MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by whatevertrevor | 2025-09-29 01:22:30+00:00
Imo the distinction is very important in this context because there's a lot of technophobia and cynicism in general discourse, to the point where new developments in technology are often immediately met with extremely pessimistic takes re exploitation.

It's good to remind ourselves from time to time that new developments in technology have both positive and negative potential, and how they're applied is largely due to sociological factors. When we dissociate the issues with "technology" we allow ourselves to see the underlying issues causing potential misuse, making progress at solving those problems possible instead of a knee-jerk negative lashback against anything new.
by Nevermark | 2025-09-29 01:22:38+00:00
Very cool!

I created a snake game like this on the Tandy Pocket Computer. [0]

I even managed to create a 20 room sub-set of Zork.

Desperately primitive times, required desperate game compression measures.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_Pocket_Computer
by rogerrogerr | 2025-09-29 01:23:26+00:00
> “So somewhere along the 50-odd years of my life, I breathed something in, and it landed on one of my lung cells. That caused a change in the DNA and the genetic material in that cell, and it became a cancer,”

This is the thing that would bother me the most, knowing that in all likelihood there was some innocuous thing I did or didn’t do that had such a huge butterfly effect. You can’t think that way very much or you’ll go crazy; you can’t walk through life trying to dodge invisible particles. Still a mind fuck.
by gruez | 2025-09-29 01:24:31+00:00
>Look, you chose to run with a figure that was nonsense at face value just because it suited your narrative. You then defended the figure and you made up a narrative about how executives should be believed over random commenters, which was - at best - a strawman. You then keep digging yourself into ever deeper holes without simply coming out and saying that you were wrong to believe the initial figure without any critical thought. The longer you keep this up the more silly you look.

I suggest you read over the comment chain more carefully and note the authors. I jumped in at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45405359 and was specifically objecting to the part of the comment that was claiming the executive was lying with no evidence. I made no such claims or arguments based on the 7% figure.
by monkeycantype | 2025-09-29 01:24:43+00:00
as I dabble with neural networks, I keep having these moments where i wonder, is this what I am? (a neural net) And it has begun to make we wonder in an entirely unscientific manner, whether a large part of what notice as neurodivergence, is not the core divergence from 'typical', but something emergent from that difference, that we are noticing is that we are interacting with a mind that has trained with an uncommon loss function, on different features of reality. There is only some much space in one head and so depending on what apsects of reality we are drawn to poetry,football,horseriding,music,art,software,cooking,farming,other people we end up very different people
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-09-29 01:26:20+00:00
This isn’t news. The alarm bells have been clanging away for decades. One of the scariest, is drug-resistant TB. I understand there’s also drug-resistant leprosy, but that doesn’t transmit easily.

I’m old enough to remember that penicillin cured almost everything. You started a 10-day course, and felt better in a day and a half.

The problem was that many folks stopped taking it, when they felt better.

These days, American meat is absolutely overflowing with antibiotics. I don’t know if there’s any kind of serious effort to address that.
by bigbadfeline | 2025-09-29 01:27:03+00:00
> one organization is a profit generating machine and the other is in a debt spiral

You mean, MS is fat, while the government is skinny and feeble? Reminds me of Oscar Wilde who once had the following exchange with a rather overweight businessman at a party:

Big Biz: "Mr. Wilde, you are such a skinny fellow. Looking at you, one would think there was a famine in England."

Oscar Wilde: "And looking at you, one would think that you were the cause of it."

I mean, between MS and the gov, we need to be clear about who's the owner and who's dog and who's feeding whom? And why is there a chewed up hand in this story? Important questions.
by whywhywhywhy | 2025-09-29 01:28:53+00:00
Turn it up to hear the dialogue, then rapidly turn it down when music, explosion, just basic background noise is often the volume that would annoy your neighbors, then turn it up again to hear the dialog.

Dunno if it's because it's all mixed for cinema or 5.1 and then badly turned to stereo but something they're doing is trash for 99% of those watching.
by RainyDayTmrw | 2025-09-29 01:28:58+00:00
As this is a tech forum, I expect that the name that stands out is Radio Shack, and I do agree that that story is tragic. For me, as a long time New Yorker, the other name that stands out is Modell's. They were, for quite a long time, a fixture in New York City and beyond. Even for us not sports inclined, we still knew Modell's as a reliable retailer of sneakers throughout the years. Arguably, their Covid era bankruptcy was already the end, and this was just private equity puppeting the corpse. Nevertheless, it's a sad and nostalgic story.
by pcthrowaway | 2025-09-29 01:29:42+00:00
The alien is lounging on the beach. You actually can get to the UFO (you can also see it in the preview before you hit "begin"). Cross the wooden bridge by the red cliff house, then turn right to face the stilts holding up the house. Walk a few meters towards the water but don't walk into the water. Follow the waterline on your right, towards a tree. Pass the tree to where you'll find a "path" spiraling up and to the left around a larger rock. You'll have to make a few jumps to wind your way up the rock, then you'll be at the UFO
by AngryData | 2025-09-29 01:31:30+00:00
You can reduce the number of rolls you make for cancer in life, but I think at the end of the day you just have to accept that you are still always making some rolls and eventually you are going to lose. Just the fact that we live in an oxygen environment gives us some small level of cancers even if we could otherwise eliminate all other environmental factors and replication errors.
by nextaccountic | 2025-09-29 01:32:05+00:00
> Are you sure you don't have it reversed? Companies would be quite happy if they could enter into some sort of no advertising pact so they don't have to spend any money on ads at all.

