MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AdieuToLogic | 2025-09-01 06:45:38+00:00
I don't agree with anesthesia having long-term affects similar to their initial use (excluding any allergic reactions of course).

I will say that I believe when a person experiences significant pain of any kind, it changes their lived experience such that what previously might have been painful may not be as much if the event causing the pain is relatively less. Much like how the high-water mark of a river indicates what a riverbank can withstand.

For example, a person who has never had to use crutches due to injury may see having to park their car a great distance from a store's entrance as being "a pain in the ass" and might complain loudly. Yet that same person who doesn't have the option to drive to the store due to an injury, or if they did would have to use crutches to move about, may very well not care at all where they park once they regain full mobility.

In short, pain is relative and once one "raises the bar" of what is considered painful, that which once qualified as same very well may no longer be so.

Problem is, it takes the memory of "new levels of pain" to make this happen.
by josephg | 2025-09-01 06:45:42+00:00
> Your parents are more likely to be a victim of a phone call scam than malware, even on PC. There is also no guarantee that malware will not slip through cracks of official stores or signatures.

So what? The lack of perfect security is a terrible argument against better security.

For example, lockpicks exist. Is that a reason to stop locking your house? Our TLS ciphers might eventually be broken. Should we throw away TLS and go back to unencrypted HTTP?

I'm not expecting anything to 100% stop all scams. But modern computer security is a joke. We could do an awful lot better than we are today at keeping people safe from this stuff.

> We already had "best of both worlds", especially on mobile OSes - granular permissions per-app were quite good, and on Android until few years ago root was widely available if you needed it as well

Yes. I want something like this on desktop too - but I want to own the signing keys, of course. It seems strange that this is so controversial.
by rowanG077 | 2025-09-01 06:45:53+00:00
Aren't some trees, some fungi, some sharks and some crabs basically exactly that? They are most certainly complex life. Sure you are right heir metabolic profile is very different.

But really the your argument is already shifting to "there is no life ver similar to humans that do it, so it must be impossible" which imo is a much larger stretch then assuming it's possible.
by erulabs | 2025-09-01 06:46:11+00:00
A good read. I only wish I had the intellectual prowess to have something to add.

I will say, once you really digest it, it becomes impossible to look at the crescent moon at night and not immediately triangulate the position of the sun, even though the sun is not visible. Truly internalizing your place on this "floating sphere of rock and water" is as close to a religious experience as I have had.

But I'll never walk on the moon, and I'll never see an earth-rise. I am convinced the moon is a ball of rock, but my mortality and inability to go and see tenders my heart towards those who firmly believe in other 'unconfirmed' ideas, say, that the moon is a bowl of fire or that lightning bolts are Zeus having a go on some poor soul. It makes me sad and afraid in a way the young, strident, physics loving, atheist me in the past could not understand.

> How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

We do owe something to the supernatural, for killing it. I just don't know what. Love? Then again, maybe we owe something to Socrates, for killing him.
by ACS_Solver | 2025-09-01 06:46:31+00:00
Same in Sweden, physical bank branches are rare and even they will often require an appointment. All banking is through bank apps or websites, and you use 2FA extensively. Sweden's digital ID system is called BankID because it was made by banks and, initially, for banking, though now BankID is used extensively for all kinds of government and private services.

That doesn't stop scammers. They also keep getting more sophisticated, often using a combination of social engineering and technical skill, and they keep tricking people into giving them money. So unfortunately, while malware is pretty much a non-factor, scammers still thrive.
by jjav | 2025-09-01 06:47:52+00:00
> Meanwhile, in the real world:

More than one thing can be true at the same time.

Yes, vastly increasing the traffic that is encrypted is a great thing for many reasons.

Simultaneously, it is also true that if a public CA-issued (as opposed to unknown me self signing) certificate is effectively required, that sure provides a handy hammer to shut something down. History tells us that whenever such handy hammers get built, they inevitably get abused.
by b112 | 2025-09-01 06:48:44+00:00
So far in Canada... I must reiterate this, so far, this can and has been fought by one thing. Rural life, and nationalism.

