MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by generuso | 2025-10-21 20:20:23+00:00
Mainstream oscilloscopes typically have sampling frequency at least five times greater than the bandwidth of the analog front-end. For example 1 GHz bandwidth oscilloscope will have sample rate of 5 GSps.

https://www.tek.com/en/products/oscilloscopes https://www.keysight.com/us/en/catalog/key-34771/infiniivisi...

"Sampling" oscilloscopes are a much less common product -- they are useful for analyzing signals that are too fast to digitize in the ordinary way. They typically sample at a very slow repetition rate -- some hundreds of kilohertz, but each sampling aperture can be exceptionally short, allowing to record signals to 100 GHz frequency.
by nostrademons | 2025-10-21 20:21:05+00:00
Party registration isn't required (I'm unaffiliated, for example) but enough people do it that you can make a reasonable prediction of how a precinct is going to vote before they actually vote. This is the input data for gerrymandering: you don't need to know every single voter, as soon as you get a statistical sample you know how the area is likely to vote, and then you can construct districts out of precincts such that there's a safe margin of victory for each one.
by throwa9876 | 2025-10-21 20:21:11+00:00
> And the fact that elections can be meaningfully influenced by the amount of ads a campaign can run is a signal to me that the democratic process is broken in some fundamental way.

That's probably rational ignorance. It's hard to get people to investigate the details of policy and their consequences when theirs is just one vote out of millions. It's too much work. But that leaves the voters susceptible the kind of ads you mention.

Or stated more simply: getting informed doesn't scale, but mass advertising does.

Athenian-style democracy might handle this problem better. Randomly select, in some unbiased manner, a smaller number of people who then decide. But I suspect sortition is a little too unusual and feels a little too chancy for people to accept as a serious proposal.
by jrowen | 2025-10-21 20:21:25+00:00
practical experience and skill training, but most importantly a certain degree of influence and power: You can't go on strike if you don't have a job.

People don't have to need these things though. For a lot of people it's all just the means to the end of being able to live comfortably.

Because while everyone could live a happy, fully consumption-oriented life, they'd have zero influence how to live that life:

I don't think most people care much about that. But either way, they have the option to. I don't think humanity will slip into a vegetative dystopia because the default spirit of life is grow, expand, go, go, go, don't stop to think about the bigger picture. There is always curiosity and ambition in the gene pool. But society is jammed up with this model that is low-efficiency for everyone except the people that are financially in a position where they don't have to care (and I include myself at the lower end of that tier).
by ethbr1 | 2025-10-21 20:21:33+00:00
> The US spends more per pupil than every other OECD country except for Luxembourg, and exceeds the average by over 50%.

Not accurate in the context you're saying it.

You're probably conflating US K-12 spending (low) with post-secondary spending (high)?

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...

https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...
by consumer451 | 2025-10-21 20:21:35+00:00
Whenever I can, I try to think of modern events from the point of view of archaeologists digging through the layers, at some point in the distant future.

Given that perspective, my thought was: "Hey Bob, look at these morons, they called easily proven lies 'post-truth!' Can you believe that? In a civilization based on science, with AI, nuclear, and biological weapons?! No wonder they died out right after this. How did they not see this coming? Anyway, what's for lunch?"
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2025-10-21 20:22:00+00:00
If I'm on the jury, I'll make sure he walks.

The only valid agreements require the party seeking the agreement to make efforts in that pursuit. Did a human view the signed agreement afterward? Do they store that signed agreement in such a way as to be able to retrieve it if they need to contest the terms later?

Then no agreement was made.

And as for the CFAA provisions, if they put those resources on the public internet, then the public has the right to interact with them. You can't fence off the sidewalk and claim that someone trespasses when they walk on it.
by bonoboTP | 2025-10-21 20:22:12+00:00
It was easy to spread lies through print and through good old fashioned word of mouth too. No radio needed.

