MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Nevermark | 2025-10-19 21:07:25+00:00
Thank you for taking my points with exactly the seriousness they deserve.

I respond in that spirit.

Taking the convention that “byte” always means 8 n-valued bits:

One advantage of a convention of 8 quaternit bytes is they can be readily used as 8 ternary valued bytes too, albeit with reduced use of their value range.

8 quaternit bytes also have the advantage of higher resolution addressing, I.e. at the nibble = 4 quaternary bit boundaries. (The last bit of modern memory addresses indicates the upper or lower quaternary nibble.
by SoftTalker | 2025-10-19 21:07:25+00:00
My GE fridge has been a disappointment. It is OK at its main function: cooling. However I've had to replace the main control board and the freezer defrost heater. The built-in water dispenser never really worked because the water line is routed too close to the freezer compartment and it freezes up. The ice maker is disconnected because its water line developed a leak and damaged my laminate floor before I noticed it. I don't think I'll be buying GE again.
by nobody9999 | 2025-10-19 21:07:36+00:00
>But YouTubeTV is excellent too. The only thing I miss is the ability to save recordings for as long as I want or record anything I want. There were some I kept for years and YT only lets you keep them for a few months.

cf yt=dlp[0]

[0] https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
by MaxikCZ | 2025-10-19 21:07:40+00:00
I pressume its much easier to design something to burn than to do anything else. You are basically just restricting yourself on material selection. The goal isnt for something to not fail, the goal is to fail. Its like asking to build a lawnmower that doesnt have to cut grass, and can look however you want. If you produce a pebble, it fits those criteria.

The atmospheric entrance for these (starlink) sattelites is basically as shallow as possible, so the object spends the most time possible in high atmosphere (think 60-90 km, where the atmo is thick enough to engulf the object in plasma, yet extert low pressure to slow it down, prolonging the time its burning. In otherwords, you couldnt achieve better parameters to burn stuff on deorbit.

All of it will probably be fully burned way before 50km - planes fly at 8-12
by geoduck14 | 2025-10-19 21:08:18+00:00
>It's not all-or-nothing. I'd rather have a choice instead of none.

I used to work adjacent to car financing. One of the "tricks" used in car negotiating is the "fake choice": "oh, you want to pay less for the car? Well. I can give you X OR Y for FREE!". Now you spend time thinking if you want X or Y, forgetting thay they are worth $200, and what you really want is $1000 less on the car.

Be careful with the "choice" you think you are making
by colmmacc | 2025-10-19 21:08:44+00:00
No, this absolutely is not how forward secrecy works in TLS. Forward secrecy protects against a break in the signature algorithm, but not in the key agreement algorithms.

Both the FFDH and ECDH key agreement algorithms are vulnerable to quantum crypt-analysis; someone capturing traffic today could later break that agreement and then decrypt the data. An attacker would have to capture the entire session up to the "point of interest" though.

This is why FFDH/ECDH are being augmented with Post-Quantum secure KEMs.
by alganet | 2025-10-19 21:09:06+00:00
I am sorry, there is a bunch of steps to that conclusion that I took for granted.

We seem to be in a moment that values more terrible engineers in volume than non-terrible engineers.

To me, it sounds very likely that if you're a not-terrible engineer, you won't be rewarded by that effort. Instead, you'll be hired or leveraged for value in the same batch as several other mixed-quality engineers, and rewarded as a maybe-terrible engineer.

Maybe I just want to be non-terrible if there's a viable reward for doing that.

That goes for jobs (you are hired to do something etc) and also for work like free software, open source, even portfolio work (stuff you do to display your skills). Maybe you want to do just enough to show that you can be a non-terrible engineer if the reward for acting that way is guaranteed, which today, it isn't (in my opinion).
by Bolwin | 2025-10-19 21:09:24+00:00
> Are you trying to have fun with programming languages? Or, are you trying to get things done quickly in programming languages? Speed is infinitely more important than fun.

I mean what if I am trying to have fun?