There are plenty of places where mobile phones don't work, especially in the summer when there are leaves on the trees. This means SMS won't really work. So for this path, SMS, the bank has an alternative -- call a number on your account with a voice reading the 2FA code. Thus, landlines or VOIP work here.

When it comes to an app, forcing Canadians to use a phone OS controlled by US companies, still has pushback. An example being, the concept of "A Canadian having to use software from a US company, to identify themselves to a Canadian company" is still a hotspot. Especially with the US wanting to annex us.

So this lock in has not yet occurred.

Really, the phone call to a phone number on your account, not using SMS is as solid a protection, as an app running on a phone controlled by a foreign country's company. It's an alternate path. And it solves the whole 'rural person' access.

Many people living in rural areas don't even bother with a phone type device. Some have Kindles. But by buy a phone, if it doesn't work where you live?

This logic, combined with them closing rural banks, means they have to be quite sensitive here. EG, closing rural banks, then making it difficult to do online banking is political poison for our banks.
by a_bonobo | 2025-09-01 06:49:49+00:00
Few years ago I read 'Between Silk and Cyanide': Britain's Wartime Spies and Saboteurs', the autobiography of Leo Marks who worked in the British Special Operations Executive. He designed cryptography for agents behind enemy lines (thus the title: you could print one time pads on silk, and silk was harder to discover during pat-downs than paper).

Lots of interesting stories in there, including when he suspected that Germans had captured all of their Dutch spies and were transmitting fake messages: real agents made mistakes when encoding due to stress, the Germans' fake encodings were all perfect.
by saratsai | 2025-09-01 06:50:36+00:00
We’re sharing 20 invitation codes below. You’re welcome to use them freely.

RQlCXO1a eIQ5afyn 3sO7JvwA eMuBBk5C OYxesQMV m5LYqCZS CSNHRtI6 N5O2GkiE 2m4J1lZM q6OnJWpg 2Vaks1jg T3xpZLr7 anCzy3JB XobNXVPV wPYsgOy7 5mg5ungq I7WsmkVN 3xeig7Fe jmmQRS75 uZErSECt
by WalterBright | 2025-09-01 06:51:11+00:00
That was a giant mistake on C++'s part, as you cannot do this:

static if (feature) { int bar() { betty(); }} ... lots of code ... static if (feature) bar();

Forcing a new scope cuts the utility of it about in half, and there's no way around it. But if you need a scope with D's static if:

static if (expression) {{ int x; foo(x); }}

the extra { } will do it. But, as it turns out, this is rarely desirable.
by josephg | 2025-09-01 06:52:56+00:00
> The browser is just a much easier mental model, especially that I can install an ad blocker on it to make them safer, which I can't on mobile apps.

I'd like that security model to be the default for desktop apps on my computer as well. Its weird that davinci resolve and spotify and all the rest have full access to look through all my files.

> It never happened once with my parents in 15 years of running Ubuntu.

Probably just because so few regular people use ubuntu, scammers & malware authors don't bother targeting it. Still good for your parents though!
by mkbkn | 2025-09-01 06:53:04+00:00
It boils down to unconscious habits/patterns.

What worked for me was to install an Android app called Regain. It asks for how much time will you use while opening an app, like 5 minutes, 1 minute or 3 minutes or maximum time in a session. And then I also used another app called Farhan. So it gives you a reminder and a pop-up that you have scrolled something for like continuous 5 minutes or 10 minutes. You can set the timer. Both of these apps made me change my habits and now I don't have that much urge even without these apps.

I have uninstalled these apps. But I can now choose not to play anything on YouTube or Reddit or Telegram. And I also like I keep YouTube history off so it doesn't show me anything like that. And I try to use third-party YouTube apps like FreeTube. So that doesn't show suggestions, recommendations if you like. That can also block certain channels, shorts also. And I try to use every new browser wherever possible. That helps.

