MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lisper | 2025-09-07 14:43:44+00:00
> The database page size in bytes. Must be a power of two between 512 and 32768 inclusive, or the value 1 representing a page size of 65536.

What an odd design choice. Why not just have the value be the base 2 logarithm of the page size, i.e. a value between 9 and 16?
by the_snooze | 2025-09-07 14:43:47+00:00
I like to take a tiered approach, placing way more importance on news 1s of miles away from me than 100s or 1000s of miles away from me. If there's a water main break or police activity or interesting new construction happening near me, that's the news that matters. What happens on the opposite end of the country has little bearing on my day-to-day life, so why give it a disproportionate amount of attention? It's trivia for all intents and purposes.
by andyjohnson0 | 2025-09-07 14:44:03+00:00
This is me over the last year or two. Anxiety and creeping horror, interrupted sleep and low mood. Ukraine, Gaza, Trump, authoritarianism everywhere...

I try to avoid online news sources, because there's an infinite amount to doomscroll. I use leechblock [1] in firefox to introduce just enough friction to visiting a news site, without hard-blocking them. Because sometimes I still need to know what's going on.

I check the ten minute news summary on BBC Radio 4 as I'm driving to work. Its time-bounded, and pretty reliable imo - although I lean towards a Guardian perspective. Sometimes I hang around for the big interview afterwards, other times I go back to music on a usb stick. Or just drive.

[1] https://github.com/proginosko/LeechBlock

Also available for chrome and edge
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-09-07 14:44:04+00:00
I used to read the newspaper every morning over breakfast as a teenager. At one point I noticed that it just made me angry at the stuff going on in the world, but without me actually being able to do anything about it. So I stopped consuming the news. It's been 25 years now and I have zero regrets about this. On occasion I miss something I would like to know about, but in general I will find out about any truly important news out from other people.

And that was before the current age of yellow journalism. The news is 10x worse now than it was then; I strongly recommend that everyone unplugs from it for the sake of their own mental health.
by mattnewton | 2025-09-07 14:44:06+00:00
Taxi demand is actually usually quite easy to forecast for an individual, which makes planning alternative competition easier, although we often don’t try anymore because we’re used to good app competition. This is before even getting to how much lower the infrastructure and personnel barriers are to competing in the medical space versus the taxi space.

I know that most nights I am going to want to sleep in my own bed, this is somewhat inelastic sure, but not a surprise. The apps can’t raise prices too much however because they are in competition with us making plans to use the bus or call a friend. There is not a good equivalent in the medical world, it’s webmd and herbal compresses versus licensed doctors and prescription only drugs, with your life on the line.
by indigodaddy | 2025-09-07 14:44:11+00:00
I don't think you're either wrong or right (in fact my intuition sides with yours I think) because I definitely know way less than you about the subject in general, or probably also less than almost anyone here on HN-- just the trust of swaths of people in the authoritativeness of LLM outputs does generally amuse me. I'm sure we'll get there one day, but we're not there yet. I clearly offended you, and I apologize.
by wren6991 | 2025-09-07 14:44:31+00:00
It's a numbers game. Sentence complexity within a given novel follows a distribution, and if you keep reading then you'll keep getting some input that is at exactly the right level for you to grow. It's normal to stumble on the exposition at the start of a chapter and then breeze through the dialogue.

I did find it helpful early on to go through web novels with a low 95% coverage vocabulary count, like the Narou stories indexed here: http://wiki.wareya.moe/Narou

Natively is a great resource too. It does Elo-style ranking of novel difficulty: https://learnnatively.com/browse/jpn/?language=jpn&lvl=

I highly recommend real stories over generated text and synthetic exercises, because the key to success is staying engaged long term. Stories are just more fun. Also get yourself a reading setup that minimises the pain of dictionary lookups, because there are going to be a lot of them. ttsu reader + yomitan is excellent.
by ghaff | 2025-09-07 14:44:35+00:00
Even within the US, there's been something of a crackdown on out-of-state work from a tax perspective. Though it has been pretty inconsistent from what I've seen even if companies are starting to use auditors to track via expense reports--though, somewhat weirdly, they don't always follow state laws that are often set up around professional athletes and entertainers. Obviously most people have a right to work out-of-state but they may have to file appropriate tax returns.
by quuxplusone | 2025-09-07 14:45:07+00:00
Absolutely correct. Basically, C++ has value semantics — you pass arguments of type X like `void f(X x)`, and you return them like `X f()`, and that's good enough for a first approximation. (This is the only thing C lets you do.)

The second refinement is that you can use `const X&` as an optimization of `X`. (Perfectly safe for parameters; somewhat treacherous for return values.) Passing by `X&` without the const, or by `const X` without the ampersand, are both typos, and you should regularly use tooling to find and fix that kind of typo.

https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2019/01/03/const-is-a-con...

