MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by xvfLJfx9 | 2025-09-13 09:40:17+00:00
This statement is very uninformed. Other sources are intermittent, nuclear energy is not. The problem about many countries not being able to produce fuel rods themselves is true, but the exact same applies to other energy sources. Most nations depend on very few other nations for imports of oil gas etc.

Nuclear power plants only have a high upfront cost, which is compensated by their long lifetime of 60-100 years. Other energy sources also have high upfront production costs + you need to spend additional money on infrastructure for batteries/storage.

I also don't understand your argument on military targets. A NPP is a target the sane way a solar park, wind-park, geothermal facility or whatever would be a target. And to add to that, wile they are of course not indestrctible they are extremely robustly built. You can literally fly an airplane into them and it wouldnt result in a meltdown.. I do agree on your point on decentralization, yes.
by sensanaty | 2025-09-13 09:40:29+00:00
And what exactly is the alternative, in your mind? Ukraine gets conquered, and what, they all live happily ever after under the gracious and gentle hand of Putin and sing kumbaya for getting reintegrated back into the glorious USSR?

Also, you're framing this as if Ukraine is the aggressor. Maybe if Russia didn't want to be left as an "angry" neighbour, they shouldn't have started their 1000 day special military operation.
by corimaith | 2025-09-13 09:41:01+00:00
Social Media emerged in 2012 or so. The ability to connect already existed in the older forums and image boards for a decade prior to that, and their promise was fulfilled. The whole shtick of Social Media was it did NOT do that, Facebook, Instagram, etc was more about reinforcing preexisting connections with your real world identity than meeting others as strangers.
by willtemperley | 2025-09-13 09:41:26+00:00
I do wonder if this is just a symptom of monetization. Free advertising with viral posts was possible for talented marketers until the early 2010s. Now you have to pay.

OTOH I have seen examples where messages were supressed. A FB acquaintance was sued under the DMCA for posting data that has since legally been deemed public domain. I suggested setting up in the Netherlands where DMCA is not recognised, via Messenger. Meeting this person in person sometime later, it turned out this message was never delivered. They'd thought I was working for the company that sued them.
by beefcake | 2025-09-13 09:42:07+00:00
What's the difference between using agents and playing the casino? Large part of the industry is a casino hidden in other clothes.

I see people who never coded in their life signing up for loveable or some other code agent and try their luck.

What cements this thought pattern in your post is this: "If the agents get it wrong, I don’t really care—I’ll just fire off another run"
by palmfacehn | 2025-09-13 09:42:08+00:00
If the hiring process is dishonest, wouldn't that be a good sign to avoid them as a potential employer?

I know I'm out here in my own space capsule, but it seems like a non-sequitur. Again, perhaps this is my own bias speaking, but wouldn't you prefer to solve your own business problems as an entrepreneur, rather than battle to be employed by someone who has the intent to screw you, so that you might have the privilege to solve biz problems for them? In both cases you have problems, but only one gives you autonomy.

Alternatively, you might look towards employers who want you and do not desire to screw you.
by antonvs | 2025-09-13 09:42:10+00:00
Are you thinking of Windows perhaps? Mac and Linux can both handle this well. Even on X11 (which is old and limited in many ways), on 4K monitors global scaling of 200% works really well. But Windows has legacy apps that are bitmap-scaled, which apparently leads to blurriness (I’ve never seen this myself, only read about it. I’m allergic to Windows.)
by tim333 | 2025-09-13 09:42:10+00:00
>Artillery fire accounts for about 80 percent of the casualties

is no longer the case. Now it's drones https://www.army-technology.com/news/drones-now-account-for-...

which I guess show that things can change. If it had been a NATO vs Russia war it would have been air power or maybe nukes which everyone wants to avoid.

The switch to drone warfare may be a problem of Russia. They had a clear advantage in artillery but it's more even with drones and western collaboration like this Project Octopus may give Ukraine the advantage. (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/a-western...)
by macrolime | 2025-09-13 09:42:57+00:00
This is my experience too.

Make agents for tasks, not roles.

I've seen this for coding agents using spec-driven development for example. You can try to divide agents into lots of different roles that roughly correspond to human job positions, like for example BMad does, or you can simply make each agent do a task and have a template for the task. Like make an implementation plan using a template for an implementation plan or make a task list, using a template for a task list. In general, I've gotten much better results with agents that has a specific task to do than trying to give a role, with a job-like description.

