MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by alberth | 2025-10-11 12:18:46+00:00
Will streaming services ever stop over-compressing their content?

I have a top-of-the-line 4K TV and gigabit internet, yet the compression artifacts make everything look like putty.

Honestly, the best picture quality I’ve ever seen was over 20 years ago using simple digital rabbit ears.

You especially notice the compression on gradients and in dark movie scenes.

And yes — my TV is fully calibrated, and I’m paying for the highest-bandwidth streaming tier.

Not my tv, but a visual example: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
by wartywhoa23 | 2025-10-11 12:18:53+00:00
The future of gaming is the Grid-Independent Post-Silicon Chemo-Neural Convergence, the user will be injected with drugs designed by AI based on a loose prompt (AI generated as well, because humans have long lost the ability to formulate their intent) of the gameplay trip they must induce.

Now that will be peak power efficiency and a real solution for the world where all electricity and silicon are hogged by AI farms.

/s or not, you decide.
by michaelt | 2025-10-11 12:18:53+00:00
Many western countries make dying slowly with Alzheimer’s very expensive, by the standards of normal families.

Between doctors, nurses and lawyers you can burn through a million bucks in five years easily. And most families don’t have a million bucks cash to spare.

On the other hand, if they die after six months, instead of after 5 years? The family doesn’t lose the farm.
by heisenbit | 2025-10-11 12:19:01+00:00
I remember jumping out of gosub on the Apple ][ and eventually running into an out of memory error as the stack on the 255 byte page $01 overflowed. As math was also done on the stack math functions broke. Simplifying expressions only delayed the inevitable doom. I had to abandon the project and only later understood my first encounter with a memory leak.
by AQuantized | 2025-10-11 12:21:03+00:00
> You really don't want to end up with dementia and related illnesses, it totally sours everyone's view of you.

This seems like such an absurd conclusion to this, as though the opinions of other people of you are what matter when you functionally lose your personhood and then die.

Maybe a better focus would be that there often isn't a good way for a community to manage a person who suddenly becomes irrational because of an illness.
by ants_everywhere | 2025-10-11 12:22:14+00:00
We don't talk about it a lot as a society, but some people just like killing people.

The ordinary outlet for them is the military. Sometimes they become serial killers.

A euthanasia industry would attract these people similarly to how police and security work attracts authoritarians and how clergy jobs attract pedophiles.

That's not to say that most people in the industry would enjoy killing people, but it would be a problem. And death is final; it's impossible to fix mistakes. This is the same reason many people are opposed to the death penalty.
by elvennn | 2025-10-11 12:23:14+00:00
I agree.

If I understand correctly the hard parts are the limited resources of the controllers and a need for high versatility for the rooms. Actually needing to update the controllers to update CSS for the main app is kind of crazy.

With my limited understanding of the system it feels like my go to solution would be: - A thin generic program on the controller that run a arbitrary configuration of room logic. - A main client program that can: 1. manage the state of the current configuration. 2. push / switch configurations on the controllers.
by JKCalhoun | 2025-10-11 12:23:16+00:00
"HyperNormalisation" was interesting but gave me tinfoil hat vibes such that I kept everything they claimed at arms length. But there we are, in a "post truth" world you have to be skeptical of everything. (At the same time, I am conflicted because I tend also to be skeptical of skepticism itself and try to maintain a dogged optimism.)
by flohofwoe | 2025-10-11 12:23:33+00:00
Just look at the Intel iAPX 432 [1] as example for such an alternative CPU design, this was supposed to be the actual 8080 successor and 8086 was just supposed to be a temporary throwaway solution until the 432 was ready. The rest is history as they say ;)

Meanwhile, the C programming model turned out a pretty good fit for very different hardware architectures. All 3D API shader languages have a C heritage for instance, despite GPUs being radically different than traditional CPUs. In the end only three things matter in hardware design: throughput, throughput and throughput ;)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432
by sarchertech | 2025-10-11 12:23:45+00:00
>I feel the desire to stay alive long enough to be a liability for yourself and those around you is a decision motivated by ego and fear, rather than compassion or logic.