On laptop, I use News Feed Eradicator and Leechblock. You just have to use them to break your unproductive habits, that you can uninstall them.

I was heavily addicted to Twitter and Reddit. Not anymore.
by jjav | 2025-09-01 06:53:40+00:00
> You can't fly anonymously and, as far back as I can remember, never could.

You're young then. Flying anonymously was the norm. You could go to any travel agency and buy tickets cash. They had a name on it but it didn't matter, put any random name. Or have someone else buy it and give you the ticket, that was fine too.

Getting past security was back then only about actual security (screening for weapons). You did not need a ticket nor an ID of any kind. Then board the flight with that ticket you had from wherever.
by npteljes | 2025-09-01 06:54:07+00:00
I'd still consider it hoarding.

Depending on how old they are, phones have diminishing network compatibility, and cheap, dumb devices are in production still, and will be for the indefinite future. So it's not like they are a resource that the world has run out of.

Old laptops age better, but it's not like anyone restricts software on laptops, or will ever be able.
by brabel | 2025-09-01 06:56:15+00:00
> Anyway my point is that "reproduction" doesn't create whole new life, it's just a continuation.

Then you're just arguing that we're already immortal, after all we reproduce, but I don't think that's what we're talking about when we talk about longevity. Longevity is the continued existence of a particular being, not its continuation through descendants.
by Daviey | 2025-09-01 06:56:20+00:00
It reminds me of when the UK Prime Minister sent a letter to all 30 milliom households during the first Covid lockdown.

Printing and postage cost was about £5.8 million. At the time, I thought it was a waste of taxpayers’ money. A letter wouldn’t change anyone’s behaviour, least of all not mine or anyone I knew.

But the economics told a different story. The average cost of treating a Covid patient in intensive care ran to tens of thousands of pounds. The UK Treasury values preventing a single death at around £2 million (their official Value of a Prevented Fatality). That means if the letter nudged just three people into behaviour that prevented their deaths, it would have paid for itself. Three deaths, out of 30 million households.

In reality, the effect was likely far larger. If only 0.1% of households (30,000 families) changed their behaviour even slightly, whether through better handwashing, reduced contact, or staying home when symptomatic, those small actions would multiply during an exponential outbreak. The result could easily be hundreds of lives saved and millions in healthcare costs avoided.

Seen in that light, £5.8 million wasn’t wasteful at all. It was one of the smarteer investments of the pandemic.

What I dismissed as wasteful and pointless, turned out to be a great example of how what appears to be a large upfront cost can deliver returns that massively outweigh the initial outlay.

I changed my view and admitted I was wrong.
by YmiYugy | 2025-09-01 06:56:43+00:00
I like the idea of course, but such legislation would also be very disruptive, because it affects the entire supply chain. Every maker of any gadget, be it random white label android smartphone, set top box or smart home camera would have to negotiate with all their component suppliers to obtain full documentation instead of just driver and firmware blob. So would these suppliers with their suppliers. For mor niche components it seems plausible that no proper hardware spec exists and it’s instead through a combination of hardware descriptor languages, the driver code and good old tribal knowledge. Forcing Google and Apple to allow side loading on their OSs just requires them to flip a switch. I think there are also compelling reasons why smartphones are special. It’s a duopoly and most people have got to have one to properly participate in modern society.
by WalterBright | 2025-09-01 06:56:58+00:00
And it doesn't in D. We call such modules ".di files", which consist only of declarations.

D does not require names in global scope to be declared lexically before they are used. C++ only does this for class/struct scopes. For example:

int bar() { foo(); } int foo() { bar(); }

compiles and runs (and runs, and runs, and runs!!!).
by josephg | 2025-09-01 06:57:55+00:00
> Everything you have suggested in this post takes away freedom. There is no solution that doesn't take away freedom / your control. There is always a trade off.

