MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kccqzy | 2025-09-12 15:30:15+00:00
Great insight. But this is sadly not applicable to interviews.

> It's easy to do in O(n^2) time, or if you are clever, you can do it in O(n). Or you could be not clever at all and just write it as a constraint problem

This nails it. The point of these problems is to test your cleverness. That's it. Presenting a not-clever solution of using constraint solvers shows that you have experience and your breadth of knowledge is great. It doesn't show any cleverness.
by hombre_fatal | 2025-09-12 15:30:25+00:00
It's a trivial task for an LLM to take the HTML at https://techcrunch.com/latest/ and extract a perfect list of only the article URLs. And if you can do this, then you can build the tool that I describe.

From there you can extract each article content with an LLM or use something like readability.js or just download the whole page for later consumption.

I have a prototype of it. You add a feed as { feedUrl, feedPrompt, articlePrompt }.

`feedPrompt` lets you append rules for extracting the article url list from the `feedUrl` like "ignore video articles". `articlePrompt` lets you append rules for how to extract article content for a given website, like "translate to english".
by observationist | 2025-09-12 15:30:28+00:00
If you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about! Nobody will ever run afoul of the system or fall through the cracks. We only have the best and brightest bureaucrats who won't make mistakes. Nobody will ever be attacked with this for politicized reasons. This will never be used to debank or isolate or penalize or attack an innocent person. And even if it did, the government would never use its immunity from prosecution to evade accountability!

Don't be paranoid, and don't worry! We're the good guys!
by sveinnthorarins | 2025-09-12 15:31:02+00:00
Cool article.

I really like structured logs and am pleased the Go team saw the benefits of bringing it into the standard library.

However, I feel like errors should be able to hold slog attributes. It makes for some very useful and easy error logging, especially when the logging takes place far up the execution chain from where the error happened.

This is easily possible with a custom error type and some log functions. I have published on GitHub my small and crude implementation that I use in a few hobby projects, MIT licensed, if anyone is interested. https://github.com/sveinnthorarins/sterlo
by SubiculumCode | 2025-09-12 15:31:23+00:00
Very true. In my opinion, and strictly from an American-centric view, privacy should only extend to transactions within borders between citizens. As soon as it involves transactions from outside our borders, then it is a national security concern. We know, right now, that both Russia and China are fueling internal political tension via massive and sophisticated disinformation/influence campaigns, a certain part of which involves paying influencers, extremists, shady media outlets, maybe a Representative or three in America to push their agendas, foment discontent aiming to destabilize and control the United States. Monero is definitely being used in this information warfare. I am pro-privacy, pro- individual rights, but we have to resolve this central tension of these things and the very real hyper connected world we live in which very real nation-state enemies. I am at the point where I think restricting the internet to allied countries might actually be a good idea, as currently we are leaving citizens unprotected from every nation-state actor who wishes to manipulate us with targeted, data-analytic, bot- and ai-empowered campaign against us. It is out of control, and as long as a monetary instrument like crypto enables that attack surface, it will be hard for me to support crypto-maxamialism.
by semiquaver | 2025-09-12 15:31:43+00:00
The patriot act is not really “a law” in the sense of being a concrete series of statements you can point to in today’s US Code. It’s more like a patch to a codebase. At the time it was passed it (like any statutory act of Congress) created and amended dozens of sections of the US code. Some of those provisions had expiration dates which have lapsed, but not all, and (apparently) not the sections this article discusses dealing with financial crimes.
by NotPractical | 2025-09-12 15:31:50+00:00
> Virtual Boy games will require the Switch Online Expansion Pack add-on

I never understood why they didn't just... sell the games individually as an option? That doesn't make the subscription itself less attractive, right? Amazon still sells music even after they started their subscription service.

The other accessories they released through this program at least had uses outside of the accompanying subscription, but this one I guess just turns into a brick when your time runs out.

I will admit it's pretty cool, though.
by pqtyw | 2025-09-12 15:32:45+00:00
>perhaps 10 or 12 years

So if party A votes down proposal X and the next election party B that publicly supports it wins they shouldn't be allowed to propose that law?

Logical conclusion would be for the governing party to get some stooge to propose all the policies they oppose, get them far enough to the voting stage and reject them. Now your opponents can't do anything even if you lose the next election...

Of course doesn't really apply to pseudo-democratic institutions like the EU..
by labcomputer | 2025-09-12 15:32:45+00:00
That sounds like a terrible idea. Suppose a malicious actor wants to prevent something you support. They can simply bring a bill with a poison pill.

To use the prior example: They could create a criminal reform act which makes weed legal, but also (by total coincidence) makes child rape legal.

Nobody will vote for the pedophiles, so now they have successfully prevented weed legalization for at least 10 years, and they can use a different poison pill next time.