Everyone becomes a liability at some point. By that logic we should just go full Logan’s run and kill people as soon as they stop being productive.

There nothing wrong with saying that you aren’t going to take extreme measures to preserve your life past a certain age.

But I don’t want this attitude of “you should kill yourself so you don’t burden your family” to become the norm either.

What if your partner’s grandad heard you calling him a rude obnoxious liability and felt pressured into killing himself?

>I've never known anyone naturally age and die without losing their ability to be civil in some way towards the end.

But many people die suddenly with no serious mental decline at all. That can happen at 95 or 100 the same as it happens earlier.

If you rule out everyone who didn’t die of some nebulous cause as the result of a slow decline you are selecting for people who mentally decline.
by KronisLV | 2025-10-11 12:24:00+00:00
These are otherwise smart people who also make more money than I ever will, shipping stuff that is bad even when it comes to basic usability, like the transparency in particular. I don't get it, why did something like that pass through whatever approval processes are in place? If nothing else, they should have at least ensured that there is enough opacity and contrast with whatever's the background at any given time, otherwise it's just... way, way worse than the previous design?

I am one of the people who didn't mind the Windows Vista/8.1/10/11 redesigns and to me most versions of macOS and also various Linux DEs all typically look more or less fine (maybe tiny window controls in some versions of Linux Mint are a pet peeve of mine). But this is just so much worse. That's like a Windows 8 release level fuckup.
by joshstrange | 2025-10-11 12:24:06+00:00
They are shifting these people to their Smart Glasses (rumors say it’s in response to Meta’s new Ray-Ban Display glasses). The problem is Apple doesn’t have enough people skilled in this area to pursue both the headset and the glasses at the same time with reasonable timelines to release. So they’ve decided to focus on the glasses to move up their (previously) expected 2028 timeline (I think I’m remembering these dates correctly from previous leaks).

While I agree that Apple is floundering on the AI/LLM front, it’s not like the people working on the headset would be able to jump over to the Siri/LLM team and speed up that process. Sure, some could help, but probably not enough to be materially useful, especially when the glasses are Tim Cook’s stated end-goal. On that note, I’m worried he won’t leave/step-down before they finally ship those and that sucks because Apple needs someone else at the helm.
by cogman10 | 2025-10-11 12:24:39+00:00
Same with my grandmother that had dementia.

You can get into a state of living death where the brain is mush and who you were is completely destroyed. That's hell for the family.

I saw my grandmother forget her daughter (my mother) it was heartbreaking. Seeing my mom realize her mom forgot everything about their life together was just painful.

It was just a sad existence to observe as well. Grandma lived for quiet a while with dementia and spent years trying to return to her childhood home. We'd constantly have to trick her into accepting help from us "strangers". Re-convincing her to come inside that these "strangers" wouldn't mind having her for a bit. Watching her read over the same page of a book for hours on end.

That's not an existence I want for myself or my family.
by grafmax | 2025-10-11 12:25:51+00:00
Both the Pax Romana and Pax Mongolica saw their share of violence - plausibly comparable to 19th century Europe, or the Han and Tang dynasties, which which were not unipolar. We just don’t have good numbers for any of these cases. The long-history basis of your argument is flimsy at best.

The US itself only began resuming mass offensives with the decline of the USSR. But a world collapsing into unipolarity should lead to less conflict according to your view, as there would be less incentive for inter-state violence. The other pole was undergoing collapse, and the US sent soldiers, and continued to do so for decades.

But strictly speaking 2019 is part of a longer term downtrend in violence between nations after World War 2. That’s a trend that preceded American hegemony - a hegemony which is frankly a shadow of its former self. The real risk today isn’t multipolarity, it’s that the US is denial of multipolarity. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel. The US just doesn’t have the money to hemorrhage out to military disasters any more. It’s a house of cards growing taller and taller. What has no limit is the foolish arrogance of our leaders. The way to stop war is rarely escalation (anathema to the defense lobby).