That's why it's a local optimum. Any company that try to unilaterally leave advertising will be punished. The global optimum would be no advertising at all, of course.

Anyway the people are already fighting back. I block ads everywhere, at least.
by RhysU | 2025-09-29 01:32:15+00:00
Suppose you buy bread, meat, and cheese and pay sales tax for each of them. You make a sandwich. You eat the sandwich.

Do you now owe the government the difference in sales tax on the market price of a pre-assembled sandwich versus on the market price of the individual bread, meat, and cheese?

Is it "fair" to owe the government the incremental sandwich sales tax? Should someone who can buy separate bread, meat, and cheese ingredients get such marginal sales tax benefits relative to someone who only can buy pre-made sandwiches? Or does owning the bread, meat, and cheese mean that whatever marginal value you extract from the ingredients' use is fully yours?

Supporting imputed rent seems consistent with supporting my hypothetical sandwich marginal sales tax. It's ridiculous.
by jmull | 2025-09-29 01:32:24+00:00
Left vs. right is the wrong way to think of this.

It’s corruption vs. integrity and justice.

Let’s be on the side of integrity and object to pay-to-play and political pardons, regardless of the party of the administration.

There’s nothing left to be done about Clinton’s pardon, but Trump is president now.

Let’s make him pay a political cost for his corruption.
by cadamsdotcom | 2025-09-29 01:33:38+00:00
China moves so fast that by the time knowledge gets back to the West it’s often outdated. So my info should be checked.

But as I understand it China has been famous for “nail houses” - homes from which the owner refuses to move out, causing all kinds of headaches.

It isn’t a lawless place and the Party / local government doesn’t have carte blanche. There is nuance that’s worth considering before making blanket statements.
by mjr00 | 2025-09-29 01:34:10+00:00
It's factual and objective that billions, if not trillions of lines of Java and Go have been deployed and the language still cannot express "supports the + operator" as a type constraint. In production, non-academic settings, people don't generally write code like that.

Again, this is an esoteric limitation from the perspective of writing code that runs working software, not a programming language theory perspective.
by zamadatix | 2025-09-29 01:35:01+00:00
No worries, I figured you didn't mean anything by it I just didn't want you to end up in a surprise problem one day over something silly.

It always seems niche when talking about examples of stuff that can't be done. Prior to iPadOS 26 people would tell me I just didn't understand what an iPad wasn't supposed to have windowing similar to macOS too, but it was hard to say it wasn't a niche use case when the old way discouraged users who wanted that from using the platform.

I agree Apple doesn't typically target Enterprise directly, but they do support them. They maintain things like MDM support across all products, Apple Business Manager, and AppleCare for Enterprise. The big difference between supporting those kinds of use cases and this is that these enable more Apple products to be sold, while enabling iPadOS to do MacBook like things enables fewer and cheaper devices to be sold. I don't actually expect Apple to go down this path for that reason, but I still wish they would.

The same is still somewhat true of some consumer use cases like games they already own on macOS or peripheral support not in iPadOS, but Apple has given a little over the years in this regard (e.g. allowing 1 external monitor, allowing certain peripherals and dock types, adding decent windowing support). Of course, Apple's goal in this remains to align with what feature set will make them the most money, not what feature set people would use, the two things just align slightly better in the consumer space than the enterprise space.

But a person could still dream their phone/iPad more powerful than most people's laptops could take the role of one when plugged in, even if it wouldn't make Apple more money.
by sema4hacker | 2025-09-29 01:35:19+00:00
Do what makes you happy, but avoid the balls and chains: alcohol, smoking, drugs, crime, obesity, organized religion, debt, marriage, children.

Follow the Golden Rule.

Good health is your most important asset.

It gets more difficult with each passing decade to find and have good, safe sex, so maximize your enjoyment while you can.

