MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by crowbahr | 2025-10-29 23:45:19+00:00
Android dev at a large company - I've been talking with the folks at Graphene about options for attestation without using Google's API and it looks like there's actually a lot I can do for attestation without them, as long as I add their cert chain to a backend service.

It's a bit of a pain because Google just does that for me normally, but we _can_ support it. It's probably only a sprint of effort give or take. But we're deeply undermanned so it's hard to get done.
by andy99 | 2025-10-29 23:45:35+00:00
Possibly for some workflows, though personally I find the emphasis on speed baffling and a big part of the reason I don’t find most of these uv testimonials credible. I’m a regular python user across multiple environments and I’ve never considered waiting for pip to be a material part of my time, it’s trivial to the point of being irrelevant. The fact that so many people come out of the woodwork to talk about how fast it is, means either there’s some big group somewhere with a niche use case that gets them bogged down in pip dependency resolving or whatever gets sped up (obviously the actual downloading can’t be faster) or it’s just a talking point that (presumably) rust zealots who don’t actually use python arrive with en mass, but it’s honestly an extremely ineffective way of promoting the product to most python users who don’t have speed of package installation as anything close to a pain point.
by zelphirkalt | 2025-10-29 23:45:57+00:00
Tooling like npm, cargo, and others existed well before uv came up. I have used poetry years ago, and have had reproducible virtual environments for a long time. It's not like uv, at least in that regard, adds much. The biggest benefit I see so far, and that is also why I use it over poetry, is that it is fast. But the benefit of that is small, since usually one does not change the dependencies of a project that often, and when one does, one can also wait a few seconds longer.
by motohagiography | 2025-10-29 23:46:03+00:00
i've followed them for a while and as just a general technologist and not a scientist, i have a probably wrong idea of what they do, but perhaps correcting it will let others write about it more accurately.

my handwavy analogy interpretation was they were in-effect building an analog computer for AI model training, using some ideas that originated in quantum computing. their insight is that since model training is itself probabilistic, you don't need discrete binary computation to do it, you just need something that implements the sigmoid function for training a NN.

they had some physics to show they could cause a bunch of atoms to polarize (conceptually) instantaneously using the thermodynamic properties of a material, and the result would be mostly deterministic over large samples. the result is what they are calling a "probabilistic bit" or pbit, which is an inferred state over a probability distribution, and where the inference is incorrect, they just "get it in post," because the speed of the training data through a network of these pbits is so much more efficient that it's faster to just augment and correct the result in the model afterwards than to use classical clock cycles to directly compute it.
by throwaway31131 | 2025-10-29 23:46:42+00:00
For the cores working hardest to achieve the absolute lowest cpi running user code, this is true. But these days the computers have computers in them to manage the system. And these kinds of statements aren’t necessarily true for these “inner cores” that aren’t user accessible.

“ RTKit: Apple's proprietary real-time operating system. Most of the accelerators (AGX, ANE, AOP, DCP, AVE, PMP) run RTKit on an internal processor. The string "RTKSTACKRTKSTACK" is characteristic of a firmware containing RTKit.”

https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/glossary/#r
by cruffle_duffle | 2025-10-29 23:46:49+00:00
Honestly people really just dont understand how far apart things are. And yeah the good remote spots are a 4 hour drive from the city (and you aren’t even half way across the state at that point).

The forests and wilderness of the PNW are much, much, much, much more remote and wild than virtually anywhere you’d go in Europe. Like not even close.
by sheepscreek | 2025-10-29 23:47:16+00:00
What about Pixi[1]? It has become an irreplaceable part of my dev stack. Fantastic for tool + library version management. It has replaced a number of tools for me and greatly simplified bootstrapping in a new environment (like lxc containers when I am experimenting with stuff) or creating a lightweight sandbox for AI agents.

