MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by asimovDev | 2025-09-12 20:42:56+00:00
I wonder, if rack mount Mac Pros weren't so stupidly expensive, would AWS go with those instead? (assuming they wouldn't be able to get a good offer on those). I can't imagine it was all too pleasant to have to develop these rack mounting solutions for these minis (unless they used a preexisting one). Although if they can fit multiple of those minis in the space one Mac Pro would've took, it could be more efficient and therefore worth it?

All of this is ignoring the fact that current M2 Ultra Mac Pro is just barely better than M4 Pro mini (unless thermals are an issue on those, haven't delved into the reviews and/or benchmarks)
by matthewtse | 2025-09-12 20:43:21+00:00
Can I curl this file to a linux machine easily?

I was just the other day looking for a tool to easily move a non-sensitive file from my macbook, to my network-locked production machine. Rather than doing many hops through SSH tunnels, the easiest thing to do would be to host the file online, and wget it down to my linux machine.

The options out there were lacking. I used https://bashupload.com/ for a bit, but the problem is that after you download the file once, it gets deleted. Sometimes I want to share the file to multiple machines.
by lazyasciiart | 2025-09-12 20:43:30+00:00
Jesus. They were literally answering your question of “how can anyone be committed to someone they describe as a lesser evil”, very clearly not even using a specific side as the lesser evil, and you’re mad that anyone is able to elucidate or understand the reasoning used? You didn’t want to know how people do that, you just wanted to mention that they are terrible people and it’s a bad choice?
by Zenst | 2025-09-12 20:43:42+00:00
Finally, France will be happy after years of being pushed back on this with the drive for solar and wind turbines, which sadly all got supplemented via gas on the back that nuclear was bad.

Sadly, with electricity becoming more reliant on gas and other fossil fuels when it is not so sunny in winter, or on those cloudy days with no wind, means fossil fuel usage ends up higher than if they had stayed and expanded nuclear - instead they closed many plants(Germany a prime example, in favour of....gas).

Then the whole over-dependence on Russian gas and oil really did whammy the energy price market, not just for Europe, but with a knock-on effect across the world. One we still pay for today.
by Vegenoid | 2025-09-12 20:43:52+00:00
I think it’s better viewed through a lens of effort. Implementing systems that try harder to not challenge humans takes more work than just throwing up a catch-all challenge wall.

The author’s goal is admirable: “My primary principle is that I’d rather not annoy real humans more than strictly intended”. However, the primary goal for many people hosting content will be “block bots and allow humans with minimal effort and tuning”.
by mikepavone | 2025-09-12 20:43:52+00:00
You totally can do it with some combination of overbuilding, storage and increased interconnection. It just starts to get expensive the higher the portion of your generation you want to supply with renewables. There's a good Construction Physics article[0] about this (though it simplifies by only looking at solar, batteries and natural gas plants and mostly does not distinguish between peaker and more baseload oriented combined cycle plants).

Personally, while I'm not opposed to nuclear, I'm pretty bearish on it. Most places are seeing nuclear get more expensive and not less. Meanwhile solar and batteries are getting cheaper. There's also the issue that nuclear reactors are generally most economical when operating with very high load factors (i.e. baseload generation) because they have high capital costs, but low fuel costs. Renewables make the net-demand curve (demand - renewable generation) very lumpy which generally favors dispatchable (peaker plants, batteries, etc.) generation over baseload.

Now a lot of what makes nuclear expensive (especially in the US) is some combination of regulatory posture and lack of experience (we build these very infrequently). We will also eventually hit a limit on how cheap solar and batteries can get. So it's definitely possible current trends will not hold, but current trends are not favorable. Currently the cheapest way to add incremental zero-carbon energy is solar + batteries. By the time you deploy enough that nuclear starts getting competitive on an LCOE basis, solar and batteries will probably have gotten cheaper and nuclear might have gotten more expensive.

