MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by baxtr | 2025-10-05 10:35:24+00:00
My best friend from school days has a son who’s now in 7th grade.

Recently, when we were talking about him, we realised his school years are far less dramatic than ours. We had drama, lots of bullying, tears, fights, and mean things were done.

In contrast, his son’s school days are absolutely harmless and benign.

I know it’s n = 1 and maybe we were very unlucky back then. But it also makes me wonder if any chaotic experience is worth having.
by bonoboTP | 2025-10-05 10:36:02+00:00
Most people used to be illiterate a few generations ago and then only had a handful of books in the house, like the Bible and some other staples, and their letters were full of spelling mistakes, and clumsy writing and bad letter shapes. This is also seen in reddit translation requests of postcards and letters.

Your impression is based on immense selection bias. Maybe your ancestors were in the top percentiles, nobles, aristocrats, or even just doctors, academics and priests. But up until the early 20th century the vast majority were farmers and then they were factory workers.

Great writing and abundant reading was always very niche.
by Hnrobert42 | 2025-10-05 10:37:00+00:00
Washing powder and books are classic cases of items that are easily counterfeit and often appear on amazon.

https://thecounterfeitreport.com/product/138/Laundry-Deterge...

https://clark.com/scams-rip-offs/fake-laundry-detergent-how-...
by mgh2 | 2025-10-05 10:39:00+00:00
Why does the author need to inject his political viewpoints into the article?

> Cory Doctorow is an activist, science fiction author and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing.

If you have not dealt with digital marketing, this article is structured as an advertorial, present a pain (Amazon practices), then offer a solution/product, with a subtle call to action (CTA) at the end - "subscribe to the left ideology to get rid of the problem"

I am tired of political propaganda masqueraded as information. Ironically, the author doesn't know that he is a product of "enshittification"; but instead of physical products, left ideologies, heavily advertised through social media.

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/guardian
by dijit | 2025-10-05 10:39:24+00:00
But that “subject” header makes it paletable.

I would argue if you really can’t come up with a subject then you probably shouldn’t be asking at all.

I got used to Zulip at my previous job and people made the same argument about “Topics” (which are basically subjects); but they forget that the messages are read more often than they are written. A little friction in writing for an easier time reading and skimming is absolutely worth it.
by johtso | 2025-10-05 10:40:00+00:00
sqlc always seemed like a really neat concept to me. I love the idea of being able to write my queries as raw SQL in separate files, would make everything so much more interoperable with other tools. Having your queries defined as strings inside some other programming language always struck me as not so awesome.

I'd love to see something like this for Typescript and Effect's SQL integration with schemas.
by robinsonb5 | 2025-10-05 10:42:17+00:00
I used a PSOC (4) for a project once, and while the chip itself was awesome the software was so bad that attempting to use the next version of the software "bricked" the devboard I was using. (Something to do with the new serial bootloader being a different size. "Bricked" in quotes, because with the right kind of expensive programming cable it could have been resurrected - but the whole point of the devboard in question was that it was cheap and self-contained, not needing an external programmer.)
by 0xDEAFBEAD | 2025-10-05 10:42:34+00:00
This sort of vague, association-based reasoning can be used to prove anything. The US is a country with over 200 years of history, currently with hundreds of millions of citizens. You can cherry-pick whatever "visuals" from whatever "inflection points" you want, in order to prove whatever conclusion you want.

For example, here is a thread on /r/AmerExit, a subreddit you would expect to have an anti-American bias, on racism in the EU vs the US. The strong consensus is that EU racism is worse:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AmerExit/comments/17g68zx/pervasive...

Or here is the Wikipedia page on charitable giving by country, which shows the US is easily the most generous nation in the world as a fraction of GDP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...

If you learn about the history of other countries, you'll find that they usually have dark stuff in their past as well. You claim that standing up against Nazis is "very low hanging fruit", but there's a considerable list of countries which cooperated substantially with the Nazis, including Italy, Japan, Romania, Croatia, the USSR, etc. France was torturing thousands of Algerians who were fighting for their independence as recently as the 1960s.

