MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by louthy | 2025-09-09 08:34:20+00:00
From the IFS [1]:

"UK tax revenue was 33.5% of gross domestic product (GDP ) in 2021 – the most recent year for which there are internationally comparable data. This is slightly below the average for both the G7 (36.3%) and the OECD (34.1%). While UK taxes are higher than in most other English-speaking developed economies (such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and the United States), they are considerably lower than in most other western European countries (average tax revenue amongst the EU14 was 39.9% of GDP ).

Under current government plans, UK tax revenue is forecast to increase to 37.7% of GDP by 2027–28. This would take the UK above both the current OECD and G7 averages. It should be noted, however, that other governments may also increase their levels of taxation by then."

If it's just Germany we're comparing to, then there are still multiple percentage differences. Germany is close to the average of 39.5% of GDP and the UK is 33.5% raising to 37.7%. Nearly 2% difference, which is a lot. It doesn't matter how the tax is raised, it's the total investment that matters. We have been a low tax economy for a long time (compared to similar European nations), that was my entire point: if we want better services then we are unlikely to get them in a low tax economy. Recent changes to the tax levels doesn't change how we got to this position in the first place.

[1] https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/how-do-uk-tax...
by vbezhenar | 2025-09-09 08:34:45+00:00
Also related:

I skimmed classic Codd paper "A relational model of data for large shared data banks" which gave birth to RDMS.

Codd uses singular nouns for example relation names: PART, PROJECT, COMMIT, supply, component, employee, jobhistory, salaryhistory. The only exception is "children" relation.

So that's one small argument in favour of singular approach :)
by littlestymaar | 2025-09-09 08:35:10+00:00
> WhatsApp had a migration app that has to be done when setting up the iPhone, but it failed due to some bug.

It's appalling to see how poor there QA is for a company that big. They also have a migration tool for migrations between android devices without going through a Google drive, but this one didn't work either when I tried it two years ago.
by jillesvangurp | 2025-09-09 08:35:30+00:00
> Renewables can't meet the base energy needs.

That assertion is not something everyone agrees with. And baseload is hardly ever qualified with even a ballpark estimate in GW or GWH of capacity needed. So, it's a fairly hollow and meaningless term.

And the reality is that for every 100GW added to grids world wide, about 80% or more is renewable. Nuclear is only small portion of the remaining capacity. And SMRs are a rounding error on that. Most of the rest is gas based generation.

Besides, data centers are a great example of something that can easily scale up and down its energy consumption based on price signals, user demand, etc. So, it's actually ideal to pair with fluctuating supply and demand from renewables. Using e.g. spot instances makes it easy for data centers to scale down their demand if energy is scarce and expensive. Other things they could do is throttle CPUs/GPUs based on energy pricing or encourage people to time shift non critical jobs to when energy is plentiful.

SMRs won't have fixed anything until there are lots of them. Whether you believe this will happen or not, it won't be happening very soon. Realistically, SMRs will remain a niche solution for decades to come; even if they do work at reasonable cost levels.
by fxtentacle | 2025-09-09 08:35:58+00:00
If you take a peak-performance-optimized design (the Intel CPU) and throttle it down to low power levels, it will be slower than a design optimized for low power (the Apple CPU).

"let's compare oranges to oranges"

That's impossible because Apple has bought up most of TSMC's 3nm production capacity. You could try to approximate by comparing Apple M4 Max against NVIDIA B300 but that'll be a very one-sided win for NVIDIA.
by pjc50 | 2025-09-09 08:37:36+00:00
> 2022 is also when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza started in earnest

This is just wrong for Gaza; either you take the "conflict has been running continuously since 1948" approach, or you date the present intense fighting to October 2023.

> AI has now sent a supply shock to the whole art industry

Not to the "fine art" part of it, no. It's taken out the lower and middle tiers; people doing commissions for a few hundred dollars are squeezed out, and there's much more slop to sell to tourists, but any business which cares about uniqueness and provenance (sometimes more than the content of the art!) is not going to notice.
by graemep | 2025-09-09 08:37:48+00:00
Empires have often grown without any desire to grow. Quite often empires have grown by moving against a threat close to its borders or trade routes and ends up in control of new areas, which then become part of its territories, which are then threatened....