Before you say "well, bring it back without the child rape part", see my other comment in this thread about deciding whether two bills are the same.
by the_duke | 2025-09-12 15:32:47+00:00
The tactic here is sneaking legislation through the system by bringing it up again and again, hoping for the public to eventually lose interest, or to catch a time with a lot of other drama going on so they can avoid the public attention/backlash.

I do think there are procedural ways to support this, like: proposed bills that are very similar to previous rejected ones need a preemptive vote with 60%+ support to be considered - if brought again with a certain time frame.

I do see your point though, there can be unforeseen consequences.
by 9rx | 2025-09-12 15:32:53+00:00
> I believe you understand my complaint.

I don't, really. If performance is of utmost concern, you're not going to accept the overhead of passing the logger through an interface anyway, so that's moot. A library concerned about performance as a top priority has to pick one and only one.

But if a library has decided that flexibility is more important than raw efficiency, then the interface is already defined.

zaplogger.Info("Calling third-party library") thirdparty.Call(slog.New(zaplogger)) // Logs whatever the package logs to zaplogger zaplogger.Info("Called third-party library")

The only 'problem' I can see is if `zaplogger` hasn't implemented the interface. But there isn't much the Go team can do about implementations not playing nicely.
by dragonwriter | 2025-09-12 15:33:27+00:00
> A generic example, fridges could easily last 40 to 50 years without maintenance. They wouldn't be all that more expensive either. Volvo, and the B-52 bomber program showed this, with Volvo having some models unchanged for 20 years. The B-52 has been in service longer than most people have been alive.

Neither Volvos (presumably, a reference to their cars) nor B-52s are maintenance-free, even if they have long service lives with proper maintenance, so I don’t see how either supports your argument that fridges could easily be made to last decades without maintenance.
by jandrewrogers | 2025-09-12 15:33:35+00:00
> How do you get former founders to put in that kind of dedication to _someone else's company_?

It is common for people to call themselves "founders" because they vibe-coded an app over the weekend and sometimes just because they have an idea for an app. Like an aspirational lifestyle thing. I suspect that is the kind of "founder" we are talking about here.
by cryptonector | 2025-09-12 15:33:41+00:00
I can't find any data to back that up. On the contrary, it seems there's about 1.4 colonies per square mile in the U.S. Varroa has not been an existential threat to feral honeybees, and almost certainly has hit them much less hard than commercial honeybees because feral honeybees swarm much more often, which means they reproduce more often (thus get to adapt faster) and abandon old comb more often (which helps fight lots of diseases).
by coldfoundry | 2025-09-12 15:33:51+00:00
Oh wow, this brought me back! I used to be obsessed with papercraft back in the day as a kid, specifically “pepakura”. I used to print out halo 3 helmets and build them and wear them. It was like a puzzle on steroids in the cool department!

There used to be an entire finishing process with this yellow and blue bottled smooth-cast resin and sanding before painting, but they always stayed paper for me.

Was a cheap way for me to have fun, and definitely holds a special place in my heart forever. Great share and thank you for posting! Brought me through memory lane.
by azinman2 | 2025-09-12 15:33:54+00:00
Many of these things you state as fact do not match my reality.

> I have never heard of an insurance policy in the US that allows you to consume as much, and whatever type of healthcare that you want.

That’s basically my plan. I work for a FAANG, and have a low 2k/year max out of pocket for in-network, which is almost everything I encounter. I just book specialists when I want, and I see them as many times as I need. I can do PT 365 times per year, so as long as I don’t go more than once a day (which would be silly), I consume as much as I want. I recently chose to go to the Mayo Clinic — out of state, no referral, and everything is covered. I keep getting estimates from them of $0 since I hit my max out of pocket. The only thing I’ve been denied for is Botox for TMJ which they say is not medically proven (seems to be the opposite, but I understand why they’re wary).

I’ve never had a medication, procedure, or doctor visit denied.
by yepitwas | 2025-09-12 15:34:13+00:00
War on Terror AUMF is still in force and is why the President can just decide to bomb whatever country they want without asking for permission, now.

All that shit after 9/11 was crazy and dangerous, and some of us said that at the time, and go figure, the fucking obviously true things we were saying have turned out to be... true. What a surprise.
by hombre_fatal | 2025-09-12 15:34:19+00:00
So RSS isn't an API because it returns XML instead of JSON or protobufs? That doesn't sound right. It's an endpoint for machine consumption and that's what most people mean when they refer to an API. But that's a distraction from the point.

It's trivial to implement an RSS endpoint, but what's not trivial is requiring everyone to implement it.

Needing someone to implement an API just to have machine-friendly pull access to their latest content is only a trade-off that made sense last decade.