I'm only half joking. For work, your philosophy is correct. But at home, it's fine to give up a little convenience if you have more fun with a different language.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-10-19 21:09:36+00:00
When I was younger (in the 1970s), I lived in the DC area (East Coast, USA). The summers were always tough, but they weren't obscene. We also got some really cold winters, with lots of snow.

During the 1980s, there was a huge development surge, all up and down the East Coast. Basically, the whole coast got paved.

The summers really seemed to get crazy hot, and we stopped getting extreme winters.
by techblueberry | 2025-10-19 21:09:43+00:00
> Also the author seems to be worried that people will make bad decisions with their choices, and this seems not like freedom to the author.

Even sort of bing a libertarian, objectively speaking, yes, I think other people will make bad decisions with their choices.

I find this argument interesting, because I think it’s a plea to rationality. people who consider themselves good/rational are humble enough not to paint the rest of humanity with such a broad brushstroke. But I think it’s wrong, I think it serves more as an emotional plea than a rational one.

So yes, I think the author probably thinks that too many choices will lead people to make bad choices, and in fact not only do I agree with the author but I would guess many? Most? People would be happy to apply this to themselves.
by maartenh | 2025-10-19 21:10:21+00:00
Ah, 5x? At $WORK, the low code tool vendor that is used to build the monolith (and that of our sister company) is bought by a private equity firm. Our sister company will face a 7x increase. Another fun thing is that the license is based on a percentage of licensing cost to their customers.

Their game is clearly to squeeze very hard for a few years, and then deprecate the product. I can't imagine that there are companies that are fine with such price hikes.
by daemonologist | 2025-10-19 21:10:26+00:00
Labels are so essential - even if you're not training anything, being able to quickly and objectively test your system is hugely beneficial - but it's a constant struggle to get them. In the unlikely event you can get budget and priority for an SME to do the work, communicating your requirements to them (the need to apply very consistent rules and make few errors) is difficult and the resulting labels tend to be messy.

More than once I've just done labeling "on my own time" - I don't know the subject as well but I have some idea what makes the neurons happy, and it saves a lot of waiting around.

I've found tuning large models to be consistently difficult to justify. The last few years it seems like you're better off waiting six months for a better foundation model. However, we have a lot of cases where big models are just too expensive and there it can definitely be worthwhile to purpose-train something small.
by sthlmb | 2025-10-19 21:10:47+00:00
I do accept them from vendors directly (and it has no bearing on how I run the tests) but I've not taken any from individuals before. I'm not quite sure how I'd do that logistically, but if there's something interesting then I'm open to discussing it!

I'm currently in talks with a few of the vendors to start filling the database with missing boards from their ranges so we should have more data available in the coming weeks. There should be 2 BeagleBoard (Eco Green and PocketBeagle 2) arriving tomorrow/Tuesday to expand their range on the site!
by gnopgnip | 2025-10-19 21:11:05+00:00
I work for an MSP, mostly with small to medium companies. Licensing costs went up a ton when broadcom acquired vmware. They went up a ton more this year with minimum core counts, current licensing costs are roughly $20k a year minimum. They might hike the price again, even medium businesses that see some value in avoiding an expensive migration want to avoid this uncertainty. Basically they don't want to deal with small and medium sized businesses. I'm sure large businesses are facing price hikes too but I don't have experience with that.

If you are on a perpetual license you can put the management vlan on a network not connected to the internet if it wasn't already and realistically this buys a few years. You will not be able to patch, eventually auditors will not accept that. For the rest not on perpetual licensing, when the licensing expires you will not be able to power on machines, if they reboot they stay off.

About half of clients we are migrating to hyper-v. Most are already running windows servers. There are some differences but hyperv covers the important features and the licensing is basically already included. Beeam makes the virtual to virtual move a lot easier, this is what most of our customers use for backups

For a good chunk they are migrating to azure or another hosted environment. If you don't have a main office with a file server or some more demanding line of business apps this is a pretty easy move.

