MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ath3nd | 2025-09-14 22:24:50+00:00
With AI everyone is a net loser.

People using it get dumber.

What is being produced is slop and discardable poc-like trash

The environmental costs of building and training LLMs are huge. That compute and water could have been useful for something.

Even the companies building and peddling AI are losers. They are not profitable, need constant billions of dollars of financial help to even syay afloat and pay their compute depth.

The worst part is that even bigger losers will be the general population. Not only are our kids gonna be dumber than us thanks to never having to think for themselved, but our pensions are tied to the stock market that will inevitably collapse when the realization that the top 30% of companies in terms of value are just dominoes waiting to collapse.

But the biggest loser of all is Elon Musk. Just because of who he is.
by skissane | 2025-09-14 22:25:08+00:00
Research suggests there is a big difference between how children experience divorce between high-functioning and low-functioning families - children from high-functioning families often experience parental divorce as traumatic, children from low-functioning families often experience it as a relief from ongoing traumatisation

Even within the same family, both divorce and dysfunction can be experienced very differently due to differences in each child’s individual psychology and also family dynamics (sometimes one child is made to bear the brunt of the dysfunction much more than the others-the “black sheep” versus the “golden child”)
by Analemma_ | 2025-09-14 22:25:12+00:00
Sure, but by that time you've IPO'd and dumped the bag on the public, founders and seed-round investors make bank and are long gone by then.

I'm only half-joking: personally I'll be looking very closely at the IPO prospectus of any company founded in/after 2024 or so, to know how much vibe coding risk I can expect in its long-term prospects.
by dgrin91 | 2025-09-14 22:25:17+00:00
(not my views, playing devils advocate)

PE strives to make things more efficient from a capital point of view. Business foois making $X in profit, and the PE firm's analysis says the can make X+Y dollars with some changes. This is 'better' because now the capital usage is more efficient and more can be spent in other places - new products, new jobs, new businesses, returns to investors, etc. And of course returns to the PE firm.

In principle an efficient economy is important on a macro scale - if all the business are stuck in how they were doing things 30 years ago then we would have reduced innovation and ultimately less jobs.

In practice there is of course a lot of money that flows back into the PE boss's pockets and.... thats it.
by rodarima | 2025-09-14 22:25:38+00:00
Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure if I understand the misdiagnosis part. I think that complex free software reduces the ability from independent groups to modify it, so forcing it to be small ensures it remains easy to modify.

Chromium is complex because they indeed solve a complex problem, and I don't think there is much room for a simpler software solution to implement the current web. So the problem is not the implementation, but the choice of what is being implemented. But I'm not sure how this conflicts with the above argument to preserve the ability to modify the software.

My main objective is to make sure that this problem doesn't happen in Dillo, which necessarily means we need to sacrifice many features. A benefit from using source size is that is easy to measure (we do it in the CI) so we avoid a subjective metric.
by felurx | 2025-09-14 22:25:46+00:00
As described in the README, the combination of root access and locking the bootloader has the caveat that it's easy to brick your boot partition by accidentally making changes to it. That causes the signature check to fail, and then you have to unlock the bootloader and wipe all your data to re-flash it.

I don't know if there's any good solution to this, since all this seems to be necessary for the security model.

EDIT: Wait, isn't this what A/B partitions are for? (ie, you can brick one partition and still boot from the other) Also, shouldn't it be possible to flash an image signed with the correct keys without unlocking the bootloader and wiping the user data?
by heavyset_go | 2025-09-14 22:25:56+00:00
> I always think about it from the point of view of what would happen if I want to do extended travel. Which method minimizes risk around something going wrong.

This actually happened to me. Spent two months on the other side of the planet. When I landed I realized I didn't pack my contacts. I just wore the same pair the whole time and was fine.
by withinboredom | 2025-09-14 22:26:04+00:00
Yes, but that’s just time traveling, IIRC. With actual time travel queries you can see what changed between T1 and T2, like “show me all users that changed their email address last month” or “of the products that changed prices, how much did they change by” etc.