And apropos radio, the War of the Worlds radio drama in 1938 is know to have made quite some afraid that it's real. And plenty of people collected money in communist Hungary for the sake of the enslaved Isaura (protagonist of a Brazilian soap opera). But most people adjusted and understand that radio dramas are a thing, movies are a thing, and will adjust to the fact that pixels on a screen are just that.
by aaronbrethorst | 2025-10-21 20:22:51+00:00
Is this a corrupt, punitive attack against Elon Musk over the falling out between him and Trump? Is this based on a strong, factual basis? Who knows!

If Musk was still in tight with Trump, and this potential booting was based on a strong, factual basis, would it still be in the works? Who knows!
by zer00eyz | 2025-10-21 20:23:06+00:00
> "The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term" - Sean Duffy NASA administrator.

Im not sure the current admin is prepared for the risk that entails, unlike the last time we did this:

https://www.archives.gov/files/presidential-libraries/events...

https://www.discovermagazine.com/if-the-apollo-11-astronauts...
by whynotminot | 2025-10-21 20:23:09+00:00
We all owe every part of everything to those who’ve come before us. That goes without saying, really.

> Secondly, you are very blind if you don’t see that the AI making your job “easier” is close to replacing you entirely, if you don’t also have a deep understanding of the code produced.

Brother don’t patronize me. I’m a senior engineer I’m not yeeting vibe code I don’t understand into prod.

I also understand the possibility of all of this potentially devaluing my labor or even wholesale taking my job.

What would you like me to do about that? Is me refusing to use the tools going to change that possibility?

Have yet to hear what else we should be doing about this. The hackernews answer appears to be some combination of petulance + burying head in the sand.
by kulahan | 2025-10-21 20:23:22+00:00
In the end, I kinda... don't care. Look up - there's nothing. There should be at least some alien civilizations trying to make their presence known. There should be some signs somewhere that could be recognized universally as either "stay away" or "come here". It really should be trivial to locate technological civilizations unless you've got some incredibly solid reason as to why EVERY SINGLE ALIEN CIVILIZATION IN THE UNIVERSE acts a certain way. Color me doubtful.

We have billions and billions of data points showing the Universe is empty. We have exactly one (1) data point showing it isn't. And that's us.

Besides, just look at the timeline. The universe has only been cool enough, with enough stable stars, with enough formed planets for potential life to form for a few billion years. Between that and the Drake equation, life alone is likely to be unreasonably uncommon. Life that forms after a planet becomes stable, doesn't have any planet-altering disasters, evolves to complex multicellular forms, evolves some kind of intelligence, becomes social, forms a society, advances technology, and starts exploring the universe...? Why bother? The math doesn't work.

Note: I'm not speaking about any KIND of life existing, I'm speaking about technological civilizations. My belief is that we are essentially the forerunners.
by stevenwoo | 2025-10-21 20:23:37+00:00
I've been doing this for New Scientist and a few other magazines and there's always a few articles that I have found interesting that don't make it to hacker news (the whole magazine with ads comes digitally), though many of the pieces are very short half page articles that mention something new that one has to follow up on one's own for detailed information and there's regular columns like book reviews. This magazine via Libby feature is the only thing that makes me miss having an ipad or larger mobile device for reading convenience. I assume the magazine is paid for by our local library system for access so in some small way there is compensation making its way to the creators which if someone is worried about supporting them, is one way besides a subscription. (I have stopped print subscriptions because I always end up with repository of stuff I need to recycle or throw away).
by 9dev | 2025-10-21 20:23:40+00:00
So, how does the story go? Only earth is blessed by god, because Jesus crashed here, and all the alien races are toast because they didn’t have a chance to learn about Christ, Savior of the strange bipeds from Earth?

I’m sure they came up with an elaborate story how Jesus loves sentient mollusks from Alpha Centauri, but I hope most people are smart enough to realise how little sense it all makes. I for one am curious how this plays out, if I’m lucky enough to witness it.
by mullingitover | 2025-10-21 20:24:16+00:00
> The question the US (Congress/NASA) should be asking is not 'how can we get Artemis III' but rather 'what kind of Space program do we want over the next 30 years'.