Huh? In what way does application sandboxing take away my freedom? What can I do today that I can't do with a sandbox-everything-by-default model?

In my mind, it gives me (the user) more freedom because I can run any program I want without fear.

> I run Discord/Slack in Flatpak. Out of the box the folders and clipboard permissions are restricted. Only the ~/Downloads folder on my PC is accessible to Discord/Slack. You can't drag and drop things into these apps. Which makes sharing content a PITA.

Cool! Yeah this is the sort of thing I want to see more of. The drag & drop problem is technically solvable - it just sounds like they haven't solved it yet. (Capabilities would be a great solution for this.. just sayin!)
by wkat4242 | 2025-09-01 06:58:03+00:00
Hmm I had the HTC Touch Pro 2 and it was the worst phone I ever had in my life. It was given me by work, I didn't pick it. It ran a customised version of Windows CE with a lot of super fake glossy overlays that slowed it down to an absolute crawl, and the keyboard was so tough and heavy that it was a nightmare to use. It was really a piece of shit. It also had a really horrible resistive touch screen (one of those with a plastic layer over it)

Maybe they made good stuff too but that put me off HTC forever.
by fsflover | 2025-09-01 06:58:35+00:00
> How is that different from Twitter, Facebook or any other centralized service?

1. You can make your own server federating with anyone you want. This achieves your goal, doesn't it? And, like everything, it has its cost.

2. You can freely move between the islands. Keeping the essentials like followers, known structure of the system. This forces the servers to compete and prevents creation of walled gardens and enshittification like with Twitter and Facebook.

Same effects work in the Internet itself, which made it survive to a large degree free to this day. Facebook and Twitter, as you noticed are those similar islands. Mastodon achieves a similar, decentralized structure on a lower level, increasing the resilience further and making it easier to move between the islands and create your own one.

Decentralization obviously doesn't on its own protect anything from the governments, but it helps.
Ask HN: Does show HN has spam filter? because our post never showed up
by kathir05 | 2025-09-01 06:58:41+00:00
Recently we went live with our product https://huntyourtribe.com

Our platform is a very new and novel approach towards professional networking. Our Text message as well didn't have any marketing content. Just "Why", "What", "Who" we built this for

We submitted it to HN but it seems this is not listed for the public and not sure where it stands. HN is a very knowledge provoking platform and we want to contribute to your oxygen. Kindly guide us if we are missing something. No reply from hn@ycombinator.com
by sdwolfz | 2025-09-01 06:58:48+00:00
Congratulations on your release!

Just a few questions:

1. I've never felt the need to use anything else apart from ruby's Net::HTTP, while I see every project I've worked on in the past add in stuff like faraday or httparty for doing JSON REST calls. Apart for the convenience aspect of it in terms of lines of code, is there any advantage for me to use your gem in such cases? (for example performance?)

2. I'm confused as to why you would need to do something special for fibre aware scheduling. Is it the case that ruby considers anything traversing into C world as "CPU bound" even when it sits idle and you need to instruct it otherwise?

3. How does it behave with ractors? I mean does it work called inside a ractor or when I'm initialising a "client" object in the main body, then trying to pass it to many ractors for them to use it in parallel. Prior to ruby 3.4 I've had issues even trying to use `pp` inside a ractor so I'm not expecting miracles, just curious how things are progressing in that area.
by fnordpiglet | 2025-09-01 06:59:05+00:00
This is the sign of seniority IMO. First you learn to write code. Then you learn to write code that can be read. Then you learn to modify code. Then you learn to read other people’s code. Then you learn to modify other people’s code. Then you learn to own code regardless of who reads or writes it.

At this point in my career 35 years in I find reading and writing code whether I wrote it or other did irrelevant. Bad or good code, it’s all the same. By far the most effective work I do involves reading a lot of complex code written by many people over many years and seeing the exact one line to change or improve.