Ultimately this entire project of trying to discover and interrogate a "national character" is a little silly in my opinion. Especially through the sort of cherry-picking I did above. Yes, it's a very popular topic of internet flamewars. But I've never seen compelling evidence that "national character" has significant predictive value. People are people wherever you go, people respond to incentives, etc. We should default to structural explanations for human behavior, rather than explanations based on "national character".

For example, consider this recent Substack post on how climate caused the US Civil War: https://substack.com/home/post/p-170433170

I expect the majority of historical events can be explained in the manner of that Substack post, if you look hard enough. Same way I'm rather skeptical of "Great Man" theories of history, I'm also rather skeptical of "Great Nation" or "Great Culture" theories of history.
Show HN: Nomad task driver for Cloud Hypervisor
by ccheshirecat | 2025-10-05 10:43:30+00:00
Made this initially as part of another project but pivoted to something else and was left with this doing nothing. Other one is way cooler(I'll drop it here too when I'm done)

Custom Nomad task driver that runs Cloud Hypervisor virtual machines natively, fork of the original virt-driver with support for cloud-init, VFIO passthrough, and full resource orchestration.

If you’ve ever wished Nomad could launch real VMs (not just containers) with the same declarative workflow, this closes that gap. It’s useful for anyone running high-isolation workloads, nested virtualization, or GPU-bound compute pipelines inside Nomad clusters. It's still got some rough edges but usable

github.com/volantvm/nomad-driver-ch

Under the hood: • Written in Go, implements full TaskDriver interface • Supports create/start/stop/destroy lifecycles • Cloud-init injection for userdata, networking, SSH • VFIO passthrough for direct PCI access

Would love feedback from Nomad operators or Cloud Hypervisor users especially around how you’d use this in your stack.
by BlueTemplar | 2025-10-05 10:43:52+00:00
We're talking about unsolved philosophical issues here, matters of barely stable equilibriums.

Would you rather be «team Plato», ruled by enlightened 'philosopher-kings' ? Comes with its own set of issues.

P.S.: Also, it's probably only a real paradox if you conflate the levels of application : what is really problematic is the systems that result in increased intolerance.
by blagie | 2025-10-05 10:45:56+00:00
Amazon broke in 2020, when most shopping went online. It never recovered.

I doubt it ever will. Trust takes a long time to earn, and a little bit of time to break. I had four or five incidents on Amazon, cancelled Prime, and I doubt it will ever make business sense for Amazon to get me back.

I do think there's a place for a competitor to Amazon right now which looks more like the old Amazon.

Starting one would be super-capital-intensive. It's not a lean startup. There's only a handful of organizations with the capital to do that, and I doubt any of them will, in fact, do it.
by watwut | 2025-10-05 10:46:54+00:00
There are some differences: investment platforms wont kick you out if you manage to earn money. Gambling sites do that. If you are loosing a lot, gaming sites make your limits go up. If you are winning a lot, your limits go down. Investment sites dont do that.

They also assign "consigliere" to you if you loose a lot. He is supposed to create a personal relationship with you. If you try to stop playing, that person will try to get you back into gaming.

You are not betting against investment platform itself, you are betring against other people on it. That is major difference.
by johtso | 2025-10-05 10:47:02+00:00
I've been having a bad time with email of late. It's been the method of communication between us and another company (a pretty creaky old product). I thought they were replying strangely and ignoring my questions "did they even read what I said!?". It turns out for whatever reason they hadn't been getting some of my emails.

Now I can't trust that anything has been received unless I get an acknowledgement, so I have to keep pestering for replies. Basically lost trust in the protocol because it's dependent on the the other person's mailserver behaving they way you expect it to.
by delta_p_delta_x | 2025-10-05 10:47:46+00:00
> Due to human-driven climate change effects this event will certainly happen much sooner (<100m years) as well

No, it will not. Human driven climate change is drastic, but the Earth has seen far worse events than our anthropogenic carbon emissions. For instance, the Chicxulub impactor at the end of the Cretaceous changed atmospheric conditions overnight, and to a much greater degree than whatever we have cooked up. It was the equivalent of detonating the world's entire nuclear arsenal about a million times over.