And we are all human beings, US and non-US alike, not animals. It’s the capacity for compassion that makes us human, not the ability to kill.
by paulcole | 2025-10-11 12:26:34+00:00
> Family, friends, support networks, availability of employment, and a million other factors apply.

You’re just adding excuse on excuse here which is totally fine. People love thinking that a million factors are holding them back when the only thing actually holding them back is themselves.

You made an impressive list of 2 people who simply couldn’t move!

Fine, whatever those people absolutely couldn’t move or do anything to drive less or not drive at all. You really think this applies to all the people who claim to wish they could drive less or not at all? And you really think moving is the only way to drive less? And that the decision to move is one that can’t be made throughout one’s lifetime?

Grad school ends. Kids grow up.

But I’m sure there’ll just be another excuse at that time.

And again, there is nothing wrong with that. It just shows that if a person continues to claim to value something and does nothing to live that value (besides make excuses and blame others), I do not believe that person actually values that thing.

> but if it means I'm spending 1 hour on daily commute instead of 4 in the metro area where I ended up living, you bet I'll do the stupid thing, as will everyone else

I did not!

Additionally you did not end up living anywhere. You chose to live there.

> people who are the victims of the decisions made by governments

If you see people as victims that’s how you perpetuate the problem. If a person says that they wish they could drive less or not at all tell them, “Change your life! Or admit that you don’t value that as much as you think!”

> Put simply, your solution doesn't scale

It obviously doesn’t have to scale. Anyone can make choices that they think will allow them to lead the life they value. If someone believes they value driving less or not at all, those choices are available to them!

They shouldn’t say, “Boy I’ll continue to dislike my life because the solution I see doesn’t scale.”

Additionally it obviously does scale because most people will do anything to avoid changing their life. The solution is right there for the people who actually want it.
by sillyfluke | 2025-10-11 12:27:03+00:00
The parent described someone who went above and beyond the norm of other members in his community in his constant positive interaction with his neighbors, collegues, and former students. It is highly likely this kind of person would give a considerable shit if he knew he would become a nightmare for the same community.

There may be others reading in the thread who also can relate to the personality of the teacher and may care about their affect on others when they are "not themselves".
by masklinn | 2025-10-11 12:27:30+00:00
Hard fast (e.g. hunger strikes) usually take about 2 months to kill a healthy adult.

On the one hand according to the wiki this is more progressive removing food by degrees which would make the process a lot longer.

On the other hand being a mostly ascetic practice I'd assume it's done by people who have a lot less reserves (body fat and muscle) which would shorten the process significantly (the 207kg Angus Barbieri famously fasted continuously for 382 days[0] breaking his fast at 82kg, although he supplemented his liquids — water, tea, and coffee — with vitamins, electrolytes, and yeast extract, the latter for essential amino acids).

[0]: technically he was put on a recovery diet of salting then sugaring his water for 10 days, so ate no solid food for 392 days, breaking his fast with a boiled egg and a slice of buttered bread
by spiffytech | 2025-10-11 12:27:33+00:00
My Garmin (Forerunner 255 Music) feels like it's designed by a committee that uses their own product only while working jira tickets, and has never used it in anger.

On paper, it should feel like my old Pebble did. In reality it's clumsy and poorly thought-out. I look for ways to use it less, not more. I can't wait to replace it when the Pebble ships.
by gjm11 | 2025-10-11 12:27:41+00:00
Has anyone ever seen an instance in which the automated "How" removal actually improves an article title on HN rather than just making them wrong?

(There probably are some. Most likely I notice the bad ones more than the good ones. But it does seem like I notice a lot of bad ones, and never any good ones.)