You can build all of that on top of simple time travel, but there was a lot of research on how to bake it into the SQL language. IIRC, a lot of it was proposed for the SQL standard but it was too niche or something. It’s been over half a decade since I was in that space.
by bapak | 2025-09-14 22:26:06+00:00
Hate to see this thinking, even more so on HN.

1. So what? Are you the kind of guy who wants "quality tourists" and then cries when tourism indicators are down several months in a row?

2. Whose fault is that? Give me a path to residency and I'll happily file taxes there. No one wants to play this game and be treated as a second class citizen.

Also if your visa allows back-to-back entries that's exactly what I'll do. Nowhere does it say that there's a limit, therefore it's not "abuse".

FWIW I really wish I could open shop in Thailand, pay taxes there from my online business and gain visa/residency through it, do it you think it's possible/easy? Nope. Roadblocks at every step.

3. WTF do you want exactly? I'm injecting $500/mo in Thailand, do you prefer 0? This line of thinking is insane.

Anyway $500/mo in Thailand nowadays is basically impossible unless you live in a shack or in the sticks.
by sdenton4 | 2025-09-14 22:26:15+00:00
The "willing to maintain your work" forever is the crux here - the open-source contributor is doing some amount of work to bring their contribution in line with the expectations of the repository, but it's up to the repository's maintainers to decide if they want to take on the work of maintaining that contribution forever. And that asymmetry exactly what TFA is about.

If there's great features missing form a library which are out of scope for the library, you have options - fork it, make a new library depending on the other one, launch a new linux distribution, and so on. These options require taking on the long-term work that the other library is saying (implicitly) that they don't want to do.

Libraries /should/ be tightly scoped and think hard about serving broad use-cases with simple API's: Otherwise maintenance, documentation, and discoverability of features become nightmares. It's also completely OK for composition to happen, as new libraries serve new sets of features for their own specific use cases, with dependencies on existing work. It's an ecosystem! It's ok!
by casey2 | 2025-09-14 22:27:31+00:00
You could also "solve" these problems by cutting every social service. That's the only reason H1-Bs are willing to work for less, because their country doesn't invest nearly as much into them.

People seem to have a moral problem with cutting social services, I wonder why this doesn't go both ways when hiring foreign nationals who can only work because their country doesn't.

They don't even have to be foreign red states have been supplying silicon valley with cheap labor for decades. If you want the pure solution you would have to block hiring from these states too, not just H1B. Do you really want to exploit someone who was taught that the earth is 6000 years old and will also have to uproot their live when they are fired?

You can try to classify underprivileged workers and scale compensation based on their class, but any mistakes would lead to unfair wages. The real solution is to increase the standard of living in developing countries and decrease the standard of living in advanced countries starting with relatively wealthy people. Your solution is just a weird soft ban that implicitly buys into the propaganda that there are genius H1B workers when we all know why companies hire them.
by tzs | 2025-09-14 22:28:01+00:00
> We need to be investing in solutions that could actually work, like stratospheric aerosol injection

The problem with aerosol injection is that it doesn't actually lower CO2 levels. It just adds a cooling effect that can counter the CO2 warming effect. The aerosols don't stay in the stratosphere long so you need to be regularly injecting more.

If you stop those regular injections the warming quickly comes back.

If we have a strong plan to reach near net zero CO2 emissions in some given timeframe and we really can stick to it then adding aerosol injections so that we can stop the warming sooner might be OK.

If we don't have that there is a good chance that some large emitters will decide that since the aerosol injections are holding warming at bay there is no reason to not increase emissions as much as they want. Most will acknowledge that we should reduce emissions, but with no immediate consequences they will put it off.

Then in a few decades if something disrupts the regular aerosol injects we could get decades worth of warming over a few months.

That would not be good.
by lbourdages | 2025-09-14 22:28:56+00:00
Have you looked into orthokeratology?

