MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rpearl | 2025-09-22 23:27:34+00:00
> backpacks were marginalized as being associated with being too poor to own a car.

The majority of all commuters in SF do not commute by car: https://www.sf.gov/data--vision-zero-benchmarking-commute-me...

This has been true for at least a decade. The trend, even ignoring COVID, is that a decreasing proportion do so.
by pncnmnp | 2025-09-22 23:27:39+00:00
I love what Norvig said. I can relate to it. As far as data structures are concerned, I think it's worth playing smart with your tests - focus on the "invariants" and ensure their integrity.

A classic example of invariant I can think of is the min-heap - node N is less than or equal to the value of its children - the heap property.

Five years from now, you might forget the operations and the nuanced design principles, but the invariants might stay well in your memory.
by zhivota | 2025-09-22 23:27:44+00:00
Not if the windows are both from the same program. Then it's a different keybind, CMD-~ which doesn't have the same priority order style as CMD-Tab. I get caught up on this constantly, to the point where I decided to stop using one Chrome window under my work profile, and one under my personal profile, just so I can have my personal browser under a different program so CMD-Tab works better.
by gchamonlive | 2025-09-22 23:28:00+00:00
> Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now.

Here in Brazil criminals are extremely dehumanized as well and used as electoral fodder. Leave them to rot in amounts proportional to the anger of the population against criminality as it rises again in the country, or at least the perception of it.

They are used to quickly let this social pressure out without actually solving anything and without making the population safer.

It would be really nice if remote work could serve as a viable vector for rehabilitation. Everyone involved would benefit from it, we just have to beware of the wrong kinds of incentives, so that people don't get thrown in jail only to serve as cheap remote labor later.
by leakycap | 2025-09-22 23:28:21+00:00
Agreed. Do not purchase AppleCare+ from a retail store like the Apple Store or Best Buy, either. Just sign up yourself from the device, so you can cancel on device.

I bought AC with a Watch at Best Buy. Canceling was harder than handling legal paperwork.

I bought AC+ on an unlocked iPhone purchase at an Apple Store and had a similar experience as the author here.
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-09-22 23:28:45+00:00
Absolute nonsense and hogwash, with zero shown basis in fact. Thankfully just empty words on paper, of no actual legal constitution, but the intent of the administration to go after people they don't like, to create an illusion of shadowy forces to justify their own violence & misdeeds, is clear & wicked.

America should be fighting fascists!
by teraflop | 2025-09-22 23:29:44+00:00
You can't easily, automatically test concurrent code for correctness without testing all possible interleavings of instructions, and that state space is usually galactically huge.

It is very easy to write multithreaded code that is incorrect (buggy), but where the window of time for the incorrectness to manifest is only a few CPU instructions at a time, sprinkled occasionally throughout the flow of execution.

Such a bug is unlikely to be found by test cases in a short period of time, even if you have 1000 concurrent threads running. And yet it'll show up in production eventually if you keep running the code long enough. And of course, when it does show up, you won't be able to reproduce it.

That is, I think, what the parent commenter means by "luck".

This is similar to the problem you'll run into when testing code that explicitly uses randomness. If you have a program that calls rand(), and it works perfectly almost all the time but fails when rand() returns the specific number 12345678, and you don't know ahead of time to test that value, then your automated test suite is unlikely to ever catch the problem. And testing all possible return values of rand() is usually impractical.
by zahlman | 2025-09-22 23:30:04+00:00
> Those points could also fit a groyper with parents who don’t recognize that subset of right ideology

You really think they would mistake a groyper for a leftist?

> I would not be surprised if they had a playbook ready to go for such an event given how strong of claims they were making about the shooter when the evidence at that point in time didn’t exist.

"The shooter in a political assassination represents an ideology opposed to the victim and was motivated by a political position opposed to the victim's" should be everyone's prior. It doesn't require a playbook.
by TulliusCicero | 2025-09-22 23:30:21+00:00
> NEVER. In my LIFE. Have I seen this in action.

