MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Tell HN: You gave us pricing feedback, we're testing it
by pedalpete | 2025-09-22 19:28:33+00:00
Two days ago, in a thread about a new test for Alzheimer’s, the conversation went down a rabbit hole about our company. I had left a comment about our work in sleep, which was not intended as promotion. We are building Affectable Sleep, an EEG headband that enhances the restorative function of sleep without changing how long people sleep. Our technology builds on more than a decade of research and more than 50 published peer-reviewed papers, which are linked on our website, https://affectablesleep.com

There is growing interest in this space because four trials in slow-wave enhancement have shown positive results for Alzheimer’s.

Many of the comments in that thread were about our subscription model. Our view has been that subscription makes our product accessible to a broader audience thanks to a lower entry price, while also supporting the ongoing costs of a bootstrapped neurotech hardware company.

Those costs go beyond just software and servers. A product like this involves material science, industrial design, regulatory work, insurance, and more.

What's the point of being part of this community if we're not going to learn from the feedback?

So we are going to run a test to find out. We have set up a one-time purchase page that does not require a subscription, available here at https://affectablesleep.com/product-purchase-upfront-payment

We're testing this directly with HN because you asked us to remove the subscription. We'll keep this page live for 24 hours after this thread drops off the front page, or 30 hours total if it never makes it there.

Once the test is complete I will post a breakdown of the data and open a discussion about subscription models, not only for our business but for others who might be weighing the same decision.

I will do my best to answer questions, though I have meetings mid-morning Sydney time.

For context, the original post about the Alzheimer's test is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45305180
by rahimnathwani | 2025-09-22 19:28:39+00:00
There are companies in Japan that provide esim connections that don't route via an overseas provider, e.g.

https://www.sakuramobile.jp/japan-sim-card/local-japan-esim-...

EDIT: Last time I went to Japan, I bought an esim from https://jjesim.com/esim
by Terr_ | 2025-09-22 19:28:58+00:00
> Summaries written by AI of longer-form work that are then shoved into AI to make sense of the AI-written summary.

Also the problem where someone has bullet-points, they fluff them up in an LLM, send the prose, and then the receiver tries to use an LLM to summarize it back down to bullet-points.

I may be over-optimistic in predicting that eventually everyone involved will rage-flip the metaphorical table, and start demanding/sending the short version all the time, since there's no longer anything to be gained by prettying it up.
by nottwo | 2025-09-22 19:29:18+00:00
This is fun!

I was going to try to draw a circle but was missing sin/sqrt. Then I thought of using a lookup table but got stumped.

Do you have any pointers for drawing a circle?

I'm looking at demo #4 (https://susam.net/fxyt.html#XYpTN1srN255pTN1sqD) to see where the circular shapes are coming from.

Have you seen Forth Haiku? https://forthsalon.appspot.com/
by cosmic_cheese | 2025-09-22 19:29:24+00:00
People distro hop all the time for out of the box experience. Very few enjoy configuring their desktop to perfection, because frankly it's a huge PITA with everything being split between a thousand control panels and config files with differing conventions and levels of documentation.

When a distro with a default configuration close to what some group of users is looking for shows up, that's exciting to that group because it's that much less fiddling they need to think about, and perhaps most importantly it's not going to randomly break on them one day because it's represented in the distribution's testing.
by therein | 2025-09-22 19:29:38+00:00
Sounds like it is yet another Postgres cloud offering. It is a little cringe for them to self-congratulate and say "allowing companies like Cursor, Intercom, and Block to scale beyond previous limits".

Did any of these companies reach out to them and say "you know, we wouldn't have been able to scale beyond our previous limits without you, thank you so much guys you saved us". If not, this is so insincere that it is cringe.

Are they implying these other companies lacked knowledge and expertise to put their databases on machines with NVMe storage? Or is it that they chose to use their product? If it is the latter, they should just say these companies chose us, instead of emphasizing how they just couldn't scale past their previous limits without PlanetScale's help.
by fpoling | 2025-09-22 19:29:38+00:00
What is random.bin? I was testing with a json dataset that compresses by factor like 2.5 with zram. But if random is incompressible, then zram does not write compressed data but rather the original resulting in much faster read speed.

