MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by magicalhippo | 2025-09-27 00:56:14+00:00
> A bit beautiful that we might end up partially going back to analog computers, which were quickly replaced by digital ones.

How long till we get a Ben Eater-style video about someone making a basic analog neural network using some DACs, analog multipliers[1] and bucket-brigade chips[2] for intermediate values?

[1]: https://www.analog.com/media/en/training-seminars/tutorials/...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-brigade_device
by like_any_other | 2025-09-27 00:56:21+00:00
> direct consequence

Yet somehow the Ottoman and Japanese empires didn't "directly cause" such laws in Turkey or Japan, so obviously this is not "after rain, the streets are wet" type causality, but more like "the safe was unlocked, which caused me to steal the contents" "causality".

> Public opinion [..is] irrelevant to the causal chain.

Public opinion is irrelevant to what laws and policies are enacted in a "democracy". It would be hilarious if it wasn't so true.
by burkaman | 2025-09-27 00:57:32+00:00
I mean it's already illegal to stop in the bus stop, and in some cities the buses have cameras to catch offenders, but people still do it. What would help is bus rapid transit (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit), which involves a lot of dedicated and separated bus lanes to make it a bit more like a train, but that only solves some of the problems I mentioned.
by ahazred8ta | 2025-09-27 00:57:48+00:00
Original paper in Science: "The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans" - TLDR longi/ denisovans/ neanderthals diverged from erectus earlier than we were previously aware of, but no info on when sapiens diverged from erectus

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado9202
by nis0s | 2025-09-27 00:58:05+00:00
The idea of reparations is both a fascinating economic and social problem to think about.

I personally think reparations at a group or nation state level are impractical and infeasible, but maybe someone could show a paper or two on how they could model the effect of such resource or money movement across nations and economies.

I can’t even imagine the geopolitical consequences, but I think a lot of new nuclear nations are going to pop up.

Climate change is real, but climate justice seems like a convenient excuse to make someone else pay for your country’s bad governance. What keeps many of these countries from building up from shanties like Singapore, or becoming small and mighty like Vietnam? How do they imagine that an influx of money will solve any of those problems which keep them from transforming at the moment? Iraq has 1100% more GDP since it was bombed after 9/11, but it still struggles with electricity and water supply issues. Lack of money and resources is not the problem for many of these nations, but their leaders and elites are excellent at convincing everyone otherwise.
by bvan | 2025-09-27 00:58:54+00:00
It has been growing slowly for the past 25 years. The limited market size is a reflection of the demand by traditional insurers and reinsurers, for alternative sources of capital. This is as it should be.. when traditional players start transferring risk to the capital markets motivated by the fees involved, or cheaper rates (premium), then you really start worrying about moral hazard i.e. ‘bad risks’ getting transferred to investors.
by godelski | 2025-09-27 00:59:12+00:00
> I got the impression you thought the simplicity came purely from architectural insights.

I'm unsure where I indicated that, but apologize for the confusion. I was initially pushing back against your original criticism of something like Alphafold having needed to be built first.

Like you suggest, simple can mean many things. I think it's clear that in this context they mean "simple" (not from an absolute sense) in terms of the architectural design. I think the abstract is more than sufficient to convey this.

> My point was just that to compare apples to apples

As a ML researcher who does a lot of work on architecture and efficiency, I think they are. Consider this from the end of the abstract

| SimpleFold shows efficiency in deployment and inference on consumer-level hardware.

To me they are clearly stating that their goal isn't to get the top score on a benchmark. Their appendix shows that the 100M param is apples to apples to alphafold2 by size but not by compute. Even their 3B model uses less compute then alphafold2.

So being someone in a neighboring niche, I don't understand your claim. There's no easy way to make your comparisons "apples to apples" because we shouldn't be evaluating on a single metric. Sure, alphafold2 gives better results on the benchmarks but does that mean people wouldn't sacrifice performance for a 450x reduction in compute? (20x for their largest model. But note that compute, not memory).