Then show me the profit margins? If they just pocketed all the money, where did it go?

> Literally every single category of product that I buy is more expensive now than when I was a kid.

I'm pretty confident this is one of those situations where as soon as I start to lay out out examples, they'll immediately be dismissed, but just in case that's not true:

Full price video games are WAY cheaper than they were in the SNES era that I grew up in. Factoring in inflation, even $70 games today are like half the price, or close to it. Even most digital deluxe and similar versions are substantially cheaper than SNES games were.

It's way, way, WAY easier to get by with cheap or free games these days. Free games basically didn't expect in the 90s other than demo discs maybe (and those typically were still bought as part of a magazine issue), whereas now there's plenty of free games where you can just ignore the gacha/skin elements if you want, and there's a bajillion demos that can be accessed totally free on every storefront.

Indie games? In the 90s, games from small development teams would still cost the full price or close to it, something like Silksong that's high quality and costs only $20 -- even at launch -- didn't exist.

I remember the 90s, I remember how most middle class families couldn't really afford all that many games each year, especially in the cartridge era. People are practically overflowing with video games now in comparison, it's crazy how much easier it is to build up a huge library.

Really, tons of electronics are way cheaper now than they used to be. A $1500 desktop computer in the early 90s was a reasonable mid-range price; even if you ignore inflation, you can get a perfectly capable desktop or laptop today for less than that, and if you factor in inflation, computers today are way cheaper (unless you want a high-end gaming PC).
by bigiain | 2025-09-22 23:30:48+00:00
There's a bunch of red flags here. The author of the article is desperately trying to sound like pert of the Ruby developer community, not some corporate type power player trying to maximise profits and their own bonus...

In the linked post the author claims to be just some grateful Ruby developer volunteering their time to mundane bookkeeping tasks for an organisation they feel lead to support, describing themselves with:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

When I first discovered Ruby, watching some crazy video where a blog was built in just a few minutes, I was just a young man working at a bank who would sometimes get paid to build software for other people on the side. Ruby opened my eyes to the idea that code could be a craft, a skill I could hone and develop. It also introduced me to the idea that code could be poetry... code could be art.

20 years later, and here I am, a reasonably successful person who's built a career out of building software.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Yet the Ruby Central website describe them like this:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Freedom Dumlao is a seasoned technology executive with experience at leading companies like Vestmark, Flexcar, Zipcar, Wayfair, and Amazon. Currently the CTO of Vestmark, Freedom brings strategic insights that will help drive Ruby Central’s efforts to expand the Ruby ecosystem and build stronger connections with top companies and startups.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The post appears to be signed as "MINASWAN", a well know pseudonym for Yukihiro Matsumoto, the chief designer of the Ruby programming language. Hard to imagine a scenario where that was accidental and not an attempt to manipulate readers into assuming Yukihiro has something to do with writing the post.

It's posted to a Substack launched 1 day ago. With the username/subdomain "apiguy" - suspiciously not 'ctoguy' or 'seasonedtechnologyguy'.

I place pretty close to zero respect for the OPs position, compared to well known names in the decade long Ruby Gems committer community.
by burnt-resistor | 2025-09-22 23:31:29+00:00
Trying to convince rich people that their extreme selfishness leads to externalities like unnecessary suffering of others and destruction of the planet is like trying convince a cult member that they're happy, secure, and not abused. Good luck with that because trickle-down economics, unregulated capitalism, and "family values" nationalism are the ones who have more power here and in the world. It doesn't have to be this way if there were greater solidarity, (rational/productive) action, and civic participation amongst non-capital owners to limit the power of a small cadre of destructive individuals who horde wealth, but great numbers of people choose head in the sand learned helplessness or inaction, foolishly believing their interests align with the very rich, accelerationist terrorism, or ineffective shouting into the void like this here. :) Revolutionary communism, anarchocapitalism, nor any utopia ain't the way but certainly maximum corruption like gold bars, dark pools of PAC money, getting away with accepting $50k bribes, or using office to launch a crypto coin ain't sustainable.
by silicon5 | 2025-09-22 23:31:44+00:00
Commodore's strategy was to sell an entry-level computer as cheaply as possible, whereas the Amiga's initial selling point is that it was cutting-edge but still somewhat affordable. If you want to see what Commodore's answer to the Amiga would have been, look at the Atari ST: cheaper, still using the 68000, but lacking the advanced features which made the Amiga special.
by sarchertech | 2025-09-22 23:31:44+00:00
> Also, you cannot prove something by tests; Just because you found 100000 cases where your code works does not mean there is not a case where is does not (just as you cannot prove that unicorn does not exist) :)