Also on your SSD do you have logical 4K sector or 512 byte sectors? If the latter, then Linux distros defaults to 512 LUKS sectors on them resulting in much slower performance especially with writes.

I always ensure that LUKS sectors are 4K even if SSD reports 512 bytes and does not allow to change that to 4K like Samsung 9* series.
by simonw | 2025-09-22 19:29:47+00:00
The model weights are 70GB (Hugging Face recently added a file size indicator - see https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B-Instruct/tree... ) so this one is reasonably accessible to run locally.

I wonder if we'll see a macOS port soon - currently it very much needs an NVIDIA GPU as far as I can tell.
by kragen | 2025-09-22 19:29:52+00:00
Forth control structures don't work in interpret state because control structures involve executing code out of order: jumping from the end of a loop back to its beginning, etc. In interpret state there's nowhere to jump to. So you have to put control structures inside a colon definition for them to work. Also true of strings in traditional Forths, but GForth just dynamically allocates some memory and leaks it instead.
by pseudosavant | 2025-09-22 19:31:02+00:00
Because no amount of money was going to solve the problem of people saying they think Microsoft's browser is slower/worse/etc. Switching to Chromium negated that in a way nothing else could.

When Microsoft beat Netscape with IE, it was by building a far better browser. Google is a stronger competitor than Netscape ever was though. Without Google dropping the ball (like Netscape), Microsoft would never exceed Chrome's performance by enough to be the fastest, most compatible (with Chrome), etc.

It is also just classic Microsoft when they are hungry. Like making Word use WordPerfect files and keyboard shortcuts. Only today it is that their browser is mostly Google, Linux is built into Windows 11, SQL Server ships on Linux, and their most popular IDE is open-source built on open tech (Electron) they didn't create.

When they get threatened, nothing is too sacred for Microsoft to kill or adopt.
by superkuh | 2025-09-22 19:31:16+00:00
Nope. It's because the cloudflare captchas require a bleeding edge browser. If one uses a modern commercial browser it works and you've never even presented with a captcha. But in both cases I am tunneling to a VPS to avoid Comcast/Xfinity's MITM injections of javascript into pages and that adds some oddness to my connections. Comcast has a monopoly on high speed internet in my town and I cannot even get DSL or I'd switch.

Lacking lived experience re: discrimination is something that's pretty common. I hate to compare my entirely optional 'software veganism' struggles with real discrmination issues, but just because you don't experience discrimination doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I go to online stores, government services, even places of recreation and I get denied service because I have to tunnel to avoid my ISP's unethical practices and I don't use a cloudflare approved browser. It feels bad.
by maxenglander | 2025-09-22 19:31:21+00:00
There are a lot of differences between Aurora/RDS and PlanetScale I could talk about, some but I'll point to just one for now: PlanetScale offers Metal databases, which means blazing fast NVMe drives attached directly to the host where Postgres is running. This gives you faster reads and writes than what either Aurora or RDS can achieve with their network-attached block storage. Check out our benchmarks: https://planetscale.com/blog/benchmarking-postgres

Also, the architecture of Aurora is very different from PlanetScale's:

* AWS Aurora uses storage-level replication, rather than traditional Postgres replication. This architecture has the benefit that a change made on an Aurora primary is visible very quickly on the read replicas. * PlanetScale is a "shared nothing" architecture using what I would call traditional methods of data replication, where the primary and the replicas have independent copies of the data. This means that replication lag is a possibility customers must consider, whereas Aurora customers mostly ignore this. * If you set up 3 AWS RDS Postgres instances in separate availability zones and set up replication between them, that would be roughly similar to PlanetScale's architecture.
by ruslandautov | 2025-09-22 19:31:24+00:00
Migrating from Google Maps to Apple Maps used to be a painful, manual process. I built GoToAppleMaps to solve that: a free tool to instantly convert your entire collection of Google Maps Saved Places (CSV or JSON) into organized Apple Maps Guides.