Expansion is not uncontroversial either. The Roman Empire had periods of a non-expansionist policy, and the British Empire in the 19th century had a fairly popular Little Englander movement that opposed expansion of the empire.
by Nursie | 2025-09-09 08:38:05+00:00
It's my understanding, though don't take it as 100% gospel truth.

I can see that the model does incentivise both cheaper energy sources (more over-pay leads to greate investment possibilities) and pricing honestly. If the scheme chose the cheapest X units and paid them out at their bid rates, there would be incentive to bid as close as you can to what you predict the day's cutoff would be... but it does seem likely to not achieve the best overall price.
by zozbot234 | 2025-09-09 08:39:11+00:00
It's easy to be "unconditionally cheapest" when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. "Simple, cheap" power plants that burn a lot of expensive natural gas (or even worse, coal) are the current approach to that problem, which is not working very well. The point is to do better, and nuclear may be a very sensible choice since a single nuclear plant can replace a whole lot of natural gas peakers.
by jajko | 2025-09-09 08:39:18+00:00
This is the way. I've spend few weeks back a wonderful time on remote islands in heart of Sulawesi, Indonesia. I even bought sim card for the operator that was supposed to have some coverage there (to stay connected a bit with kids back home). Suffice to say no phone signal for week and a half, I don't mean internet, not even sms.

Pretty amazing, one focuses on actual adventures, people, food, culture, coral marine life, diving and so on. It felt like spending 2 months there.

Then coming back to all this cheap pathetic crap was a proper 'bleh'.
by espadrine | 2025-09-09 08:39:24+00:00
Past Mistral investors: JC Decaux (urban advertizing), CMA CGM CEO (maritime logistics), Iliad CEO (Internet service provider), Salesforce (client relation management), Samsung (electronics), Cisco (network hardware), NVIDIA (chips designer)[0]. I agree ASML is a surprising choice, but I guess investments are not necessarily directly connected to the company purpose.

BTW, I generated that list by asking my default search engine, which is Mistral Le Chat: indeed, using Cerebras chips, the responses are so fast that it became competitive with asking Google Search. A lot of comments claim it is worse, but in my experience it is the fastest, and for all but very advanced mathematical questions, it has similar quality to its best competitors. Even LMArena’s Elo indicates it wins 46% of the time against ChatGPT.

[0]: https://mistral.ai/fr/news/mistral-ai-raises-1-7-b-to-accele...
by elAhmo | 2025-09-09 08:40:04+00:00
That might be your experience. I also prefer Claude for my tasks, but for general usage they are very close.

Leaderboards like LLM arena show this and effectively rank all latest models within 20-30 points, which is almost a coin flip. 30 point difference in Elo rating is ~55%/45%, so out of 11 answers, you might prefer 6 from best model, and 5 from worst.
by port11 | 2025-09-09 08:40:14+00:00
It's a tragedy, when it comes to digital and specifically web literacy, but most people don't know they can.

I sat on calls with teachers at my previous job and they had no extensions installed. My own sister (a milennial) wasn't aware. Before that, I was at a place where devs could join UX interviews; it was even worse given the generational divide: older folks couldn't even tell when a link was obviously malicious.

We either install good browsers/extensions for our relatives, or let them be easy prey to the current state of affairs.
by djtango | 2025-09-09 08:41:52+00:00
I recently learned that Margit has a "feint" that is actually a stance - that's why his wind up feels like it takes forever.

I was interested to find out that Margit is one of the most technically fun and difficult fights to nohit run because his flow chart is actually the most complex of all the bosses. But most players can brute force their way through him.

Malenia was a lot of fun, especially without summons
by Pikkemans28 | 2025-09-09 08:42:13+00:00
This was inevitable but the way they did it with increasing the pricing across the self-hosted options the last couple of years is almost criminal.