1. https://pixi.sh/latest/
by Bud | 2025-10-29 23:47:24+00:00
It's reasonable to say this is wrong. But really, this seems like a tiny subset of users. Who bought a Mac Pro in 2023 after Apple Silicon had been out for 3 years already? Almost nobody, because it wasn't a real performance improvement by that time. For those extremely niche folks for which it was somehow still beneficial, they definitely won't want to still be using such a machine in 2028. They will have moved on to something like an M5 Ultra Mac Studio or whatever form the Mac Pro takes next.
by dynm | 2025-10-29 23:48:45+00:00
Strange, right? Take a look at figure 4 here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

This is as in the abstract:

1. drinks/day declined in both groups and somewhat more in the treatment group but wasn't statistically significant 2. number of drinks/day basically wasn't different at all 3. drinks/drinking day didn't change in the placebo group but did decline in the treatment group

(These are all actually regression coefficients computed on non-random samples but nevermind.) Somehow it seems like what's happening is that 3 rises to statistical significance even though 1 doesn't.
by okanat | 2025-10-29 23:48:54+00:00
Not the OP but does this actually package CUDA and the CUDA toolchain itself or just the libraries around it? Can it work only with PyTorch or "any" other library?

Conda packaging system and the registry is capable of understanding things like ABI and binary compatibility. It can resolve not only Python dependencies but the binary dependencies too. Think more like dnf, yum, apt but OS-agnostic including Windows.

As far as I know, (apart from blindly bundling wheels), neither PyPI nor Python packaging tools have the knowledge of ABIs or purely C/C++/Rust binary dependencies.

With Conda you can even use it to just have OS-agnostic C compiler toolchains, no Python or anything. I actually use Pixi for shipping an OS-agnostic libprotobuf version for my Rust programs. It is better than containers since you can directly interact with the OS like the Windows GUI and device drivers or Linux compositors. Conda binaries are native binaries.

Until PyPI and setuptools understand the binary intricacies, I don't think it will be able to fully replace Conda. This may mean that they need to have an epoch and API break in their packaging format and the registry.

uv, poetry etc. can be very useful when the binary dependencies are shallow and do not deeply integrate or you are simply happy living behind the Linux kernel and a container and distro binaries are fulfilling your needs.

When you need complex hierarchies of package versions where half of them are not compiled with your current version of the base image and you need to bootstrap half a distro (on all OS kernels too!), Conda is a lifesaver. There is nothing like it.
by pas | 2025-10-29 23:49:40+00:00
The post argues for "control theory" and slowing down changes. (Which ... will sure, maybe, but it will slow down convergence, or it complicates things if some class of actions will be faster than others.)

But what would make sense is that upstream services return their load (queue depths or things like PSI from newer kernels) to downstream ones as part of the API responses, so if shit's going on the downstream ones will become more patient and slow down. (But if things are getting cleaned up then the downstream services can speed things up.)
by rtpg | 2025-10-29 23:49:41+00:00
There was still a perfectly nice window of opportunity even scratching nuclear from the list.

My other glib thing about nuclear is that France, a much denser nation than the US (though of course density is a local property...), has a bunch of nuclear, but even with "full" buy-in it's hard to make the whole thing profitable, and a lot of the nuclear reactors are running at like 80% capacity.

Electricity is pretty fungible at smaller scales but when you start building reactors you need water and you need consumers of a lot of electricity to be close by, and that does cause its own sets of constraints.

Would still be better if the US had built a bunch more nuclear reactors, but my assumption has often been that there are limits to how much it could be expanded in the US given those constraints.
by ghc | 2025-10-29 23:49:55+00:00
As someone who lives the DoD software delivery process on a day-to-day basis, it's too on the nose to not be satire. Everything is _exactly_ wrong, even the waterfall part (everything's "agile" now!).

Edit: Never mind! I just saw their other comment and it seems more like they are blissfully ignorant of the reality on the ground.
by Nextgrid | 2025-10-29 23:50:43+00:00
I think there’s a difference between “indie dev” aka either an experienced SWE trying it or some really motivated person with an established identity, credit card & income stream and a kid/teenager tinkering around.