I think the big question is "What is it going to do to the global standing of the United States (let alone domestic politics) when China repeatedly lands people on the moon and we can't."
by hollowturtle | 2025-10-21 20:24:27+00:00
I'm Italian, I love cooking in my free time, it's also part of our culture. I honestly can't figure out what's stressfull and time wasting shopping for groceries, I often get lost inside the smell of vegetables, pickin the right one, looking for the right color, even optimizing for cost and less waste. I find it so relaxing and like a zen experience
by makeitdouble | 2025-10-21 20:24:29+00:00
Haven't crypto an opposite bias, with no guarantee that any given transaction's ledger will stay relevant ?

Dropping votes is as problematic as allowing too many.

In general, money transactions have failure modes that don't match what we want for other use cases. That's the same trap as using credit card payments for ID verification, it only works if you don't actually care about the ID.
by ggreer | 2025-10-21 20:24:32+00:00
There are some limitations on such balloons already. For example, if the payload is 4-6lbs, stricter rules apply if the weight/size ratio is greater than three ounces per square inch (measured by the smallest surface on the payload).[1]

Also for larger balloons, any trailing antenna must break if subjected to an impact force of 50lbs, or the antenna must have colored streamers every 50ft.

The ideal measurement would be some sort of crash testing. eg: The payload is accelerated at some standard velocity towards some standard target that represents the weakest part of an airplane (either cockpit glass or leading edge of a wing) and must not damage the target beyond some threshold. But that seems like it would be expensive, since every change in payload would require re-testing. Limits on sectional density seem like a good compromise.

1. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F...
by fujigawa | 2025-10-21 20:24:33+00:00
I'm gonna be honest, you sound like a problem employee.

The companies not using Microsoft, are using Google. Which in my experience is equally or measurably worse.

Just personal data points, but every avowed Microsoft hater I've ever worked with has been... difficult. Like a-drag-on-the-team-because-he-refuses-to-use-company-tools difficult.

Edit: How does an aged post on this site go from +4 to -1 in the span of a few minutes?
by kossTKR | 2025-10-21 20:24:35+00:00
Things work "relatively well" for billionaires and the status quo though.

You probably have no idea how much working class anger, how many unknown groups and "screams from the abyss" are being targeted, removed, censored, deranked before they gain any critical mass in this bizarre cybernetic web that's been created. I sure don't.

But sometimes you feel it on a gut level, flooded in a torrent of PR and entertainment, mind controlling algorithms and mainstream media with an increasingly tiny overton window disregarding the circus of culture wars farming attention and steering political anger for economic political gains - through a media landscape where all local news, actual working class papers representing real people, and diversity of thought has been replaced by thoughts™ approved by one of the few giga corporations working for a microscopic plutocracy.

It's over 100 years since Edward Bernays et al. invented modern PR, then came astroturfing, and now it's all so weird and colossal that no talks about what was seemingly obvious a century ago.
by toast0 | 2025-10-21 20:24:47+00:00
> And I hate to say it, but I suspect the industry itself will never return to those "cowboy coding" days. It was fun while it lasted.

I don't think the industry will return to it, but I suspect there will be isolated environments for cowboys. When I was at WhatsApp (2011-2019), we were pretty far on the cowboy side of the spectrum... although I suspect it's different now.

IMHO, what's appropriate depends on how expensive errors are to detect before production, and how expensive errors are when detected after production. I lean into reducing the cost to fix errors rather than trying to detect errors earlier. OTOH, I do try not to make embarrassing errors, so I try to test for things that are reasonable to test for.
by aspenmayer | 2025-10-21 20:24:54+00:00
Archive of TFA:

https://archive.is/08ig5

which is reporting on the linked original publication:

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/xk8y-hycn

which has a preprint available:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.14367

h/t to both criddell and nicklaf who posted replies containing the above to a now [flagged][dead] comment which violates the HN guidelines, which is why I have collated this and reposted it as a top-level comment.

