MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jedharris | 2025-09-16 16:12:11+00:00
In the Culture Series history hasn't ended, and the members of the Culture can and do leave and live in ways the Culture would find repugnant. Also there are marginal participants (such as the Mind known as Meat Fucker) who are more or less in the Culture but act in ways the Culture finds repugnant, but are not punished or controlled.

So according to your definition the Culture is not a utopia.
by Melatonic | 2025-09-16 16:12:12+00:00
My solution was to use both - they behave a bit differently and I figure it can't hurt to get two sets of backups (I do also get iCloud for free though).

Google photos is definitely easier to export and backup to my windows PC although Apple does provide a half decent iCloud client now for windows. It's a bit janky and took awhile for me to get a proper pipeline (you can accidently delete your cloud copy by doing the wrong thing).

One thing I really miss about Android was the ability to just plug in via USB-C to any computer and backup all the photos (and then remove them from the local phone). Google Photos would retain its full quality copy this way and I would free up phone space and have a full quality copy on my local machine (plus local external drive). Try this on an iPhone and it's slow as hell (even though it has USB-C), often fails partway through a large copy, and when you delete the photos locally I believe iCloud deletes their copy as well (even if you have plenty of cloud storage). I understand it's a "sync" tool technically but there's really no reason for it to be restricted in this way.
by verdverm | 2025-09-16 16:12:23+00:00
Cool, but these things make mistakes and that is not changing. They certainly cannot "understand" the complexities of infrastructure. That amount of context has shown to make agents struggle

Not going to trust Pulumi to build a better agent than companies who's focus is AI. My first concern is that they fine tuned their model and lost general capabilities along the way. The piece is vague and heavy on the marketing/investor appeal. If they want trust, make it open source and open weight

I don't want dozens of agents for every company because they are on a hype train and need to tell their investors they are now doing AI because the investors are also on the hype train
by poopsmithe | 2025-09-16 16:12:29+00:00
Yeap, saw that coming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQxm6n7SdvE

Apparently there is a manual release lever, which this driver did not know about. But really, I think it's a bad design to have to think about a second way to open the door. When people panic, they fall back to training, and that training is just opening the door using the handle they always use.
by PolicyPhantom | 2025-09-16 16:12:34+00:00
It’s true that much of the debate around AI swings between extremes — utopian promises on one side, dystopian collapse on the other. But institutions don’t operate well in extremes.

What matters is how we design governance that acknowledges uncertainty while still enabling progress. In practice, that means imperfect but adaptive frameworks — guardrails that evolve as technology and society evolve.

Instead of asking “which fallacy is right,” we might ask: how do we build systems that remain trustworthy even when our assumptions about AI turn out to be wrong?
by Yeroc | 2025-09-16 16:13:22+00:00
> Maven land is full of plugins with automated pom.xml version templating that has effectively the same effect as lax versioning, but without any strict adherence to any kind of standard like semver.

Please elaborate on this. I'm a long-time Java developer and have never once seen something akin to what you're describing here. Maven has support for version ranges but in practice it's very rarely used. I can expect a project to build with the exact same dependencies resolved today and in six months or a year from now.
by toss1 | 2025-09-16 16:13:24+00:00
Retractable flush door handles without an obvious, usable, and effective manual override option are one of the most stupid and user hostile "innovations" ever.

Designers effectively said: "Lets save 0.03 on our Coefficient of Drag, add unnecessary weight of extra motors and control complexity, and make sure whenever the 12V supply is cut or a bit of ice is in the mechanism, everyone inside is trapped —— it'll look cool".

China is already looking at banning them [0] because of the difficulty they present to emergency crews trying to rescue passengers.

And while I used to admire Musk and defend him here, this now seems like just another "innovation" by a sociopath who cares only about how cool it might make him look, and nevermind the people burned to death trapped inside his cars. At least the Ford Pinto exploding gas tank debacle was for profit [1], this is just one man's ego.