A few are going to nutanix. Or more of expanding nutanix.
by mrngm | 2025-10-19 21:11:42+00:00
I'm not sure why orders/purchases/subscriptions would be seen as mutable. At some point in time, customer X decided to exchange money amount M for a subscription Y. This means the company is obliged to deliver subscription Y, because the customer engaged in a contract with the company, moved amount M to the company, and expecting to (regularly) receive Y. At renewal, the customer, again, needs to pay amount M in order to continue receiving Y.

The only mutable thing here would be the end date of said subscription, at which point the company no longer requires amount M from the customer, and the customer no longer receives Y.

Then on the accounting side, every time subscription Y renews, said customer in account 750xx needs to have its balance lowered by amount M, only to get increased again when they pay.

The only way to bridge this gap is to have the engineers know what accounting needs, and let them build the right infrastructure. In this [2018] [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH0l8QqhzYk I recently watched, the speaker Rahul Pilani explains how Netflix organised their billing systems, and how all parts fit together. I'm not saying you should copy their infrastructure, but it doesn't hurt to look at a higher level how the business operates and what their accounting requirements are.
by quacked | 2025-10-19 21:12:47+00:00
Your quote:

> Every learning method you can think of has been thought of before and all variations have been implemented in classrooms throughout time. It is mostly pseudo-science.

This is wrong. Not every "learning method" is pseudo-science, neither is comparison of the efficacy of different learning methods. As a trivial example, flat lecture and individual textbook reading is inferior to one-on-one discussion and tutoring with a native speaker if the aim is to learn a foreign language.
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-10-19 21:12:58+00:00
Really enjoyed the following post-skit (that I think is basically the alternative, if you insist people have to see what the corporation wants to push in your face):

normal person: i just want a place to hang out with my friends tech weirdo: and shitheads np: no just my friends tw: but what about hearing alternative views on race and gender? np: we just want to hang out and goof around tw: so where do the shitheads fit in then np: no shitheads tw: not following

Via https://bsky.app/profile/msbarnes.bsky.social/post/3m3beqjja...

Given that this White House is so so so proud of their king shitting on people's heads, the word choice here could not have been better. The White House is perhaps the most needed to block evil people out there, aiming for it, again and again: Miyazaki AI comes out and an old lady in handcuffs crying is what that's for.

These people deserve no voice, no presence in society, except as a warning mark in the history books for what rot abounds from decoupled extremely online vicious edgelording. Which is all too effective and engagement schtick, that doesn't deserve attention.
by Aurornis | 2025-10-19 21:13:03+00:00
The ambient temperature differential between the kitchen and other rooms in a house is minimal on average. There’s nothing bonkers about putting the refrigerator in that space. Even a hypothetical 20F temperature rise during an hour long cooking session is basically negligible for the efficiency of a refrigerator that is cooling 24/7.

Putting the refrigerator in an unconditioned space wouldn’t be as big of a win as you think because every time you open the door to the unconditioned space you’re letting cold air into the house. Twice per refrigerator visit all day long adds up.

In the winter you actually benefit from having the refrigerator in your conditioned space because the waste heat goes toward heating your house. It would be lose-lose to put it outside of the house in a cold location.
by 1718627440 | 2025-10-19 21:13:33+00:00
I am serious. Maybe there is something lost in translation. My dictionary gives me:

disposition <n>, nature <n>, nature <n> of a person, nature <n> of a thing, temper <n>, mettle sb. is made of <n> [archaic], natural <adj>, quiddity <n>, particular nature <n> (of a matter), essence <n>, suchness <n>

The examples make me think, that English indeed does have this meaning of the word "nature", and it's only you who doesn't know this, but maybe you would prefer a different word?
by sitharus | 2025-10-19 21:13:35+00:00
I (well, my landlord) replaced a similarly old refrigerator last year. The thermostat was fine, it had developed a very slow gas leak and the charge had dropped enough that it was freezing rather than cooling.

It was using around 29kWh/month before the leak was noticeable, the new one uses 12kWh/month. The new one is slightly larger than the old. The old model was freezer-on-top style, the new one is a less efficient freezer below model.