> messaging is also about attracting attention

Yeah this is an unfortunate thing and I'm incredibly frustrated with this in academia and especially in ML. But it's also why I'm pushing against you. The problem stems from needing to get people to read your paper. There's a perverse incentive because you could have a paper that is groundbreaking but ends up having little to no impact because it didn't get read. A common occurrence is that less innovative papers will get magnitudes more citations by using similar methods but scale and beat benchmarks. So unfortunately as long as we use citation metrics as a significant measure of our research impact then marketing will be necessary. A catchy title is a good way to get more eyeballs. But I think you're being too nitpicky here and there's far more egregious/problematic examples. I'm not going to pick my fight with a title when the abstract is sufficiently clear. Could it be more clear? Certainly. But if the title is all that's wrong then it's a pretty petty problem. Especially if it's only confusing people who are significantly outside the target audience.

Seriously, what's the alternative? That researchers write to the general public? To the general technical public? I'm sorry, I don't think that's a good solution. It's already difficult to communicate to people in the same domain (but not niche) in the page limit. It's hard to be them to read everything as it is. I'd rather papers be written strongly for the niche peers and enough generalization that domain experts can get through it with effort. For the general public, that's what science communicators are for
by swores | 2025-09-27 01:00:09+00:00
I'm too late to edit my previous reply, but wanted to add a few sources so here we go -

Fact checking services debunking the claim of population not shrinking since October 2023:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-...

https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/gaza-population-growth-proj...

Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' population estimates, as of July 2025 - down 6% in one year since 2024, which is 10% below original forecasts for 2025:

https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_... (3rd section of page 2; though the whole document is worth reading)
by inferiorhuman | 2025-09-27 01:01:46+00:00
The issue here appears to be: Why is SORTA's purchasing so incompetent that they are buying 17 busses for the price of 35? They are over double the price of RTD.

As far as I can tell the author is making a bad faith argument. SORTA's purchase was about one third diesel-electric hybrids, while RTD's was almost certainly diesel only. AFAICT the RTD buses don't have air conditioning while the SORTA buses do.

SG vs the US? Economies of scale, simpler drivetrains (hybrid vs non), and less expensive smog equipment.
by Zacharias030 | 2025-09-27 01:02:22+00:00
I think people often interpret a bit too much. Perhaps it’s just some researchers who got enough freedom to run and publish interesting work within apple. For a company like apple it makes sense to have a research lab with considerable freedoms even if protein folding is not a core interest, which is why you see it published but not the formula for the new Corning Gorilla glass…
by dogmatism | 2025-09-27 01:05:09+00:00
It doesn't really work like that for the most part

If you actually need a really high risk surgery, you probably have a terrible prognosis without it

For instance, in the pivotal trial of transcatheter aortic valve replacement for aortic stenosis (TAVR) the people were deemed too high risk for surgery, so got nothing (well, medicine only which doesn't really change anything for this condition) or TAVR. The medicine arm had 50% mortality (1 year I think?) whereas the TAVR arm was "only" 30%!

Now that didn't mean all those 30% of deaths were due to the procedure or even the aortic stenosis. I think that ran 10% or so (going off memory here). They just had so many other problems. For comparison, TAVR is now done in low-risk people, and I think the 1 year mortality is <3%

The things that go into making someone "high risk" in the STS (cardiac surgery) risk score are for the most part pretty obvious. If your heart muscle is super weak (or you need a machine to keep going before surgery), you have kidney failure, prior strokes, combined heart problems, bad liver or lung disease, etc etc. You can calculate a score, but you probably can guess it from the door of the room
by cml123 | 2025-09-27 01:05:50+00:00
Since you mention the viola da gamba, I'll mention that in the US, the Viola da Gamba Society of America[0] is keeping the tradition alive. I'm a rusty cellist and learned of the vdgsa a few years ago. They have an annual conclave for players of all levels to learn, play, and have a good time. There was a conclave about 2.5 hrs from my home, and it was advertised as free for beginners, with the option to rent an instrument for the duration of the event across ~ a week. I also play the bass guitar and double bass, which like the gamba family are tuned in fourths vs fifths for the violin family, so I figured I'd show up and try my hand at the instrument.