[0] https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a66052483/china-possible-b...

[1] https://www.autosafety.org/ford-pinto-fuel-tank/
by pletsch | 2025-09-16 16:13:30+00:00
It gets mentioned at the end but service disruption really is the problem here. Reminds me of how quickly my govt (Canada) breaks strikes nowadays to avoid these disruptions.

I don't know if there's a way out of businesses that don't see the value of IT ignoring these risks (outside of legislation) but I hope we don't end up in a situation where bailouts are common/companies rely on govt intervention.
by pengaru | 2025-09-16 16:13:37+00:00
The AI story is inherently dystopian. I don't think it says one iota about the SF tech scene, that's more defined by the people in the city than the output of advertising dollars.

From where I'm sitting (SoMa for coming up on two years) the city is still relatively empty compared to past booms where apt. hunting involved bidding wars. But RTO pushes are clearly progressing, albeit slowly.

Personally I prefer it empty, billboards are easy enough to ignore.
by nradov | 2025-09-16 16:13:49+00:00
Many things are technically possible. Fewer things are economically practical. Does Europe have the capacity to manufacture batteries that are big enough? How much will that cost and how many years will it take? A few local small-scale demonstration projects don't tell us much about the difficulties of scaling up by orders of magnitude. Have you actually done the math on this or are you just repeating platitudes?
by pdntspa | 2025-09-16 16:13:52+00:00
It isn't always a job. Sometimes it's just tinkering. Sometimes it's grandma trying to make sense of the Ubuntu linux install her grandson just replaced an old virus-laden version of windows with. Or the unfortunate retail worker on the phone with support staff because her POS terminal can only boot into single-user mode. Or (and I have experience with this one) an account manager at a customer install site trying to fix a bad update.
by AlexErrant | 2025-09-16 16:14:07+00:00
I appreciate your example.

Some libs do not expose "vanilla" js/ts functions that I can call - e.g. `LiveKitRoom` https://github.com/livekit/client-sdk-react-native

It only takes 1 hook to pollute your entire factory pattern; the comparison to colored async functions wasn't spurious. Hook-only options seem especially prevalent in the React Native ecosystem (ironic, given the memory constraints of phones).

Of course, I could fork/go down to the native layer, but this just proves my point that React DX is hot garbage.
by kstrauser | 2025-09-16 16:14:23+00:00
I've had that, too! Fairly recently, an ex client who sold their business to someone with a full-time IT staff asked me if I had the password to unlock their NAS. No, I didn't. I turned all those over to the IT staff, strongly recommended that they change them, and deleted my local copies. Sorry, but no, I can't help you with that.
by stetrain | 2025-09-16 16:14:56+00:00
I've had a Tesla for several years and am generally pretty happy with it.

I don't think the fancy electronic door handles are an improvement, and am unhappy to see that other brands are following suit.

If there are electronic processes that you want to trigger as the door opens, I think the better solution would be a two-stage handle that initially sends an electrical signal and then engages the mechanical latch if you continue pulling.

From just a convenience perspective having to explain both the interior and exterior doorhandles to anyone riding in your car is a pain, but in the case of an accident, being submerged in water, driver incapacitation, or any other reason you need to exit the car, there should be zero ambiguity of how to do so even if the car has lost power.

Obvious, intuitive, failsafe handles on the inside and outside of car doors should be industry standard.
by hawkfish-rmgw | 2025-09-16 16:15:04+00:00
Feature author here. The new FILL uses linear interpolation (and extrapolation at the ends). There were a bunch of other algorithms requested (e.g., cubic splines), but the syntax was not clear.

I think the real solution is to add support for non-aggregate window functions in the catalogue. Right now, they are all hard-coded, but if they were extensible, there are a number applications in addition to filling that could be supported.
by myrmidon | 2025-09-16 16:15:04+00:00
> Things were fine in Germany under the moderate Merkel government

Disagree completely.