In a “free for all” setting, anyone (including kids) could potentially learn enough (or even just download pre-made scripts) and try their hand at modding software/games.

In a modern situation with developer registration, etc someone would need some sort of established identity, potentially going through age verification, paying some nominal fee for a license, accepting an EULA and so forth. This is a huge barrier to entry for kids/teenagers just wanting to tweak the game experience for themselves/their friends. I remember my first time trying to install Apache on Windows I guess around 2008-09, and the (very well-made!) install wizard asked me for a domain name. At the time I wasn’t aware of how DNS/etc worked and was scared to continue, thinking I would either take up some other company’s name or not being “allowed” to use a random name I’d pick and get myself/my parents in trouble.

All these “regulated” ecosystems make it scarier for well-meaning but inexperienced devs to get started, while doing little to deter dedicated attackers who know the game and know actual cybercrime enforcement is both lacking and trivial to defeat in any case.

The “free for all” environment made me the developer & sysadmin (or DevOps person as the techbros call it) I am today despite no formal training/education and I am sad to see this opportunity go for the younger generations.
by bcantrill | 2025-10-29 23:51:54+00:00
I (obviously) don't agree with your characterization, but given that I don't work for you (and won't) and that you don't work for me (and won't) can we just let a decades-old disagreement live in the past? Not that it will stop or dissuade you, but I would point out that following me around on HN just to leave nasty replies is exactly the kind of harassing behavior that you so frequently decry in others...
by IAmGraydon | 2025-10-29 23:52:41+00:00
It's funny this myth persists, primarily in conservative circles, it seems. We are far worse per capita than China. In 2023, the US emitted 13.83 tons of carbon per capita. In that same year, China emitted 9.24 tons per capita. There are few countries that are worse than us - that list includes Russia and Saudi Arabia.
by rtpg | 2025-10-29 23:53:06+00:00
In the "we only have one planet" angle, I think it's worth considering that China is not just burning coal for domestic purposes for fun. The fossil fuel consumption is an input to some output, a lot of that going abroad.

If China is the factory for all of these products sold in the US (and elsewhere of course), then isn't China just accounting for even more US emissions?

In that sense, some sort of eco-Trump could put all the tariff money into green tech or something, to balance out the exporting of emissions.

Though to be fair, I gotta imagine that... a lot of chinese emissions are purely for domestic purposes.
by the_hoser | 2025-10-29 23:53:37+00:00
One of the biggest optimizations it offers is shrinking the size of the classes by obfuscating the names. If you're obfuscating the names anyway, there's no reason that the names have to be the same length.

"hn$z" is a heck of a lot smaller than "tld.organization.product.domain.concern.ClassName"
by westurner | 2025-10-29 23:54:01+00:00
"PSA: SQLite WAL checksums fail silently and may lose data" so that's probably not how to sync sqlite; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44672902

electric-sql/electric: https://github.com/electric-sql/electric :

> Specifically, Electric is a read-path sync engine for Postgres. It syncs data out of Postgres into ... anything you like. The core sync protocol is based on a low-level HTTP API. This integrates with CDNs for highly-scalable data delivery.

electric-sql/pglite: https://github.com/electric-sql/pglite :

> Embeddable Postgres with real-time, reactive bindings.

"Using Postgres for Everything" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40420474
by the__alchemist | 2025-10-29 23:54:18+00:00
Yea def. I think Linux's ABI diaspora and the way it handles dependencies is pain, and the root behind both those distro methods you mention, and why software is distributed as source instead of binaries. I contrast this with Rust. (And I know you can do this with C and C++, but it's not the norm:

- Distribute a single binary (Or zip with with a Readme, license etc) for Windows - Distribute a single binary (or zip etc) for each broad Linux distro; you can cover the majority with 2 or 3. Make sure to compile on an older system (Or WSL edition), as you generally get forward compatibility, but not backwards. - If someone's running a Linux distro other than what you built, they can `cargo build --release`, and it will *just work*.
by stavros | 2025-10-29 23:54:31+00:00
> Responses from Large Language Models like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini are not facts. > They’re predicting what words are most likely to come next in a sequence.