Hopefully the new one lasts as long as the old!
by hagbard_c | 2025-10-19 21:13:38+00:00
Those things were everywhere in the Netherlands when I was a child - 70's. I had one above the sink in the kitchen in my student apartment (half of a pigsty converted to human habitation, pigs in the other half, a thin wall in between - that's what you get when studying at an agricultural university and living on a farm) running off a propane tank in the garden. We had one in the kitchen and a bigger one in the bathroom, running off natural gas which the country had plenty of after the discovery of a large gas deposit in the northern Netherlands. There were no vents to the outside, the things just vented into the room. They're called 'geisers' (geysers) in Dutch.
by PaulDavisThe1st | 2025-10-19 21:14:00+00:00
I have no understanding of the "freedom to ..." and "freedom from ..." phrases that would align with your claim about America.

"Freedom from..." is generally used to form phrases like "Freedom from hunger", "Freedom from homelessness", "Freedom from being thrown in the back of an unmarked black van by unmarked people wearing masks". I don't know what version of America you've experienced, but the one I know absolutely does not focus on this notion of "freedom from".
by sipofwater | 2025-10-19 21:14:21+00:00
"Something from “space” may have just struck a United Airlines flight over Utah" "“NTSB gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data.”": https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-m... (arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-may-have-just-struck-a-united-airlines-flight-over-utah/)
by neilv | 2025-10-19 21:14:25+00:00
Some good advice, but two of the pieces surprised me:

> Go to the prof before final exam at least once for office hours. - Even if you have no questions (make something up!) Profs will sometimes be willing to say more about a test in 1on1 basis (things they would not disclose in front of the entire class). Don't expect it, but when this does happen, it helps a lot. Does this give you an unfair advantage over other students? Sometimes. It's a little shady :) But in general it is a good idea to let the prof get to know you at least a little.

Were I a professor, and a student showed up to my office hours, to disingenuous BS me (e.g., making something up to get face time to advance their sociopath career, or to try to get exclusive hints on the exam), that would not be to their advantage.

ProTip: I wouldn't be thinking "What a wonderfully go-getter young person; I should write them a good recommendation, to help them gain more influence. Stanford hasn't inflicted nearly enough people like this upon the world."

> If things are going badly and you get too tired, in emergency situations, jug an energy drink. - They work. It's just chemistry.*

Half of the students are already drugged to the gills. Students don't need celebrity alum endorsement of that.

You don't want people graduading as drugged-out zombies and narcissists, to then go on to found or lead sociopathic companies that make society worse.
by sipofwater | 2025-10-19 21:14:43+00:00
"Something from “space” may have just struck a United Airlines flight over Utah" "“NTSB gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data.”": https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-m... (arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-may-have-just-struck-a-united-airlines-flight-over-utah/)
by timschmidt | 2025-10-19 21:14:45+00:00
> This is a factual true statement, but you wouldn't accept this as a moral argument in a court.

Self defense, as I pointed out, is a perfectly normal reason to kill someone which is widely accepted as a morally defensible argument in court.

> I think you are over-interpreting me, answering to something I haven't said.

Seeing as your argument was anticipated, and a suitable set of counterexamples was provided preemptively, I think not.
by dash2 | 2025-10-19 21:14:51+00:00
I'm afraid I'm not convinced. In particular, there's an obvious objection to your first claim: if language were primarily designed to fool people, then it would be useless, because other people would ignore it. As for the rest, it still isn't clear what you are saying. For example: "the basic principle of control-deception in language became electronic through its perceptions of socialization". Sorry, whose perceptions? The principle's perceptions? Language's perceptions?

It seems you can't explain your ideas clearly. Maybe they just aren't clear ideas.
by apatheticonion | 2025-10-19 21:15:09+00:00
> I fear the Rust world that overuses macros

I share this fear. Rust macros are _amazing_ and indispensable but their overuse makes understanding third party code extremely difficult. There are cases where macros are used to avoid repetition, I feel like code generation makes more sense here, where crates publish expanded syntax.