[0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/can-we-afford-large-s...
by SamoyedFurFluff | 2025-09-12 20:44:06+00:00
I think rhetoric around immigration is functionally a Motte and Bailey game. Many of our most productive immigrants play visa games, overstaying, working on non-working visas, etc. in fact it takes a sort of grit, daring, and entrepreneurship to play fast and loose with bloated inefficient government regulation (such as our immigration system). It is obviously easy to declare “well, my intentions were to always target just the worst ideal of immigrant” while ignoring the reality of how much immigrants— yes, even the unchecked, undocumented, unvetted ones— benefit the country as a whole…
by shmerl | 2025-09-12 20:44:38+00:00
More exactly, you can't invent algorithms on a spot which took who knows how many years for others to invent. I.e. the question ends up being more if you know about a specific algorithm, which results in "invent it if you don't know about it". It's absolutely silly to test for ability to invent one on the spot, so it's a pretty pointless interview question really.
by garciasn | 2025-09-12 20:45:42+00:00
Some polls state otherwise, with many pointing to disillusionment with the methods and likely incarceration and deportation of immigrants that were potentially targeted improperly by the administration as a way to appear tough on immigration to achieve their goals. The net-net of these actions will leave the economy weaker and cause a net loss of population earlier than expected according to the CBO.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...

https://www.axios.com/2025/09/10/trump-ice-big-beautiful-bil...

https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/docume...
by crystal_revenge | 2025-09-12 20:45:49+00:00
Does it really matter whether or not the head of the EPA believes in climate change or not?

There is no indication that we will, no matter the administration, as a society/civilization/species will do a single thing to avert the worst case climate scenarios.

And, at this point, to do so would cause, at least in the short term, just as much harm as the impact of climate change, no matter how severe, will in our lifetimes.

The previous administration had plenty of "green" rhetoric, but nothing about the situation we're in improved and there is zero evidence it will. I personally don't see a lot of difference between "pretending things are good" and "ignoring that things are bad".

Besides, there's very little chance that climate change will do tremendous damage to our civilization, as the build up to those impacts will likely be preceded by increasingly aggressively and destructive global conflict. We're already seeing this happen before our eyes. The humans that climate change will drive to extinction will be the small number of "survivors" of whatever happens on the way there.
by b_e_n_t_o_n | 2025-09-12 20:46:09+00:00
I agree that these platforms are an issue, but I think it's also a matter of how you use them. I spent a couple years on Twitter/X and regret every minute, whereas my time on Instagram has been great. That's because I fed my X algorithm all sorts of rage bait and political content through my interactions and follows, and likewise my Instagram is full of friend's posts, comedy skits, and poetry/literature due to mindful interactions with content. I'm not saying the platforms aren't at fault, because they definitely are, but it's also possible to curate your feeds for stuff that's healthier.

That being said, we shouldn't have to put effort into curating our feeds to ensure we don't become mentally unwell. I'd be happy if every social network disappeared and we went back to chatrooms and maybe 2013 Instagram / some way to share photos with friends.

I'm an older gen-z and I see my younger peers starting to become mindful of the harms of social media. I don't know if it will ever be seen as harmful as smoking, but I have a feeling that the younger crowd is ready for a more mindful form of social media. Anecdotal, but it feels like my generation mostly uses Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok, FB and X are more for millennials. We're aware of doomscrolling and stuff, perhaps in the near future we will drop our usage of TikTok and a new, more mindful form of social media will emerge.

edit: just realised I wrote "mindful" 50 million times
by yongjik | 2025-09-12 20:46:17+00:00
I can assure you, if OSHA raided Hyundai's plant and even arrested managers for unsafe practices, the majority of Koreans would've been like "Yeah fuck Hyundai, serves them right, go America!"

But that's not what happened. And the message seems pretty clear: don't come to the US to work, unless you fancy being treated like a busted drug dealer.

You can't do that and then claim it was about workplace safety. Well, I mean, I guess you can, but the factory workers and investors aren't going to believe you.
by ctoth | 2025-09-12 20:46:37+00:00
> There are lots of providers where I can buy a VPS somewhere and be in charge of configuring and patching it, but if I just want to hand someone a set of HTML files and some money in exchange for hosting, not many hosts fit the bill.

