MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Tangurena2 | 2025-09-19 19:49:32+00:00
We absolutely could mine and refine the stuff. It is everywhere. The "problem" is that the refining process is horribly toxic and the residue/slag is toxic and radioactive. The last refinery that had been located in the US is now a SuperFund site. Every country would prefer that the refining takes place in China because that way the pollution & hazardous waste remains in China.

The anger is that China is being "uppity" by wanting to make the things (like motors) out of the "rare earth" elements instead of being the colony that supplies raw materials to the Empire/colonizer. This was one of the complaints leading to the Revolution in 1776 - only raw materials could be shipped to England and all finished goods could only be shipped from England. The colonies were forced to remain at the bottom of the economy.

China wants "a seat at the table". Western countries are unwilling to let that happen.
by gjsman-1000 | 2025-09-19 19:50:21+00:00
Correct. He didn't use a legal framework, and did it anyway. They even convinced Twitter to ban retweeting an unfavorable New York Post article that turned out true!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mark-zuckerbe...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-wh...

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO02/20220914/115106/HHRG...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/14/facebook-...

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54552101
by reaperducer | 2025-09-19 19:50:49+00:00
It's sad that the head of the FCC is ignorant of what the FCC does.

The Fairness doctrine was eliminated in the late 80's by Republicans whose talk shows were taking over AM radio.

Later, the FCC took the position that it does not have the authority to regulate content. Only technical things like frequency allocation.

Now, suddenly the Republicans want to invoke the rules they killed because someone got their feelings hurt?

Man up, GOP.

Maybe turn off the TV and read a book, or go for a walk, or take up a hobby other than being angry at everything.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-09-19 19:51:59+00:00
Mega isn't indexed and decrypts content in javascript on the client. If people are using it to share your stuff, you have to find where they're sharing it to even find out that it's on there. Now, Hollywood did this to themselves, because back when it was Megaupload the fact that they had a search index was used as an excuse to shut down the whole service because a couple of employees used it to access infringing stuff without taking it down, so Mega got rid of that as a means to prevent it from happening again.

Internet Archive is searchable and executes DMCA takedown notices. If something of yours is on there and you don't want it to be, it's not because they're making it hard to change that.
by benlimner | 2025-09-19 19:52:24+00:00
Our opinion will differ here, but I enjoy the discourse.

I actually see speeding as a close corollary to this parking app. People speed. Can’t stop it. But when you see a speed trap marked on your map, you’re going to slow down. In a way it actually increases the effectiveness of the enforcement.

Knowing that parking enforcement is nearby, to your own admission, will encourage drivers to either pay up, or pack up.

The point of the site isn’t to break unenforceable laws. It’s to balance market forces. Parking meters used to take $.05 denominations. Now you need to download an app and pay several dollars plus transaction fees even if you’re just a door dash guys stopping to pick up someone’s order of biryani.

A thick cut of the revenue from modern parking meters goes to corporate pockets, so it’s not like you’re doing your civic duty by paying the meter. This is especially true in Chicago where meter collection revenue goes 100% offshore; whereas parking ticket revenue goes back to the city.

The sensible thing for a city to do is to allow 1-2hr free parking (by sign), and regularly enforce violations with patrols.

The sensible thing for a driver to do is to look both ways before parking, and alert fellow drivers if they are about to get a ticket.

Let me ask, if a you and a friend were out for lunch and you saw the meter maid coming by would you tell them, or keep it to yourself?
by RiverCrochet | 2025-09-19 19:53:14+00:00
Yeah, there's no way the Famicom/NES could do audio modulation/demodulation through phone lines to directly be a modem itself. It doesn't have a real audio input, and doesn't have an audio output separate from what's going to the TV.

There is a YouTube video out there of what I believe is a Russian dude copying a Dendy or Famicom cartridge through sound, though. The system is powered up with the copier cart. The copier cart copies its code to the system's 2K of RAM, and runs from there. You then remove the copier cart and insert the game you want to copy. This makes the screen garbled as you are removing the graphics data from reach of the PPU, but the code continues to run as the CPU is not reset. The copier cart will then iterate through each byte of the cart and emit FSK tones through the system's audio out which you can record and then convert to an .nes file with a utility. I suppose it has to know the mapper involved and such.

But there's no way for the NES to shove that modulation through a separate audio out (and definitely no real audio input).

Now the Famicom/NES does have a few GPIO-like lines through the expansion connector, so bit-banging a UART I guess would be possible (if appropriate converters for the voltage are present), but it couldn't be very fast as the CPU has to service the PPU every frame with OAM DMA writes if sprites are enabled.

The Commodore 64 RS-232 built-in capability was driven entirely with software and it didn't go faster than 2400 baud.
by cjbarber | 2025-09-19 19:54:26+00:00
This is written by Kevin Bryan from University of Toronto. He has good tweets on the economics of AI, too (https://x.com/Afinetheorem).

