MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vladgur | 2025-10-30 19:50:15+00:00
From the article:

"The demand, which would require Google and Amazon to effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around the world"

"Like other big tech companies, Google and Amazon’s cloud businesses routinely comply with requests from police, prosecutors and security services to hand over customer data to assist investigations."

The way I interpret this is Google, Amazon operates in multiple countries under multiple jurisdictions. The security services for any of these countries(including for example Egypt where Google has offices according to....Google), can produce a legal(in Egypt) order requesting Google to produce data of another customer( for example Israeli govt) and Google has to comply or leave Egypt.

It seems to me that being under constant threat of your government sensitive data being exposed at the whims of another, potentially adversarial government is not a sustainable way of operating and Im surprised that Israel havent either found ways of storing its infrastructure locally or encrypting it five way to Sunday.

This is not a comment on the specific accusation of actions by Israel but for strange reality of being a small-country government and a customer of a multi-national cloud vendor.
by sebastiennight | 2025-10-30 19:50:17+00:00
OP: I think introducing volatility (which you can just model with one percentage variable and a sinusoidal multiplier based on this: 100% volatility means if your "real" balance was going to be $100 today, it varies between $0 and $200 ; 10% volatility means you're fluctuating between $90 and $110) is also a good idea in teaching kids to refrain from the impulse of withdrawing the money just because today's daily gain is in the red.

Another add to the feature request list :)
by WalterBright | 2025-10-30 19:50:56+00:00
The D language default initializes floating point values to NaN. AFAIK, D is the only language that does that.

The rationale is that if the programmer forgets to initialize a float, and it defaults to 0.0, he may never realize that the result of his calculation is in error. But with NaN initialization, the result will be NaN and he'll know to look at the inputs to see what was not initialized.

It causes some spirited discussion now and then.
by vlovich123 | 2025-10-30 19:51:25+00:00
> Unfashionable languages like Java and .NET that have quality multithreaded runtimes are the way to go because they provide a single paradigm to manage both concurrency and parallelism.

At the cost of not being able to actually provide the same throughput, latency, or memory usage that lower level languages that don't enforce the same performance pessimizing abstractions on everything can. Engineering is about tradeoffs but pretending like Java or .NET have solved this is naiive.
by dragonwriter | 2025-10-30 19:51:57+00:00
ICE leadership below the top level is currently being purged, and apparently replaced with officials transferred from Border Patrol, because ICE’s approach and culture is more targeted and criminality based, and many of the biggest abuses so far in the immigration crackdown blamed on “ICE” have actually been carried out by Border Patrol (its not a coincidence that much of the current controversy in Chicago centers around thhe regional Border Patrol commander.)

While ICE is being massively scaled up with the intent that you describe, its not unique in kind or even the worst by degree of the agencies involved in terms of either historic or current lawlessness. It's just the one with the public mission most in line with the propaganda cover chosen for Trump's totalitarian efforts.
by YurgenJurgensen | 2025-10-30 19:52:12+00:00
It’s actually even worse than that. Not only am I unconvinced that aphantasia is real or merely a difference in the way people describe the same experience (either because of how they use language, or because of how their mental images are connected to their speech processing), but even if it were an experimentally verified phenomenon, people still talk about it like it’s a /thing you have/ instead of a /skill you failed to develop/.

I lack the ability to produce realistic images using sticks of charcoal, but I don’t consider this to be ‘acarbographism’ or something, I recognise that other people have put more effort into learning that skill than I have.
by jahsome | 2025-10-30 19:52:17+00:00
The addition does indeed provide the clarity I sought. For reasons I won't bore you with, I truly could not discern what the issue was. Every one of my hunches was wong.

Hopefully you can see I was disappointed because it was something I wanted to care about, I just wasn't sure what it actually was I was supposed to care about.

I appreciate your openness to feedback, and I think the article is better for it.
by hansvm | 2025-10-30 19:53:14+00:00
It would look like a Fourier transform ;)

Zooming in to cartoonish levels might drive the point home a bit. Suppose you have sound waves

|---------|---------|---------|

What is the frequency exactly 1/3 the way between the first two wave peaks? It's a nonsensical question. The frequency relates to the time delta between peaks, and looking locally at a sufficiently small region of time gives no information about that phenomenon.

Let's zoom out a bit. What's the frequency over a longer period of time, capturing a few peaks?

Well...if you know there is only one frequency then you can do some math to figure it out, but as soon as you might be describing a mix of frequencies you suddenly, again, potentially don't have enough information.

That lack of information manifests in a few ways. The exact math (Shannon's theorems?) suggests some things, but the language involved mismatches with human perception sufficiently that people get burned trying to apply it too directly. E.g., a bass beat with a bit of clock skew is very different from a bass beat as far as a careless decomposition is concerned, but it's likely not observable by a human listener.