Dreamhost! They're still around and still lovely after how many years? I even find their custom control panel charming.
by lossolo | 2025-09-12 20:46:44+00:00
> I doubt Russia can keep this one going for a decade.

They only need to keep going longer than their opponent. Ukraine has fewer soldiers and resources than Russia and currently has almost no offensive capability, as seen on the battlefield. All they can really do is defend, and even then they’re still losing ground, not much, but still losing territory. Here in the West, we’re facing economic problems, high debt, and a shortage of weapons production, especially in the EU. I’d like what you’re saying to happen, but that’s wishful thinking. And Afghanistan wasn’t the primary or even a major reason for the Soviet Union’s collapse.

> I doubt Russia can keep this one going for a decade

They have oil, gas, and minerals that the rest of the world needs, and they have an internal propaganda machine that lets them hold out for a long time. I remember "experts" saying Russia would collapse economically in 2023, then in 2024 for sure, and that they’d run out of rockets. Now it’s 2025, and that collapse isn’t even on the horizon.
by hex4def6 | 2025-09-12 20:46:56+00:00
Counter: Netscape vs Internet Explorer. Netscape had a year lead, but it's hard to compete when Microsoft decided to bundle IE for 'free'.

If profit margins are razor thin, the Apples and Amazons and Microsofts of the world can happily copy an idea and hold their breath far longer than a smaller competitor can.
by rnhmjoj | 2025-09-12 20:47:22+00:00
> in theory any amount of power a nuclear plant would generate could also be achieved with large amounts of renewables no?

You're exactly right, in theory, in practice it's impossible without some significant amount of energy storage, which we don't really have.

I once did this calculation for fun: in Italy, starting from the current energy mix and replacing fossils with more solar while meeting the demand in winter would require covering with panels an area equal to the region of Abruzzo (that's like 5% of Italy's total surface).
by BeetleB | 2025-09-12 20:47:58+00:00
Did a Google search, and the only actual, definitive thing I found was this:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5008436/#tbl1

Note that it's an IQ of 128 vs 125 for humanities. With the small sample size, it's basically noise. And given that this is Oxford, I would expect the average PhD student to have less than these numbers.
by dmoy | 2025-09-12 20:48:08+00:00
I mean yea, you're not exactly wrong, but the cost to fully investigate every application would be incredibly high. Maybe the answer is to make patents cost $20k (fee) + $20k (your patent lawyer's fee) instead of $1k (fee) + $20k (your patent lawyer's fee). But that's gonna be a lot of extra cost to file.

> If I was making a game with capture/summon mechanics and got a call from Nintendo, I would probably take capture/summon mechanics out of my game if their lawyers were threatening enough. That's the value in unenforceable patents.

It really depends? If you could hire a good patent lawyer for say $5k-$10k to dig up a reasonably correct answer for you, and that answer was "lol this patent is a joke, Nintendo will get quickly smacked out of court and all your attorney fees will get paid for by Nintendo", then maybe that would be sufficient if the cost to you to rework the mechanic would be order(s) of magnitude higher than $5k.

You're definitely right in that before you actually call their bluff and enter litigation, you'd want to be damn sure what you're getting in to.
by bsenftner | 2025-09-12 20:48:19+00:00
Found the fatal flaw, and right here it is in glorious action:

> and strong regulations and safety culture ensure that it remains one of the safest forms of energy available to humanity.

It is thinking like the comment above why nuclear power is unsafe and will be unsafe as long as the drive to reduce the expense is viewed as "fake costs due to regulation."