My recap of the PDF is something like:

1. There are good books about the near-term economics as AI.

2. There aren't many good books about "what if the AI researchers are right" (e.g. rapid scientific acceleration) and the economic and political impacts of those cases.

3. The Second Machine Age: Digital progress boosts the bounty and widens the spread, more relative inequality. Wrong on speed (e.g. self driving tech vs regulatory change).

4. Prediction Machines: AI = cheaper prediction. Which raises the value of human judgement, because that's a complement.

5. Power and Prediction: Value comes when the whole system is improved not just from smaller fixes. Electrification's benefits arrived when factories reorganized, not just when they added electricity to existing layouts. Diffusion is slow because things need to be rebuilt.

6. The Data Economy: Data is a nonrivalrous asset. As models get stronger and cheaper, unique private data grows in relative value.

7. The Skill Code: Apprenticeship pathways may disappear. E.g. survival robots prevent juniors getting practice reps.

8. Co-Intelligence: Diffusion is slowed by the jagged frontier (AI is spiky). Superhuman at one thing, subhuman at another.

9. Situational Awareness: By ~2027, $1T/yr AI capex spend, big power demand, and hundreds of millions of AI researchers getting a decade of algo progress in less than a year. (Author doesn't say he agrees, but says economists should analyze what happens if it does)

10. Questions: What if the AGI-pilled AI researchers are right, what will the economic and policy implications be?
by nonameiguess | 2025-09-19 19:54:29+00:00
Even in the cases of species that roughly meet the naive high school definition, it is at least sometimes the case that they can still interbreed, they just don't. Usually, this is because of geographic isolation. Take African and Indian elephants, for instance. They diverged long enough ago that they're morphologically distinct, not just genetically distinct, but they can still interbreed. They don't because they live on different continents, and they probably wouldn't if they were put together outside of captivity because they're intelligent, social animals with culture and learned histories who rely on not entirely biological cues regarding who to breed with, just as much as humans do.

In reality, we first categorized life into species because they either looked different or we found them exclusively in different places, and only centuries later did we attempt to figure out exactly why and how this was the case and reverse engineer some sensible definition onto the pre-existing categories, but it turns out there is no single definition that works universally and has zero exceptions. It's frustrating if you're a language pedant who likes clarity, but a lot of categories and definitions are like this.
by thoroughburro | 2025-09-19 19:54:40+00:00
> People are so headline fixated that they only ever see the claim denials and think that's all that ever happens.

I’ve experienced plenty of my own claim denials. In fact, I had to stop treatment of my chronic condition due to the last one. This is certain to cause my knees to fail in a few years.

You think they only exist in headlines? Then get your own head out of the news and talk to real people.
by Terr_ | 2025-09-19 19:54:46+00:00
Never before has any administration made me feel like I need to create a goddamn mind-map or wiki just to document the hundreds of crimes and scandals with unique primary keys.

Even when you drop the detail level down to exclude individual names it's just too damn much.

I wonder if there's some prior-art in The investigative journalism field which could be relevant...
by KwanEsq | 2025-09-19 19:54:46+00:00
Huh, last/only time I used yt-dlp on a livestream it downloaded exactly from when I ran it, didn't get anything in the past at all (which was a shame for me personally at the time, as I would have liked the earlier stuff too).

Maybe that was a difference in the stream itself though, since I've experienced both past-seekable and live-only live streams on YouTube.
by Tangurena2 | 2025-09-19 19:54:56+00:00
> why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths?

Pollution. The smokestack emissions are very toxic. The residue/slag is toxic and radioactive. One should remember that "rare earth metals" are not rare, they're the bottom 2 rows of the periodic table. They are rather hard to separate chemically and many people like to exclude the bottom row of the periodic table (the actinides) because that's where uranium and plutonium are located and those 2 elements terrify people enough to derail discussions about the materials.
by mlsu | 2025-09-19 19:55:12+00:00
I notice people do this a lot. The way I think about it is this:

If I believe that I can do better than someone with a career in X, that’s actually hugely insulting. Because with my assertion that I can do better, I’m basically saying that those people were all basically screwing around for the duration of their entire career. That my 0 years experience is comparable to their 5 or 10 or 15.

Luckily, we don’t have a bunch of super rich and powerful software people wading into areas where they have no experience and making a big mess because of assumptions like this. Right? Ha ha ha.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-09-19 19:55:17+00:00
> Their whole business is based on bullying, dark patterns and ripoff

No. It’s based on monopoly. There are a limited number of venues that can host a modern superstar, generally no more than one per geography, and Ticketmaster made it a point to represent all of them. Which means any modern superstar and their fans must work through Ticketmaster. Which, in turn, enables this nonsense.

