MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by croon | 2025-10-02 13:24:56+00:00
ACA subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year, and democrats want to extend that. That in combination to cuts to medicare and medicaid in the BBB tax cuts that won't hit until next year, while not directly related to the shutdown, it is one of few venues for leverage in negotiations. Especially after GOP promises of no cuts in medicare and medicaid which were obviously broken with that bill.
Ask HN: An "Empathy News Channel" that reports global tragedies as local ones?
by amichail | 2025-10-02 13:25:08+00:00
Most people hear about bad things happening around the world but don’t feel much because the events feel distant. What if there were an Empathy News Channel that retold world news as if those events happened in your own city?

For example: instead of reporting, “A market bombing killed 15 people in [country],” it might say, “A market bombing killed 15 people at [your local shopping mall].”

The idea is not to mislead — the channel would be completely upfront about what it’s doing — but to help viewers imagine what these events would actually feel like if they happened close to home, and therefore build more empathy for people who live through them elsewhere.

Do you think such an empathy news channel would be effective in making you care more about global tragedies?
by jklowden | 2025-10-02 13:25:35+00:00
To be fair, the characterization is entirely accurate. Anyone who speaks of "government schools" advocates their demise. They want an entirely privatized system funded at taxpayer expense: a voucher for every child to be spent as each parent decides. If that means every public school closes, well, voila: the magic of the market.

Whoever "they" are in your assertion, they are not cutting down bureaucracy or promoting local control. The federal government has not issued new regulations to cap administrative overhead, for example. It simply abandoned its civil rights enforcement and slashed funding.

Agreed, public schools in America do a poor job. Something like 1/3 of graduating seniors are ready for college work, according to the "national report card". But that’s by design: elected school boards and administration determine salaries and standards. No principal wants to explain poor grades to a disappointed parent; no teacher wants to combat a parent’s prejudice by teaching real history or biology. So, the curriculum is mediocre and grades are high.

The situation isn’t much better at private schools by the way. Grade inflation is everywhere. Harvard just has the luxury of picking its students.

No Child Left Behind and civil-rights enforcement by the department of education did narrow the achievement gap, which has now begun to widen again. So it is clear the department directly benefits student. The complaint is not that; it is that it benefits the "wrong" students, if you get my drift.
by diimdeep | 2025-10-02 13:25:38+00:00
It is ridiculous bloat of "high level technobabble"

npm install for web/ server/ % cloc . 81808 text files. 51415 unique files. Language files blank comment code --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- JavaScript 25050 453101 913671 4436663 TypeScript 14997 85346 630503 831318 JSON 2238 168 0 457435 Perl 233 10541 34463 293957 Markdown 1977 89859 1551 234399 Dart 1257 24152 14748 229937 Svelte 678 5917 190 51223 HTML 128 16361 90 31719 ... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 51415 713200 1617503 6726009

In comparison, qemu does emulation of literally every hardware that there is and it is only 1/3 more code, and it is without counting code required to run nodejs, docker, postgresql, redis that is dependencies of this image catalogue software.

qemu-10.1.0 % cloc . 58961 text files. 43347 unique files. Language files blank comment code --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 18063 1068616 1312988 5590243 C/C++ Header 13980 366138 907350 1774239 Assembly 1370 42839 55872 320027 Python 1345 67483 89294 255732 SUM: 43347 1789003 2759752 9220521 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by nwsm | 2025-10-02 13:25:45+00:00
My Windows 10 updates had been failing for the past 6 months. When shutting down my PC I'd get the notification to "update and shut down", but the update would routinely fail. I thought the outstanding updates were the reason I wasn't given an option to update in place to Windows 11, but that was actually because my i7 7700k isn't officially supported. I ended up needing to create a Windows 11 iso that doesn't enforce hardware requirements with Rufus [0]. I was building a new gaming rig in tandem, so I reformatted the lone remaining SSD on the machine and left the new windows install unactivated as I plan to give it to a neighbor or family friend who can be tasked with buying a copy of windows. But this means I was left without any free Windows 10 -> 11 upgrade and had to buy a new license for the new rig. I didn't try to do anything other than browse the internet on the unsupported hardware, but things seem fine.