Key points:

No signup, 100% privacy: No accounts, no stored data — everything processes instantly, in one go.

Supports both CSV and JSON/Google Takeout: Works with all recent Google exports.

Batch conversion: Tested on files with thousands of places (my own 2,500+ import included).

Open to feedback: Would love bug reports, suggestions, or ideas for CLI/developer workflows.

Try it with your export and let me know if it makes switching easier!
by standardly | 2025-09-22 19:31:54+00:00
No, lol, I don't partake at all. I post in a few subreddits, and lurk here, but that's about it. Ditching social media, and not getting involved in temporal, partisan issues, has been more of a boon to my mental health than exercise, sleep, and diet. I cannot recommend it enough.

I guess I should add: I understand why people do what they do, and I see how we arrived at this point. I don't blame anyone on Bluesky for not wanting to associate with certain types. But, it seems the end results are echo chambers which certainly aren't healthy for a functioning democracy.
by simonw | 2025-09-22 19:32:03+00:00
The existing vision LLMs all work like this, which is most of the major models these days.

Multi-modal audio models are a lot less common. GPT-4o was meant to be able to do this natively from the start but they ended up shipping separate custom models based on it for their audio features. As far as I can tell GPT-5 doesn't have audio input/output at all - the OpenAI features for that still use GPT-4o-audio.

I don't know if Gemini 2.5 (which is multi-modal for vision and audio) shares the same embedding space for all three, but I expect it probably does.
by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF | 2025-09-22 19:32:33+00:00
To be maximally fair to their argument, I think it is good to point out (not that it's the point that was made but that it's a good point to make) that 9,100 is a distinct departure from 0 when there are other numbers in the tens and hundreds. It's worth questioning the disparity and whether it's indicative of incorrect or misinterpreted data.
by Nevermark | 2025-09-22 19:32:48+00:00
> Impact is irrelevant in Kantian ethics

From an arm chair perspective, this is a wonderful shortcut isn't it! Roughly, treat everyone how we would want to be treated - or some other limited formulation, with no horizon of thought about downstream impact past that.

Presumably, inflexible pacifism would get a sympathetic response from Kantians.

A kind of intellectual purity, at the relative cost to others' lives.

Interesting as an idea. Not so great for actual humans.

What exactly is the imagined benefit, that outweighs the well being of others and ourselves? A circular form of philosophical purity? A view that is better because it deems itself better?

EDIT: Just saw this:

> Not unless you can present some proof of this. Your implicit assumption that we should care about outcomes over principles has its own set of moral failures, like the repugnant conclusion.

Well, most people start by caring about other people and themselves. Not as an assumption but as a real status.

Doing so has a particularly interesting and meaningful consequence. By prioritizing better results for human beings, positive impact can better produce more positive impact. Creating a positive spiral where benefits of the ethics of prioritizing impact compound, and compound.

So for those that care about our fellow beings, and nontrivial non-limiting implications of choices, there is solid ground for ethics. Nothing arbitrary or foundationally circular.

Need to make up assumptions.

In contrast, what is the assumption or principle that values principles over people. What is the actual point? How is that deemed better than prioritizing a better world. How is that better or richer than ethics that achieve a higher bar, by continually re-incorporating, navigating and producing an ever more complex enabling future?
by random3 | 2025-09-22 19:33:07+00:00
thank you. So indeed it's, as corrrectly described, schemaless i.e. schema agnostic, which falls into "schema responsibility being passed to user/dev" (I should have picked up what it means when writing that).

So it's basically Stubby/gRPC.

From strictly a RPC perspective this makes sense (i guess to the same degree gRPC would be agnostic to protobuf serialization scheme, which IIRC is the case (also thinking Stubby was called that for the same reason)).

However, that would mean some there's

1. a ton of responsibility on the user/dev —i.e. the same amount that prompted protobuf to exist, afterall.

