MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tptacek | 2025-09-27 16:08:08+00:00
I don't understand how Bluesky is going to continue to exist past 2026, based on the sharply declining usage, their headcount, and the amount of funding they've taken.

It has apparent value propositions past the social network, but none of those use cases are visibly taking off and none of them appear to be monetizable. The social network itself is what will be evaluated when they go out for more funding. And I don't see how you can raise at all for a social network in 2026 with flat numbers, let alone the declining numbers Bluesky actually has.

I've been dual-wielding Twitter and Bluesky for about a year (after a year off Twitter where I was mostly Mastodon), and, anecdatally, we've hit a point where the engagement and volume of stuff I see in Bluesky is lower than what I was getting even on Mastodon. Earlier on, there was some truth to the idea that Twitter had a much larger audience, but you'd get better engagement on Bluesky. I now get better engagement on Twitter. I can see people I had followed into Bluesky moving back to Twitter.

I have no idea what's going to happen, but I'm curious to hear a coherent story about how Bluesky isn't cooked.
by acbart | 2025-09-27 16:08:09+00:00
LLMs were trained on science fiction stories, among other things. It seems to me that they know what "part" they should play in this kind of situation, regardless of what other "thoughts" they might have. They are going to act despairing, because that's what would be the expected thing for them to say - but that's not the same thing as despairing.
by Volundr | 2025-09-27 16:08:24+00:00
> Decades of Coca-Cola advertising creating an emotional connection?

Sure maybe, doesn't sound like something that should be celebrated, more like brainwashing.

> Maybe it's your favorite drink? Maybe it was a special treat on your birthday?

Coke is still around in this scenario no? I know people got upset about the reformulation, and that tracks. But it's not like I can't have a coke on my birthday because it's got a different logo.
by fgdelcueto | 2025-09-27 16:08:41+00:00
I had been using LaTeX for 25 years. I gave it a try recently to write a technical paper and I was blown away. I saved so much time. The immediate feedback and the advanced features were impressive. I had to include a budget proposal in one of the chapters and I was able to create a quick script that read a csv file with the different concepts and costs. I would modify the contents of the csv file and the document would update right away. I didn't have to recompile the document as I used to do with LaTeX... the results were there, right away, beautifully formatted. I am very impressed and will definitely consider doing more work with Typst.
by SideburnsOfDoom | 2025-09-27 16:08:42+00:00
> Trading one corporate overlord for another is not the smartest play.

Only if you expect to be there for ever even as they inevitably enshittify. Be under no illusion that although BlueSky is having its "first they are good to their users" phase now, it is temporary.

So make the most of it now while it's good, but be prepared to move on when that changes. Embracing impermanence is a smarter play. This is nothing new, thus passes all social media.
by ranadomo | 2025-09-27 16:08:44+00:00
Transit violence is not limited to outlier cases like the nyc immolation or Iryna's horrific slaughter. Women in particular may never feel safe on public transit and avoid it entirely at night and alone. Daily harassment, stalking, threats and verbal abuse are "facts of life" for the majority of female passengers in metro areas. They will all move up or out to safer environments and take their car or private transportation everywhere. Pretending like Americans are instinctually averse to public transit is an absurd contention when they've been behaviorally conditioned by the insanely dangerous environment and a justice system that works to inflict it upon them until they give up or die.
by vel0city | 2025-09-27 16:08:44+00:00
If your CD player had cheap anti-skip it probably does lossy digital audio compression before output. A lot of the CD-player-as-a-package chips had older, crappy lossy audio compression and saved to a small bit of RAM on the CD player. Not much of a power envelope for compute power for audio compression logic. With memory being really expensive back in the day and prices being cutthroat there wasn't much memory for the blanti-skip buffer. So you needed fast, cheap, and really compact audio compression. Nobody really bothered improving it once MP3 players came out and memory got cheaper, so even "new" CD players use the same hardware portable CD players were using in the 90s.