It's not a good solution if you had the power of generating feeds yourself.
by timr | 2025-09-12 15:34:21+00:00
Well, you're making a a series of logical fallacies (are we talking about the UK, specifically, or an unspecified constellation of "places like" they UK, so that you can avoid the false dichotomy?), but my general rebuttal would be this:

"the existence of magical unicorn places with worse price transparency than the US does not make opaque pricing good."

I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to argue. The US system is good? Price transparency is bad? UK good, US bad?
by aspenmayer | 2025-09-12 15:34:40+00:00
Would you settle for a catchy motto, mayhap?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Free_or_Die

> "Live Free or Die" is the official motto of the U.S. state of New Hampshire, adopted by the state in 1945. It is possibly the best-known of all state mottos, partly because it conveys an assertive independence historically found in American political philosophy and partly because of its contrast to the milder sentiments found in other state mottos.
by vel0city | 2025-09-12 15:34:52+00:00
People act like there are no wait times in the US.

I remember a few years ago, I noticed a mole on my arm suddenly looking very irregular. I kind of panicked, thinking it was potentially skin cancer. I have decent PPO insurance, no worries, I can go call up and schedule an appointment with a dermatologist directly. I live in one of the largest metro areas in the US, tons of doctors, should be a breeze to get it checked out.

I load up the find a doctor website on my insurance company's website. There's like 30 dermatologists within an hour or so drive from me, awesome. I start calling. Not taking new patients right now. Can't be seen for 6 months, 8 months, we could get you in next year. Next year, when I might have quickly growing skin cancer?

Luckily when I finally talked to my wife about it, she reminded me she had poked my arm with a permanent marker. Some solvent, and my mole looks normal again. I still make sure to keep my dermatologist appointments, just so I don't have to deal with the new patient issues and the "we're not taking anyone new these days".

I had a different issue with extreme nystagmus come upon me. Bedridden for days, I couldn't even open my eyes without having extreme vertigo. Calling ENTs to try and get help, none would be able to see me for weeks. Luckily a friend who works with ENTs managed to get a doctor to see me but if it wasn't for that I probably would have just had to suffer at home with no answers as to what was happening.

I now know that unless I'm practically about to die, seeing a doctor that will do more than run extremely basic labs and very basic healthcare is weeks away in the US even if you have decent insurance.
by sir0010010 | 2025-09-12 15:34:56+00:00
Another thing the US could do would be to offer a fast and easy path for foreign medical doctors to immigrate and start practicing medicine with minimal barriers.

Unfortunately, right now, it is difficult for doctors to do so much as move to and start practicing in a different state. But if you want medical costs to actually come down and to ensure availability, you need to multiply the number of doctors available to treat people.
by jandrese | 2025-09-12 15:35:27+00:00
One thing that GTK lost in the transition to GTK2 was working well over slow Internet connections. I remember how even on a dial up modem you got pretty acceptable performance out of a GTK1 app, so long as it wasn't shoving big bitmaps around. GTK2 on the other hand was always dog slow over remote X connections for no apparent reason.
by typeofhuman | 2025-09-12 15:35:45+00:00
"Public higher education yields more skilled workers" as compared to what? Laborers or trade-skill workers? I think people overestimate the ROI of a college diploma.

Let's just assume you are correct. The solution should be universities lower or eliminate tuition. Not exponentially increase it. Not pay presidents and coaches millions and millions of dollars. And not stick taxpayers with the bill - or devalue our currency with government spending.
by hermannj314 | 2025-09-12 15:36:04+00:00
Most interviews are based on the premise that if a diabetic can't synthesize their own insulin in their basement, they are somehow cheating at the game of life.

If my wife's blood sugar is high, she takes insulin. If you need to solve a constraint problem, use a constraint solver.

If your company doesn't make and sell constraint solving software, why do you need me to presume that software doesn't exist and invent it from scratch?
by Al-Khwarizmi | 2025-09-12 15:37:04+00:00
The objetive, observable outcome is that before the law, websites don't have cookie banners. Since the law passed, they do. And they make the user lose time, and make navigation much more cumbersome, sometimes even impossible (not even 5 minutes ago, I had to go back on my phone because a newspaper article went into an endless loop after accepting the cookie banner).

It doesn't matter much what happened behind the scenes to cause that outcome. From a black-box perspective, it could be that

(a) the EU mandated the cookie banners, (b) the EU mandated to provide cookie settings in some generic form, and websites decided to use banners because it's easier, more lucrative, or even to put people against the EU, in spite of having other options that were better for the user. (c) the EU mandated a different thing and the annoying banners don't even comply with the law.

No matter what the case is, the fact is that the EU made the WWW worse with the law. Either due to an outright harmful law, or to a well-intentioned law with too many loopholes, or to a good law but lack of enforcement. Doesn't matter much for the end user. When you make laws that affect people's daily life, good intentions aren't enough.
by pqtyw | 2025-09-12 15:37:25+00:00
Interesting seeing people downvoting this. I mean this is literally what happened after Brexit:

> you should look at recent history (since the 80s-90s) in Britain .. and even backbenchers in government have no power at all

All pro EU Conservatives were forced to either get in line or commit political suicide since local party constituencies aren't allowed to pick their representatives. US at least has primaries...
by remix2000 | 2025-09-12 15:37:30+00:00
What is this company actually selling anyway?