Not being localized in time means* you look at longer horizons, considering more and more of those interactions. Instead of the beat of a 4/4 song meaning that the frequency changes at discrete intervals, it means that there's a larger, over-arching pattern capturing "the frequency distribution" of the entire song.

*Truly time-nonlocalized sound is of course impossible, so I'm giving some reasonable interpretation.
by nearbuy | 2025-10-30 19:53:22+00:00
I haven't lied. You're making accusations in bad faith. This was a faithful representation of your position as best as I can tell from your comment.

If you'd like to explain why "What you've mistaken for a 'logical model' is simply a large amount of repeated information." actually means something else, or why you think I've misinterpreted it, be my guest.
by MerrimanInd | 2025-10-30 19:53:31+00:00
People complain about Adobe's subscription model but it's superior to free-to-play consumer software because it still keeps an alignment between the consumer interest and the company's income. Despite its other faults, you could even argue that a consumer subscription model can be better aligned than single purchase software because the customer needs to continually choose to pay the company for its use and it incentivizes continually improvement and competition.
by diabeetusman | 2025-10-30 19:53:33+00:00
To add on to this, there's no standardized way of indicating what needs to be typed out and what needs to be replaced. `foo --bar <replace me>` might be a good example command in a README, but I had to help someone the other day when they ran `foo --bar <test.txt>`, not realizing they should have replaced the < and > as well as just the text.
by kayodelycaon | 2025-10-30 19:54:07+00:00
I have three different ways that vision seems to work with me.

1. Actually seeing something like in a dream.

2. A mental scratch pad I can draw on and use spatial awareness to navigate. (I see the code of applications as flying over a landscape or walking through a forest.)

3. Imagination, which uses whatever data vision gets turned into.

I'm not sure how common 2 is. A lot of my brain has broken parts and this scratchpad is used in place of logic. This works fine until I need to work on linear list of similar tokens and keep them in order, like math and some functional programming languages.
by godelski | 2025-10-30 19:54:42+00:00
> But I think there has been a real shift in mindset over time.

With this I'm in full agreement. We've moved even further now to where we're selling products that do not yet even exist. It was bad enough we were selling stuff that wasn't fully tested, but worse that we're selling things on a promise.

I'd even go so far as to say that the selling of hype creates an environment where we almost certainly will have worse products. The business people are most interested in the sale, not maintaining the customer. The incentives to fix things or bring them out of alpha or beta release disappears. Even if this is harmful to the longevity of the company. But that doesn't matter either if you're only thinking one quarter at a time...

The point was never that it is easier to patch now and back then it wasn't possible. The point of this conversation was that we can't begin to solve the actual problems if we can't recognize why they happened in the first place. To base our premise on products being finished in the past will only lead to us cycling back to where we are. Someone just has to come up with the /brilliant idea/ of "what if instead of mailing patches, we send them over the internet!" It is good intentioned and will result in more users getting patches. We should not throw out the baby with the bathwater!

But the abuse of the environment is an entirely different problem. You're right that the ease of shipping patches lubricates this abuse of shipping to prod to early. But it isn't a causal variable. The causality here is the business people being uncaring about the quality of the product. The causality here is engineers not taking enough pride in their work to push back against the business people. The causality is that we've structured our work environment to reinforce this behavior and promote those who fall in line instead of those who do quality work. (quantity over quality) The causality here is that customers cannot differentiate a well designed product from a half baked idea and a promise. The causality here is that we call product vision a product demo (demonstrating what we want the product to be, not what the product is).

There's more causal variables, but these are clearly part of the chain of problems. The problem is that the situation is complex! But we can't fix complex problems by oversimplification and denial of their complexity. We have to break them down into simpler parts and address those smaller and more manageable problems. I mean we use this same procedure every day to write code and do numerous complex tasks!

But we can't solve complex problems if we deny the existence of their complexity.
by labcomputer | 2025-10-30 19:55:06+00:00
> Who determines the "service life" of a conductive piece of metal with no moving parts?

Perhaps you might start by explaining how that question is in any way relevant to the current discussion.

The part that was found to have failed was a wire hanger that wore through as it swung in the wind (hint: a moving part) and allowed the power line to fall on the ground.

Somehow (magic or the occult probably) SC Edison and LADWP have not had failures of their physical plant which bankrupted the company. They also had higher maintenance budgets. Hmmm… nope, can’t see how these things are connected.
by cosmic_cheese | 2025-10-30 19:55:09+00:00
Assuming that the point of comparison is Windows (since it’s a rough XP/7 analogue), any difference in behaviors, patterns, or conventions that might differ from what a long time Windows user would expect, including things that some might write off as insignificant. In particular, anything relating to the user’s muscle memory (such as key shortcuts, menu item positions, etc) needs to match.