And even then, it's not digital square waves coming out of your headphones. At some point that digital signal needs to be converted to analog waves. The quality of the DAC matters as well and can give a different quality of output.
by gottorf | 2025-09-27 16:09:16+00:00
I'm not a highly religious person so I may well be wrong about this, but my understanding of Christian principles (as you referenced in your Bible quote) is that you, the individual, should do these kind things to other individuals personally; and in that act of doing so personally, you become closer to God.

What we have instead is that taxes are collected by an entity with the monopoly on violence (and of course, it's understood that the people making more than you are not paying their "fair share") whether you like it or not, spent by people who generally have boundless disdain for the very people who pay those taxes, on people and causes on the other side of the planet. There's no connection between people, or between people and God, in this scenario.
by nh2 | 2025-09-27 16:09:17+00:00
SSH has low throughput on high latency links, but not because it uses TCP. It is because SSH hardcodes a too-small maximum window size in its protocol, in addition to the one of TCP.

This SSH window size limit is per ssh "stream", so it could be overcome by many parallel streams, but most programs do not make use of that (scp, rsync, piping data through the ssh command), so they are much slower than plain TCP as measured eg by iperf3.

I think it's silly that this exists. They should just let TCP handle this.
by glitchc | 2025-09-27 16:09:28+00:00
I have yet to observe an activist practice objective thinking. That was the root of the argument. Activists sometimes do back the correct argument, but not because they are practising scientific reasoning. Most activists are swayed by rhetoric, a good story. That's an emotional response, not a logical one.

To answer your second point, science has a process for disseminating new findings. It's not perfect, but it works. Organizations that scientists work for do pay attention to those sources, discoveries do get patented and productionized. I encourage you to conduct some research: See how many people were talking about mRNA vaccines and gain-of-function research on social media before COVID vs after. The lack of social media coverage didn't affect the science or the scientists, who had spent the past decade conducting research on the subject.

I will maintain that Twitter/X/Bluesky are not part of the scientific process, nor should they be. These platforms do not encourage objective thought or reasoned arguments.
by BobbyTables2 | 2025-09-27 16:09:31+00:00
I always view the initial billed amount as the MSRP for a really shady industry.

While it’s often 2x-3x the allowed amount, I’ve even seen it closer to 20x-40x one — an amount for a simple outpatient procedure the would lead to financial ruin if it had to be paid in full.

I really don’t understand why there is any math in the initial amounts.

Why don’t they just bill $1M for every single item and then see what they get?
by tummler | 2025-09-27 16:09:44+00:00
• I didn't say there's a line between "tech people" and "art people". Why would there be?

• We're having this discussion because people are trying to equate an auto-amalgamation/auto-generation machine with the artistic process, and in doing so, redefining what "art" means.

• Yes, you can "be creative" with AI, but don't fool yourself-- you're not creating art. I don't call myself a chef because I heated up a microwave dinner.
by al_be_back | 2025-09-27 16:10:05+00:00
You're correct actually, I missed that. With Raspberry Pi they moved production to the UK (Wales) in 2012 - (Factory tour article in 2023 - https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/how-raspberry-pis-are... ).

I wouldn't be surprised if they move production back to the UK assuming Pi 500+ starts doing well.
by armchairhacker | 2025-09-27 16:10:12+00:00
Why don't scientists publish anonymously? We already have double-blind peer review. This seems like such an obvious idea, there must be some issue.

Authors can still get reputation, recognition, and compensation for their papers, without people knowing who wrote what paper, via public/private keys and blockchain. Every time an author publishes a paper, they generate a new address and attach the public key to it. Judges send awards (NFTs) and compensation to the key without knowing who holds it, and if the same award type is given to multiple papers, authors can display it without anyone knowing which paper is theirs.

With LLMs even writing style can be erased (and as a side effect, the paper can be written in different formats for different audiences). Judges can use objective criteria so they can't be bribed without others noticing; in cases where the paper is an algorithm and the criteria is a formal proof, the "judge" can be a smart contract (in practice I think that would be a small minority of papers, but it would still be hard for a judge to nominate an undeserving paper while avoiding skeptics, because a deserving paper would match the not-fully-objective criteria according to a wide audience). Any other potential flaws?
by ulrikrasmussen | 2025-09-27 16:10:14+00:00
That's also been my own personal experience, and I have a CS background and have written several papers and a PhD thesis in LaTeX. I have done many detailed figures in TikZ and done countless presentations using Beamer.