For code review, I don't use a code reviewer agent, instead I've defined a dozen code reviewing tasks, that each runs as separate agents (though I group some related tasks together).
by rufasterisco | 2025-09-13 09:43:32+00:00
i suppose, gradually and the suddenly? each "fix" to incorrect reasoning/solution doesn't just solve the current instance, it also ends up in a rule-based system that will be used in future

initially, being in the loop is necessary, once you find yourself "just approving" you can be relaxed and think back or, more likely, initially you need fine-grained tasks; as reliability grows, tasks can become more complex

"parallelizing" allows single (sub)agents with ad-hoc responsibilities to rely on separate "institutionalized" context/rules, .ie: architecture-agent and coder-agent can talk to each others and solve a decision-conflict based on wether one is making the decision based on concrete rules you have added, or hallucinating decisions

i have seen a friend build a rule based system and have been impressed at how well LLM work within that context
by tiberius_p | 2025-09-13 09:43:43+00:00
I remember the anti-nuclear fever went viral in 2011 after the Fukushima nuclear accident caused by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. I think the correct lesson to be learned from that experience is not to built nuclear power plants in places where they can be damaged by natural disasters...and not to call for all nuclear power plants around the world to be shut down.
by mkl | 2025-09-13 09:45:06+00:00
> Earth’s moon causing ocean bulges on both sides of Earth

That's not really a thing, and tides are way more complicated than that. For example, at any given moment, part of New Zealand's coast is at high tide, and part is at low tide. Same with the coasts around the North Sea, and the Atlantic coast of Patagonia, and Hudson Bay.

Animation of today's tides: https://www.tpxo.net/

Some good tide explanation: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/121830/does-earth..., discussed three months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44065458
by perching_aix | 2025-09-13 09:46:27+00:00
A quick search suggests to me that it's only a lossless process if the image dimensions are a clean integer multiple of 8 or 16 (as the blocks can be 8x8, 8x16, 16x8, or 16x16), otherwise the edges must be reencoded. Never written a JPEG codec though, so happy to be proven wrong.
by tha_hnrain | 2025-09-13 09:46:57+00:00
Let me play the devil advocate here: - first, I don’t think the measures they put in place are unreasonable: publishing on newspapers, mailing your application instead of emailing or using online forms may feel outdated, but they are all standard practice in other countries. You cannot say you don’t know how to mail(!) or that reading newspapers is beneath your dignity, especially if you need a job!

-second, what is wrong with free competition on the job market between US- and non-US citizens? Competition is good for the business, isn’t it?! It should be a competition on qualification and wage, not races, your skin color or some rubber stamp on a paper. Protecting domestic workers by artificially restricting competition risks creating complacency, higher costs, and slower growth.

- I hear you say: but it’s our country! We (or our parents) paid tax to build it. Yes, but if companies hire non-US employees, they will pay good tax, rent housing, spend in local economies, and contribute to Social Security and Medicare, too, while often receiving less in return.

- many foreign students already invest heavily in the U.S. by paying high tuition and living expenses, without subsidies. This is not charity; it’s a deliberate transfer of wealth into American universities and communities. Denying them a fair chance to compete for jobs means taking their money while closing the door to long-term participation, which is both unfair and economically wasteful.

- intentionally barring foreign talent to artificially inflate wages for domestic workers undermines U.S. competitiveness. High labor costs without corresponding productivity gains make companies sluggish and less adaptive to global competition. The U.S. became great by being open to talent and ideas from everywhere, reversing that openness risks slow growth and stagnation.

The real solution is domestic reform, not exclusion, for example by redistributing wealth more fairly through tax reforms that ensure the rich contribute proportionally.

America grew strong by opening its doors to talent and competition. Shutting out qualified foreign workers to protect wages may feel safe in the short run, but in the long run it weakens our economy, breeds complacency, and wastes the very investment we’ve already taken from those who studied and contributed here. If we want Americans to compete better, fix student debt and inequality at home, but don’t impede the nation by closing the market to global talents.
by proactivesvcs | 2025-09-13 09:49:09+00:00
The Trending feature is not pushed into the home (or any) timeline. In the Web UI it sits unobtrusively in the corner of the window and on some apps simply does not exist. It can also be easily disabled.

In the discourse about social media, the term "algorithm" is exclusively used to refer to purposefully-maligned algorithms engineered to addict and abuse people. Nothing about any of the Fediverse services is designed this way because they're not chasing money or engagement, they're made to help people converse in a human way.
by torginus | 2025-09-13 09:49:25+00:00
Very interesting article and good points.

But how about we flip the original statement around:

Many problems thought to require giant software packages/libraries are very solvable locally if you know what you are doing

This is why LC is actually meaningful - imagine if you faced the coin challenge problem IRLin prod and you decided to pull in a constraint solver - what would've been a 25 line function now is a giant python library that carries 30MB of native dependencies around.

These solutions are often lacking in many ways, since mentally offloading some of the work means you don't have to understand the problem in depth or how the designated tool solves it, which can lead to nasty surprised in production.

We see this everywhere - people pulling in questionable npm packages to save themselves 30 mins of thinking or 20 mins of reading docs - people convinced that you do need that huge 3D framework that comes with an editor to make a WebGL widget on your landing page etc.