The cause is monopoly. Not “bullying, dark patterns and ripoff;” those are effects.
by mikewarot | 2025-09-19 19:55:31+00:00
My analysis paralysis was solved with a Github Copilot account for $20/month getting me access* to ChatGPT5 (preview) agent inside Microsoft Visual Studio Code.

At least I think that's how I'm paying for it

I've just given it a folder and a description of what I want, and iterated until I got what I needed.

It's great for trying out ideas.
by erulabs | 2025-09-19 19:55:58+00:00
A lot of things can be true at the same time:

- The FCC shouldn't be involved in content moderation, and the FCC Chair is obviously on an authoritarian power trip.

- What Kimmel said was wrong (assuming you believe Utah state investigators) and deeply irresponsible and inflammatory.

- Clearly the market was already deciding that Kimmel's show is irrelevant (Nielsen ratings quite clear on that).

- The FCC is only involved in content because of how TV broadcasting worked ~50 years ago (large swaths of RF spectrum allocated to certain license holders, only a few channels -could- exist due to technical reasons, thus fairness rules).

- ABC's distributors threatened to stop airing the network, which is what actually caused Disney/ABC to act, it's hard to say what impact the FCC Chairs comments actually had.

- The idea that the FCC needs to act to protect the TV Broadcasting systems is ridiculous, just let it all die, we're very far past the "public square" era of media.

- Had the FCC made no comment, and Disney pulled the show due to the distributors actions, it would have obviously just been "cancel culture but from the right", instead Brendan Carr wants to get in the headlines and so here we are.

It's all a perfect Scissor Statement. You can absolutely not care about Kimmel, you can think the FCC's TV licensing scheme is pointless and outdated, you can be 0% surprised Disney only cares about money and Carr is an idiot, and still you can get into a heated argument about this stuff. My own mother texted me "Free speech is dead" and hurah, now I get to do 3 hours of reading to say "it never really existed in broadcast television and also yes, this is bad, but not nearly as bad as you think" and boom now I'm the fascist.

"Sort by Controversial" is such a troubling timeline.
by whitehexagon | 2025-09-19 19:56:06+00:00
>but with batteries like these it's going to be cheaper than fossils for overnight usage too.

1200eur bought me a reasonable LiPo solar 'buffer battery' for evenings, and ROI is maybe 3 years vs buying fosil fuel electrons at peak tarif. Plus savings from being able to drop the fixed ~70% of my bill grid connection charge.

Anyway, exciting to see that I might soon be able to afford enough storage for cloudy days too. Thanks for the extra details, sounds too good to be true.
by Jtsummers | 2025-09-19 19:56:08+00:00
You seem to be done editing this finally, so I'll quote (in case you edit it again) and respond:

> When your opponent plays dirty, when your figureheads get killed or nearly killed, why uphold the rules?

The Constitution wasn't shredded after Lincoln's assassination, Kennedy's, the attempt on Reagan. Why shred it now? You either believe in the principles, or you do not. If you don't, just admit it instead of complaining about hurt feelings or people playing dirty. Be an adult.

Damn, you managed to edit it while I was typing that, but the irony in this is rich:

> actively seeks to get you fired from your job

The Vice President of the United States is calling for people to be fired for speech. Again, you either believe in the freedom of speech or you don't. It's very clear that you do not. So again, be an adult. Admit that your position is an unprincipled one and based on feelings rather than thought.

EDIT: Removed "or Roosevelt" from attempted assassinations, he was the former president, not the sitting president, at the time.
by Aerbil313 | 2025-09-19 19:56:09+00:00
Which other country can attack 6 countries in 72 hours and get away with it[1]?

I very rarely expose myself to international news. When I do, it's strikingly obvious that Americans have a president who treats every other country as if they are children to be disciplined (cue Trump "I'm disappointed in Putin/Israel/Canada..."), and Israel is the favorite child who can disobey the father and bully whoever he wants without consequence.

1: https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/world-int/27890-israel-attacks-...
by lupusreal | 2025-09-19 19:56:28+00:00
Maybe they were coerced by the government. Or maybe they canceled Kimmel for the same reason the Trump administration was pissing themselves over Kimmel, because Trump and Sinclair are politically aligned and therefore inclined to act in similar ways anyway...

> Sinclair's stations have been known for featuring news content and programming that promote conservative political positions. They have been involved in various controversies surrounding politically motivated programming decisions,[172][173] such as news coverage and specials during the lead-ups to elections that were in support of the Republican Party.[174][175][172]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Polit...

My read is they weren't coerced, but did as Trump desired because they like Trump. Either way, it should go to court.
by kazinator | 2025-09-19 19:56:44+00:00
In Vancouver, Canada, the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition), owned by the City of Vancouver, got fed up with Ticketmaster and created its own ticket-vending outfit called Ticketleader.

https://ticketleader.ca

This might have been around 2011?