So far Windows 11 on the new rig has been very smooth/stable and I can't think of any issues I've had after 2 weeks of gaming and other typical use. But the amount of internet-driven widgets that ultimately are a medium for ads is frustrating.

[0] https://github.com/pbatard/rufus
by Gerardo1 | 2025-10-02 13:25:49+00:00
It's not reasonable to claim inference is profitable when they've also never released those numbers. Also the price they charge for inference is not indicative of the price they're paying to provide inference. Also, at least in openAI's case, they are getting a fantastic deal on compute from Microsoft, so even if the price they charge is reflective of the price they pay, it's still not reflective of a market rate.
by looping__lui | 2025-10-02 13:25:53+00:00
Well, 5 years later past publication and with “the highest electricity prices, a high carbon footprint compared to neighboring countries, challenges with network stability and 3 years in a recession with major mass layoffs in the news every week” I can reassure you that the math of cost efficiency was certainly off and the population has serious concerns about the feasibility.

I do trust their math on carbon emissions and capacity calculations wrt to renewable energy and gas power plants though.
by masfuerte | 2025-10-02 13:26:04+00:00
If names must be unique you don't need to rename them because they are unique.

I'm not being facetious. It's a design choice. Many languages don't but Java and C# for example require modules to have globally unique fully qualified names.

Maybe this was the intention of the C++ committee. C++ does support hierarchical module names so Java style naming is possible. If everyone adopts it then name clashes won't be a problem.
by librasteve | 2025-10-02 13:26:44+00:00
It’s great to see JetBrains giving back like this …

The Raku language community has put a lot of effort into IntelliJ support, initially the Comma plugin was supported by Edument and then it was passed to the Raku Community where it is actively supported … now renamed Raku IntelliJ Plugin (RIP - geddit?)

Tools like the Grammar inspector and debugger fit well in the IntelliJ UI model.

https://raku.org/nav/1/tools
by iamnothere | 2025-10-02 13:27:28+00:00
Patreon/LiberaPay style individual sponsorship should be a simple path around this. If I am sponsoring an individual because I like the work they do in general, I am not contributing towards a single “project”. Especially if the dev contributes to more than one project. The wider the grey area the better.

Perhaps the future is shadowy projects led by an anonymous figure who merely merges pull requests, while named devs contribute work and receive support from their fans/supporters.
by crazygringo | 2025-10-02 13:27:38+00:00
My exercise bike can play Doom on its display in theory.

Theory doesn't matter here, tooling and standards do. And PDF doesn't just have the tooling for highlighting and annotations, it has the standards for them so that tools support them in an interoperable way. A highlight made with one tool can be removed with another, without altering the underlying content.
by alkonaut | 2025-10-02 13:27:43+00:00
That would be the sensible idea in a free market. But that ship sailed LONG ago. Now there are apps and "markets" that are so important and dominating (Amazon, Facebook, ...) that the only alternatives are basically to split them, control them or regulate them in detail. The problem isn't lack of "innovation".

Anyone can make any social app work the way they want to. But that doesn't mean the same rules and laws applies - or should apply - to one with 1B users as one with 100 users.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-10-02 13:27:54+00:00
Search pubmed for empathy. People who have it, have it, those who don't aren't going to build it, because it's brain structure (anterior insular cortex). If you want to make change, you have to care (and be willing to expose yourself to the costs involved) to put yourself into positions of power to have more leverage to effect change at scale (to prevent the events from happening you mention; do you want to know about them if you cannot change them?). Do you care enough to seek power you don't want but need to make the change you believe in?