They are a friendly and welcoming community maintaining a rental network in the US for the different types of violas da gamba. They have a strong interest as an organization in funding the continued scholarship, performance, and community for these forgotten instruments. It was very cool. I've since gotten my hands on a rental bass viol, though I haven't had as much time for it as I'd like.

[0] https://www.vdgsa.org/
by bb88 | 2025-09-27 01:06:33+00:00
There's a certain trend to repairing existing electronics and keeping electronics waste out of landfills, right to repair and what not -- and that's the spirit I was talking about.

Even hot swap switches prevent more landfill waste as it makes it easy for people to replace bad switches. And if you want a reliable keyboard in the future, that's what you'll need, other wise it will just be more e-waste.

Owning 20 cars and maintaining them is a hobby. Owning 1 car and maintaining it is not -- it's life.
by songeater | 2025-09-27 01:11:13+00:00
Tools like Suno are fundamentally enabling. I'm about 40 years old and never "had the music" - not for lack of trying (music lessons at a young age)... but could never carry a tune or keep rhythm. I suppose its what being dyslexic feels like. If I were educated in a culture where music was fundamentally as important as reading or math, I suppose would have spent enough hours on it to eventually be passable... but I got frustrated, the music lessons stopped. But that doesn't mean I stopped appreciating or wanting to make music!

And then comes Suno (and OpenAI's jukebox before that), and it felt like my brain exploded... like the classic scene in a superhero movie when the power was given to me. Is my music good? No - but I spent years writing and fashioning poetry and all of a sudden can put that to music... hard to explain how awesome that feels. and i love using the tools and it's getting better and it's been fundamentally empowering. I know it's easy to say generative art is generative swill... but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar".

https://open.spotify.com/album/45CY60A8GCHxBQb7DCJsIl

https://songxytr.substack.com/p/what-is-a-songxytr
by mrtesthah | 2025-09-27 01:15:06+00:00
Yes, it would help to know that I could see a dentist who would inform me of cavities and gingivitis that I am (or am not, depending on genes), developing as a result of my brushing habits (and through that feedback help refine said habits), rather than merely hoping and doing nothing more for lack of funds.

And many people will require regular teeth cleanings to avoid gum pockets and consequent gingivitis despite their best efforts at brushing and flossing.

There are other situations where tooth infections can move to the brain in a matter of days, risking death if left untreated. Regular checkups reduce that risk considerably.

The other side of your argument would imply that the existence of toothpaste renders the entire field of dentistry inessential.
by doctorpangloss | 2025-09-27 01:15:24+00:00
I guess my point is, writing 3,000 words on social media choices isn't going to make the game engine any better. But I can see how it is really important to the community and developers, which is to say, it's really important if the product is not a game engine but An Open Source (Esoteric) Game Engine Hosted On GitHub. Do you see what I am saying? That is the difference between making the best videos and making the best YOUTUBE videos. Mr. Beast isn't confusing, he's capitalizing the important part of what he is trying to say!
by hirako2000 | 2025-09-27 01:17:27+00:00
I agree that the effect can look similar, we both end up with a compressed representation of past experiences.

The brain meaning-memorizes, and it prioritizes survival-relevant patterns and relationships over rote detail.

How does it do it, I'm not a neurobiologist, but my modest understanding is this:

LLM's summarization is a lossy compression algorithm that picks entities and parts that it deems "important" against its trained data, not only is lossy, it is wasteful as it doesn't curate what to keep or purge off accumulated experience, it does it against some statistical function that executes against a big blob of data it ingested during training. You could throw contextual cues to improve the summarization, but that's as good as it gets.