No, that person does not understand larger human culture and how it destroys anything with a nuance to understand, such as the need for regulations.
by dv_dt | 2025-09-12 20:48:50+00:00
I think the outcome here is we tried nothing, and now conclude nothing works. Ok, we tried privacy breaking "protect the children" nonsense. We used to have a much more of public announcement/education system for aspects of society for civil education (School House Rock), for nutrition, for public health (vaccination). All of it has since been deemed frivolous public expenditure - maybe because it worked too well and the need became invisible.
by fluoridation | 2025-09-12 20:50:12+00:00
There are two components to price: what the thing is worth, and what you might be willing to convince someone else to buy it from you in the future for. The latter is the speculative component. The former must be related to some intrinsic property of the thing. For example, an orange has some minimum price, because if nothing else it's composed of matter and so can weight things down. If bitcoin is useless to transact, then its intrinsic worth is zero, so its price is 100% speculative. That's not so much a bubble as just air being pressurized by no container.
by godelski | 2025-09-12 20:52:03+00:00
Not to mention just the practicality of it all. Like good god, how much time do we waste on rewriting the same little subprograms? But then again, I don't understand how people make a few hundred thousand a year and can't kick back some beer money for software we use every day. A solvable problem, needing only a minority to contribute, but nearly none do.
by ffsm8 | 2025-09-12 20:52:14+00:00
IANAL, but I think you're misunderstanding their point. MtG did not patent the genre/game type. There are countless other cards games that are essentially MtG, just not called that. Same with monopoly and any other established board game.

It's mostly trademarks with physical games, not patents.

But video games are ultimately software, and that's easy to patent...
by dotnet00 | 2025-09-12 20:52:49+00:00
That was the PR line used to trick immigrants into initially supporting the cause, it's become pretty obvious with the sheer glee on social media over all immigrants being harassed and open questioning of the immigration status of anyone they don't like (see: NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani), that it's actually just about not liking anyone who doesn't look like themselves.
by spwa4 | 2025-09-12 20:53:24+00:00
Uh, Qatar has colluded with hamas, in fact they are colluding with hamas, who have killed US civilians and attacked the US army. So the Qatari government has done worse to the US ... so what? Are they claiming the moral high ground? Seriously? Oh right, they see themselves as superior, they are god, and the entire world needs to be punished in revenge for this "disrespect" to their "power". Yes, raising a stink about this is clearly necessary to protect some Al-Thani ego, but a stink is all they can have.

Qatar is an ally of the US for one reason, and one reason only: to sell their oil. Both to have an export market and because they have absolutely zero hope of getting their oil dug up in the first place, and safely past Iranian waters without US military support. Oh and they have some somewhat conveniently located land the US uses for that deal. Frankly, neither Iran nor Russia or China can offer a deal 10% as sweet as the US offers them, plus you'd have to be totally insane to trust these them.

So when it comes to Qatar's position, the cold analysis is simple: this does not matter, does not change anything.
by creata | 2025-09-12 20:54:03+00:00
I don't think I'm falling for the ELIZA effect.* I just feel like if you have a small enough model that can accurately handle a wide enough range of tasks, and is resistant to a wide enough range of perturbations to the input, it's simpler to assume it's doing some sort of meaningful simplification inside there. I didn't call it intelligence.

* But I guess that's what someone who's falling for the ELIZA effect would say.
by Retric | 2025-09-12 20:54:06+00:00
> Most of it are fake costs due to regulation.

It’s really not, nuclear inherently requires extreme costs to operate. Compare costs vs coal which isn’t cost competitive these days. Nuclear inherently need a lot more effort refining fuel as you can’t just dig a shovel full of ore and burn it. Even after refining you can’t just dump fuel in, you need fuel assemblies. Nuclear must have a more complicated boiler setup with an extra coolant loop. You need shielding and equipment to move spent fuel and a spent fuel cooling pond. Insurance isn’t cheap when mistakes can cost hundreds of billions. Decommissioning could be a little cheaper with laxer standards, but it’s never going to be cheap. Etc etc.

Worse, all those capital costs mean you’re selling most of your output 24/7 at generally low wholesale spot prices unlike hydro, natural gas, or battery backed solar which can benefit from peak pricing.