In future, I would advise folks who post archives and workarounds to post them as a top-level comment in addition to and/or instead doing so as replies to others, especially instead of as replies to comments that violate guidelines, as if/when those comments become [dead] for whatever (legitimate or otherwise) reason(s), their child comments also get buried except to those with showdead enabled on their profile, which requires not only an HN account and login, but also requires enabling the showdead option in one’s user profile.
by bigyabai | 2025-10-21 20:25:41+00:00
> At current market rates every country in the world can afford CNE technology

Slippery slopes don't justify anything. You might not care enough to make a difference, but many people do and your justification rings hollow to everyone that's potentially a victim. You wouldn't say this about nuclear proliferation, so why make a carveout for digital mercenary work? Because it's "harmless"?

I don't know what your goal is with this statement but it certainly doesn't make me feel any better. If you're this emotionally invested in the topic, it might be best for your own optics to not chime in.
by Fade_Dance | 2025-10-21 20:27:07+00:00
FX necessarily trades in pairs. To buy a peso one needs to sell something against it, and the US will sell dollars if acting in the FX space.

Since the USD is one of the core currency crosses and is at the base layer of the financial system, raising the peso/dollar cross is effectively strengthening the currency against all other currencies.

Also, while the specific political circumstances around the pesos swap line are dubious, the US often extends dollar swap lines to other central banks. The other side of the privilege of having the world reserve currency is having the obligation to support the stability of the world financial system (although this example is more off the wall than the typical example).
by noxa | 2025-10-21 20:27:13+00:00
Neat! As someone working in this space and feeling like I've been taking crazy pills from how these "duh, CPU solved this 30 years ago" things keep slipping it's great to see more people bridging the gap! Unfortunately CUDA/HIP (and the entire stack beneath them) virtual memory management ops are very expensive host APIs (remapping a big block of pages can be O(n^2) with page count and fully synchronize host/device (forced wait idle), take kernel locks, etc) so it hasn't been viable in all cases. If your workloads are submit/wait with host in the loop the VM tricks are ok but if you are trying to never block the GPU (pipeline depth > 0) you really want to avoid anything that does a page table modification (until we get GPUs that can pipeline those). vkQueueBindSparse is one of the few async APIs I've seen, and CUDA has cuMemMapArrayAsync but I haven't yet used it (because arrays are annoying and without being able to inspect the driver I'm sure it's probably doing the wrong thing).

I've had good luck with indirection tables used during lookup inside of the kernels consuming/producing the kvcache data - it's essentially user-mode remapping like they do here: you can publish a buffer offset table and threads are uniform, have coalesced reads to the table, and cache the offsets no problem. You have the same memory locality issues as VM (contiguous virtual but potentially random physical) but are not limited to device page sizes and since you can update while work is in-flight you can be much more aggressive about reuse and offload (enqueue DMA to cold storage to evict from VRAM, enqueue DMA to copy from cold memory into reused VRAM, enqueue offset table update, enqueue work using them, repeat - all without host synchronization). You can also defrag in-flight if you do want to try to restore the physical locality. It's nothing crazy and fairly normal in CPU land (or even classic virtual texturing), but in ML GPU land I could write a big paper on it and call it SuperDuperFancyAttention4 and publish press releases...
by spankibalt | 2025-10-21 20:27:29+00:00
> He only cared about sending rockets up.

Which extended also how exactly those rockets were produced... and by whom.

EDIT: Yeah, I get it, the Zwangsarbeiter from the camps building the rockets are not very conductive to the carefully whitewashed "hero technocrat" image certain "hackers" just love to invest in. :T
by moritzwarhier | 2025-10-21 20:27:48+00:00
I envy the rigor and time investment, but I'm inclined to agree: there are unenforceable contracts, but I'm not aware of any case in which denying t&c's while using a service deliberately was successfully defended as compatible?

I'm not a lawyer though, I'm not even that well-informed about everyday law stuff for laymen.
by bawolff | 2025-10-21 20:27:51+00:00
[According to google] My country has a per capita peanut consumption of 1.4 kg per person per year vs america's 2 kg. So not that different.