Human memory is not a workaround for a flaw. It doesn't use a hard stop at 128kb or 1mb of info, It doesn't 'summarize'.

it constructs meaning by integrating experiences into a dynamic/living model of the world, in constant motion. While we can simulate a hierarchical memory for an LLM with text summaries, it would be off simulation of possible future outcome (at best), not a replication of an evolutionary elaborated strategy to model information captured in a time frame, merged in with previously acquired knowledge to be able to then solve the upcoming survival purpose tasks the environment may throw at it. Isn't it what our brain is doing, constantly?

Plus for all we know it's possible our brain is capable of memorizing everything that can be experienced in a lifetime but would rather let the irrelevant parts of our boring life die off to save energy.

sure, in all case it's fuzzy and lossy. The difference is that you have doodling on a napkins on one side, and Vermeer paint on the other.
by dghlsakjg | 2025-09-27 01:17:37+00:00
You actually need the altimeter to be capable of reading below 0 in the real world.

Aircraft altimeters are based on air pressure. The reference pressure is variable based on atmospheric conditions and is decided by controllers, or in the case of uncontrolled airspace, the matching the altimeter of the known altitude that you took off from.

All that is to say, on my home (uncontrolled) airport which is ~10 feet above sea level, I occasionally land at a negative altimeter value since the weather conditions have changed while I am in the air.

Assuming that an altimeter reading must be positive is a bad assumption.
by graeme | 2025-09-27 01:18:06+00:00
There isn't really a good way to know if the EC will find a violation. The legal rulings are much more substance based than rule based. This sounds good but it creates uncertainty. The previous enforcement chief routinely touted the potential for large fines.

The safest approach is not to bring in new features that might be deemed non compliant.

If the EU nonetheless threatens fine that weighs into the cost benefit analysis.

Your last paragraph focussed on the app store, but the DMA covers everything. There is no feature of the iphone excluded from potential rulings that it must be interoperable.
by brailsafe | 2025-09-27 01:23:25+00:00
Vancouver has a great coffee scene, better than most cities imo in terms of spread of types, prices, availability. A recent one I've been liking lately is Doe Roasters on Hastings, but Moja and JJBean are great too between $3-6 CAD for good filter coffee, presumably a bit more for espresso-based drinks.
Show HN: A web version of Pips game (NYT domino game)
by kieojk | 2025-09-27 01:23:58+00:00
Hi everyone,

I’m an indie developer learning Next.js and a big fan of the NYT game Pips. Inspired by it, I built https://pipsgamer.com — a responsive web version of Pips with smooth gameplay on both desktop and mobile.

What makes this project different from NYT’s version is that you can play it infinitely under three difficulty levels: Easy / Medium / Hard.

This is the first time I’ve built a game. Along the way I ran into many difficulties: implementing the game logic, configuring the UI, matching layouts for small and large screens, etc. I spent many lonely nights and sometimes even doubted whether I could complete the whole project. After 24 days of persistent effort, the project is finally finished.

No signup required — just go and play. If you try it out I’d really appreciate your feedback: what you like, what bugs you see, what could be improved.

Thanks!
by paulcole | 2025-09-27 01:26:36+00:00
I’m not sure if you meant to reply to my comment or someone else’s?

Why would I have FOMO? I am literally not missing out.

> All you are doing is learning to deal with the very flaws that have to be fixed for it to be worth anything.

No it is already worth something.

> Embrace that you aren't learning anything useful

No, I am learning useful things.

> There's a point when you need to realize it's not good enough yet

No, it’s good enough already.