"One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato
by fragmede | 2025-10-02 13:27:57+00:00
Which gives him great credibility on the history of the field, but is maybe a hinderance in advancing it. Advancement comes from people who are too ignorant to know that what they want to do is considered impossible by experts in the field. Not always, of course, but enough times that being the expert that created the Roomba back in the augts doesn't automatically mean he's right.
by Aurornis | 2025-10-02 13:28:13+00:00
> I would argue that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger.

Messenger was never the primary draw of Facebook. It came long after Facebook was popular.

I should have known better than to step into a conversation about Facebook on HN. Doing anything other than blindly agreeing with anti-Facebook comments, even if they’re factually incorrect or illogical, attracts downvotes and more illogical arguments.
by cool_cherry | 2025-10-02 13:29:04+00:00
The paper that this CBC article is based on: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-05036-6_...

There's a great and very detailed report written after the 2018 municipal elections that outlines some security issues with online voting in practice:

https://whisperlab.org/ontario-online.pdf

I'll also shamelessly plug my thesis which, among other things, describes an interesting ballot secrecy vulnerability in one online voting system that allows a passive network observer to determine who someone voted for:

https://uwo.scholaris.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/4e74d806...
by ryanar | 2025-10-02 13:29:41+00:00
Fascinating article. As I was reading it, particularly the part about his son John saying his father was very loving and was there for him, but also saying he did not like to be interrupted during his work or reading, and would say "Go away! I am reading!" immediately made me think he was quite narcissistic. His work was more important than even his own son. Later on his brother Dennis confirmed my suspicions that McCarthy was a narcissist. I have an insatiable curiosity as well and truly love learning, but in being a christian I have actively worked against my tendency to narcissism. A life like McCarthys sounds romantically fabulous, but when you think about the end of it, four people around your bed, it sounds tragic. There is something profound in sacrificially loving others and it doesn’t seem like Cormac experienced that. Though I am sure his wives, brother Dennis, and son John, did.
by cthalupa | 2025-10-02 13:29:55+00:00
The numbers suggested in this article (and to be clear, what you have linked is not a study - it is a discussion by graduate students in a PT/exercise science program. Not to disparage them, but this is not primary research) do not match the results we see in actual RCTs or meta analysis of them.

See the bottom half of my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45446913 - significant muscle damage is exceedingly rare, and ~90% of the muscle pain reported in the RCTs ended up not being related to the statins at all.

Your claims are simply not backed by the data. These are some of the most prescribed and studied drugs on the planet.
by HankStallone | 2025-10-02 13:30:01+00:00
Yeah, "underfunded schools" is a talking point that bears no relation to reality but was great for pulling at people's heartstrings, because "think of the children!" But taxpayers have learned better, because they can look at their property tax bills and see how the bulk of it goes to schools. They can look up the per-pupil cost and see that it just keeps climbing faster than pretty much anything else but health care.

They can see that the corollary talking point (schools in disadvantaged areas get less funding) is a lie too. From an MIT study: "The distribution of spending experienced by children living in poverty (figure 1a) is nearly indistinguishable from that of children not living in poverty (figure 1b)."[1] People who make that claim usually only count state and local funding, ignoring federal Title I which makes up for it.

The "underfunded schools" dog just won't hunt anymore. People who are worried about their next paycheck don't want to hear it, especially when it often comes from school administrators who make more than they do.

[1] https://direct.mit.edu/edfp/article/19/1/169/116642/Funding-...
by gman83 | 2025-10-02 13:30:33+00:00
The US wouldn't be doing this if these American tech companies weren't lobbying the government hard to kill the DSA & GDPR. It seems like all regulatory enforcement is out of the window with this administration, so if they can kill the European regulations, they're free to do as they like. The scoping of the trade war as the US having a deficit with all countries by not counting services is ridiculous, it's the most important sector of the economy, and the US has a massive surplus in services.
by calmoo | 2025-10-02 13:30:48+00:00
I don't really want to discuss politics off the bat of my purely 'for your information' comment, but I think you're grossly misrepresenting Ezra Klein's worldview and not listening to the nuances of his opinion, and instead having an intense emotional reaction to his words. Take a step back and try to think a bit more rationally here.