That’s exactly it. For any non trivial program, there exists an infinite number of ways your program can be wrong and still pass all your tests.

Unless you can literally test every possible input and every bit of state this holds true.
by 999900000999 | 2025-09-22 23:32:02+00:00
Your last paragraph is exactly why I'm avoiding the brand.

It's a premium product with subpar service.

You have Framework the ideal. Right to repair , replaceable parts, ownership rights.

Vs

Framework the company, weird QC issues, parts out of stock, iffy supply. Prices so high you might as well just buy a better laptop whenever you'd swap the main board out.

I think I'm just going with a Thinkpad for my next computer. I also prefer the all black look.
by jdsnape | 2025-09-22 23:32:16+00:00
Is it possible? The EU is finding now that it is hard to keep data from the USA, which as a jurisdiction falls as much into that category as China does.

I would argue it is not possible to ever consider the internet 'safe' because you happen to flow through country x, and not country y. Instead, we must keep working on the protocols that we use to try to reduce exposure as much as possible.
by philwelch | 2025-09-22 23:32:24+00:00
I don’t think the primary value in learning data structures and algorithms is the ability to implement them yourself. It’s more of a way to get repetitions in on basic programming skills while learning about the tools that are available to you. Later in a CS curriculum you might learn how to write an operating system or a compiler, not because you’re necessarily going to ever actually do it again but because it’s a way of learning how those systems work as well as getting repetitions building larger projects.
by moomoo11 | 2025-09-22 23:33:05+00:00
While some UX improvements are nice, there are way more UX regressions that affect my day to day.

FaceTime zoom via drag gesture used to be so nice. Now I can only pinch (requires both hands) or tap the preset zooms.

Safari tabs and other interactions are ass now.

Selecting text and dragging selection is impossible if I’m dragging down. Half the time it doesn’t do shit because it opens a pane right below which registers my tap instead.

So many other interactions that required single tap or drag now require 2 or more and invoke opening a menu. Wtf.

Honest feels like an intern project, and not something I’d expect from Apple design team. Did any important/good people leave recently?

And yeah it looks cheap. I used to hate this similar look a decade ago when it was on iOS. I liked the last few UIs. This is just awful.
by sbinnee | 2025-09-22 23:33:14+00:00
It’s not for me either. I peeked at the script and repo the other day. There were choices I wouldn’t make, but it’s written opinionated in the front. That’s totally fine by me.

It is definitely making Linux more accessible. Yet still new comers to Linux will struggle when they want to do sightly more than what Omarchy offers. In that sense, the current Omarchy may not be _accessible_. But I think with this amount of users coming in, they will be able to find ways for almost anything.

It’s been having a great side effect. Hyprland is having a lot of support. I hope that many other pieces will have supports for better Linux experience. Who knows most of major software applications will have official Linux support in a few years.
by hinkley | 2025-09-22 23:33:44+00:00
A common story with JIT languages is to go back and forth between having a bytecode interpreter and not.

The paradox is that when the interpreter is fast enough then you delay JIT because it takes longer for the amortized cost to be justified. But that also means the reasons for that high amortization cost don’t get prioritized because they don’t really show up as a priority.

Eventually the evidence piles so high nobody can ignore it and the code gets rearranged to create a clearer task list. And when that list runs out they rearrange again because now that other part is 2x too slow.