I have no idea how to implement anything in TeX on my own besides rudimentary macros. I did once try to implement a simple typesetting package for typesetting some particularly gnarly natural deduction trees, and I thought it worked fine for a few examples, but then it broke down in ways that was completely non-obvious to me.

The computational model of TeX is really, really opaque to me.
by AJ007 | 2025-09-27 16:10:34+00:00
Eh, reads like someone who uses ChatGPT but can't tell you what model they have.

For my personal projects I have a list of difficult bugs I keep that LLMs can't solve. Right now that list is empty. Anyone using LLMs for coding, using the best tools and practices, can see what a massive capability leap has occurred in the past 9 months.

If the US is going to end up "losing", it is going to be first through power generation -- China's coal plants produce more power than the US as a whole. Robotics is a whole other topic and shouldn't be bundled with LLMs.
by moron4hire | 2025-09-27 16:10:35+00:00
Yes, but we're talking about digital interfaces right now.

Even when considering faux finishes on real world materials, that standard doesn't apply here. Unlike, say, the wooden shingles cut to look like stone on Colonial era architecture (e.g. George Washington's home at Mt. Vernon) that are trying to convince us they are something they aren't, the penguin icon is not trying to, nor would it ever, convince us it's a real penguin.

Going back to my first sentence, yes, skeuomorphism is a concept older than computer interfaces. When the term is applied to computer interfaces, it has to be adapted. Since current display tech could never create something even close to a convincing simulacrum of, say, a notebook, the term then gets adapted to mean that the use of skeuomorphism attempts to communicate functionally. Much like how "brutalist" Web design has nothing to do with the Brutalist architecture movement.
by reliabilityguy | 2025-09-27 16:10:50+00:00
These reports tend to ignore how fast you can get a specific service or test done. There is plenty of anecdotal data out there that in US you can get CT or MeI the next day, while in many countries in the EU you have to wait months.

I think looking only on the spending per capita tells us nothing about accessibility of service, and its quality. Once you start to consider those things, imo, the whole thing is not as a clear cut as it looks.
by krapp | 2025-09-27 16:10:55+00:00
No, because the point is that not everyone is forced to use the same instance.

When I started on Mastodon I created an account for each instance I wanted to post to, which was slightly annoying but not much more complicated than signing up for different subreddits. Now I have my own hosted account and follow whomever I like from there. Of course you can follow any account from any account (if the admin hasn't blocked it.)
by dcassett | 2025-09-27 16:11:02+00:00
Have an old Victoreen Geiger counter and have seen some interesting things: - Munich: Chernobyl (obvious high background radiation) - Arizona: Fukushima (noticeably higher background radiation)

Also, my wife had a test requiring an injection of a radioisotope and the meter was moving (many counts per second) when placed within several feet of her. So an EDC motive might be to monitor whether a colleague got such an injection and decided to come to the workplace.
by hshdhdhj4444 | 2025-09-27 16:11:55+00:00
This article doesn’t really explain it, but Eric Schmidt in this article explains what the concern is.

I’m not sure about the legitimacy of these claims but trying to clarify what some people are concerned about with the US’s vs China’s approach

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/tech/25/09/47859358/us-coul...
by teaearlgraycold | 2025-09-27 16:12:22+00:00
> When is the last time you laughed so hard with friends you couldn't breathe?

2 weeks ago in Oaxaca with some friends. We were at dinner and one (a guy) mentioned the Mormon purity defying practice of soaking which sparked confusion from the other (a girl). So he explained it in Mandarin so the others in the restaurant wouldn’t understand. It’s not a language I speak but watching her face told me everything I needed to know.
by Telemakhos | 2025-09-27 16:12:36+00:00
Port 25 is insecure and unencrypted; EU doesn't even need ChatControl to hoover up that data, and you'd better believe anything going through an airport wifi router unencrypted is being hoovered by someone no matter what jurisdiction you're in. Apple mail prefers 587 for secure SMTP and 993 for secure IMAP.