Basically, contact lenses you wear at night (which could perhaps be tolerable for you). Then, your vision stays fine during the day (mostly, it worsens gradually but it's manageable).

I don't use it myself but I have a relative that does and they love it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthokeratology
by aeon_ai | 2025-09-14 22:29:03+00:00
Nietzsche spoke of life at its fullest as an overflow, a strength so abundant it spills into creation, joy, generosity. Christ, too, framed love as something that overflows measure: forgiveness seventy times seven, care that extends to strangers and enemies.

Even the smallest overflow — a kind word, a patient gesture — can ripple outward. One person softens, then another, and soon an entire current of interaction changes course.

In this way, what begins as overflow in one heart can become a tide that lifts many.

It is the way.
by gruez | 2025-09-14 22:29:09+00:00
>- Fixing your housing costs against inflation:

Any sort of serious buy vs rent calculator already takes this into account, for instance the one on nytimes

>- Capital Battery: As I build equity in my home it can become an asset I take loans against to pursue other opportunities.

That feels absolutely insane to me, especially when you consider that by the time you built up significant amounts of equity you'll have significant commitments (eg. college age kids) and/or be close to retirement. Going 3x on S&P500 might be justified when you're a new grad, but not beyond your 30s.

>- Flexibility: Should I need to fiscally downsize I can still move out and rent out. Or rent a portion either via a suite or secondary unit

How is this more flexible than the counterfactual of renting?
by tremon | 2025-09-14 22:29:10+00:00
How would you define "third party" in this case? We now know that the assassin was a follower of Nick Fuentes, acting on the suggestion of Laura Loomer. Both are working with Donald Trump on destabilizing the US. On top of that, the victim itself was also a seditious actor trying to destabilize the US.

In that light, does it really matter what tier party the assassin belonged to? The joint common enemy you allude to is already inside the white house, and as long as that is still up for debate, the country has no future.
by SpicyLemonZest | 2025-09-14 22:29:32+00:00
Again, the problem is that this concept of "shitfest red meat" definitionally excludes anything the Democratic base actually supports. The median Democratic voter doesn't want to ban Christian books or round white people up in camps.

California, for example, is currently pursuing a lawsuit (https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...) seeking to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. That's a controversial position on a high-profile issue whose opponents consider it to be outrageous persecution. Would you say this is an example of "shitfest red meat"? Or do you think that it's just an ordinary lawsuit, because you're not personally outraged by it, because you think California's position is reasonable?
by mkfs | 2025-09-14 22:29:51+00:00
> Some of the terminology used hints at in-group memes from the "groypers"

The OwO thing is furry/gamer speak: https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/OwO

Its use is replete on reddit, and there's even a "Furry OwO" game on Steam. Trying to pass this off as groyper-coded is insulting to one's intelligence and incoherent, being at odds with the anti-fascist rhetoric he also used. (Simultaneously signaling "groyperism" and anti-fascism?)

If you really want to argue he's a "groyper," you'd do better to just admit the "OwO" thing is furry- and trans-coded, and consistent with the anti-fascist slogans, but that it's a false flag to be blamed on trans-furry Antifa types meant to inflame moderate Republicans of the sort Kirk represented to drive them further to the right for the sake of accelerationism. Of course, that would be easier if you weren't also trying to paint Kirk as so extremely rightwing that we ought to breathe a collective sigh of relief that he's gone, as if one of Hitler's top henchmen was just taken out by a partisan.
by quotemstr | 2025-09-14 22:30:01+00:00
> grapevine

The headline is practically a demonic summoning ritual for the naturalistic fallacy. The article is talking about cellulose. We've had cellulose forever. Cellulose is dirt cheap. We are a post-cellulose-scarcity civilization. Extracting it from grapevines ought to be mocked as our century's version of bringing coal to Newcastle.

There's a reason we don't use cellulose packaging for everything and it has nothing to do with grapes.

Hint: moisture exists in the world. Biodegrading in 17 days usually means that it breaks down a lot sooner in conditions we care about.