I wish we'd move away from these reductive statements that sound like they mean something but are actually a non-sequitur. "Articles on Wikipedia are not facts. They're variations in magnetic flux on a platter transferred over the network".

Yeah, that doesn't make them not facts, though. The LLM should simply cite its sources, and so should Wikipedia, a human, or a dog, otherwise I'm not believing any of them. Especially the human.
by bigyabai | 2025-10-29 23:54:40+00:00
> the 10% that DON'T are all of the new, massive titles

That's not true? Arc Raiders, arguably the most-hyped game of 2025, is day-one compatible with Linux devices. I played the Server Slam free weekend on my NixOS machine, clearly not all of the new massive titles are broken.

You can't abuse hyperbole like this while accusing other people of lying.
by rlayton2 | 2025-10-29 23:56:24+00:00
Even in small companies, its important to discuss what the expectations around AI are. In the absence of any further requirements (i.e. assuming privacy is not a major issue, regulatory issues etc), it can be as simple as clearly saying: "You can use AI, but you are ultimately responsible for what you deliver. It is expected you verify the data, test the code, and otherwise validate the responses."

Something as simple as that gives an expectation, without being overbearing to start with.
Show HN: Hacker News in Dark Mode
by dbaio | 2025-10-29 23:56:45+00:00
Reading HN at night was hurting my eyes. This is just a lightweight playground project that you can try at: https://hn.sysopscafe.com/ It uses the Hacker News API and the Algolia search API to provide a dark mode view. Upvotes and replies will redirect you to the official website.
by okanat | 2025-10-29 23:57:14+00:00
I actually got interested in Rust because its integer types and the core data structures looked sane, instead of this insanity: https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/types/integer.html . Fluid integer types are evil.

I stayed for the native functional programming, first class enums, good parts of C++ and the ultimate memory safety.
by nobody9999 | 2025-10-29 23:58:02+00:00
> But they are trying very hard to not throw all brown people with an accent into detention centers

Are you sure about that? There's quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, starting with the really high false-positive[0][1[[2][3][4][5] rates of facial recognition, especially among people of color.

In fact, as the studies linked below show, people of color are misidentified (i.e., false positive) more than 1/3 of the time. That's not nearly accurate enough to round folks up if 10 of every 30 arrested, detained and potentially deported actually aren't the folks you're looking for.

What could possibly go wrong?

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/police-facial-rec...

[1] https://www.aclu-mn.org/en/news/biased-technology-automated-...

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/facial-recognition-race-1.54...

[3] https://jusmedia.co.uk/riotandreason/2025/06/02/face-the-bia...

[4] https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2019/12/nist-study-eva...

[5] https://civilrights.org/edfund/2024/09/25/advocates-ring-ala...
by bigyabai | 2025-10-29 23:59:00+00:00
> There is no spyware and adware integrated into standard apps or OS itself.

Are you sure? Senator Ron Wyden claimed that the US uses the Push Notification system for surveillance, and Apple never denied it: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/apple-governments-surve...

"In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information," the company said in a statement. "Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests."

At the very least, there is a little bit of spyware integrated into the OS.
by dlojudice | 2025-10-29 23:59:07+00:00
Congratulations on your work. I spent the day working with a mix of the Composer/Sonnet 4.5/Gemini 2.5 Pro models. In terms of quality, the Composer seems to perform well compared to the others. I have no complaints so far. I'm still using Claude for planning/starting a task, but the Composer performed very well in execution. What I've really enjoyed is the speed. I had already tested other fast models, but with poor quality. Composer is the first one that combines speed and quality, and the experience has been very enjoyable to work with.
by LexiMax | 2025-10-29 23:59:40+00:00
I took a vacation from this site many years ago because it was clear that the moderators of this site were at the very least complicit in the rise of bad faith user moderation, from both bots and so-called "fellow travelers."