I would put significant part of the blame for the whole Ukraine disaster on western reaction in 2014, when Crimea was annexed (thats not to say that Putin isnt an imperialistic asshole, just that this could have been avoided regardless).

The "Merkel policy" (link EU/Russia by trade to prevent war) is a solid long-term plan, but the EU needed to demonstrate willingness to reduce that trade (even when it hurt themselves) to punish expansionism/destabilizing behavior.

It failed to do this almost completely. This made it clear to anyone that a (successful) annexation of the whole Ukraine would have gone (mostly) unpunished.

In this case, I blame the Merkel government for putting the financial well-being of its citizens over ethical principles, but a big part of the problem is that most voters are too stupid and uninformed to even realize that such a tradeoff is being made anyway, and react to economical signals only.
by robotnikman | 2025-09-16 16:15:11+00:00
I've learned to take anything said by the experts with a grain of salt nowadays, mainly after seeing the large conflicts of interest in the food and drug industry. It's best to do your own research as well if you can.

That being said, there are certain institutions and experts that I've found are more trustworthy than others (The Electronic Frontier Foundation for example) so I do usually trust them over the opinions of others. Basically there is a lot of nuance, never blindly trust anything.

Regarding the topic of the Tesla door handles, I've always felt uneasy regarding the safety of them.
by retrac | 2025-09-16 16:15:18+00:00
That museum looks exciting!

> Pre-WW2 televisions seem to be quite rare

Pre-war television was rare. Electronic television came to maturity during the Great Depression. Early TVs were horribly expensive and given the economic situation of the 1930s almost no one could afford them! The UK started regular TV broadcasts in 1936 and by 1939 there were about 20,000 televisions in the whole country. And that was much further along than France, Germany, or the USA.

Most of those 20,000 were scrapped or sold during the war or they served as TVs faithfully into the 40s and even 50s, and then were retired. There are only a handful of working televisions of that vintage in the world.
by brewdad | 2025-09-16 16:15:29+00:00
Absolutely. My kid just finished an engineering degree from a well respected institution. Early on in the intro programming classes, about half of his class was unfamiliar with file system structures. Chromebooks and iPads in school and at home meant they had never really encountered them.

There were plenty of other "techy" things that older generations take for granted but kids aren't learning about unless parents show them because they are hidden behind modern OS/software interfaces and usually locked down to prevent discovery.
by Someone1234 | 2025-09-16 16:15:29+00:00
This is actually their "upgraded" design, the original Model 3 had no rear mechanical release at all. Hidden or otherwise. None.

See the older manual here:

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/2017_2023_model3/en_us/GU...

> Only the front doors are equipped with a manual door release.

How was THAT legal? How was that ADA compliant?
by simiones | 2025-09-16 16:15:35+00:00
No, this is just wrong. It might indeed use package-lock.json if it matches your node_modules (so that running `npm install` multiple times won't download new versions). But if you're cloning a repo off of GitHub and running npm install for the first time (which a CI setup might do), it will take the latest deps from package.json and update the package-lock.json - at least this is what I've found many responses online claim. The docs for `npm ci` also suggest that it behaves differently from `npm install` in this exact respect:

> In short, the main differences between using npm install and npm ci are:

> The project must have an existing package-lock.json or npm-shrinkwrap.json.

> If dependencies in the package lock do not match those in package.json, npm ci will exit with an error, instead of updating the package lock.
by PolicyPhantom | 2025-09-16 16:17:08+00:00
You’re absolutely right that mid-level hires buy immediate productivity. But “growth potential” isn’t just romanticism — it’s an investable trajectory. With the right project design, feedback loops, and domain exposure, juniors can grow into “multipliers” — people who combine technical skills with adaptability or domain expertise. That’s a kind of return you rarely get from simply adding another mid-level hire. In practice, resilient organizations balance both: mid-levels for immediate throughput, and juniors for long-term strength.
by PolicyPhantom | 2025-09-16 16:17:23+00:00
I agree that high turnover is a real constraint. That’s why the answer isn’t “10 years of apprenticeship” but designing scaffolds that combine learning with contribution in a shorter timeframe. Things like short rotations, micro-credentials, or mentorship stipends let juniors add value while they’re still on the job. Even if they leave after a few years, the investment isn’t wasted — both sides still capture meaningful returns.
by cbeach | 2025-09-16 16:17:32+00:00
Tesla fanboy and Model S owner here. I agree, those door handles are unsafe.