In a relationship, you have to be on the same page when it comes to how you feel about money and how you feel about sex. Everything else will be relatively unimportant.
by SilverElfin | 2025-09-29 01:35:32+00:00
Is influencing is just speech, why have a problem with that? What makes it different from groups of activists doing the same thing within a country? It’s all propaganda to some, or free speech to others. I agree it’s an “influence war” but disagree that a foreign source changes things at a basic level - even from within the same country, brigading and bot like voting or comments, corrupts the process of politics. So I disagree about the choice to violate free speech principles. But do you see it differently? Do you agree with the part about activists behaving similarly?
by pkaodev | 2025-09-29 01:35:52+00:00
Swedish ID system seems pretty great. Never had any of my family there complain about it, and it just seems to make a lot of life easier.

The issue I see with the UK's plan is it that so far everything the government is talking about is how it will stop illegal working, and that just seems like a reaction to reform's recent rise in polls. That by itself seems like a waste, because people working cash in hand surely won't be bothered by this new requirement.

I think it should go further so it actually becomes useful. Things like having people's benefit status accessible at pharmacies to prevent people simply saying "I don't pay for my prescription" (still blows my mind this is a thing).

What has the UK done to make you think it is becoming one of the most authoritarian advanced economies?
by Terr_ | 2025-09-29 01:35:55+00:00
> not as safe or diversified as they think

I'd like to remind people that your profession should be part of your diversification decisions. (At least for those of us in the working class.)

For example, as a software developer, I am already tightly exposed to risks in the software sector even before I invest a single dollar.

You want to minimize the chance/amount that your investments implode at the same time you lose your job, which might force you to "sell low".
by analog31 | 2025-09-29 01:36:22+00:00
Indeed. On the other hand, I also know my limitations, since roughly half the people I play with are pro's with music degrees. And I'm still trying to improve.

I'm inspired by the quote from Pablo Casals when he was in his 90s. They asked him why he still needed to practice, and he said: "Because I'm finally beginning to see some improvement."
by what-the-grump | 2025-09-29 01:36:57+00:00
Because it decouples the restaurant from controlling the means of purchase and delivery and thereby creating a market on top of the restaurant.

You order on Uber Eats, Toast, Seamless, and they set the prices pushing them up.

It’s a completely parasitic market and if a restaurant does not participate it’s squeezed out due to not being able to compete with online ordering.

You notice how you can’t just order from xyzpizza.com and choose 1-7 vendors to deliver the pizza? They should class actioned into the depth of hell.

Imagine going to Nike.com, but Nike has to sell on the usp website at the ups price because they deliver the last mile package…
by treyd | 2025-09-29 01:37:45+00:00
> IP is an approximation of what has been organically part of human society and drove innovation since forever: benefits of being an author and degree of ownership over intangible ideas.

It is not! It's a very recent invention. Especially its application to creative works contradicts thousands of years of the development of human culture. Consider folk songs.

> I doubt anyone would consider it a problem if large-scale commercial LLM operators were required to respect licenses and negotiate appropriate usage terms. Okay, maybe with one exception: their investors and shareholders.

And the issue I'm gesturing at is that you run into different contradicting conclusions about how LLMs should interact with copyright depending on exactly what line of logic you follow, so the courts will never be able to resolve how it should work. These are issues can only be conclusively resolved with writing new laws to decide it's going to work, but that will eventually only make the contradictions worse and complicate the hoops that people will have to jump through as the technology evolves in new ways.
by sowbug | 2025-09-29 01:38:40+00:00
A friend of mine who might be me came up with a similar model during an acid trip a few years ago.

Imagine your mind's eye traveling down a hallway of pictures. Some are memories, some are what your senses are actually experiencing, and some are products of your imagination. There are occasionally branch points where you can choose a path depending on which pictures you see down each hallway. Some pictures are scary, some are enticing. Your mood or goal influences which path you'll choose. Many of these pictures are pictures of you in various situations. They could be as simple as you at the top of the stairs you're currently climbing, or as intricate and abstract as you at the pinnacle of your career 15 years from now. Once you get to a picture that's only slightly different from your current situation, your subconscious mind can choose to make it happen -- moving muscles to take the next step, speaking the next word in a sentence shown in the image, etc.

Consciousness is the path you take through this network of images. In real life it happens so fast you don't experience the choosing of paths, and it's not really a visual hallway but rather a fusion of senses and emotions.
by MountDoom | 2025-09-29 01:39:51+00:00
> The problem was that many folks stopped taking it, when they felt better.

This really wasn't the problem. There was never any strong science behind it, other than just an abundance of caution. But you can also argue that taking antibiotics for an extra week is bad because it prolongs the evolutionary pressure on microbes to develop resistance.

Either way, stuff like that is inconsequential. Most drug-resistant strains crop up in hospice and hospital settings where immunocompromised or gravely ill patients are kept on a cocktail of antibiotics for months or years, and resistant bacteria have a significant advantage and can spread easily.

And it's not like we have a good alternative to that - "let more people die earlier" is not an easy sell.