And that's it, for business-logic code. If you're writing your own resource-management type, you'll need to know about `X(X&&)` and `X& operator=(X&&)`, but ordinary business-logic code never does.

"What about `X&` for out-parameters?" Pass out-parameters by pointer. It's important and helpful to indicate their out-parameter-ness at the call-site, which is exactly what passing by pointer does. (And the pointer value itself will be passed by value, just like in C.)

"What about return by const value, like Scott Meyers recommended 20–30 years ago?" No, don't do that. It disables the ability to move-assign or move-construct from the return value, which means it's a pessimization. Scott found this out, retracted that advice in 2009, and correctly issued the opposite advice in his 2014 book.

https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2019/01/03/const-is-a-con...

At work I use a Clang patched with "-Wqual-class-return-type" to report return-by-const-value typos — since, again, `const X getter()` is almost always a typo for `const X& getter()`.

You can use that compiler too: https://godbolt.org/z/7177MTfb8
by wqaatwt | 2025-09-07 14:45:11+00:00
Oh sorry. Based on the tone and general fervor in your comment I somehow read it as RISC-V instead of simply RISC (which as other say seems like a mostly meaningless label these days).

Yes, ARM is certainly competitive. But I don’t know how much is that down to Apple being good at making chips instead of the architecture itself.

Qualcomm of course makes decent chips but it’s not like they are that much ahead of x86 on laptops.

Even in Apple’s case, if you only care about raw CPU power instead of performance per watt M series is not that great compared to AMD/Intel.
by Bender | 2025-09-07 14:45:18+00:00
excuse that the Germans used in droves after 1945

That was a thing. One of my family members had to round up an entire town of German citizens and march them through the death camps as none of them believed it was a real thing. They got to see and smell it for themselves. Some were still in disbelief that their own soldiers committed such horrific acts.

In the US the closest thing to keep an eye on would be the FEMA camps. Most are in very remote locations. If Russian and Chinese start to vanish those are the first places I would look and there are many such camps. By that point the internet would likely be entirely censored and people would have to authenticate with a centralized service to use the internet at all. I would expect those implementing such services to be members here so one can only hope they chime in when the planning starts. I would expect this to eventually be a MitM agent that runs on phones and computers to monitor pre-encrypted content to report on suspicious words and phrases. It might be silently deployed to all cell phones much like the past CarrierIQ but as a helpful AI this time. The PC versions would probably get inserted quietly in OS updates under the guise of a helpful AI as well. Those working on it may not even realize it's intended purposes. I would be curious to see how they sneak it into Linux and BSD.
by ZeljkoS | 2025-09-07 14:45:19+00:00
OCaml got experimental algebraic effects in version 5.0 (December 2022). Here is a tutorial: https://github.com/tanelso2/ocaml-effects-tutorial

Also from the tutorial: "Unlike Eff, Koka, Links, and other languages that support effect handlers, effects in Multicore OCaml are unchecked currently. A program that does not handle a performed effect fails with a runtime error."
by SanjayMehta | 2025-09-07 14:45:36+00:00
It’s a language issue.

When I first started travelling to the US, I was carefully coached by US HR and Legal to say I was on “business” as in meetings, and not “work.”

I suspect the subtle difference was not understood by the Koreans.

A shoddy way and shortsighted to deal with companies which are investing in your country.
by mrangle | 2025-09-07 14:45:44+00:00
>A democracy is only as effective as its people are educated

I missed that part of the Western Constitutions. It is likely missing because it is a false and self-serving axiom, as well as flirting with being the opposite of democracy. Mostly, it is totalitarian regimes that invoke education as being necessary for their citizens.

Is it only democracy and not a downward spiral when democracy moves in the direction that you prefer?

You might have to accept that democracy works, and that if nothing else democracy is the individual freedom to decide on what is true.

The second that you start restricting that freedom of information and individual decisions pertaining to it, impacting elections for example, you can no longer appeal to democracy.

Personally I think that more subjects are deceptive than either they or you likely know. But I'm not so debased as to call for restrictions on your information. You're free to believe in and seek out your deceptions, as a matter of democracy.
by mikestew | 2025-09-07 14:46:09+00:00
Apple already competes with satellite comms on the latest phones (well, anything after the 13?). It’s not as hands-off as InReach, but the job gets done. Rumors say the new AW Ultra will have satellite comms.