Also your prediction of them making a JD vance republican pivot is extremely misguided. I would happily bet my life savings against that prediction.
by jpfromlondon | 2025-10-02 13:31:11+00:00
On the contrary, you've fallen for the propaganda:

https://brilliantmaps.com/help-europe-crisis/

Most neighbourly countries: Romania, UK, and Poland (no country in Europe they weren’t willing to help).

For the record I voted remain as a eurosceptic, but I know a lot of people who voted leave and not one is an overweight, red-faced, lager-swilling, hateful person who foams at the mouth at the mere mention of europe and its bureaucracy.
by hnuser123456 | 2025-10-02 13:32:00+00:00
Yes, the issue is forced algorithm-based feeds, where Meta is free to profile as deeply as they want and exploit what should be private knowledge about you. A "most recent" feed (of things you already chose to subscribe to/follow) should be a standard option on any social media app, and the app shouldn't switch back to their toxic algorithm automatically anytime you look away. This behavior itself shows how much Meta wants to control what you see and is extra impetus to require a simple chronological feed option that is selectable as default, and that the user's choice is respected.

IIRC, around 2008-2009, "most recent" was the only kind of feed, and within the span of a couple years, they added their "personalized" feed but would let you switch between the two freely (and the setting would persist), and not much later, the setting would no longer persist.
by everdrive | 2025-10-02 13:32:16+00:00
As will all LLMs eventually if they're not already? One more service online to assiduously avoid. Or maybe just game? Get in an unprotected web browser and complain to the LLM how you just never have any money and can't make ends meet, and get better pricing? Might be too much effort vs. simply not buying stuff in the first place.
by password4321 | 2025-10-02 13:32:17+00:00
My friend recently purchased a new Tesla Model Y; I doubt they have any adapters. I believe they were traveling for about 5 hours in the US without many climbs geography-wise. How helpful are the adapters for long trips?

Personally I look forward to renting an EV to travel about 6 hours each way with one major climb on the way back, and would also appreciate any ideas on making the charging time more enjoyable for younger children along for the ride.

Thanks for taking time to share!
by jklowden | 2025-10-02 13:32:40+00:00
90% of funding for K-12 public schools comes from state and local taxes. That’s hardly a one-size-fits-all national system.

Would you tell me though, please, what language and cultural differences should inflect science or math or literature or history? Are you suggesting evolution not be taught where there are parents who object, or that the civil war be taught differently in the former confederacy, so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings? Those things are happening, of course. I’m just innocent of any defense for them.
by palmotea | 2025-10-02 13:32:52+00:00
> ...and a small book he kept, written primarily in an invented or "asemic" script, meaning it is unreadable or lacking specific semantic content.

Learned something new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asemic_writing:

> ...asemic writing distinguishes itself among traditions of abstract art is in the asemic author's use of gestural constraint, and the retention of physical characteristics of writing such as lines and symbols.

Basically stuff that looks like writing but actually isn't. Another example is Xu Bing's A Book from the Sky, which is composed of things that look just like Chinese characters to someone who can't read them, but aren't.
by iamnothere | 2025-10-02 13:33:39+00:00
It would be foolish to ignore the risk, however, especially if you work on something potentially controversial, such as encryption, privacy tools, or any software that may have uses that the EU frowns upon. I strongly suspect that this will eventually be used as a cudgel against disfavored projects/devs to compel project changes or even kill the project outright (or force it to move overseas).

If you’re a FOSS dev in the EU who works on something controversial, and you accept donations, it would be better to outsource the project “ownership” to someone unnamed or outside of EU jurisdiction.
by Workaccount2 | 2025-10-02 13:34:41+00:00
They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory.