Personally I’d love to see a JIT that was less just in time. Queuing functions for optimization that only get worked on when there are idle processors. So there’s a threshold where the JIT pre-empts, and one where it only offers best effort.
by dismalaf | 2025-09-22 23:33:54+00:00
Honestly, apps that require the web to actually do the thing you want, but also work offline, are more or less useless. You're basically just faking that it works offline, it doesn't do the thing you want, and it's a PITA for everyone involved. And to try get this right when most of the world has reliable data connections all the time is a colossal waste of effort.
by Mistletoe | 2025-09-22 23:34:00+00:00
The President is a Soviet planted saboteur, it's not that surprising, it's coming from the top down. I assume this is the US manufacturing revolution he has in mind.

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

>In 1988, the Soviet newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda stated that the widely propagandized personal achievements of Stakhanov actually were puffery. The paper insisted that Stakhanov had used a number of helpers on support work, while the output was tallied for him alone.
by zahlman | 2025-09-22 23:34:03+00:00
> Like if I think about the apps I use, my friends use etc, most of them are local.

Ones that you have to pay for directly?

Aside from game devs it's hard for me to think of who the major players are in that space any more. And now even when the game has a single-player mode it seems to demand an Internet connection, whether for DRM reasons, "anti-cheat" (why do you care?), updates etc.
by WaltPurvis | 2025-09-22 23:34:22+00:00
>prisoners being coerced to work is payment for their crimes. On the other hand, that job would have gone to someone else at market rates. This kind of thing drags down the market rates.

That's a different problem, for different inmates -- the inmates covered in this story are paid market rates. It mentions the software developer has a six-figure salary.
by nradov | 2025-09-22 23:35:13+00:00
China has collapsed multiple times: in 1967, 1960, 1937, 1916, 1856, and so on. Another collapse probably isn't imminent but based on historical patterns it's entirely possible in our lifetimes. There could be an external shock in terms of a severe disruption in food or energy imports, or an internal power struggle between CCP factions. And even if China doesn't exactly collapse, a slow stagnation like what happened to Japan after 1992 is quite possible.
by kbelder | 2025-09-22 23:35:14+00:00
This is what's keeping me from working on my own "John Carter of Mars" game. The books (at least the first 5-6) are public domain, but Edgar Rice Burroughs, inc has John Carter, Dejah Thoris, etc., all trademarked, and can continue that indefinitely. I don't think it would be a slam dunk legal case, but it's enough to discourage me from trying (I've heard they are litigious).
by doublerabbit | 2025-09-22 23:35:29+00:00
Understand the first 70%.

With the 70% you then pitch "I have this" and some Corp/VC will buyout the remaining 30%.

They then in return hire engineers who are willing to lap the 70% slop, and fix the rest with more AI slop.

Your brother dies happily achieving their dream of being a bazillionaire doing nothing more than typing a few sentences in a search bar.
by mattgreenrocks | 2025-09-22 23:35:49+00:00
Agree, the meat of the article is quite interesting. Also worth noting that, IMO, covid boosted the amount of engagement with the simulacrum (there was nothing else to do for many!), and people haven't weaned off of it. Algorithms will gradient-descend you into it very gradually, and you'll convince yourself you're just "looking for the truth."

Personally, I'm trying to cultivate more unmediated experiences as much as possible. The world and people aren't really attuned to this as much...to say nothing of my own inertia! But I do think they are an important component to both finding contentment and a sense of sustainable calm.
by janalsncm | 2025-09-22 23:36:11+00:00
Slightly related, in ML I write a lot of code which will be executed exactly once. Data analysis, creating a visualization, one-off ETL tasks.

There are a lot of times where I could spend mental energy writing “correct” code which trades off space for time etc. Sometimes, it’s worth it, sometimes not. But it’s better to spend an extra 30 seconds of CPU time running the code than an extra 10 minutes carefully crafting a function no one will see later, or that someone will see but is harder to understand. Simpler is better sometimes.