You are more willing to accept bloat of others, just because they pulled in Electron, because they were too afraid to learn how native UI works.

People need to be more curious, and strive to be more knowledgeable.
by mpweiher | 2025-09-13 09:49:27+00:00
Or if you build them there, build them so they can withstand that disaster.

There was another similar plant even closer to the epicenter, and it was hit with a (slightly) higher tsunami crest. It survived basically undamaged and even served as shelter for tsunami refugees. Because they had built the tsunami-wall to spec. And didn't partially dismantle it to make access easier like what was done in Fukushima.

Oh, and for example all the German plants would also have survived essentially unscathed had they been placed in the exact same spot, for a bunch of different reasons.
by n1b0m | 2025-09-13 09:49:31+00:00
You’re right that "walking off the land did happen". Although the feudal system legally bound serfs to the land, there were ways for individuals to escape this bondage. For instance, a serf who lived in a town for a year and a day without being reclaimed by their lord could often gain their freedom. These people, known as 'villeins' in some records, were essentially free peasants who had successfully left their lord's domain.
by ofalkaed | 2025-09-13 09:50:02+00:00
But they are not the same, if you are a musician going to bars and practice spaces and the like that $300 Blofeld will handle the abuse and accidents much better than a laptop or tablet. No matter what you do and how careful you are, cords get snagged and stepped on, stuff gets knocked over, things get spilled etc etc etc. My Blofeld has taken far more abuse than any laptop or tablet will handle and still going strong 15 years later; three laptops and two tablets later.

There are things you can do to make computers more suitable for this stuff but it gets expensive fast and less convenient quickly. Toughbooks are tempting, but expensive, rackmount computer can be managed for not much and keeps the computer safe in its rack but now you more and bigger stuff to haul. Taking a disposable approach with rpi or the like is tempting but not exactly ideal. Computers/tablets are great and have their uses but are not a replacement for hardware yet.

The big problem for me with all things touch screen is that they get confused by water on the screen, which is an issue when it is hot and you are sweating or on a stage with bright lights cooking you. Not an issue if you just want to tap out beats but a serious headache if you want to adjust parameters. Connectors on tablets are also an issue, USB is not a very secure connection and the wireless options are not great. Give me a tablet with a plastic screen, 1/4" ins/outs, can run PureData and will not get confused by water on the screen and I will probably give up my hardware.
by mpweiher | 2025-09-13 09:52:09+00:00
No, the exceptions are builds like HPC.

The average build time is currently 6.5 years. The median is lower at 5.8. The variations across both time and space of those average are neither large nor particularly systematic.

There have always been outliers, so if you focus on those you can "prove" anything you like.

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
by diggan | 2025-09-13 09:52:48+00:00
> You don’t need to be 18 to have a bank account, even in the UK (which just introduced age verification laws).

Yeah, I had one of those myself when I was under 18 too, I think it was called Maestro or something similar. However, it didn't work like a normal credit card (which I think only 18+ can have), platforms were clearly able to reject it, as most things I wanted to buy online didn't work at the time with it (this was early 2000s though), only with my mom's debit card.

Probably the same is true for those cards you linked, they're special "youth" cards that platforms could in theory block? Then requiring credit card "donation" of $N would still basically act as a age verification. I think debit cards might in general be available to people under 18, so filtering to only allow credit cards sounds like a start at least.

Newgrounds literally employed the same strategy for automatically validating a bunch of users, from https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1548205:

> 2. If your account ever bought Supporter status with a credit card and we can confirm that with the payment processor, we will assume you are over 18 because you need to be 18 in the UK to have a credit card.

Basically, filter by the card type, assume credit = 18+, any other might be under 18.

> One mitigation around that could be the gifting of accounts

Yeah, referrals ala Lobste.rs. I feel like they get lots of stuff right, from transparent moderation to trying to keep it small but high-quality. The judge is still out on if they got it right or not :)
by skydhash | 2025-09-13 09:53:58+00:00
The thing is we did have nice tooling before those languages came to be. If you look at Smalltalk, it has this type of context in an even more powerful way. You can browse the whole library in a few click and view its code. And it has a Playground element where you can try and design stuff. And everything was inspectable.

Same with Lisp. If you take emacs has an example, you have instant documentation on every functions. Another example can be python where there’s an help system embedded into the language.

Java is basically unwritable without a full indexer and completion. But it has a lot of guardrails and its verbosity discourages deviation.

And today we have Swift and kotlin which is barely better. They do a lot of magic behind the scene to reduce verbosity, but you’re still reliant on the indexer which is now coupled with a compiler for the magic stuff.

Better languages insists on documentation, contextual help, shorter programs, no magic unless created by the programmer, and visibility (inspection with a debugger and traceability with the system source available, if possible).
by epistasis | 2025-09-13 09:54:18+00:00
I expect that if I had to put numbers on things, I would be subject to the same biases as everyone else.