The DE needs to be as close to a drop-in replacement as possible while remaining legally distinct. The less the user needs to relearn the better.
by devilbunny | 2025-10-30 19:55:13+00:00
I'm not a coder, so I'm not going to pretend that this solution is easy to implement (it might be, but I wouldn't assume so), but how about allowing you to expose the "expert" options just temporarily (to find the tool you need) and then allow adding that to your new "novice plus" custom menus? I.e., if you use a menu option from the expert menu X number of times, it just shows up even though your default is the novice view.
by adt2bt | 2025-10-30 19:55:27+00:00
This has always been interesting for me, as I think I have aphantasia but also can vividly experience taste in the same manner as if I'm eating foods.

In other words, if I think about, say, spaghetti & meatballs, I can feel the exact sensation of the taste of the spaghetti & meatballs. I can even vary aspects of the dish without much effort (e.g. adding dusted parmesan, basil, the pasta is more/less al dente, etc). I use this all the time when cooking, as I 'think with my tongue' and pre-taste what I think a dish will taste like as I'm considering what ingredients to add or different techniques to follow.

I think my experience with visualizing taste is what some people can do in their minds eye with images & sounds, yet I can barely visualize any images in my head when I close my eyes. Frustrating, but gives me a bit of hope. In my younger years I did not have this virtual food tasting ability, but I think I slowly gained it by paying close attention to the experience of eating food I made in order to improve my cooking ability.

I wonder if I can pay similar attention to the world around me and develop image visualization abilities over time.
by pfgallagher | 2025-10-30 19:55:38+00:00
I’ve heard about that! My partner and I have both been learning to draw this year. I’m pretty decent at drawing observationally / from reference, but I haven’t tried much from memory. I imagine she’d be much better at that side of things. I’ve also noticed I’m not great at coming up with initial ideas or visual concepts, but once I have a topic or direction, I can absolutely run with it.

I also think it makes sense why a lot of software engineers (myself included) have aphantasia. Being “rational” is arguably easier when you’re not influenced by the emotional weight of images. Maybe we’re even less predisposed to PTSD, since we can’t visually relive things in the same way. My mind still races at night like anyone else’s, but it’s all non-visual. Just endless inner monologue instead of a reel of images. Couldn't count sheep if I tried!
Can you still bootstrap a unicorn in 2025?
by moneymanskurt | 2025-10-30 19:56:00+00:00
MailChimp famously bootstrapped their way to a $12B acquisition without ever taking VC money, which feels like the ultimate founder dream. But is that path even realistic anymore? Today's unicorns seem to require massive compute infrastructure, Al/ML capabilities, and enormous data science teams just to compete. Even simple products now need sophisticated recommendation engines, LLMs, or complex cloud architectures that burn through cash. Sure, you can still build profitable bootstrapped businesses, but can you realistically get to unicorn status ($1B+ valuation) without institutional funding in 2025? Or has the barrier to entry gotten so high in terms of technical complexity and capital requirements that it's impossible now?
by boxerab | 2025-10-30 19:56:11+00:00
That is an interesting point. The statement "the company that helped save the world" that I was responding to was stated without evidence. So, in the words of Christopher Hitchens, what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

IMHO, if someone disagrees with me, they can ask for evidence, and there is plenty. Downvoting makes my post less and less visible, suppressing my opinion, rather than debating it. That's why I think it is cowardly. Of course there is a place for suppression, for example for abusive posts or inciting violence. But here, I politely state my opinion, let people debate.
by Damogran6 | 2025-10-30 19:56:59+00:00
At the time, formatting a floppy disk was a single task thing.

Downloading a file via Zmodem was mostly a single task thing.

The Windows of the day could to the latter, but not the former.

OS/2 on my 8mb 386sx could do both AND have a clock up, and play solitaire, and have another terminal window open.

It took a bit to get there, and there was swapping while everything loaded, but it was true pre-emptive multitasking, while still maintaining the highly time critical I/O stuff that Windows couldn't touch.
by abetusk | 2025-10-30 19:57:39+00:00
Interesting. So it sounds like you don't even dream visually.

I think for many people, even people with aphantasia, dreaming is akin to watching a movie or actually experiencing the event (myself included). I know the experience is immersive because it's the same feeling as watching a movie, but I can't recall it visually the same way after the fact, while I'm awake.
by crtasm | 2025-10-30 19:57:41+00:00
>When you run npm install, npm doesn't just download packages. It executes code. Specifically, it runs lifecycle scripts defined in package.json - preinstall, install, and postinstall hooks.

What's the legitimate use case for a package install being allowed to run arbitrary commands on your computer?