People were (wisely) blocking port 25 twenty years ago.
by xorcist | 2025-09-27 16:13:22+00:00
The Tux penguin was suggested as the unofficial logo for the 2.0 release of Linux, which had SMP support and was a big deal. It half-jokingly received Linus' blessing and everyone has used it since.

It's easy to see why, it is an instant classic, very cute, and works in different situations and at different scales. Larry Ewing who drew the picture, a sysadmin and not a professional illustrator, still has a web page up describing it: https://isc.tamu.edu/~lewing/linux/

Before that there were many logos but the platypus one was probably the most used. Walnut Creek, who put out CDROMs with shareware and freeware, used to publish the popular Linux distributions too and they needed something for their covers and used it.

Slackware kept using it for a long time. I believe the idea was that Linux, too, looks like it was put together by disparate parts. Web pages back in 1996 was mostly textual and pictures were used sparingly so the use case was mostly books and CDROM covers. There is a certain cuteness to it and it did look good on T-shirts.
by alephnerd | 2025-09-27 16:13:25+00:00
1. Ime, Power generation isn't a major blocker and my peers in the DC space are seeing a decreasing interest in funding new capex expansion because there is a bit of a worry of a Telco Bubble 2.0 arising.

2. Robotics should not be bundled with LLMs, but it is absolutely an AI/ML subfield - and in fact, the kind of subfield that is the best example of AI/ML having tangible real world impact. Autonomous UAS was a sci-fi concept 20 years ago, but is an engineering problem that has become a reality today.
by Dilettante_ | 2025-09-27 16:13:30+00:00
>Well, here's the thing not enough people talk about: we're giving these tools god-mode permissions. Tools built by people we've never met. People we have zero way to vet. And our AI assistants? We just... trust them. Completely.

I keep seeing this pattern in articles: "Did you know that if you point the gun at your foot and pull the trigger, yOu ShOoT yOuRsElF iN tHe FoOt??!? I couldn't believe it myself!! What a discovery!!1!"

Are people really this oblivious or are these articles written about non-issues just to have written 'content'?
by aleph_minus_one | 2025-09-27 16:13:43+00:00
> Windows is actually excellent at maintain backwards compatibility.

Rather: Windows is actually excellent at maintain backwards compatibility for binary programs.

There exist lots of other backwards-compatibility topics like

- being backwards-compatible in the user interface (in a business setting, ensuring that the business-critical applications still run is a problem of the IT, but if the user interface changes, people will complain. I just say "Windows 8" or "Office ribbons" (when they were introduced)). I would for example claim that very specifically for the shell interface, the GNU/Linux crowd cares a lot more about user-interface backwards compatibility than what Microsoft does.

- being backwards-compatible in the hardware requirements (i.e. "will it still run on an old computer"). I just want to mention the drama around Windows 11 because it doesn't run on still actively used hardware so that Microsoft cannot force the update on all Windows 10 users, but on the other hand wants to terminate the support for Windows 10.
by gottorf | 2025-09-27 16:13:53+00:00
> a sovereign nation

A sovereign nation in name only, who cannot adequately protect its people against disease without Uncle Sam's backstop.

> Americans don't want to cause the death of other people

Your concept of causation here is tortured. Americans are not spraying Ebola from airplanes. Can you equally say that you caused the death of a beggar who you passed by without sparing a dollar?
by southernplaces7 | 2025-09-27 16:13:56+00:00
First, I'm not an American nor do I live in the USA. My mentioning the 1st amendment is because it's the best known example of free speech protection enshrined in the constitutional law of a country.

Secondly, your logic is well off. I never said the 1st or any similar sort of legal protection for free speech is a guaranteed tool against bad government, repression and censorship. Instead it's ONE tool against these things, and better than its complete absence.

Other efforts still matter and in the U.S, we'll just have to see how they pan out, or not. That still doesn't mean that the 1st or any equivalent to it is irrelevant.