[EDITED to add:] For context, the actual article title begins "Superpowers: How I'm using ..." and it has been auto-rewritten to "Superpowers: I'm using ...", which completely changes what "Superpowers" is understood as applying to. (The actual intention: superpowers for LLM coding agents. The meaning after the change: LLM coding agents as superpowers for humans.)
by basisword | 2025-10-11 12:27:56+00:00
I think it would be valuable to get your parents opinion on whether the burden was worth it or not. Or, unfortunately, to see if your opinion changes if you have to bear the burden of your parents in the future. It's easy to assume the burden isn't worth it when we have a bit more distance (e.g. grandparents) but I think people are more open to it than we realise - even if it comes with immense amounts of stress. Saying that I think it varies person to person. Often in families you have people who are willing to carry the burden and others who aren't and that brings even more stress and disagreement to the situation.
by jsheard | 2025-10-11 12:28:38+00:00
> Already in 2025, Google Veo 3 is generating pixels far more realistic than AAA games.

Traditional rendering techniques can also easily exceed the quality of AAA games if you don't impose strict time or latency constraints on them. Wake me up when a version of Veo is generating HD frames in less than 16 milliseconds, on consumer hardware, without batching, and then we can talk about whether that inevitably much smaller model is good enough to be a competitive game renderer.
by manuelabeledo | 2025-10-11 12:29:01+00:00
The examples you mentioned would not fall into ICE scope of action, but CBP.

> Yet we are supposed to let people in without documentation? Without background checks? What kind of insanity is that.

Let me tell you that, in my experience, the US very much enforces all these requirements, to the point where foreigners have to pay the US government hundreds of dollars for the _chance_ of getting a temporary visa. And again, ICE has nothing to do with the process.
by card_zero | 2025-10-11 12:31:58+00:00
What sort of a link would you like, perhaps this?

https://archive.org/details/Vertebrate.Paleontology.Evolutio...

That's on chapter 9, "The Conquest of Land and the Radiation of Amphibians". Caution, this is a book from 1988, the Carboniferous era may have changed a lot since then.

(Carboniferous = Mississippian + Pennsylvanian.)

An image search for "Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians and reptiles" may also be gratifying. I'm fond of Moschops ("calf face"), though that's after the Carboniferous rainforest collapse.
by xtracto | 2025-10-11 12:32:23+00:00
I had read so many raves about that book, and heard the author got a Nobel prize for his ideas, so I started reading it.

I just could not digest it. I understood the words but I couldn't make whatever message he was trying to convey... it felt too "dense" for me. Maybe im just stupid, but I could not get past I think the first two chapters.
by codingdave | 2025-10-11 12:33:01+00:00
It is a real pain, but you are approaching it with the same attitude that is causing it. Don't email gently to "check in". Don't beg. Don't start soft and build up over weeks.

If a payment is late, call them directly that day and be firm. Not mean or harsh, just firm. "Hi, your payment did not come through, please take care of it so I can start working for you again." And then stop working with them until it does.

To answer your question, no. I would never pay for an automated service to email payment reminders. Because emails are ignorable.
by ndsipa_pomu | 2025-10-11 12:33:03+00:00
Depends on how you classify the collapse of civilisation.

It seems highly plausible that there will be a large exodus of humans from previously habitable zones as the temperatures increase and access to food and water become highly variable. Some areas will likely still have access to decent agricultural conditions (e.g. greenhouses can help to control the local climate in order to grow food), but there will undoubtedly be increased conflict over dwindling resources.
by sph | 2025-10-11 12:35:50+00:00
I'm a full-stack consultant (the actual full stack, not whatever kids mean these days) and deliver "solutions" to clients. I've got my fair share of legacy code to maintain, don't worry. (I have this Django app I wrote 15 years ago that I should really port to Elixir which is my main thing these days - but there's no money in rewriting an entire application that's in production for that long)

Here's my 2 cents: take any advice on professional matters from someone that has never left academia with a heaping dose of salt.
by mkw5053 | 2025-10-11 12:36:20+00:00
My arc of using AI code generation tools started by steadily adding more and more guardrails. I realized the returns were diminishing while cost, complexity, and latency climbed. Mutation testing made it obvious I had gone too far. While there is a time and place for it, I completely lost the flow and was fighting against my dev setup. I’ve since found a better balance: the most strict, opinionated dev environment, especially on types and linting, with the least code and configuration.
by zyxzevn | 2025-10-11 12:36:25+00:00
Check out Transputers, that were programmed via Occam. They do most of the stuff that the article desires. Though its hardware is restricted to a matrix orientation.