The only thing I can't decide on is if YC let this rot take hold because they were also fellow travelers, or if they made the wrong choice that a good number of failed internet social spaces make in following their own stated guidelines to the exact letter at the expense of all common sense and decency.

Not that it matters much in the end - the end result is what we got.
by al_borland | 2025-10-30 00:00:13+00:00
I’ve been part of many migrations at this point and my feelings toward them depend on if I feel the migration is actually needed and worth it.

When it seems like a worthwhile upgrade to something I want to learn and use, I jump in with both feet and quite enjoy it.

When it feels like the only reason for the migration is for a VP to leverage it into an SVP or CIO role at a new company, I’m less thrilled. These migrations are long, painful, and it feels like pulling teeth every step of the way, because no one in the organization is really on board.
by lovelearning | 2025-10-30 00:00:15+00:00
> Drawing on national reports prepared for FAO, ...

> Since 2005, the FRA has relied on data provided by a network of officially nominated national correspondents...

My understanding is that these reports are heavily based on data reported by respective governments. I think "officially nominated national correspondents" means bureaucrats of different governments.

But the governments of Russia, India, China are all known to lie. A lot. About a lot of things. I would know.

My default stance is to be skeptical of such claims based on national reports. Independent verification using satellite imagery seems like a better approach.
by stavros | 2025-10-30 00:01:02+00:00
Side effects are generally rare, but it really depends on the person. I tried to start five times, and got massive side effects each time. The last time I started, I did my own protocol (started at 0.5mg every three days and increased a bit on every injection).

Now I'm up to 6mg and I'm not getting any side effects, but it also doesn't work for me! I lost 6kg at one point but the effects wore off and I gained the weight again.

None of my friends had this experience, for everyone else it's worked with no side effects. I really am cursed.
by hekkle | 2025-10-30 00:01:35+00:00
OMG YES, that site needed to die! I posted a few times on subjects I was an expert in, and hence they were difficult issues, and no one would ever answer them.

The few other times I posted they were questions about things I wasn't an expert in, hence why I was asking, and my god, it was like I was pulling them away from their busy schedules and costing them time at work. It's like you don't have to answer if you have something better to do.
by a-dub | 2025-10-30 00:02:53+00:00
the joke i like to make:

it's a linked list with an O(exp(n)) append cost and a O(r*exp(n)) rewrite cost where r how many from the tip you wish to rewrite.

other notable: the 32 bit nonce is exhausted very quickly with modern mining systems, so they roll the timestamp forwards and backwards by a limited amount, add, remove and reorder transactions and iirc twiddle some bits in the coinbase (the first transaction the miner is allowed to add to the block to pay for the mining) to twiddle the merkle root.

the implementations of the mining systems are actually pretty cool. the host will compute the first rounds of the compression function for the first 32 bytes, and then hardware acceleration will take over for the open hash for the remainder which includes a host computed merkle hash and 32 bits of nonce + 32 bits of timestamp (with some maybe 8-10 bits of entropy to play with). so the host computes these new merkle hashes and partial sha2 sums, but then farms out the open hash state to the hardware to spin and check on timestamps and nonce values. (although newer stuff may need to compute the merkle hashes in hardware too)
by Levitating | 2025-10-30 00:03:25+00:00
> Genuinely, why would they leave any data on the table if they don't have to? That's the entire purpose of the browser.

Because extracting and using that data may not be trivial, practically and legally speaking.

I am sure they use the chat input you send them for training. But to say that they transfer all the websites you visit to their servers, or that they can monitor your keyboard input either by continuously streaming your window or your keyboard events to their servers. All of that would be a small technical feat and noticeable in the created traffic.

My belief is that they simply hacked together an AI web-browser in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort, so that they can showcase another use for AI.

That would be a much simpler explanation than them building a personal surveillance tool that wants to know what you've typed and keeps track of the time you've spent looking for shoes.