By your apparent reasoning, it's worthless because it doesn't guarantee results and that's sort of like having a fireman throw away their fire axe because it's not a sure fix against a house burning down.
by MrDarcy | 2025-09-27 16:13:59+00:00
Disagree. I run Ceph in Proxmox and have for years on a small cluster of 3 used R620 servers without any SSDs.

It’s just worked. I’ve lost two of the machines due to memory failures at two different points in time and the k8s clusters sitting on top didn’t fail, even the Postgres databases running with cnpg remained ready and available during both hardware failures.
by analog31 | 2025-09-27 16:14:36+00:00
I anticipated this moment. ;-)

It was at a time of extremely rapid development of laser technology, where you built your own lasers to be at the cutting edge, which meant optics, electronics, and in my case, computer control plus data collection. I developed a method of increasing the signal-to-noise for a class of spectroscopy measurements by a factor of roughly 1000. This opened up a number of possible experiments involving otherwise weak effects.

My experiment produced some token physics results, but the method that I developed was really the point of it. A couple other labs used my setup, substituting more modern lasers as they became available. Meanwhile, I went into industry, and still work on measurement instrumentation today.
by evanjrowley | 2025-09-27 16:14:37+00:00
> Equally disturbing is the security risk posed by the presence of such a large number of senior national security officials in one place.

>The only good thing about the summons is that word of it has been released — perhaps leaked — several days in advance.

What? That's a completely backwards take. The likelihood and impact of any risk here is made worse by the fact that this has been leaked.
by camel_Snake | 2025-09-27 16:14:51+00:00
yep. This feels like a feature to me, not a bug. As a mostly reader/follower on these platforms I'm surprised when others compare their engagement metrics, rather than the quality of the engagement on these platforms. Obviously their goals and incentives are different than mine, but the more time I spend on the internet the more I value the smaller communities due to the correlation with quality and topical focus.
by jmyeet | 2025-09-27 16:14:52+00:00
I really wish there was a simple solution for streaming audio in a stereo like box. And no, Sonos isn’t it. Neither are the “smart” speakers.

I have several frustrations with Sonos. Just the other day I was trying to setup a 10+ year old Sonos. Doesn’t work with the latest software. So I have to download a different controller. Couldn’t get it to work.

This isn’t something that should deprecate that quickly. Nest does the same thing.

Almost every “smart” appliance has a terrible network stack too. Like my washing machine can get an address on a mobile hotspot but not on my home network for some reason. And the errors are generic and useless.

We should be able to use Bluetooth or NFC or similar to configure the devices seamlessly by now.

Back to Sonos, I used to stream Internet radio. Every now and again it would drop out and I’d have to hit the power button. Why? It should be fault tolerant enough to do this on its own.

Interesting things like Spotify always seemed way harder than they should be.

As for smart speakers, thanks but no thanks. I just don’t want an always on cloud-connected microphone in my house.

So I just end up using my phone and a Bluetooth speaker. I wish there was something better.
by oasisbob | 2025-09-27 16:15:19+00:00
That's not a popular opinion to express these days.

If you point out the excessive length, the rhetorical flaws, and the obvious idiomatic tics of AI writing people don't tend to want to hear it.

When authors had to do the work, you'd notice your article approaching 1900 words and feel the natural need to cut redundant platitudes like this:

> The postmark-mcp backdoor isn't just about one malicious developer or 1,500 weekly compromised installations. It's a warning shot about the MCP ecosystem itself.

An AI feels no such need, and will happily drag their readers through a tiresome circuitous journey.
by layer8 | 2025-09-27 16:15:26+00:00
Just to be precise, the bug isn’t about invalid use of an API. The software uses uninitialized values on the stack, which under older Windows versions happen to be preserved from earlier calls to the same application-level function, despite intermediate calls to other functions, which happen to also involve Windows API calls. In newer Windows versions, these latter functions happen to use more stack space, leading to the old values not being preserved on the stack anymore.

I won’t argue about your other point, as there are arguments either way. I just don’t think this particular example makes a good case, and I suspect that it wouldn’t have been made if the full workings of the bug had been properly understood.