You basically have the (independent problem of) clients, servers and data (in fligiht, or even persisted) that get different versions of the schema.

2. a missied implicit compression opportunity? IDK to what extent this actually happens on the fly or not.
by jkmcf | 2025-09-22 19:33:29+00:00
I think human editable config files become unsustainable after they reach a certain size, and while I like Ansible a lot, you probably shouldn't be embedding code in them.

For well over a decade, I've felt we missed the boat with XML, XSD, and friends to make a generic, literal user interface for configuration such that you didn't need to rely on referencing documentation for valid options and such and usable interfaces could be presented instead of editing the text directly.
by mibrahimSB | 2025-09-22 19:34:07+00:00
Spatialbound automates geospatial tasks, from buffers, clustering, and hotspot analysis to machine learning, removing hours of manual setup. Unlike ArcGIS or QGIS, it doesn’t stop at analysis: you can simulate, design, and edit real-world spaces in 3D environments.

You can build your own world instance and modify it the way you want. Unlike, single-image-to-360 generation tools (3D immersive world models), Spatialbound doesn't sacrifice physical world fidelity and global coordinate system. For example, you can drive or fly a drone from London to Paris in our 4D engine, with accurate roads, terrain, and turns.
by danielmarkbruce | 2025-09-22 19:34:25+00:00
This will annoy a lot of folks, but:

1 - If you work on large scale software systems, especially infrastructure software of most types then you need to know and understand DSA and feel it in your bones.

2 - Most people work on crud apps or similar and don't really need to know this stuff. Many people in this camp don't realize that people working on 1 really do need to know this stuff.

What someone says on this topic says more about what things they have worked on in their life than anything else.
by OJFord | 2025-09-22 19:35:05+00:00
Not really, it's a significant place which is why the protest (and hence massacre) was there, so especially for Chinese people (I expect) merely referencing it doesn't so immediately refer to the massacre, they have plenty of other connotations for it.

e.g. if something similar happened in Trafalgar Square, I expect it would still be primarily a major square in London to me, not oh my god they must be referring to that awful event. (In fact I think it was targeted in the 7/7 bombings for example.)

Or a better example to go with your translation - you can refer to the Bastille without 'boldly' invoking the histoire of its storming in the French Revolution.

No doubt the US media has referred to the Capitol without boldness many times since 6 Jan '21.
by MoreQARespect | 2025-09-22 19:35:16+00:00
>fails to demonstrate how code-tests result in objectively better code.

Tests give the freedom to refactor which results in better code.

>So, testing has its place, but testing is really no better than simulation

Testing IS simulation and simulation IS testing.

>And in simulation, the outputs are only as good as the inputs. It cannot guarantee code safety

Only juniors think that you can get guarantees of code safety. Seniors look for ways to de-risk code, knowing that you're always trending towards a minima.

One of the key skills in testing is defining good, realistic inputs.
by hyperpape | 2025-09-22 19:35:18+00:00
A lot of people are arguing about whether locking down access was justified to resolve the security issues. I guess it's debatable.

But I don't see any excuse for not putting out a statement when you do it. You have to know there will be a fight, and you will look like the bad guy. Perhaps I could see directly communicating to the maintainers that you expect that they'll be reinstated. But to say nothing? To let the post by duckinator float around for days without having a "we did this because of security concerns, we want to work together and find a resolution..." It's incomprehensible that they thought this would go well.
by mrandish | 2025-09-22 19:36:27+00:00
> Revenue != profit

Indeed. And even if that revenue is net profitable right now (and analysts differ sharply on whether it really is), is there a sustainable moat that'll keep fast-followers from replicating most of OpenAI's product value at lower cost? History is littered with first-movers who planted the crop only to see new competitors feast on the fruit.
by antonvs | 2025-09-22 19:37:02+00:00
The US doesn't use Imperial units. It uses US customary units, which are different from Imperial in several significant ways, because the Imperial system evolved after the US split from the British Empire.