In 2024 they canceled the "Server" products and at the same time massively increased the "Data Center" license fees. So everybody was forced to move to Cloud or just pay an enormous amount on DC licenses.

Then they increased the DC licenses again this year (February) only by now forcing all DC customers to move to Cloud.

I've read it many times here on HN but I hope some proper Jira/Confluence alternatives setup in the upcoming two years to fill the void.
by coldtea | 2025-09-09 08:42:39+00:00
That's what the study addresses (even if inconclusively).

The question is how "but they didn't include color blind people" has any relevance to the subject.

For color blind people we already know that they don't see the same colors, so the answer for them is trivial. They can't even decode the same input, so nobody expects them to have the same color qualia as someone who does.

The purpose of the study is to examine the color of people with same typical vision capabilities. So regarding the objection, it's like some team doing a pitch perception study and someone asks why the deaf weren't included!
by pkdpic | 2025-09-09 08:42:46+00:00
Love this resource, really looking forward to perusing the full text.

And to echo what others are saying I have spent the last month experiencing for the first time how not simple throwing a meaningful test suite together is for a ginormous legacy codebase. I was glad the author briefly seemed to acknowledge that but still... the pain...

They said the playwright ui was supposed to make it easy... Just plug it into an LLM they said... It should just take a few days right?
by danbruc | 2025-09-09 08:43:44+00:00
I think that is the correct way to do it, you iterate over all the cats picking one cat at a time and it becomes quite obvious when you join a table to itself forcing you to do this. I am not writing that many SQL queries and I am certainly too lazy to always do that, especially if I am writing not too complicated ad hoc queries, but if I want the code to be as good as I can make it, then I always do this. Sure, it makes things a bit more verbose but you can also make the query more readable by picking a descriptive alias, FROM Users AS Manager, FROM Users AS NewEmployee, and so on.
by weinzierl | 2025-09-09 08:44:42+00:00
"Clangers (usually referred to as The Clangers)[2] is a British stop-motion animated children's television series, consisting of short films about a family of mouse-like creatures who live on, and inside, a small moon-like planet. They speak only in a whistled language, and eat green soup (supplied by the Soup Dragon) and blue string pudding."

Sounds like early 70s.

"The programmes were originally broadcast on BBC1 between 1969 and 1972, followed by a special episode which was broadcast in 1974."

What else!
by coldtea | 2025-09-09 08:44:51+00:00
Yeah, I understand the limitation. But that is an irrelevant objection (is my point), since we already know that the color blind don't see the same colors - and know it at an objective level even (they can't discern them from totally different colors when asked for example).

The study is meant for people with typical vision. Might as well object that they didn't include the blind...
by hirako2000 | 2025-09-09 08:45:02+00:00
And Europe is now waking up to that. The people have access to YouTube and caught up on what's been going in European industries. Entering a multi polar world they are at least now informed.

Edit: related, France had many of these commissions to report on the dismantling of it's industrial fabric: https://youtu.be/1OH5PqO_O1Q
by arbayi | 2025-09-09 08:45:17+00:00
From the original linkedin post:

"AI has a product problem. Not a model problem.

Models are making capability leaps every few weeks but AI-native product innovation hasn’t kept up.

Most products are forcing AI into existing UX patterns rather than rethinking an AI-native experience from first principles. Parallels to early mobile (2007-2010) - for years, mobile meant shrinking your website into your phone until Uber reimagined transportation.

To be clear, there are lots of amazing AI-first products. See NotebookLM, Lovable, Stitch, Flow. But the pace of innovation on models has been faster, for a lot of reasons which I will explore in future posts."
by maxglute | 2025-09-09 08:45:45+00:00
Quotes from article repeating my points but missing context. 2011 was 12th 5-year plan, post Fukushima + desire to indigenize nuclear stack, they revised down nuclear ambitions / timelines, but it's not indicator they're cancelling / downgrading nuclear rollout. As in 13th, 14th plan hasn't deviated from nuclear targets revised 15 years ago, i.e. generation goal has been consistent given reasonable adjustments 100GW by 2030, 200GW by 2035 vs 300 GW in timeline without Fukushima + indigenization. Nuclear contribution downgrade as % of energy mix wasn't because they plan to curtail / cut back nuclear GWs, it's because their projection for future energy demand has grown above prediction, so planned nuclear share is going to be smaller %, i.e. nuclear share falls even if GW targets consistent. It just so happens they lucked out that solar/wind matured rapidly to fill gap.