On top of that, T-Mobile has sat->cell now even for my iPhone 13. I tried the beta, it gets the job done and pretty seamlessly. It’s a monthly extra, so I’ll keep the InReach for now, but it’s time is limited.
by acdha | 2025-09-07 14:46:22+00:00
It’s definitely a combination of both but I think oil wealth is inherently destabilizing because it tends to be concentrated in areas which were not previously rich and densely populated (most of the world by area) and because the way the market works allows a relatively small number of people to be wealthy without much local support compared to, say, high-end manufacturing which require lots of skilled workers and local investment. Norway is basically the only example of a petrostate where the money is invested in the betterment of the entire country.
by II2II | 2025-09-07 14:46:39+00:00
> Literally, I could do this, and I suck at design.

Are you sure about that? I've seen plenty of imitation XP interfaces in my day, and there are virtually always elements that are jarringly wrong. While I won't claim that MitchIvin XP is a faithful reproduction of XP, in the sense that one could compile a long list of inconsistencies with Windows XP, the experience is pleasant enough.
by intothemild | 2025-09-07 14:46:51+00:00
The software has gotten a lot better since they made that change.

That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's anymore. Especially without MIP displays.

The Enduro series is now the traditional Fenix series.

Also this Fenix 8 Pro is not getting reviewed well by the usual people (des, ray, etc) it's not a good watch for the price. The sacrifices made for both LTE and the new display are too great.
by swasheck | 2025-09-07 14:47:34+00:00
> It may be accomplishing what was intended -- but I don't think that people in the US (even those paying attention) understand what was intended.

this is what i suspect too. most of his common supporters i interact with parrot the “america first will revitalize the economy and job market” and then when that doesnt happen they do the same with “i’m willing to deal with temporary bit of pain in order to ensure american interests are protected.” these comments are almost always framed against the Obama and Biden administrations and never stand on their own merit (e.g. “unlike biden who …”).

to be perfectly fair, I’m not entirely sure what the ultimate goal is, though. My perception of the character of the person of the president has been dim for many decades so when it’s something that he champions I immediately chalk it up to something that would serve his own self interest above that of any group of other people
by Dunedan | 2025-09-07 14:47:52+00:00
I raised that exact same issue to AWS in ~2015 and even though we had an Enterprise support plan, AWS response was basically: well, you problem.

We then ended up deleting the S3 bucket entirely, as that appeared to be the only way to get rid of the charges, only for AWS to come back to use a few weeks later telling us there are charges for an S3 bucket we previously owned. After explaining to them (again) that this way our only option to get rid of the charges, we never heard back.
by lars_francke | 2025-09-07 14:47:53+00:00
That is not true.

There is a process, it's usually tedious but it exists. I did it for Singapore, the US and Israel. They mostly took multiple months but I never wanted to take any chances. For the US it was a "B-1 in lieu of H-1B" visa for example.

Attending a conference is something different than what these workers did. There are rules around what a "business trip" is and what is not and what "work" is.
by lazide | 2025-09-07 14:48:34+00:00
The middle east was literally roving bands of desert Bedouins and warring religious states long before fossil oil was known to be useful, let alone of major geopolitical importance.

Have people meddled since? Of course. Such is how power works. But you'd have to go back to Roman times to find a period of stability in the middle east, and the factors that led to that have nothing to do with Oil.
by TiredOfLife | 2025-09-07 14:48:37+00:00
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News : "Hacker News (HN) is a social news website"

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_news_website : "A social news website is a website that features user-posted stories. Such stories are ranked based on popularity, as voted on by other users of the site or by website administrators."

The article was recently published, users on HN submitted the article. Other users thought it interesting and upvoted. Earth has different time zones (I understand it's difficult for americans to grasp) and so different people are active at different times.
by artemonster | 2025-09-07 14:48:44+00:00
putting strong static type system into optional compiler pass. yes, I know this may be null is some cases, let me run my program for now, I know what I am doing. yes, there are unhandled effects or wrong signature, just let me run my test. yes, that type is too generic, i will fix it later, let me run my god damn program.
by elric | 2025-09-07 14:48:45+00:00
Hopefully China will improve its care of dementia patients. N=1, but a Chinese friend's mother has dementia, and basically the family is expected to care of her full time, there seem to be no facilities (at least not for regular non-rich folks), and even getting a diagnosis was apparently a very hush-hush affair. Seems like it's something that isn't talked much about over there? Again, N=1.
by derriz | 2025-09-07 14:48:47+00:00
It was amazing. Multiple applications running on different servers/machines all working side-by-side on a single desktop workstation. Effectively every GUI application could automatically be run in "client-server mode" (using the terms in the traditional sense not the inverted-X11 sense) without having to write any architecture or OS specific client code.

Although technologically completely unrelated, rich browser applications also fill this niche, and even share warts like the lack of standardized UX behaviors or having issues with dealing with (subtle) difference between "client environment" implementations (different browsers or X11 "servers").