Another option is Erlang. On the top level it is organized with micro-services instead of functions.

None of them are system languages. The old hardware had weird data and memory formats. With C a lot of assembler could be avoided to program this hardware. It came as a default with Unix and some other operating systems. Fortran and Pascal were kind of similar.

The most used default languages on most systems were for interpreters. So you got LISP and BASIC. There is no fast hardware for that. To get stuff fast, one needed to program assembler, unless there was a C-compiler available.
by lotsofpulp | 2025-10-11 12:37:09+00:00
I am referring to being so old that you are dependent on others everyday such that the caregivers cannot go on vacation. One set of my grandparents both lived to 100, and they had a 15 year age gap, so that was the first 30 years of my life that my parents sacrificed time with their kids, professional life, and personal life.

Very few people are independent after age 80, and a miniscule amount after 90.
by EvanYou | 2025-10-11 12:37:31+00:00
Wrong - Vite is not open core, Vite+ is. This differentiation is important because even if a feature benefits Vite+, if it needs to be shipped via Vite then it has to be open source.

Companies willing to pay for Vite+ help sustain and improve the open source parts powering it, including Vite. Even if you only use Vite and not Vite+, you’d benefit from the success of Vite+, not the other way around.

I don’t really find anything inherently wrong with your definition of “rugpull”. If some people in the community are happy to pay for it and the rest also benefit because of it, that’s a win-win in my book.
by charlescearl | 2025-10-11 12:37:35+00:00
The uncritical, unfounded, white supremacist equivalence of the names of Global South heads of state that share nothing other than their inclusion in the never-ending spectacle of a collapsing and always fascist empire’s hitlist. I’m reminded of how this abomination of a country relentlessly linked Marcus Garvey (Black nationalist and Capitalist) and W.E.B. DuBois (Black pan-Africanist and eventually communist) both with the label “Bolshevik” and “Communist threat” as justification for surveillance, incarceration.

This “dictator” meme, played out for the last 100 plus years is tired and tiring especially in a place that has a higher incarceration rate than USSR in the 1930s ( or Cuba ) and is currently snatching up folk for the crime of speaking Spanish, while US Southern Command blows up Venezuelan fisherman for the crime of feeding their families.
by Certhas | 2025-10-11 12:37:58+00:00
Well you missed the point. You could call it prompt adherence. I need veo to generate the next frame in a few milliseconds, and correctly represent the position of all the cars in the scene (reacting to player input) reliably to very high accuracy.

You conflate the challenge of generating realistic pixels with the challenge of generating realistic pixels that represent a highly detailed world state.

So I don't think your argument is convincing or complete.
by honkostani | 2025-10-11 12:38:27+00:00
Its fall showed, that cultural relativism and universal liberalism, where just western delusions. Socialism was a dead ideology by then, but this really attacked western values, insofar, that a dried husk of a imperialist religious ideology, revived with western demand for natural resources (oil) would rather engage in cultural warfare upon western values and society then trying to fix itself.

It was a ringing bell, bringing the attention back to the old ugly worldorder of great games, land-empires and bloody conquest and the inability to isolate from hostile ideologies, even if you are the usa and living on a giant island. Bush went to iraq and the failure to build any working state there- showed not only the failure of neoncons, but also of the whole "all cultures are equal" and academic impotence. There explanation models had nothing for this but tired rehashes of colonial/anti-colonial ideology, no predictions, no real help, just "belief in universal values and western culture, and righton" - and that was it. No help for the 2 billion stuck in religious ember, not real analysis to free the wasted geniuses trapped under burkas. Silence, ideology and absence, thats whats left.