Current construction / execution issues involves in dealing with 1st wave of indigenous plants, again it's shrinking as % of grid/mix because denominator is higher than expected, which is independent of central gov desire to multiply nuclear build rate, which they can't reliably commit to until tech is mature. So the best we can say is they're a few years off their planned nuclear GWs and if tech matures, they can go forth and multiply. Of course if alternative LCOE makes nuclear not economical that could change, i.e. if storage blows up. But there's no actual policy hints that nuclear is being revised down, as in not in the last 15 years, which even then is mostly target being pushed a decade due to factors listed. Now they're on trend and the delays are single digit year execution related, not 10+ year we have to rebuild the tech stack delays.
by sadanand4singh | 2025-09-09 08:45:45+00:00
Sick of reading the same story 10 times across different sources?

Built an AI agent that deduplicates news semantically and synthesizes multiple articles into single summaries.

Uses LangGraph reactive pattern + BGE embeddings to understand when articles are actually the same story, then merges them intelligently. Configured via YAML instead of algorithmic guessing.

Live at news.reckoning.dev

Built with LangGraph/Ollama if anyone wants to adapt the pattern

Full post at: https://reckoning.dev/posts/news-agent-reactive-intelligence
by dns_snek | 2025-09-09 08:45:49+00:00
The exact attack they described is less of an issue these days due to HSTS and preloading, but:

- make sure you're connected to the expected official domain (though many companies are desensitizing us to this threat by using distinct domains instead of subdomains for official business)

- make sure you're connected over HTTPS (this was most likely their issue)

- use a password manager which remembers official domains for you and won't offer to auto-fill on phishing sites

- use a 2FA method that's immune to phishing, like passkeys or security keys (if you do this, you get a lot of leniency to mistakes everywhere else)
by aiven | 2025-09-09 08:46:29+00:00
skill issue

game just trying to tell that brute force solution might not work. use tools, use specific charms, use crests that are better suited for specific arena/boss. some tools (such as spiked traps) can literally one shot most mobs and leave you 1v1 with a boss.

dont give up, use your brain, hacker
Show HN: Smile – an open source language for structuring prompts
by DrThomasAger | 2025-09-09 08:47:08+00:00
My wife studied psychology. One time, while I was prompt engineering, she was sharing with me a study where they found that people's bodies responded the same way to the icon of a smile as a real person smiling at them.

At the time, I had just started the latest iteration of systemizing some of the prompt syntax that had been working for me... And it included lots of open brackets ( and colons :. I figured... Wouldn't combining these together work?

And we could also get better and more consistent results by structuring prompts?

It ended up working much better than expected, and I'm excited to share (: Smile with the world. Give it a try and let me know what you feel :)
by 1718627440 | 2025-09-09 08:47:13+00:00
> so you can't rely on it as a runtime check.

Exactly. But we already have unreachable and assert. The whole point of contracts is, that they are checked by the compiler (when the compiler invoker asks for it).

Having the contract invoke UB in the fail case means that instead of replacing the error return with a diagnostic provable by the compiler, you replace the error return with potential corruption. In which case is that ever the right choice?
by mkl | 2025-09-09 08:47:20+00:00
They're not just algorithmic. There's a lot of manual effort in each image: https://thecodist.com/my-art-and-color-after-tiling/, https://thecodist.com/why-i-use-swift-to-make-generative-art...

> In my process, generation is supplemented by many manual processes, including image manipulation, digital painting, and occasionally even AI
by ohdeargodno | 2025-09-09 08:48:56+00:00
It's not, because Apple purposefully lied on their marketing material. Letting a 3090 go on full blast brings it pretty much in line in perf/watt. Your 3090 will not massively thermal throttle after 30 minutes either, but the M1 Ultra will.