Interesting perspective I guess.
by AngryData | 2025-09-27 01:26:45+00:00
I don't believe labor is that much of the cost of a bus, unless you are talking about the "labor" of investors and high level administrators. Ive worked in many many different manufacturing jobs, and labor of building things has always been the lowest cost of concern despite managers trying to harp on about it. Labor costs are the easiest to control, which is why they get the most attention, but material procurement, administrative bloat and bureaucracy, and marketing or bribes always top the scale above the workers actually producing what is being sold.
by userbinator | 2025-09-27 01:26:54+00:00
Are there any Amish in the UK? In the US, they probably have ID (like most other citizens) but not the digital form that's being discussed here. I'm not against the idea of having an ID card, as like many others I have some of my own, but that's a physical, inert object which stands on its own, not tied to anything ephemeral and fragile like a mobile phone or computer would be.
by Bender | 2025-09-27 01:26:56+00:00
If you mean rear extra bright red lights those are for fog to prevent being rear-ended. If there was no fog it is illegal. Whether or not it is enforced depends on location, agencies, priorities. Example usage would be in Bakersfield, CA there is a location that at times goes from clear to not being able to see lights 2 feet away nearly instantly. Beyond pea-soup fog. It's a very unnerving experience if one is not ready for it.
by danpalmer | 2025-09-27 01:27:43+00:00
> But a bus isn't just a bus, there are differences in what is needed in different cities

That's sometimes true but often not. Utah might need buses to go up the canyons, but might have passed some requirement at some point that said that all the buses need to be able to do this because someone got burnt once by not having enough of those buses. Or some well-meaning (or vote seeking?) city councillor might have put through a bill to put USB-A chargers in all the seats, which will stick around far longer than those coming as standard making them an expensive custom option.

What you end up with is requirements that make the buses custom purchases, which massively inflates their costs, when any reasonable person would say that such custom attributes aren't (always) needed. By having a strong opinion about something, the city will pay far more than if they bought an off-the-shelf solution.

Much of "the west" is particularly affected by this sort of attitude. Everywhere and everyone is convinced that they are special in some way and need something specific, but end up paying for it. This is part of why India can send a probe to Mars for $72m, or why Singapore can buy busses at $300k instead of $1m. And to be clear, I say this having grown up in the UK and moved to Australia, both places with a certain amount of this attitude.
by CM30 | 2025-09-27 01:28:15+00:00
Not even just regular Joe, a lot of the things large companies get away with would lead to far harsher consequences for small or medium sized ones. Any normal company spying on people's devices at the scale of Facebook, selling dodgy goods on the level Amazon does or ignoring guidelines in general like Uber and AirBnB used to would get absolutely wrecked by the legal system.

The system needs to be way more even when it comes to dealing with individuals and companies of every size possible.
by ii41 | 2025-09-27 01:31:02+00:00
This is equivalent to the `if let` syntax of Rust. In Rust at least this is treated as a special syntax but not a boolean. I once complained it's kinda confusing that it makes one think the `let` pattern matching syntax is a boolean expression which it is not, and the Rust people replied to me saying yeah it can be a boolean maybe at some point in the future. So yeah whether such syntax makes pattern matching a boolean really is just a matter of whether it's said to be one.
by thw_9a83c | 2025-09-27 01:33:51+00:00
Without a doubt, Suno Studio boasts some impressive features. One of the introductory videos features a voice-to-saxophone demonstration. The result sounded surprisingly good to me and was perfectly usable.

I wonder how AI-assisted music production like Suno will change the profession of being a musician. I think people want their favorite music artists to be real humans they can relate to. For that reason, I guess real singers won't be out of a job anytime soon. The same may apply to performers of real musical instruments. No one wants to see music played entirely from a computer during a live concert.

However, I predict that it will be very difficult to become even moderately well-known as a musician by just being a Suno Studio creator alone. A lot of good-sounding content will be created this way, and if an artist can't perform live or doesn't have a unique persona or story to attract an audience, it'll be hard to stand out from the endless mass of AI-generated content.
by theologic | 2025-09-27 01:34:38+00:00
The challenge is that we have a rapidly evolving GLP/GIP/Other landscape being developed. In other words, you take a risk that the government buys the wrong thing. However, I think with a little push, you could have a highly competitive field to lower the federal cost, and the ROI should be easy to plot.

Actually, you don't need to do everybody all at once. Target the biggest (no pun intended) opportunities first.