Sure, it finished off the dinosaurs. But 66 million years later, we, the descendants of tiny rodent-like mammals, are still here, as are the dinosaur's own descendants, the birds.

Additionally, during the Carboniferous about 300 Mya, both carbon dioxide and oxygen levels were considerably higher than they are today, and life actually thrived. I would say that with the increasing luminosity, there will be at least a decent period on Earth where life returns to that sort of diversity. We are actually still only in an interglacial of an ice age—this has effectively sterilised large tracts of our planet by covering them with ice sheets, or locking permafrost into the soil and making them unavailable for large trees.

Let me be very clear: our emissions—if unchecked—will make life very difficult for us as the rising seas and temperatures scatter millions of people out of coastal cities in the tropics further north and south and cause war, division, strife, and discord like we have never yet seen. But actually bring forward the planet's overall demise? Nearly impossible.

Let's not have the hubris to think we puny humans could remotely affect the planet's geological timeline. If we somehow all disappear simultaneously, most direct evidence that we ever lived will disappear with us–perhaps within a hundred thousand to a million years of erosion and weathering. Our emissions will similarly lurch to a halt and will reach equilibrium within a similar time span. That's all it takes to remove our direct creations from the geological record.
by tamnd | 2025-10-05 10:48:03+00:00
Behind each "tale" lies a mathematical idea: from counting numbers and odd and even numbers, to geometry with lines and circles, to group theory, waves, frequencies, etc.

Behind the story words, here are the branches of mathematics explored in each chapter: 1/ Numbers, 2/ Geometry, 3/ Pre-Algebra, 4/ Calculus and Analysis, 5/ Algebra, 6/ Probability, 7/ Logic, 8/ Complex Numbers and Higher Dimensions 9/ Mathematical Applications to Physics, 10/ Further Applications, including AI/Machine Learning, Music, and more.

Along with the tales, I am planning to write about the underlying ideas for each one in much greater detail.
by wtmt | 2025-10-05 10:48:06+00:00
I was looking through the comments here for something like this. Additional context for others here: Amazon in India is legally allowed only to operate a marketplace. It is not allowed to stock and sell products by itself (it does FBA, i.e., Fulfilled by Amazon for warehousing and delivering products by third party sellers).

Amazon in India has been close to perfect on customer service. I have had issues, but it’s still easier to contact customer service on chat or have them call me (both modes have become a little more difficult to access with the stupid chat bot responding and not helping). Anytime there’s a defective item that needs to be returned for refund or replaced, it’s been very quick.

Lately though, I’ve made it a habit of shooting unboxing videos and photos of the delivered package so that I have clear evidence on any wrongdoing by anyone in Amazon. For larger appliances and such, I’d still prefer a local brick and mortar store.

On the other hand, Flipkart, which is Amazon’s primary competitor, has worse prices on many items of interest to me, does not really offer fast shipping like Amazon does, has only a phone number to contact customer service (and that’s pretty useless), doesn’t have a simple way to get returns or replacements done, has a really stupid and useless “SuperCoins” rewards scheme, and more. It’s a wonder that Walmart is still an investor and owner in Flipkart and hasn’t sold it off and salvaged itself.

I do believe that Amazon’s service in India has deteriorated over the last couple of years or so. Don’t know if management doesn’t care as much or what’s happening within.
by mustaphah | 2025-10-05 10:48:47+00:00
Find patterns and merge similar-intent inquiries into a single thread.

I used to ask an LLM for executive summaries by pasting an article URL into a fresh conversation each time. Now, I don't open a new thread or even write a follow-up comment on the same thread. Instead, I simply edit the prompt (of a single thread) with the new link.
by clort | 2025-10-05 10:48:53+00:00
Perhaps you can explain something then, since you appear to be knowledgeable on this matter. On this[1] eBay item from a seller based in China, under their "Seller business information", they list

UNIFIED_SOCIAL_CREDIT_CODE: 91440300MA5ED70C7X

.. what is that exactly, if social credit score does not exist?