Also interestingly, US customary units are defined in terms of metric. So in a sense, the US does use the metric system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units
by karmakaze | 2025-09-22 19:37:06+00:00
The context what you should spend time to learn starting out. TL;DR

> Here is what I think in-the-trenches software engineers should know about data structures and algorithms: [...]

> If you want to prepare yourself for a career, and also stand out in job interviews, learn how to write tests: [...]

I feel like I keep writing these little context comments to fix the problem of clickbait titles or those lacking context. It helps to frame the rest of the comments which might be coming at it from different angles.
by givemeethekeys | 2025-09-22 19:37:06+00:00
The nephew has no programming knowledge.

He wants to build a website that will turn him into a bazillionaire.

He asks AI how to solve problem X.

AI provides direction, but he doesn't quite know how to ask the right questions.

Still, the AI manages to give him a 70% solution.

He will go to his grave before he learns enough programming to do the remaining 30% himself, or, understand the first 70%.

Delegating to AI isn't the same as delegating to a human. If you mistrust the human, you can find another one. If you mistrust the AI, there aren't many others to turn to, and each comes with an uncomfortable learning curve.
by burnt-resistor | 2025-09-22 19:37:37+00:00
It's a strawman besmirching niche knowledge for methodology. The two aren't mutex and shouldn't be competitors. Bloom filters are really trivial to implement and are great examples of time/space tradeoffs, and are useful mostly for checking if a key isn't a member of an otherwise expensive lookup operation and so can be avoided early.

What's more concerning is "engineers" incurious about how lower levels of the stack work, or aren't interested in learning breadth, depth, or new things.
by rpdillon | 2025-09-22 19:37:55+00:00
The jail time wouldn't be for using AI. It would be for submitting a document to the court that would have gotten an F in any law school.

Sort of like recklessly vibe coding and pushing to prod. The cardinal rule with AI is that we should all be free to use it, but we're still equally responsible for the output we produce, regardless of the tooling we use to get there. I think that applies equally across professions.
by hattmall | 2025-09-22 19:37:59+00:00
So why can't websites, do like any other "store". They can make you agree to pay for something but not enforce payment. Like couldn't I say, here's my article. If you read it you agree to pay me $1. Now a lot of people might read it and it might not be worth my time to go and collect $1 from each of them, just like Walmart isn't going to tackle you about eating a grape in the produce aisle. But if you want to make a business that's about exploiting Walmart's non-enforcement of free grapes then they are going to stop you.
by throwaway346434 | 2025-09-22 19:38:00+00:00
My point is that he chose to communicate the way he did; it is poorly thought out and extremely difficult to accept as an explanation.

Objective tests you yourself can perform.

1) How much of the publication talks about himself? Why is that relevant?

2) How much does it directly provide links, context, history? Can you find the opposing point of view directly linked from it, or is it omitted?

3) From reading the content, does this person represent the board, or not? Do they make any conflicting claims that are difficult to both be true at the same time?

4) A coup d'etat is a "a sudden, violent, and unlawful seizure of power from a government"

Were the people who lost access acting as a governing body? Was the loss of access sudden and unexpected? Did the loss of access follow any of the rules of the governing group? Did the loss of access harm individuals?

With the answers to the above, reflect on the following:

Why would someone write about themselves, their experience, etc for 6 paragraphs? Would you say it is clear they have only been appointed since Jan 2025? Or are they trying to establish themselves as an authority? If they are not attempting to appeal to authority, why is it relevant?

Did they actually apologise? If so, to who? Is it specific? Does it clearly articulate what the person did, admit fault, recognise harm? Or is there downplaying of impact, vague language, downplaying of involvement?

Does it characterise the contrary point of view in a way that trivial uses the concerns? Are the conversations "emotional" or is it implied the people experiencing the negative act are? Is the author emotional?

If you were the person or people affected, would you accept this explanation? If you were the person taking these actions, would you explain why like this? Why or why not?

I strongly encourage you to do this exercise, putting aside feelings or initial responses even if you think I am wrong.