> Funding for this research was provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.

What useful research could we have funded instead?
by OutOfHere | 2025-09-14 22:30:35+00:00
Its Pro plan is not free for everyone, but it is free for verified students, teachers, and maintainers of popular established open source projects. See https://github.com/features/copilot/plans . I clearly noted in my parent comment the constraint of open source developers. It's not a trial. If you get approved, you get re-evaluated each month.
by ajross | 2025-09-14 22:31:20+00:00
> Buying a Home Isn’t Really an Investment

That's... really not correct. And the section that follows the heading doesn't talk about (or even try to define) "investments" at all.

A home mortgage is a heavily (!) subsidized, very safe, easily-acquired and extremely leveraged investment in an asset class that tends over long terms to grow as well as anything else.

A young professional looking at a putting $100k into stocks or as downpayment on a $500k (!) mortgage is just a no brainer. Fast forward 20 years and the 5x is applied to all the appreciation.

Buy homes, folks. Worry about renting only when you're old and are making the decision as to whether to by your fifth home for cash or to finance and put the money into another asset class. The only time you decide not to is when you know a priori you can't hold the property long enough to cover the purchase overhead.

(That said: there are lots of macroeconomic and environmental reasons to think a culture where everyone should buy a home is a bad thing. But in our culture, everyone should buy a home.)
by rsynnott | 2025-09-14 22:31:57+00:00
Are there at least multiple entrances? Dublin's main station, Connolly, is actually the amalgamation of two stations, one terminal station and one through station, which were originally owned by different companies before the rail system was nationalised. The only entrances are through the terminal station, so to get to the through lines, you need to walk for about 10 minutes through the terminal station (making them mostly pointless; it's usually quicker just to get on/off at the next station, which has a proper entrance).

They are, apparently, _finally_ going to open a new entrance directly to the through lines, but they've been talking about it for years and I'll believe it when I see it.
by cramsession | 2025-09-14 22:32:23+00:00
> People obsess over granite countertops, open floor plans, stainless steel appliances, and walk in closets. These might make you happy but they don’t make you rich.

Money is a means to an end, and being happy is a fine end. I only live once and if I can be happy, well then I've pretty much won. Also you're not going to "get rich" by renting, if (and it's a huge if) you can somehow make renting work in your financial favor compared to buying, it's going to be a tiny bit better. You're not going to 10X your income renting.

He also completely discounts the cost of moving constantly (aka "flexibility"), movers, deposits, furnishings... it's not cheap. Yeah you can move yourself (add in the cost of vehicle to make that happen) but it's going to take time, and time is money.

This is not a well thought out article.
by al_borland | 2025-09-14 22:32:43+00:00
Making that much, I wouldn’t want to put anymore than 25% of my take-home toward rent. That would mean making $312k take-home… after taxes, retirement, etc.

Maybe I’m conservative, but being house poor while making $300k is insane.

I’m thinking someone would need to be pushing $400-500k for household income. That would put them in the top 3%. I don’t get the supply and demand curve on it. Making that much, and renting. It’s an even smaller market than the full 3%.
by theptip | 2025-09-14 22:33:09+00:00
Unfortunately, a bit of a one-sided article.

The most convincing argument for buying housing is that it hedges you from potential large future cost of living increases. If you can’t afford repeated rent increases then the consequences will ripple through your life.

I’ve heard this pithily stated as “you are naturally short housing”.

https://thezikomoletter.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/you-are-nat...

Another newer argument is that if you think inflation could be much higher in the future, then a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is a very attractive instrument; it’s a government-financed option. May as well benefit from it while it lasts. (If rates go down you can just re-fi.)
by 542458 | 2025-09-14 22:33:29+00:00
The argument, which doesn't seem insane, is that this film is useful because it is particularly optically clear and strong, which are not properties I would have expected from cellulose. I agree 17 days is too short, but that seems like an interesting opportunity for future research. I would highlight that the number is 17 days when buried in wet soil, not sitting around on a shelf. Cardboard will break down when buried in wet soil, yet we use it extensively in packaging without issue.
by wavemode | 2025-09-14 22:35:00+00:00
> If you rent you're left with nothing.