My other fear is the fragmentation of standard interfaces. AsyncRead and AsyncWrite are prime examples. If you build an http server you end up using tokio's AsyncRead AND futures AsyncRead - then a bunch of glue code to make them compatible with each other.

I'd love to see the standard library reinforced with crates that are basically default installs for their use cases. Tokio, futures, http, httpparse, maybe a variant of anyhow.
by BoppreH | 2025-10-19 21:16:07+00:00
That's fine, it's a very subjective choice. Here a few reasons why I preferred Dolphin:

- Tree view on main panel (can expand folders without navigating into them).

- Checksum validation under "properties".

- Filter function (like search, but faster and persistent across navigation).

- When dragging and dropping, explicit distinction between "move here", "copy here", "link here", and "move into new folder".

- Browsing SFTP drives natively.

- Native Git integration.

- Well integrated notifications for long operations.

- Disk usage statistics (technically "filelight"). Like WinDirStat, but with circles.
by mwnorman2 | 2025-10-19 21:16:30+00:00
Bill Tutte founded the Department of Combinatorics & Optimization in 1962 at the University of Waterloo (the year I was born!). No one knew about his Bletchley Park work until 1985; later in 2001 he was awarded the Order of Canada (he passed away the following year aged 84). I was amongst the usual group of often confused undergraduates in his C&O classes ... his mind just operated on a level that few of us mere mortals could ever understand!
by PaulDavisThe1st | 2025-10-19 21:17:36+00:00
The term "free market" originally referred much more to freedom from government or ruler-controlled markets than it did to the behavior of actors with a market.

A free market in that sense is one in which (more or less) anyone can sell (more or less) anything at (more or less) any price. Historically, the freedom to do this was impeded by laws and/or arbitrary rule making, even if today monopolies, monopsonies and rent-seeking are a bigger problem in many markets.
by 1970-01-01 | 2025-10-19 21:18:07+00:00
>Can we trust open source software? Yes — and I would argue that we can only trust open source software.

But should we trust it? No!! That's why we're here!

I'm not satisfied with the author's double-standard-conclusion. Trust, but verify does not have some kind of hall pass for OSS "because open-source is clearly better."

Trust, but verify is independent of the license the coders choose.
by uninformedprior | 2025-10-19 21:18:25+00:00
It's possible I wasn't specific enough when I said "graphics". Typically I blend in CIELAB when interpolating between colors for visualizations (eg data science).

But I'm unaware of rendering engines that do alpha blending in something other than linear or SRGB. Photoshop, for instance, blends in sRGB by default, while renderers that simulate light physically will blend in linear RGB (to the best of my knowledge).

It depends on the GPU and the implementation, but I personally would not want to spend the compute on per-pixel CIELAB conversions for blending.
by estearum | 2025-10-19 21:18:35+00:00
There should be an internet law for “Just to be clear you’re saying… <inject OP’s own bad faith interpretation>”

No, I’m saying that you fundamentally misunderstand the role of courts, judges, and judicial orders.

The law says “follow the law as written.” Judicial orders necessarily encompass a much, much broader set of types of relief that give courts more levers to compel people to follow the law and to ensure that they actually do it.

This is just how courts work and it always has been. This literally predates the United States by hundreds of years.

Assuming there’s some good faith curiosity behind the curtain here, the concept you want to look up is “equity jurisdiction.”
by Seattle3503 | 2025-10-19 21:19:02+00:00
> The project falls apart because Product drops the ball, but Engineering is the team at the end of the funnel, so the blame naturally tends to land on them. Product’s output is often hidden, and it’s easy for them to say, “Well, we did our part. Engineering just didn’t deliver.”

I've seen this get worse with LLMs. I've had specs that were wholly or in significant part generated by ChatGPT, but they look detailed so the are plausible workslop. I've been given a spreadsheet with nonsense items "Implement adaptive intent-driven workflows across user touchpoints" (I generated this example with GPT).

When I asked what any of it meant I was met with silence. Later through the grapevine I hear the requirements were generated by ChatGPT and the guy responsible for them doesn't understand the system at all. But guess who is responsible for delivery?