I still maintain its mostly in foods people don't generally give to toddlers. People may give a PB & J to a 5 year old, but they don't generally feed that to a 6 month toddler. Not because they are protecting them from peanuts but because generally people dont give sandwiches to toddlers.
by mulmen | 2025-10-21 20:28:24+00:00
> I can get great ICE cars for $15K. I cannot get a single used great EV for $25K.

You absolutely can get good used EVs for $25,000.00. That buys a 2022-2024 Kia Niro. You can get the 2019 model for even less, barely more than your ICE budget. 2023 Nissan Leafs are also around $15,000. All of these cars still have 70,000 miles and 5-9 years on their factory battery warranties.
by antonymoose | 2025-10-21 20:28:51+00:00
Back when I started in the late 2000s you had much clearer lines around your career path and speciality.

There was a difference between a sysadmin and a programmer. Now, I’m expected to be my own sysadmin-ops guy while also delivering features. While I worked on my systems chops for fun on the side, I purposely avoided it on the work side, I don’t usually enjoy how bad vendor documentation, training, etc. can be in the real world of Corporate America.
by nickpinkston | 2025-10-21 20:28:52+00:00
Yea totally - like those Black Mirror-esque (and South Park?) videos of people having AI talk to their partner about deep relationship stuff.

We just built a mechanical parts AI search engine [1], and a lot of what it does it just get the best options clustered together, and then give the user the power to do the deeper engineering work of part selection in a UI that makes more sense for the task than a chat UI.

Feels like this pattern of "narrow to just the good options, but give the user agency / affordances" is far better.

[1] https://www.govolition.com/power-search
by aleph_minus_one | 2025-10-21 20:29:05+00:00
> I feel like there’s a lot of tech-fetishist right now on the “if you don’t deeply love to write code then just leave!” train without somehow realizing that most of us have our jobs because we need to pay bills, not because it’s our burning passion.

I would claim that I love coding quite a lot. The problem is rather that my bosses and colleagues don't care about what I love about it. It is rather appreciated if you implement tasks fast with shitty code instead of considering the fact that tasks are easy to implement and the code is really fast as a strong evidence that the abstractions were well-chosen.

Thus, I believe that people who just do it for the money have it easier in the "programming industry" than programmers who really love programming, and are thus a big annoyance to managers.

I thus really wonder myself why companies tell all the time about "love for programming" instead of "love for paying the bills" and "love for implementing tasks fast with shitty code", which would give them people who are a much better culture fit for their real organizational processes.
by NobodyNada | 2025-10-21 20:29:14+00:00
This is because the final few minutes of a contended game are the most strategically complex, as the teams are fighting not just for scoring and control of the ball but also for control of the clock. Usually, the team that's behind is trying to slow down the clock (minimizing time-per-play and maximizing actions that require the clock to stop between plays), while the team that's ahead is trying to run out the clock to seal their win (unless their opponent is likely to score, in which case they may want to slow the clock so they have time to respond, etc). And since the stakes are so high, the teams spend a lot more huddle time to deliberate strategy, as well as going for more complicated or unusual plays that often require more careful review from the refs.

It's by far the most interesting part of the game, but if you're only passively watching and waiting for it to be over, it can feel agonizingly slow.
by dragonwriter | 2025-10-21 20:29:28+00:00
> > Which businesses did Wikipedia put out of business?

> Just as a start, other sources of reference, including encylopedias, dictionaries, websites, etc. For example, I'm sure it impacts McGraw-Hill's AccessScience, which likely you've never heard of.

Your “for example” in response to a question about what businesses Wikipedia put out of business is a business that is...still in business?
by fsckboy | 2025-10-21 20:29:54+00:00
>No chance that would hold up in court. Clickwraps have been tested in courts and are fully enforceable.

there may be no chance it would hold up in court, but not for the reason you say. it would have be be because "any words on on a modified document "signature" line would be taken as a signature" or "subverting a clickwrap license is theft of services" or whatever.

that "agreed" clickwrap licenses have been found enforceable is a separate fact about a separate issue.