That’s not regulations that’s just inherent requirements for the underlying technology. People talk about small modular reactors, but small modular reactors are only making heat they don’t actually drive costs down meaningfully. Similarly the vast majority of regulations come from lessons learned so yea they spend a lot of effort avoiding foreign materials falling into the spent fuel pool, but failing to do so can mean months of downtime and tens of millions in costs so there isn’t some opportunity to save money by avoiding that regulation.
by chipsrafferty | 2025-09-12 20:54:11+00:00
IBO premature optimization is normally one of two things:

1. Any optimization in a typical web development file where the process is not expected to be particularly complex. Usually a good developer will not write something very inefficient and usually bottlenecks come from other areas

2. Doing stuff like replacing a forEach with a for loop to be 0.5% faster
by jay_kyburz | 2025-09-12 20:54:15+00:00
> The same corporate structures that hid data about smoking, PFAS and oxycodone are the ones you want running a nuclear plant?

Thanks for expressing my concerns over nuclear so clearly. It's not the technology I fear, its the people in charge.

Combined with democracy, it means that even if we trusted our governments today to police nuclear companies, they are replaced every few years. Nobody knows who will be in charge in 10 or 20 years time.

We should simply not build this large dangerous technology because rules and regulations will not keep us safe.
by vintermann | 2025-09-12 20:54:34+00:00
UTF-8 is as good as a design as could be expected, but Unicode has scope creep issues. What should be in Unicode?

Coming at it naively, people might think the scope is something like "all sufficiently widespread distinct, discrete glyphs used by humans for communication that can be printed". But that's not true, because

* It's not discrete. Some code points are for combining with other code points.

* It's not distinct. Some glyphs can be written in multiple ways. Some glyphs which (almost?) always display the same, have different code points and meanings.

* It's not all printable. Control characters are in there - they pretty much had to be due to compatibility with ASCII, but they've added plenty of their own.

I'm not aware of any Unicode code points that are animated - at least what's printable, is printable on paper and not just on screen, there are no marquee or blink control characters, thank God. But, who knows when that invariant will fall too.

By the way, I know of one utf encoding the author didn't mention, utf-7. Like utf-8, but assuming that the last bit wasn't safe to use (apparently a sensible precaution over networks in the 80s). My boss managed to send me a mail encoded in utf-7 once, that's how I know what it is. I don't know how he managed to send it, though.
by bayindirh | 2025-09-12 20:54:49+00:00
This interpretation won't take you that far.

Crawling-prevention is not new. Many news outlets or biggish websites already was preventing access by non-human agents in various ways for a very long time.

Now, non-human agents are improved and started to leech everything they can find, so the methods are evolving, too.

News outlets are also public sites on the public internet.

Source-available code repositories are also on the public internet, but said agents crawl and use that code, too, backed by fair-use claims.
by nartho | 2025-09-12 20:55:10+00:00
Maybe, but let say you're right. I still don't understand your suggestion of doing an IQ test before you decide to study math. If you can't go further than a masters, like you said there are still a lot of industries you can go too and have an interesting, lucrative job. And if you do succeed to finish your PhD then that's great news. There are no benefits that I can see in doing an IQ test like you suggested before you make your decision. If you love math and are good at it, chances are you're moderately smart at least. Might as well go as far as you can if that's what you want.
by phil21 | 2025-09-12 20:55:12+00:00
At least around me, it's pretty easy to get into one due to enrollment not being very full in most if not all. They will of course give automatic enrollment for anyone in the parish, but I can't really argue with that since these schools are usually subsidized by the parish and local dioces.

You need to test to an academic standard of course, as they definitely want to keep the bar rather high. So they won't take all comers. But if you are either just starting out or come with an academic track record/high percentile test scores you shouldn't have much of a problem at all. When I went even 30 years ago there were plenty of low income kids who were not academic superstars. The only real metric that was universal across the board was the requirement for involved parents.

I'm sure other areas are different, but Catholic schools in my region have really suffered in recent years with a lot of them closing down.
by AfterHIA | 2025-09-12 20:55:27+00:00
This is the kind of neat, small, useful tool I carouse HN for. I'm going to add this to my giant list of, "neat ass little tools that I found on Hacker News."

Now if only somebody could make a tool that can audit my giant ass list of neat little tools so that when a use case comes around I remember, "ah yes this!"