This is possibly followed by overuse of antibiotics in animal husbandry, although that part is more complicated than usually implied.
by mooreds | 2025-09-29 01:40:23+00:00
Fun article! Lots of good points, each of which could be their own article. I did something similar[0] a few years back.

Author, if you feel inspired, would love to have you expand these and share the results.

For example, what are good ways to maintain relationships? When, if ever, should you let a relationship wither? Another example: what is a good way to get familiar with legacy code? What even is legacy code?

0: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/
by reify | 2025-09-29 01:41:04+00:00
jabbed to Nebbed!

Heparin is a blood anticoagulant that increases the activity of antithrombin. It is used in the treatment of heart attacks and unstable angina.

Common side effects include bleeding, pain at the injection site, and low blood platelets.[3] Serious side effects include heparin-induced thrombocytopenia.[3] Greater care is needed in those with poor kidney function.[3]

Heparin is contraindicated for suspected cases of vaccine-induced pro-thrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT) secondary to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, as heparin may further increase the risk of bleeding in an anti-PF4/heparin complex autoimmune manner, in favor of alternative anticoagulant medications (such as argatroban or danaparoid).

lets give it to more people via a nebuliser.

Nimbus = “razor throat”

Stratus = “hoarse voice”

Bring on the Neb!
by screye | 2025-09-29 01:41:27+00:00
AI tab-complete & fast LSP implementations made typing easy. The tools changed, and people changed their minds.

JSON's interaction with types is still annoying. A deserialized JSON could be any type. I wish there was a standard python library that deserialized all JSON into dicts, with opinionated coercing of the other types. Yes, a custom normalizer is 10 lines of code. But, custom implementations run into the '15 competing standards' problem.

Actually, there should be a popular type-coercion library that deals with a bunch of these annoying scenarios. I'd evangelize it.
by cadamsdotcom | 2025-09-29 01:41:41+00:00
One factor is how much agreement is needed to get going.

It’s a lot easier to agree what should get built when

a) you can point to wealthy nations and say “lets try to have what they have”

and

b) you’ve seen projects go fast and deliver big in your own country done by people just like you.

By contrast in the US it’s often a debate over which incremental improvement to make and why; without unilateral clarity on outcomes or value.

This “run by lawyers” / “run by engineers” claim is a symptom of that difference - it’s a byproduct, it’s not the core problem needing solving.
by Wowfunhappy | 2025-09-29 01:43:59+00:00
> But I'm not sure how simple it would be to explain to a non-technical user why size_5, size_10 and size_15 are in order but size_0.25, size_0.5 and size_0.75 are out-of-order.

You don't have to explain it if the situation never comes up.

I'd bet 99.9% of computer users don't have any files which would trigger this edge case in a situation they would actually notice. Decimals just aren't that commonly used in this context, and even if you do have decimals the sorting will still work a lot of the time. For the remaining 0.5%, chalk it up to a bug.

I literally had to test this on my Mac just now because I never realized it was broken.
by n2d4 | 2025-09-29 01:44:49+00:00
I agree with everything but the definition of intuitive; sometimes, the more common situation is less intuitive. An egregious example of this is "Close ad" buttons, which are intentionally placed unintuitively to direct the user to view the ad.

Your definition of "intuitive" would imply that innovation in intuition is impossible, which is evidently not true.
by komali2 | 2025-09-29 01:45:51+00:00
The difficulty is we skeptics have read claims like yours tens of times, and our response is always, "please share a repo built this way and an example of your prompts," and I at least have never seen anyone do so.

I'd love for what you say to be possible. Comments like yours often cause me to take another crack at agentic workflows. I'm disappointed every time.
by ashryan | 2025-09-29 01:46:58+00:00
We love our Playdate. Admittedly, when I first got the Playdate, it was a bit of a flash in the pan for me, possibly due in part to not having many games to try while Season 1 was trickling out. But since then, my daughter has reached the age (8) where she can really enjoy it, and that has pulled me back into it as another thing we can share together.

The achilles heel of the Playdate is screen brightness. There's an awkward sweet spot where you need to pour light onto the screen for it to be viewable but simultaneously avoid reflection from the light source. I guess for younger eyes that's less of a problem. But for me, I've had plenty of scenarios where I considered playing and then realized it was going to be impossible to comfortably set up a lighting environment.

I have clip-on lights for books. Maybe I should get one for the Playdate. Has anyone had success with that?
by xboxnolifes | 2025-09-29 01:48:30+00:00
I think that's basically an impossibility, unless the only code they look at is from people who have 5 minutes of coding experience and attempt to get working code from vibes (without the LLM). Even suggesting this makes me think you haven't even seen truly stupid code.

I'm talking code from people with no programming experience, trying to contribute to open-source mod projects by pattern matching words they see in the file. They see the keyword static a lot, so they just put static on random things.