> Ruby Central is essentially entirely dependent on Shopify.

The "what" seems to be purely a reaction to this article DHH posted:

Strictly speaking, DHH's September blog post could not have driven this unless there was a time machine involved. However, DHH has made some contentious political statements in the past so perhaps what you're saying is true in a larger sense.

It's certainly possible that Shopify's actions had nothing to do with either side's politics in particular, and they decided it was simply safer for them to control Ruby Cental and RubyGems rather than rely on an independent organization with unstable funding (that they were basically solely funding anyway according to the article)

I don't love that outcome. As a Ruby fan, I don't want Ruby or bits of its infrastructure controlled by a particular organization.
by alephnerd | 2025-09-23 20:04:32+00:00
HN's tone changes depending on the time of day.

HN appears very pro-EU in the mornings because that tends to align with the afternoon in much of Europe, just like how you tend to see more China or India content in the evenings when it's morning-afternoon in those markets. I also see more American political content around 5am-7am PT because that appears to be the time of day when EST and CST is at work.

All the timezones basically converge around 7am-11am PT though.
by mrkstu | 2025-09-23 20:04:48+00:00
My goodness, people need to leave their ‘supremacist’ scarlet letters in their bags for when they’re actually earned. The Brits are just as much ‘native’ people to their lands as any aboriginal group. To want to keep their characteristic culture from being wiped out is no more supremacist than any other ethnic group doing the same.

The hypocrisy is beyond the pale.
by pavon | 2025-09-23 20:06:41+00:00
INI-like formats are perfectly fine for config files with at most one layer of nesting/sections. TOML is a perfectly fine INI-like parser. Its definitions and support for strings, numbers, comments, sections and simple arrays are great. But its main claim to fame is extending INI to support arbitrary levels nesting of arrays and dictionaries like JSON, and IMO it does a horrible job at it.

With JSON, YAML, XML and many other formats, the syntax for nesting has a visual appearance that matches the logical nesting. TOML does not. You have to maintain a mental model of the data structure, and slot the flat syntax into that structure.

Furthermore, there are multiple ways to express the same thing like

[fruit.apple] color = "red"

or

[fruit] apple.color = "red"

It isn't always obvious which approach is more appropriate for a task, and mixing them creates a big mess.

And the more nested the format becomes, with arrays of dicts, or dicts of arrays, the harder it is to follow.
by larkost | 2025-09-23 20:06:53+00:00
If anyone wants to raid some code for simpler YAML, I wrote a version for the RethinkDB tests a long time ago:

https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/blob/main/test/common...

The problem I was trying to solve was that our tests involved a lot of things that looked like dicts (in fact they were), so my YAML-like parser stops parsing things when it looks like we have hit test code. This took out so much escaping, and made it easy to copy-paste tests into a REPL when you were working on the test (and vise-versa).

So it looks like YAML, but without most of the features, and without the footguns.
by BeetleB | 2025-09-23 20:07:48+00:00
By the time you get to my age, your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens. You simply cannot keep this up with all the Anna's.

A lot of people genuinely don't want to hang out with you. Likely that number exceeds the "real" Anna's by an order of magnitude.

If there's someone I particularly like, I'll keep inviting him. But if the person is otherwise normal (e.g. clearly has a social life), I invite 3-5 times, and then stop. If the guy wants to hang out with me, the ball's in his court.

You'll find no shortage of people who'll say "Hey man! What happened? I never hear from you any more!"

To which I'd love to respond with s/any more/ever/

If you're the guy who always invite people regardless of their response (or non-response), you'll find that people will have an expectation that you always invite them. I would recommend not getting to that point.
by ndriscoll | 2025-09-23 20:07:55+00:00
Because "yimby"s go to higher government to force localities to adopt rules they vote against, i.e. they get their way with authoritarian policies that apply outside of "their backyard". Some even think there should be national laws! They want their policies applied to essentially an entire continent. Nimbys typically don't care about things that are not part of their locality. San Francisco wants giant skyscrapers? Cool, none in my city, thanks. That's why we chose to live in an area that bans high density.

From what I've seen the actual policies being pushed by "yimbys" seem much closer to yiyby.
by ratelimitsteve | 2025-09-23 20:08:32+00:00
Just for curiosity's sake, when you talk about Italians being widely considered white what context is that in? Because you later talk about anti-Irish racism in the US in the 20s and 30s and the experience was pretty similar for Italians in the US in that time period as well. I have living relatives that can give you firsthand accounts of open, organized, violent anti-Italian racism in Pittsburgh pre-mid WWII.