Quote is from the researchers report https://www.koi.ai/blog/phantomraven-npm-malware-hidden-in-i...

edit: I was thinking of this other case that spawned terminals, but the question stands: https://socket.dev/blog/10-npm-typosquatted-packages-deploy-...
by frmersdog | 2025-10-30 19:57:44+00:00
"Collapse" is maybe hyperbole in this case, if it's building on our own history to extrapolate forward. For us, certain societies have collapsed, and with them have been lost certain practices or technologies, but human civilization as a whole has been largely steady or growing since the agricultural revolution (using population size as a heuristic). There's always the threat of ecological collapse, but that's something that has only happened a few times in the history of life on the planet, and we haven't really faced anything like it before at civilization-wide scale. There's always been another group to move in and take up the abandoned land. Without some major technological breakthroughs, yes, we're likely to face a collapse eventually, but as a biosphere, not merely a civilization. Short of that, people seem to keep on keeping on.

I think the mistake comes from something common to a lot of sci-fi, which is mistaking the scale of a planetary setting. It takes a lot of energy to disrupt life on a global scale (we're managing it, but it's taken hundreds of years). "At some point" is carrying a lot of weight in that observation.
by swores | 2025-10-30 19:57:44+00:00
I obviously wasn't trying to change your mind on the main subject, since I didn't make a single argument about it. I don't have an obligation to try to explain why I think you're wrong, and I don't understand the subject well enough to be the right person to do so.

I was solely addressing your bullshit attempt to dismiss any downvotes as being people defending their own self images, by pointing out that I downvoted you without that being even slightly the reason. I used to think that what you believe was quite likely the case, and that people just have different ways of describing it, and if scientists were to prove that is indeed the case I'd be perfectly happy to change my mind again, I couldn't give a shit other than being curious to know the truth. Whether or not I can visualise things more or less than the next person is no more an important part of my self image than the exact number of hairs on my left leg is - it technically does make up a part of who I am, but not a part I'd ever bother thinking about if thinking about the subject of "me".

> "I'm guessing from the comment that you self-describe in this way?"

Your comment is confusingly worded such that I don't know what "this way" means, but no, unless someone specifically asked me how my mind works with regards to this specific subject, I wouldn't self-describe anything to do with this at all.
by wat10000 | 2025-10-30 19:57:52+00:00
The reason anybody is willing to buy and sell anything is because there's no single "real value" of anything. Value is contextual. When the grocery store gives me a cake in exchange for $20, it's because the value of the cake, to them, is less than $20. Conversely, the value of the cake to me is more than $20, otherwise I wouldn't be buying it.

If you sell your business, it's because the value of the business to you is less than the purchase price. Likewise, the value to the buyer is greater than the purchase price.
by WalterBright | 2025-10-30 19:58:00+00:00
Another use for NaN's is, suppose you have an array of sensors. Given enough sensors, you're pretty much guaranteed that some of the sensors will have failed. So the array needs to continue to work, even if degraded.

A failed sensor can indicate this by submitting a NaN reading. Then, and subsequent operations on the array data will indicate which results depended on the failed sensor, as the result will be NaN. Just defaulting to zero on failure will hide the fact that it failed and the end results will not be obviously wrong.
by fao_ | 2025-10-30 19:58:01+00:00
How often do you open up your device to check for bombs?

I don't think the point is that it's not difficult to screen for, the point is that most people will not think to or do not have the means, the time, the knowledge, or the willpower to take apart all their devices, verify what is and isn't an explosive device, and then reassemble it intact. According to this report, there are a non-zero number of devices around the world, possibly in shipping containers, that contain explosives.

At least one of the suppositions I saw this last year, was that Ukraine was likely to be slapped on the hands for using consumer shipping for their military drone deployments. Because presumably, the majority of countries will not take lightly the fact that any given consumer shipping could now contain military equipment that could potentially be deployed against them, and that it is in the interest of every single country to react with prejudice to the mixing of consumer and military shipments.

An agent of the Israeli state has now admitted that since at least 2006 (so the better part of a quarter of a century), they have been planting bombs in consumer-grade electronics and subsequently using them to selectively blow people up in civilian places. How this is not a) worldwide news, and b) taken as an admission of overt terrorist activity, is utterly baffling. Can you imagine the reaction if an ex-NSA, ex-CIA, ex-MI7, or ex-MSS operative admitted that they had been planting explosives in consumer grade electronics?! There would be an international uproar.
by mindslight | 2025-10-30 19:59:12+00:00
> Why does this have to be a political issue the TP-Links hardware and software can be examined

Because while people are really frustrated with these issues in general, effective reforms require principled regulation (eg anti-trust unbundling of software/hardware, personal data protection) and are directly opposed by the US surveillance industry. So instead people channeled their built-up frustrations into the siren song a fascist demagogue promising to simply make it all better with the snap of his fingers, while he was actually backed by the surveillance industry eager to consolidate its power. So now the battle lines we've gotten are the US surveillance industry pitted against the Chinese surveillance industry, with US citizens losing either way.