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/2012_2020_models/en_ie/GU...

> To open a rear door in the unlikely situation when Model S has no power, fold back the edge of the carpet below the rear seats to expose the mechanical release cable. Pull the mechanical release cable toward the center of the vehicle.

I have mentioned this to my family but I don't think there's any way my kids could operate these manual releases on their own, and certainly not in the heat of the moment.

It gives me chills to imagine the consequences of this for my family in an accident.
by ThrowawayR2 | 2025-09-16 16:17:37+00:00
Arguably one can't be a leftist when making SF tech salaries either. A casual check of an L5 at Google (as a representative example; they do have an office in SF) says their total comp. is about $413k, putting them in the labor aristocracy or at least in the "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" type of leftist.
by ComputerGuru | 2025-09-16 16:17:38+00:00
I was informed maybe 7 or 8 years back that my electric company would be replacing my analog meter with a smart one and always intended to try and glean more information about my electric consumption habits from it. It took me a lot longer than I intended, but last year I finally bought an RTL-SDR in the hopes of being able to get realtime info from the meter. Unfortunately, it seems that it's not one of the ones that emits consumption info over ISM bands for consumption by household appliances (so far as I can tell) and I ended up only capturing info from TPMS sensors off of passing cars (which was cool, but not really what I was looking for).

Do note that if you purchase an RTL-SDR these days, you'll probably get a v4 which, at least as of last year, does not play out-of-the-box at all with the software available on the Ubuntu apt repos and the RTL-SDR drivers that ship with 24.04 out-of-the-box — there were some hardware protocol/interface changes between v3 and v4 that make the old drivers incompatible and you'll get a litany of misleading or non-specific errors if you try without downloading and installing the latest drivers from GitHub (or somewhere).
by kouteiheika | 2025-09-16 16:18:02+00:00
> We’re building an age-prediction system to estimate age based on how people use ChatGPT. If there is doubt, we’ll play it safe and default to the under-18 experience. In some cases or countries we may also ask for an ID

Yay, more unreliable AI that will misclassify users, either letting children access content they shouldn't, or ban adults until they give up their privacy and give their ID to the Big Brother.

> we will attempt to contact the users’ parents and if unable, will contact the authorities in case of imminent harm

Oh, even better, so if the AI misclassifies me it will automatically call the cops on me? And how long before this is expanded to other forms of wrongthink? Sure, let's normalize these kinds of systems where authorities are notified about what you're doing privately, definitely not a slippery slope that won't get people in power salivating about the new possibilities given by such a system.

> “Treat our adult users like adults” is how we talk about this internally

Suuure, maybe I would have believed it if ChatGPT wasn't so ridiculously censored already; this sounds like post-hoc rationalization to cover their asses and not something that they've always believed in. Their models were always incredibly patronizing and censored.

One fun anecdote I have: I still remember the day when I first got access to DALL-E and asked it to generate me an image in "soviet style", and got my request blocked and a big fat warning threatening me with a ban because apparently "soviet" is a naughty word. They always erred very strongly on the side of heavy-handed filtering and censorship; even their most recently released gpt-oss model has become a meme in the local LLM community due to how often it refuses.
by gosasan | 2025-09-16 16:18:09+00:00
I’ve been using Claude Code ($20/month) for about two weeks now, and with one of the token usage monitors I can handle most of what I need. I also have the $20/month ChatGPT plan. I know I could try Codex CLI, but I’ve been hesitant since I’ve seen people suddenly hit the limit and get locked out for a week. The problem is that there’s no way to check usage. So I’m wondering if this update improves token usage management, or if there’s now a way to actually see our usage so we don’t end up tripping the limit without any warning.
by encom | 2025-09-16 16:18:29+00:00
This annoys me so much, and it's another reason I hate phone apps, because they do this all the time. Usually ANY error resolves to "something went wrong". I'm not expecting a stack trace, but they're too scared to show the user ANY tech jargon at all, and it's another reason why young people are computer illiterate. At least I can access the developer console on modern webshit when using an actual computer.