Or perhaps not, sometimes not being an "expert" in the traditional sense can remove the biases of an industry. Sci-fi author Ramez Naam had some of the most accurate forecasts in the past by doing the simplest thing possible: looking at the past curve and extending it. That is probably the simple type of projection I would make!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23185166

The IEA and EIA are two very respectable organizations that make comically bad projections, just absolutely awful. I know I could beat their projections!

Jenny Chase is a highly prominent solar analyst that has some great anecdotes about how wrong solar estimates always are, and she challenges that new analysts face, but I'm having trouble finding the podcast right now... in any case always read the Jenny Chase megathreads on the state of solar or her interviews in order to get some really great insights into what's going on.

In any case the rate of learning in solar tech far exceeds the expectations of most "energy" experts, and also usually exceeds the expectations of even the solar experts.
by mpweiher | 2025-09-13 09:54:26+00:00
United Arab Emirates.

Fastest build times are Japan with under 4 years.

Germany built its Konvois in just shy of 6 years.

Just before we stopped building altogether.

France built 50+ reactors in 15 years.

We know how to build nuclear quickly, reliably and (relatively) cheaply. We also know how to do it slowly, eratically and expensively.

Fortunately the former comes almost but not entirely automatically with building lots of them.
by jcynix | 2025-09-13 09:55:04+00:00
You can transfer EXIF information, including the rotation info, with either exiftool or ImageMagick into a thumbnail, to let other software know how to display it correctly.

If you want to rotate a jpeg yourself (which is easily done with "magic in.jpg rotate 90 out.jpg" and, of course, other software) but lossless, there's https://jpegclub.org/jpegtran/ which accomplishes it.

When generating rotated thumbnails (without caring for "lossless") the best strategy in my experience is to first rotate the large original image and then generate the thumbnail afterwards, because image resizing will most often hide any rotation artifacts anyways.
by raghava | 2025-09-13 09:55:51+00:00
Interesting set of points; the intent to move beyond sterile dashboards and engage in deeper, more meaningful conversations about system health is very welcome, especially in a time when most leaders don't bother to read about Goodhart's law on metrics.

But still, I spot a few points of concern.

- While experienced engineers develop valuable intuition, this can also be a source of significant bias. An engineer's "feeling" might be influenced by their personal comfort with a particular technology, their resistance to change, or their own role in creating the system in question (the "IKEA effect"). Over-relying on intuition can lead to subjective decision-making that isn't backed by evidence.

- What is "simple" for a senior engineer with years of context might be overwhelmingly complex for a new team member. Furthermore, some business domains are inherently complex, and attempting to impose a simplistic model can lead to a system that fails to capture the necessary nuance and ultimately creates more problems.

- Informal discussions can be dominated by the loudest voices, the most senior people in the room, or those with the most social capital. Junior engineers or those with dissenting opinions may not feel comfortable speaking up, leading to a skewed and incomplete picture of the system's health. A more formal "safe space" approach might help here, to increase psychological safety perception of participants, for a better discussion.

- For large, legacy systems that have been in production for years, questions like "Can we explain the system's responsibility in plain English, within 5 minutes?" or "Do simple modifications you expect in hours, take many days?" can be demoralizing rather than constructive. They might highlight known, intractable problems without offering a clear path forward, leading to shame, anxiety and frustration.
by rufasterisco | 2025-09-13 09:57:11+00:00
i too have discovered that feature chats are surely a winner (as well as a pre-requirement for parallelization)

in a similar vein, i match github project issues to md files committed to repo

essentially, the github issue content is just a link to the md file in the repo also, epics are folders with links (+ a readme that gets updated after each task)

i am very happy about it too

it's also very fast and handy to reference either from claude using @ .ie: did you consider what has been done @

other major improvements that worked for me were - DOC_INDEX.md build around the concept of "read this if you are working on X (infra, db, frontend, domain, ....)" - COMMON_TASKS.md (if you need to do X read Y, if you need to add a new frontend component read HOW_TO_ADD_A_COMPONENT.md )

common tasks tend to be increase quality when they are epxpressed in a checklist format
by hyperman1 | 2025-09-13 09:57:47+00:00
Every organization, long term, will have bouts of stagnation or wrong focus. The power of competition is that users have an alternative to flock towards. This both keeps the organizations in check (they know this) or if all else fails, gives us a way to abandon the original.

Gcc and egcs, or later gcc vs llvm ar good examples in the compiler space. Everyone involved in either organization wants the best for open source compiling, and still the competition pushed innovation to everyone. Intel vs amd is a good example of what happens when one competitor is too far behind:. The other slows down innovation.

In my opinion, the rust foundation should applaud others implementing the rust language. It will cause some duplicate effort short term, but long term it will keep rust relevant and their own project in a better shape.