Well, no. You're left with the cash you would've spent buying a house.

Whether that's financially better or worse, depends entirely on the mortgage interest, taxes, and maintenance costs of the house, as well as the money you could have earned investing the cash elsewhere, compared to the rent you would have spent over the same time period.
by bitwize | 2025-09-14 22:35:44+00:00
Brazil's senate has already approved a bill, PL 2628, which is broadly similar to the UK's Online Safety Act, but also requires sistemas operacionais de terminais ("terminal operating systems") to implement age checks in a secure, auditable fashion.

The days where you could run whatever OS you want on hardware you own will soon be over. And you know what? There's not a damn thing any of us can do, so may as well just buy Apple gear.
by mh- | 2025-09-14 22:36:02+00:00
> “It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother. These “perfect little cookies” once made the rounds at bake sales, Christmas cookie exchanges, and birthdays.

> a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, two eggs, and 1/3 cup neutral oil

I realize it's not the point of the story, but this is like that Friends episode[0] where Phoebe finds out her grandmother's secret cookie recipe was just Nestle Tollhouse.

[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0583536/
by quotemstr | 2025-09-14 22:36:40+00:00
We don't have a good mechanism for waterproofing cellulose without various complicated industrial processes. Finding a way to do that would be interesting research.

But anything involving grapeviles is just ecomasturbation.

Actually, no, it's worse, because it robs attention and funding from real problems. Plastic pollution isn't predominately plastic bags or (plastic straws for that matter) that seem important because the sort of person who writes articles on a laptop for online publication encounters them daily and doesn't see the stream of untreated industrial waste mostly from the big rivers in Asia.

IMHO, the best investment in mitigation of plastic pollution would be automatic cleanup mechanisms, especially for microplastics in the ocean.
by barrkel | 2025-09-14 22:36:58+00:00
I find myself bimodal, when comparing my "speed" to others in social situations.

If there's something that's novel to me, I feel like I'm slower than the average bear. Not massively slower, but with a desire to take the material aside and spend some time alone with it.

But if it's my home ground, if I've been living inside it, I find few people can keep up with me.

At least part of it is that social interaction takes a bit more processing power. I know I get a bit autistic and info dumpy when I know the ground, and that relieves the social pressure (though I know it costs me points too).
by theoa | 2025-09-14 22:37:05+00:00
>"Even for those relationships that were negatively strained, over time, the strained relationships mended," she says.

I was 54. my wife called it quits on me.

These days, my former wife and our three daughters are probably as happy and as communicative as we've ever been.

Mutually, putting our children as a high priority helped.
by quotemstr | 2025-09-14 22:38:02+00:00
> grapevine waste is a concern, and why it’s a particularly effective source of cellulose.

We have markets and prices. If cellulose became scarce enough that the cheapest source for it became agricultural waste, we wouldn't need the government to fund research into an extraction process. Industry would be all over it on its own.

State funding for research is there to solve the problem of industry incentives being aligned against foundational, long term research. What we're looking at here isn't anything like that. It's just one more organic extraction process, another entry in a long tradition of such things.
Ask HN: How to craft an effective technical phone screen?
by dsauerbrun | 2025-09-14 22:38:50+00:00
I'm going to work on building out a technical phone screen (ie. Interview before you're invited to a virtual on-site) soon targeted at full stack and backend product software engineers(mid-senior level) and wanted to see what topics/concepts have worked for folks in the past.

I'm also interested in experiences/questions that interviewees had that were enjoyable.

My initial thoughts are that I'm avoiding leetcode type questions and I'm going to try to craft a question based on a hard technical problem I experienced recently.

For example, loading up a bunch of data into memory and optimizing a slow function, then as a second part I would create some space constraints which would require some changes to the way the data is fetched.