I had to logcat an app recently which failed with no error at all incidentally, to find out it was overzealous DNS blocking that prevented it from talking to its api endpoint. I don't to Android development, but I'm guessing apps would be aware of name resolution failures, and should be able to tell the user about it, without using fucking logcat.
by kemayo | 2025-09-16 16:18:38+00:00
Generally this is a good thing to happen, because it's fairly quick and easy to argue you're in the wrong jurisdiction... and if that's the case, it doesn't matter what the legal theory was, since the court couldn't convict you anyway.

Perhaps selfishly, I'd rather get out of a trial in the motion to dismiss stage, rather than having to very-expensively argue the merits all the way to the end.
by JCM9 | 2025-09-16 16:18:46+00:00
I do agree SF and the Bay Area have lost their allure and there are now much better places to live with opportunity and culture in tech. I don’t fully agree with the AI focus of the article. Yes it’s a bubble and the billboards are depressing, but comical if you view in the context of companies trying to out grift each other for your $$. However it wasn’t that long ago that the same billboards were saying everything would be on the blockchain now and that didn’t turn out so well.

I’d say the main sad thing is once the Bay Area was taken over by VC bros in fleece vests and mega corps it lost its soul. In some ways the place became the thing it started out fighting against, and so have many of its companies. Eg Salesforce started as the rebel solution to big bloated clunky tech, and now Salesforce is the big bloated clunky tech that a new generation groans at using.

SF turning into an almost literal dumpster fire hasn’t helped as any good “hub” also needs a clear downtown, and most folks actively avoid going into SF these days.
by qingcharles | 2025-09-16 16:18:46+00:00
I've known dozens of people in pretrial for a decade or more, it's not uncommon. Some are acquitted, most plead out or are found guilty of something at trial.

Under US law, pretrial detention is not prison. You are technically not being "punished" even though generally the conditions in pretrial are vastly worse than in prisons. (I did a deposition with a jail warden once and asked him why this was: "Because these facilities are designed for the average stay, which is 30 days if you run the numbers. Sure there are people here for a decade, but most people pay their bail within 24 hours.")

Technically most states have pretty short Speedy Trial statutes which require the gov to try you within several months of arrest. This almost universally doesn't happen because the defendants don't have all the information necessary for their defense, and because they want to run motions to try and quash any existing evidence.
by tjr | 2025-09-16 16:18:48+00:00
Jones and his team performed this experiment with four LLMs. ChatGPT 4.5 was by far the most successful: 73% of participants identified it as the real human. Another model that goes by the unwieldy name LLaMa-3.1-405B was identified as human 56% of the time. (The other two models—ELIZA and GPT-4o—achieved 23% and 21% success rates, respectively, and will not be spoken of again.)

By ELIZA, are they referring to the classic ELIZA? I am not aware of anything new and current with the same name?

If the old ELIZA succeeded 23% of the time, in the context of the other numbers ... that seems ... odd.
by xeromal | 2025-09-16 16:19:10+00:00
I was in a total crash of my model 3 in a hit a run. I was pitted from a crazy driver that was driving the wrong way and I ran into a retaining wall. I panicked trying to open the doors as there was smoke everywhere and I think the car was burning but the fog of an accident is pretty intense so I ended up breaking the window out with one of those little tipped seatbelt cutters and crawled out. That stupid override is completely useless when you're in fight or flight.

The Model S did it better where the override is just pulling the door handle all the way out.