I find LLM assisted coding very similar frankly. I’ve finished maybe 20 projects or more on the last seven months on my own time that I never would have been able to do in my lifetime for want of free time to learn minutia in stuff I am not familiar with. The parts it get hung up on I’m able with quick inspection to recognize and unwedge it, just like any junior engineer. The junior engineers also are often much better versed in XYZ library than I am.
by stephen_g | 2025-09-01 06:59:12+00:00
Usually a competently designed USB-C input should have over-voltage protection and short-to-VBUS protection for over 20V (25-28V). Putting out any voltage before detecting a sink is breaking the standard, but a charger putting out over 20V without any PD negotiation would be absurdly wrong and dangerous...

So there are non-compliant plugs, but if your device breaks just because it sees a regular PD VBUS voltage (5-20V) then it means that it was designed badly - either through ineptitude or foolish cost saving.
by Nevermark | 2025-09-01 06:59:34+00:00
> I think I understand better though what your main point is: that whatever physical theories or models we might have, the unconstructible reals won't be an essential part of it,

Yes, that is a good way to put it.

Unconstructible reals are a major and interesting "what if". What if there were numbers that had no finite relation to other numbers?

It is a great idea, from a mathematical boundary pushing way. So abstract we can never do anything not abstract with it!

> even if we have some physical theory or model whose standard formulation might be committed to unconstructable reals, we could always reformulate it into a predictively equivalent model which doesn't have this commitment. Is that fair?

But unconstructible structures can never be reformulated as constructible by definition. That would mean they were constructible.

We can never define a specific unconstructible real.

But anyone who manages to create an interesting systems theory that uses them, with dynamics that constructible math can't match, would have created a major work of mathematical art!
by fragmede | 2025-09-01 07:00:17+00:00
It's fair to point out that I didn't define exactly what we're optimizing for, but I can have the LLM generate assembly if I ask. It'll be faster than python, at the expense of readability, but if we're no longer writing code, then why not straight up use assembly? ARM vs x86 becomes an issue, but are there other reasons not to use assembly?
by adithyassekhar | 2025-09-01 07:00:53+00:00
I should make it clear I'm not saying substack was morally in the right here. Nor do I side with apple in any way. I'm pointing the obvious.

Honestly, I just can't see this as the little guy vs the corpo image this post is trying to make. Just two capitalistic ideas fighting one another. The people writing on here must have better paying jobs for their livelihood. The authors are treating their blogs as business which turns off the part of my brain with human emotional concerns.

Life isn't binary, but our choices often are.
by ChaitanyaSai | 2025-09-01 07:01:01+00:00
Yup, it's the short sentence cadence.

"And yet, hours before surgery, with death still in the room, I didn’t feel fear. I felt something quieter. Stranger. I felt connected. To her eyes. To my breath. To the weight of my feet against the floor. To the wind brushing the window."

The usage of these short sentences (which, people do use, but sparingly) is a good marker. My hunch is this is because of how they call attention to themselves and are rewarded by human RLHF participants. I don't know if incentives including spending time on essays like this but if they don't and the rater is trying to do a speed-read, these stand out.

Have written about other markers here: https://saigaddam.medium.com/it-isnt-just-x-it-s-y-54cb403d6...

One along those lines: "Not just that we think. But that we feel. That we can marvel. That we can sit in silence across from someone we love and feel time slow down and become something."
by brabel | 2025-09-01 07:01:20+00:00
> it is physically possible to extend the lifespan of an existing organism.

This is not at all guaranteed until we actually manage to do it. And that's exactly what we're discussing, you can't just say "but it must be possible". There's no rule of the universe that says it should, and given life has been around for 4 billion years and there's no single species (specially animals which is what we really should consider here if we're talking about human lifespan) that manages to live for more than a few hundred years, I think that's strong evidence that life is approaching a fundamental limit here. Someone else said "maybe that's enough" - well, why?? Maybe 100 years is already quite enough then??