[1] https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305629164114
by portaouflop | 2025-10-05 10:50:23+00:00
Google+ dies not because it was a bad product but because google changed strategy and killed it.

Ultimately it’s all subjective - some people prefer email some chat some calls some no comms at all.

If you can communicate well, articulate what you say and want well, and actually read and understand what I write then I will communicate over any medium with you. If not then I’ll have a bad time regardless of medium
by RhysU | 2025-10-05 10:50:25+00:00
> A three-fold increase was found in the rate of organ donation for unhelmeted motorcyclists compared to helmeted motorcyclists (p = 0.006).

First the statistics but then the following op-ed...?

> From a public health perspective, helmets should be required for all motorcyclists...

Personally, I always wear and will always wear a helmet. Legally, however, requiring them is pure nanny state.

Consider: We would certainly save more lives by requiring all vehicle drivers to wear helmets, including cars/trucks/etc in addition to motorcycles. Like, wear a helmet inside your car. Professionals do. But we amateurs do not. I would be laughed for proposing a universal helmet law. So, clearly saving lives isn't the only valued metric
by aspenmayer | 2025-10-05 10:50:49+00:00
the life support machine called

In case anyone is out of the loop, these are both lines from an eminently quotable Seinfeld episode (The Comeback, S8E13) that perfectly encapsulates the concept of l'esprit d'escalier, which I’m not sure has a direct English translation in common terms, but is a sort of loan word in my parlance, but I’ll admit I have studied French in secondary school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comeback_(Seinfeld)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier

> L'esprit de l'escalier or l'esprit d'escalier (lit. 'staircase wit') is a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late.

Now that Curb Your Enthusiasm has wrapped, I could go for a rewatch of Seinfeld, as I can’t think of a better coda to Curb than a return to the roots from which Larry David’s own show sprang.

Hope springs eternal, and both Seinfeld and Curb are wry reminders that every silver lining has its cloud. I’ll take the rain.
by wltr | 2025-10-05 10:51:03+00:00
Yeah, I started with an obsolete PC a decade ago, and now I’m on a Raspberry Pi 2 and a couple of Orange Pis (zero, 1st gen). Weirdly, it’s enough for me now. I self-host not too many things as of now. So I guess I’d grow at least a couple of Mac minis over time too. However, I’m trying to go slowly there. Funny thing is that despite me admitting that I’m more likely to arrive there too, each time I see a superlab, I wonder ‘what do you guys do with all this?!’
by benjiro | 2025-10-05 10:53:05+00:00
Big difference between refusing payout because of expired ITV and this installation.

If you alter your car its electrical harnas wiring and this creates a short somewhere, resulting in your car burning down ... that is a whole difference situation then missing a mandatory inspection. One is deliberate alteration of a vehicle and one is a inspection of condition.

Most insurances have a lot of protective language (for the insurance company), that often comes down to "everything needs to be code compliant/manufacture original/...".

The bigger the damage, the bigger the chance that insurance companies will fight you. If the above mentioned installation creates a small kitchen fire that cost a few 1000 bucks, they probably are not going to fight it.

But what happens if the above mentioned installation burns down the building, kills 5 people... Do not forget that the other neighbors / building owner's insurance companies, will go after your insurance if you are identified as the cause.

The issue is that if you go to court, and a fire comes from your apartment is from a accident, or a state like this, courts are willing to side with the victim party. But if a fire is the result of your own "tampering" with devices, electrical, etc, there is a very, VERY high chance that the court will side with the insurance provider. Insurances are not blank "do whatever you want, you get coverage" type of deals.
by buran77 | 2025-10-05 10:53:32+00:00
> Storage UniFi UNAS PRO: (replacing the Synology NAS) 7x 8TB Seagate IronWolf

With the way Ubiquity has treated their software stack on the network side in the past years (major bugs, regressions, and updates that had to be reissued multiple times), I wouldn't trust them with all my data. Ubiquiti's QA was outsourced to the customers and a NAS is the last place where I want to risk bad updates, no matter how many backups I have.
by fidotron | 2025-10-05 10:54:50+00:00
> The problem isnt technical feasibility it is market incentives.