This PDF document from 2010 (don't let the 2018 in the URL fool you) still mentions TicketMaster. It is an announcement in connection with the 100 year anniversary (1910 - 2010):

https://www.pne.ca/files/uploads/2018/01/entertainment.pdf

Rick Beato thinks that AutoTune and whatnot killed music.

Maybe it was just Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster is the obvious reason why fewer people go to live shows in North America, whether rock and roll or not.
by lxe | 2025-09-19 19:57:02+00:00
Why can't these projects separate the use-cases from philosophies and from implementation when presenting them?

At first glance I don't understand what this is. Is it a social network? A protocol? "Pro-censorship? I need to read some blog article...

It's been like this with scuttlebutt/gossip, and rest of the alternative internet/fediverse with mastodont and activitypub and diaspora. Instead of asking questions like "How is this different than email? How does it compare to twitter?", I have to start with "What am I looking at? A technical implementation or a product? Is it a website or an app? What am I supposed to do with this?

There's also Urbit, which I'm sure not a single one of you can explain exactly what it is.

It's not as bad as "Web3", I'll give it that.

Bluesky got it right. So did gemini to some extent.
Show HN: The Blots Programming Language
by paulrusso | 2025-09-19 19:57:36+00:00
I've been working on this small, slightly weird expression-oriented programming language for a little while now and feel ready to share it with others. I use it pretty often now in my day-to-day and work life, as a scratchpad for doing a bit of quick math or picking some pieces of data out of a JSON payload.

Would really appreciate any feedback about the syntax, docs, features that are glaringly missing, etc. Before anybody mentions it: I know the performance is pretty lousy when dealing with a lot of data. If you can believe it, the runtime is about 100x faster than it used to be! Long term I'd like to switch to a proper bytecode interpreter, but so far performance has been Good Enough for my use cases.

Thanks for taking a look!
by jghn | 2025-09-19 19:57:36+00:00
Facebook, IG, Twitter, Bsky.

To be clear, I'm talking purely about being forced to see content from accounts you don't follow and not things like them choosing to show you content from one account more than another. Not all of them support my preference of pure chronological, so they will monkey with what I see amongst the things I follow. But all of them make it easy to quickly filter out and/or avoid any unwanted activity outside of sponsored ads.
by margalabargala | 2025-09-19 19:57:50+00:00
> The only difference between that and charity is emotional impact and the fact that a charitable donation doesn't inspire envy in others like a yacht does.

Well, okay, sure, I guess you can make an argument that "we're all atoms and therefore there is no morality and therefore buying a third yacht and helping pay for a 4-year-one's cancer treatment are equally good and moral".

> it is also immoral for me to spend $10K on a ski vacation because that is no more necessary to me than a yacht is to Jeff Bezos.

My argument rests on the impact to the giver's life. So yes I agree that if the marginal impact to your quality of life of $10k on a ski vacation is equal to Jeff Bezos buying a yacht, sure, that's immoral. Just how it would be immoral for people far less wealthy than yourself to decline to share, say, $0.10 if it would have a real impact on something.

The difference is of course then that $10k has much more impact than $0.10, and the price of a yacht much more than your $10k.

And if you have the ability to spend $10k and have the zero impact on your life that Jeff Bezos experiences when he buys a yacht with billions are left over, then you too are standing by as children die of cancer.
by jltsiren | 2025-09-19 19:57:57+00:00
I think it will mostly impact cap-exempt employers. For example, universities typically use H-1B for new faculty hires, as the visa is available quickly and without too much effort. But if the visa costs $100k, the university will probably skip international applicants, because the hiring department rarely has that much money it is allowed to use freely.

Research universities could probably use O-1, as the requirements for O-1A are lower than the bar for getting a tenure-track position. So they would effectively pay $10k to a lawyer rather than $100k to the government.
by leakycap | 2025-09-19 19:58:04+00:00
> Maybe not this _exact_ outcome but largely yes I suspect they did.

Sorry, this simply isn't the case. Before TM, the best available ticket was whatever the vendor you were dealing with had in their inventory. TicketMaster was started by 3 people who wanted to make the process of getting the "best available" ticket easier than going to all the disconnected ticket-sellers and finding out who had the best ticket.

The company changed models in the 1980s when a new owner took over who was solely focused on revenue.

> See 1994 Pearl Jam vs TM and monopolistic behavior 30 years ago.

Your takeaway seems different than mine. I see a company who could have changed or been regulated 30 years ago. Now they'll slowly die or be replaced quickly by something better like an AI ticketing system. Finding someone who likes TicketMaster today is impossible. When TM launched, everyone loved it. What a loss.

As many of us here have a role in how our companies are built and what they become, it is worth asking how TM lost its way and how we can avoid bringing the same level of gross, enshittified capitalism into the world with what we build.