So, yes, if you want to look good on pointless benchmarks, a M1 ultra ran for 1 minute is more efficient than a downclocked 3090.
by FridayoLeary | 2025-09-09 08:49:03+00:00
He was popular and actually did a decent job at first. I can't understand the self destructive course of action he took during covid. He managed to tank the economy and spent huge amounts of money. That from the party of fiscal responsibility. I believe that was the reason his party ousted him.

Talking of parties, he showed open contempt for the public. His lying about what took place in downing street upset me more then the actual violations. Many of the lockdown restrictions were stupid, arbitrary and in retrospect unnecessary. He would know that better then most people, but the whole think reeked of sleaze.

It was also under him that they lost control of immigration. Something which labour is (rightfully) getting battered over.

The Conservatives are imploding have completely lost control of the narrative to Reform, they are being punished by the voters and it all started with this man. It was so unnecessary, 200 years of dominance destroyed by ego and selfishness.
by 2dvisio | 2025-09-09 08:49:21+00:00
Just back from a 8500+km road trip (car, wife, and two kids 6 and 1) around Europe where we visited 9 countries (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece). For us as a family, France and UK had the safest and more relaxing roads. Italy was OK compared to the usual standard, Slovenia and Croatia had highways with too many slopes but people drive carefully. The ones where we struggled and developed high anxiety were (surprisingly!) Germany and Switzerland. In both latter countries we seriously struggled to relax as driving in any lane becomes a stressful experience. We have decided NOT to cross those countries anymore in our next trips sadly.
by M4v3R | 2025-09-09 08:50:10+00:00
Silksong is objectively hard, and if you're trying to argue otherwise you're either the mythical "god gamer" or just trolling. The game is unapologetically hard and punishing right from the beginning. The very second boss you encounter already hits you for 2 masks (which effectively means 3 hits and you're dead), and each time you try to fight him you first have to run back for a minute before you reach him. He even does 2 masks of contact damage. Heck, even some normal enemies you encounter in the first two hours deal 2 damage. The original Hollow Knight bosses didn't do 2 masks damage until half way through the game.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the game and consider it pretty much a masterpiece, but many people believe (myself included) the game could have a better difficulty curve from the beginning and be less punishing (just give me a freaking bench before each boss so I don't have to run through 10 screens to have another try at it) while still maintaining the overall difficulty and challenge.
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-09-09 08:50:45+00:00
>Do they really need to be anything more than the best European option to be successful?

With government agencies and some large enterprise? NO, it doesn't need anything more than being European, though I fully expect each EU government will then want its own in-house AI in order to launder some taxpayer money to the right consultancies with ties to political parties.

With consumers on the open free market? YES it needs a lot more than just being European, since without any tariffs or regulations, consumers will always vote with their wallet for the best product and best value for money they can get, no matter where it comes from, no matter the geopolitics. Period. See Chinese made TikTok.

And if you look in the CONSUMER tech product market, it's been captured by US SW & HW, and Chinese HW with some Japanese presence. Other than Spotify, EU products are notoriously absent form the consumer tech industry since they couldn't out-innovate the US and they couldn't cost-cut China, so they got squeezed out.
by the_duke | 2025-09-09 08:50:57+00:00
The big problem with CRDTs IMO is that they make it incredibly easy to break application semantics.

Just a basic example for a task tracker:

* first update sets task cancelled_at and cancellation_reason

* second update wants the task to be in progress, so sets started_at

If code just uses the timestamps to consider the task state, it would not assume the task is cancelled, unexpected since the later user update set it to in progress.

Easy fix, we just add a state field 'PENDING|INPROGRESS|CANCELLED|...'.

Okay, but now you have a task that is in progress, but also has a cancellation timestamp, which seems inconsistent.

The point is:

With CRDTs you have to consider how partial out of order merges affect the state, and make sure your logic is always written in a way so these are handled properly. That is *not easy*!

I'd love it if someone came up with a framework that allows defining application semantics on top of CRDTs, and have the framework ensure types remain consistent.