I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs.

You pay for instagram with your personal data, which is used to target you with high value ads. Which covers the cost of your continued usage. If you don't like it, don't use instagram. If you really don't like it, lobby for the law to make it illegal, but get your credit card ready for another monthly subscription.
by em-bee | 2025-10-02 13:34:53+00:00
Requiring companies to make and maintain a separate app entirely if their product has messaging features is an unreasonable requirement

the better alternative is to require interoperability with other messenger apps, so can use the app of my choice. this is a proposal under discussion since years ago.

I seriously doubt that your friends are only able to communicate through exactly one communication channel

some people do exactly that. they refuse to communicate on anything but their messenger of choice. and sometimes keeping in touch with that person is more important than my preferences. oh, and for many people i do not want to share my phone number, which limits the available messaging platforms we can still use. we'll be lucky if there is one.
by mk_stjames | 2025-10-02 13:35:13+00:00
This was essentially my response as well, but the other replies to you also have a point, and I think the key here is the 'Retrieval' in RAG is very vague, and depending on who you were and what you were getting into RAG for, the term means different things.

I am definitely more aligned with needing what I would rather call 'Deep Semantic Search and Generation' - the ability to query text chunk embeddings of... a 100k PDF's, using the semantics to search for the closeness of the 'ideas', those fed into the context of the LLM, and then the LLM generate a response to the prompt citing the source PDF(s) the closest matched vectors came from...

That is the killer app of a 'deep research' assistant IMO and you don't get that via just grepping words and feeding related files into the context window.

The downside is, how to generate embeddings of massive amounts of mixed-media files and store in a database quickly and cheaply compared to just grepping a few terms from said files? A CPU grep of text in files in RAM is like five orders of magnitude faster than an embedding model on the GPU generating semantic embeddings of the chunked file and then storing those for later.
by jlouis | 2025-10-02 13:36:05+00:00
Facebook is one major bait and switch strategy.

In the first step, you get everyone to invest into your platform. You provide some valuable services to people, and they sign an implicit contract as a result.

In the second step, you reap what you sow. You switch the platform entirely and change its core nature and functionality. It's hard to stop using Facebook when everyone else is using Facebook, and this fact means you can do things which would normally have people leave your platform in droves.

This ruling limits the extent to which you can run such a bait and switch campaign. It's somewhat remarkable, because it extends some basic consumer rights to tech companies, even if there's no direct product nor a subscription in place. Personally, I think it's long overdue.
by Hackbraten | 2025-10-02 13:36:14+00:00
I specifically remember writing fontconfig overrides after I felt dissatisfied with some aspect of font rendering in the browser, mostly when it failed to pick up a FOSS drop-in replacement, e.g. Jost* for Futura.

My experience is that Firefox picked up every change to `~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf` so far, immediately after I ran `fc-cache -f` and then restarted the browser.
by stoitsev | 2025-10-02 13:37:24+00:00
StorPool | Senior Software Engineer - Storage Core (C/Linux) | Remote (UTC-1 to UTC+5) | Full-time | Multiple roles

StorPool is building the future of data storage. Our software runs at the heart of modern clouds, delivering <100µs latency, 113M+ IOPS per cluster, and 99.999% availability. We're profitable, self-funded, and our customers love us (NPS off the charts).

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Core Storage team. You'll tackle genuinely hard problems: writing custom Linux drivers, optimizing lock-free data structures at nanosecond scale, building fault-tolerant distributed algorithms, and debugging issues that go all the way down to kernel internals. This isn't CRUD work - it's systems programming at its most challenging.

Competitive salary, meaningful time off, yearly education budget. Our most senior engineers spend their time solving the hardest technical problems hands-on, not in meetings.

If you get excited about shaving microseconds off I/O paths and building infrastructure that simply doesn't break, we should talk. Apply here: https://storpool.com/force/senior-software-engineer-storage-...