Effectively the web browser became the universal "graphical terminal" in the same way as (in the past) serial TTYs were the universal "textual terminal". Thus X11's "killer app" just slowly became irrelevant.
by fluidcruft | 2025-09-07 14:49:03+00:00
I prefer GroundNews and in particular the blindspot. I gave up on NPR around 2022 because it was pushing extremely biased takes. I say this as someone whose news came primarily via NPR from ~1993-2022. I just can't stand them anymore. If there's a way to tie literally everything to some stupid social movement, that's all they can do nowadays. The best thing our local NPR station does is run BBC very early in the morning.
by jsheard | 2025-09-07 14:49:20+00:00
Protect yourself how? Most cloud providers don't support any way to immediately abort spending if things get out of hand, and when running a public-facing service there are always variables you can't control.

Even if you rig up your own spending watchdog which polls the clouds billing APIs, you're still at the mercy of however long it takes for the cloud to reconcile your spending, which often takes hours or even days.
by phoenixhaber | 2025-09-07 14:49:37+00:00
I'd like to know the effects of air pollution on at risk populations that use inhalable drugs or smoke as well. I believe the results would be much worse.

Potentially related

https://m.slashdot.org/story/446420

EDIT commenting to child so as not to start a flame war. Lung scarring, emphasema, bronchial illness and so forth can cause the lungs to trap particulates in the lungs longer than they should over the long term this exacerbating health risks. It definitely makes sense.
by skrishnamurthi | 2025-09-07 14:49:39+00:00
1. This isn't the same. `rec` names the function. This does not name the function. The point is to illustrate how the name-capture works.

2. The README literally says "Don't Use This Macro!" and references `rec` to use instead:

https://github.com/shriram/anonymous-recursive-function?tab=...
by TimorousBestie | 2025-09-07 14:49:51+00:00
> Where are the goalposts? Are you suggesting that some people found to be working illegally shouldn’t be deported?

H1-B reform should be table stakes and simple for this administration to tackle, since they “don’t give a shit” (a direct quote from VPOTUS) about laws and the legislative process.

If the administration actually cared about making it easier for foreign companies to invest in domestic production capacity, they could accomplish it overnight.
by emacsen | 2025-09-07 14:49:56+00:00
The phone company would have been happy to sell you more phone lines. I knew people who had some.

But you're right that as dumb as it is, it's likely that ISPs would have charged per "device" (ie per IP address).

Before 1983 in the US, you could only rent a phone, not own one (at least not officially) and the phone company would charge a rental fee based on how many phones you had rented from them. Then, when people could buy their own phones, they still charged you per phone that you had connected! You could lie, but they charged you.

Like I said, I have mixed feelings about NATs, but you're right that the companies would have taken advantage of customers.
by kayson | 2025-09-07 14:50:31+00:00
Any recommendations from HN for a write-once (literally once), data storage format that's suitable for network storage?

sqlite docs recommend avoiding using it on network storage, though from what I can gather, it's less of an issue if you're truly only doing reads (meaning I could create it locally and then copy it to network storage). Apache Parquet seems promising, and it seems to support indexing now which is an important requirement.
by stogot | 2025-09-07 14:50:52+00:00
Honestly, I’m not inclined to believe the NYT reporting here either. Those leaking the “facts” necessarily must obscure and change details to avoid being caught as the leaker. But after a few paragraphs, it becomes clear someone leaked this to harm the current administration. Their motive can also mean they left out detail. For example, Obama may have done a similar successful operation but that will not be leaked here. As OP said, usually you need decades to get the truth vs the little reporters can harvest
by trjordan | 2025-09-07 14:51:08+00:00
AI sloppiness of this blog post aside, it's a reasonable observation.

If you're thinking about how to integrate AI into your system, it's worth asking the question of why your system isn't just ChatGPT.

- Do you have unique data you can pass as context?

- Do you have APIs or actions that are awkward to teach to other systems via MCP?

- Do you have a unique viewpoint that you are writing into your system prompt?

- Do you have a way to structure stored information that's more valuable than freeform text memories?

- etc.

For instance, we [0] are writing an agent that helps you plan migrations. You can do this with ChatGPT, but it hugely benefits from (in descending order of uniqueness) access to

1) a structured memory that's a cross between Asana and the output of `grep` in a spreadsheet,

2) a bunch of best-practice instructions on how to prep your codebase for a migration, and

3) the AI code assistant-style tools like ls, find, bash, etc.

So yeah, we're writing at agent, not building a model. And I'm not worried about ChatGPT doing this, despite the fact that GPT5 is pretty good at it.

[0] https://tern.sh
by dejobaan | 2025-09-07 14:51:31+00:00
I loved this one back in the day, and have referenced it within the past month. The author felt that simply changing "cloud" to "butt" was less funny. But that always brings to mind the 1994 TSR mage-to-wizard search-and-replace: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/s82mi4/til_that_in_199...