This is understating it honestly.

The software industry has become completely reliant on renting data access back to users to maintain subscription revenue. One effect of this is it has devalued the actual software in the eyes of users to such a degree that virtually no one will pay for alternatives, certainly not enough to compensate the development cost.
by general1465 | 2025-10-05 10:55:00+00:00
So maybe having some hybrid like Slack/Teams over email? Where UI of such email client is rendering emails as a room/channel and subject is the name of the room (removes RE, FW, ...) and works like room identification?. So you will get IRC like experience. If you will add PGP on top of it, it can be also secure and decentralized.
by dist-epoch | 2025-10-05 10:55:04+00:00
How do I post a message on Discord/Twitter/Instagram from my personal data storage? If this is not supported, this idea is born-dead. Very few will use it, for the regular person the conversation goes like this:

- Who can see my personal data storage posts? Can someone with Twitter see them?

- No, but you'll own your data

- Bye

So maybe start with something which backs-up what you post on Twitter/Instagram/Discord to your personal data storage through APIs/data export.... This has no downside if it's easy to "activate"
by microtonal | 2025-10-05 10:55:37+00:00
I think it is really hard to extrapolate from single examples. My first two years were a little like that. Then I had to repeat a school year, got in the nicest class imaginable and had five incredibly fun years that I look back at with a lot of fondness.

Having a kid myself, I think life is much worse now. There is the constant unconscious fear of getting filmed, etc. It was much easier for my generation to just experiment, do stupid stuff, etc., you know being a child/teenager, without the fear of repercussions.
by grafmax | 2025-10-05 10:57:13+00:00
Essentially the enshittified internet is a rent-extracting one. It locks users in, often taking a loss leader, then once it has built this moat, it degrades user experience by extracting rent. Rent extraction is a form of profit that allows the wealthy owners of these platforms to parasitize money from the working class by relying on lock-in instead of offering something of value in return. It’s in society’s interest that businesses like this are expropriated and socialized and handed over to the workers to run. This would lower prices by eliminating lock-in based profiteering, restore the internet from its state of enshittification, and decentralize power by reducing wealth concentration.

However power is so centralized in the hands of these oligarchs this wont happen on its own. They are currently turning our country into a white Christian nationalist ethno-state to try to preserve their tenuous hold on power.

In the medium term, their adversarial approach to society’s welfare is likely to backfire as we continue to find ourselves increasingly squeezed by the enshittified world these oligarchs have created - and turn to the only real effective tool that we have left: mass strikes. The longer we wait the harder it’s going to be.
by smusamashah | 2025-10-05 10:57:23+00:00
Image Diffusion models are already capable of this. There was a research paper and I believe model was released as well, which ch generates visual illusions where an image when flipped becomes something else.

Same idea here. A text needs to be diffused from two views until it looks the same but still matches the input. It might already exist.

Edit: https://diffusionillusions.com/

Edit: Ambigram using Diffusion models https://raymond-yeh.com/AmbiGen/
by dist-epoch | 2025-10-05 10:57:56+00:00
You got the market incentives wrong.

Most people have no incentive of owning their data. Otherwise the companies which don't give you that would die out because people wouldn't use them if they cared.

Same fallacy as believing smartphones are giant and with non-user swappable batteries because somehow smartphone making companies are forcing this on the market, instead of the real reason which is that it's what consumers want.
by breve | 2025-10-05 10:58:11+00:00
> most people aren’t building a high performance spreadsheet

Lots of people are building Blazor applications:

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blaz...

> not most people aren’t using a high performance spreadsheet

A spreadsheet making use of WebAssembly couldn't be deployed to the browser if WebAssembly hadn't taken off in browsers.

Practical realities contradict pjmlp's preconceptions.