Their about me page reads:

We're here to help product engineers build successful products Literally every piece of SaaS that a product engineer needs. This includes tools for building products, talking to customers, and making sense of all your customer data. PostHog is a single platform for people who build things.

This is literally just a verbose way to say "we're a company that does stuff"…

Wouldn't it be better if the about me page actually had some concrete information inside it…?
by Simulacra | 2025-09-12 15:37:39+00:00
Perhaps a solution is to reward people to a greater extent for those who improve their health. Quit smoking, premiums come down. Lose weight, premiums come down. The insurance companies should be working with the doctors and the patients to identify ways they can improve their health to bring down the premium. A healthier person I would assume is a less pecuniary risk to the health insurance company

But they don't seem to do that.
by alephnerd | 2025-09-12 15:37:53+00:00
Yep! Makes sense. But like, if you are working remotely with a British employer, are you still drawing a London salary (£50-70k) instead of a Japanese salary (¥3M-6M)?

If you were earning ¥3-4M a year (roughly the average salary in Japan), would you feel the same about Japan?

Like, to me London is great, but I also know if I was working remotely in the UK or for my employer I could demand a £90k-150k salary and live in Chelsea or Belgravia, so I would be living my best life - but it's also not an "authentic" London experience.

That's why I see plenty of Japanese doing a similar thing - take a ¥4-5M salary and live in Shanghai, Bangkok, or HCMC.

As individuals, it makes sense for us for rationalize the arbitrage, but we can't deny we are also causing affordability issues as well.

I guess what I'm getting at is at the median, the vast majority of developed countries are facing the same issues, but at a micro-level, we can use currency arbitrages to give us a better life - but it's only exacerbating the problem.
by davorak | 2025-09-12 15:38:08+00:00
> There should be sorts of an exponential backoff

So some cool off period that gets larger each time a bill fails. There is not a detailed proposal, but I would assume some max cool off period is reasonable/desirable as well.

So it could not be used to block legislation that society actually wants forever but it would block the legislature from passing it in a limited time frame.

Another reasonable addition that would work well at more local levels but would be a new challenge to implement at the national level in the USA is to have citizen lead referendums with minimum participation requirements to by pass this cool off period. That way if legislation is important the voters can bypass the cool off period.
by epolanski | 2025-09-12 15:38:10+00:00
In Switzerland *no single hospital* has a proper PICU. There's one in Luzern and St. Gallen but they are under equipped for all the emergency situations. They are essentially sub-intensive, and if your child has such a complication, good luck.

The only ones that do are all university hospitals and they only do so because they operate on a very different financial non-profit model.

And I'm talking about Switzerland.

PICU isn't just an example of service and treatments where even very very rich countries with quality healthcare are relatively uncovered compared to much poorer countries with public health care.

It's not even the happiest one, because PICU is still "relatively" common, so I don't want to focus on it.

Other examples of treatments that are relatively common in public health care are organ transplants, ICU for infective diseases, post trauma (stroke-like) rehabilitation are just some of the examples of treatments you're gonna find in many public hospitals in a country but extremely rarely in neighboring countries with excellent private healthcare.
by freedomben | 2025-09-12 15:38:15+00:00
I absolutely share your frustration at breaking API changes, and the older I (and my software) gets, the more it irritates me. It can be downright enraging to have (my) perfectly working code suddenly broken due to an irrelevant (to me) API change, especially when it requires hunting down a ton of compiler errors. I absolutely wish they would prioritize stability more.

Now that said, I do not think the truth is "The maintainers seem to go out of their way to break API, for no reason at all" or "These are not thoughtful people, with a vision for the future. They are idiots that inherited something great (GTK 1), and have spent decades thoroughly fucking it up." Having worked on numerous long-lived APIs in the past, there is always a tension between backwards compatibility and future development, especially consistency between calls. Especially when there are a lot of different contributors, it's very easy for annoying inconsistencies to pop up, and it feels really great to fix those. It's a constant balancing act between the past and the future, and a tilt too far in one direction comes with some significant downsides. I also think some grace is warranted for people giving their code away freely with no expectation in return.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-09-12 15:38:32+00:00
I price shopped having skin cancer removed from my face because the total was under my high deductible. By the end the total was $2500 more than the 'price shopping' 'yes this will be the price' price even though everything went as perfect and easy as possible. This place is the number 1 clinic for doing this in the nearest city. Their waiting room was full of old guys getting skin cancers removed. And there was nothing I could do but pay the extra $2500.