What Big O gives you is an ability to assess the tradeoffs. Computers are fast so a lot of times quadratic time doesn’t matter for small N. And you can always optimize later.
by terminalshort | 2025-09-22 23:36:36+00:00
Not a fan of private prisons, but prisons (public or private) don't make money. They are a massive cost to the government. Incarceration is expensive (Google gives me a median of $65K per prisoner per year), and the percentage of prisoners that are able to earn more money through labor than the cost to lock them up is probably very low.
by awful | 2025-09-22 23:37:07+00:00
Ours a SGI 4D-220 in a molecular modeling lab, these demos made everything else look sick - we had the horsepower; engineers and programmers upset they didn't; trad CS and admins mad because I admin'd them as they were DEC and IBM snobs, mocked UNIX as a toy. Also Evans and Sutherland, a NeXT machine, MicroVAX, Macs used for building a hardware pulse sequencers for 3D NMR, custom DSP for 2D NMRs, (4) million dollar superconducting NMRs and an entire lab - all the cool toys of the day, life was good.
by frogperson | 2025-09-22 23:37:09+00:00
Same thing where I work. It's a startup, and they value large volumes of code over anything else. They call it "productivity".

Management refuses to see the error of their ways even though we have thrown away 4 new projects in 6 months because they all quickly become an unmaintainable mess. They call it "pivoting" and pat themselves on the back for being clever and understanding the market.
by nickff | 2025-09-22 23:37:11+00:00
I think NH doesn't have any private prisons either, and hasn't since 2000. Private prisons only have about 10% of the total prison population anyway.

https://www.criminon.org/where-we-work/united-states/new-ham...

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-states-use-private-pr...
by danielmarkbruce | 2025-09-22 23:37:13+00:00
> The very few people who actually need DSA skills already know that the advice "you don't need DSA" doesn't apply to them.

This is right. And most of those people know a lot of their job is very far removed from many other software engineers. But the prevalence of the idea "you don't really use DSA in practice" does suggest many people building applications where DSA isn't as applicable seem to misunderstand the situation. It matters in some sense - it explains why interviews at google are the way they are, why universities teach what they teach, what one should do if they really like such things.
by nilkn | 2025-09-22 23:37:22+00:00
Look, for most corporate jobs, there's honestly no way that you truly cannot find any kind or level of usage of AI tools to make you at least a bit more productive -- even if it's as simple as helping draft emails, cleaning up a couple lines of code here and there, writing a SQL query faster because you're rusty with it, learning a new framework or library faster than you would have otherwise, learning a new concept to work with a cross-functional peer, etc. It does not pass the smell test that you could find absolutely nothing for most corporate jobs. I'd hazard a guess that this attitude, which borders on outright refusal to engage in a good-faith manner, is what they're trying to combat or make unacceptable.
by ryoshoe | 2025-09-22 23:37:47+00:00
>If they're not forced to produce something of value to give to you, then how can you ever be made whole again? Does the state pay? If so, why do taxpayers who didn't commit a crime foot the bill? If it's insurance, then why do non-criminals paying insurance premiums foot the bill?

Are any of these solutions that unreasonable when you consider that the state/taxpayers are already footing the bill to keep prisoners incarcerated?
by bxparks | 2025-09-22 23:37:53+00:00
From the comments in this thread, it seems that to understand how Forth implements a simple IF-THEN-ELSE control-flow, I have to understand the difference between non-immediate and immediate words. I also have to understand the difference between outer and inner interpreter. And I have to understand how Forth generates snippets of machine code (where does that get stored? I thought Forth only has 2 stacks, does it also have a general heap?). Then understand how the THEN token goes back and patches the placeholder address generated by the IF token. And understand the difference between the parsing phase and the interpreted phase of the Forth interpreter/compiler.

But you are saying that the Forth version is simpler than C version which will kinda look like this after it's compiled (Z80 assembly code, it's in my head right now):

ld a, (variableN) cp 42 ld hl, StringHey call z, Printf ... StringHey: .db "hey!", 0

I find that hard to believe, but I accept that you believe that.