MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by jcgl | 2025-10-03 09:24:41+00:00
> Should everyone be required to use private banks to access e.g. foreign exchange?

Maybe so, I don't know. Though it is worth remarking that "private" banks in the US really are only semi-private. The (admittedly imperfect) regulations that banks are subject to starts to blur the lines between public and private. Not to mention that there are far more banks than smartphone handset-and-OS makers.

> No modern society is going to maintain a parallel government economy to serve the vanishingly small minority who live in fear of private companies.

This is not the only option (though it would potentially be an option for some sufficiently-powerful societies). Other options could include:

1. Multilateral coalitions to do some combination of specify/design/build smartphones and/or their OS

2. Specify a set of user rights and regulate smartphone handset and OS manufacturers accordingly

As a sibling commenter said, this isn't about living in fear of private companies as such. It's about not wanting to be coerced into a system of products that don't preserve liberal rights.
by bradrn | 2025-10-03 09:24:50+00:00
> And then there's the clicks in Southern African languages. Which are usually written as a Q not followed by a u. e.g. in the place name Gqeberha or the Mbaqanga music style.

<q> is only one of the clicks in Bantu languages! The letters <c> and <x> are used for other kinds of clicks too (for dental and lateral clicks, respectively).

And then of course there are the Khoisan languages, which use a completely different set of click letters: <ʘ ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ>.
by sfRattan | 2025-10-03 09:24:55+00:00
You're welcome! :)

> It's silly to be angry at a firm for wanting to be closed source, but if they start out pretending to be fully open source and community-motivated, while receiving lots of coding contributions, then suddenly do a rug-pull by removing features from the community edition and paywalling all important features, that is something a lot of us are going to be annoyed by.

Indeed, and that is why assessing the long term viability of an open-source or free software project means looking at multiple variables. This thread has mostly been about licenses, but there's also literal distribution of ownership... Both ownership of copyright and of corporation.

Is the code's copyright owned by the company and does the company only accept contributions with a contributor license agreement that transfers copyright to itself? Potential red flag. They're keeping the door open for an attempt to rug-pull, but they also might just be trying to do business via dual licensing.

Is the code's copyright owned by too many people to ever feasibly relicense? Green flag, as long as a healthy foundation exists to keep things on track (e.g. Blender Foundation or The Document Foundation).

Is the company publicly traded or has it accepted large amounts of investment? Red flag. Those investors will demand a rug-pull the moment the lines on their sacred monthly and quarterly graphs stop going up.

Is the company closely held by a few people? Potential green flag, depending on the people.
by crossroadsguy | 2025-10-03 09:25:18+00:00
Google a/c was the easiest to retire for me. Stopped using Android [0], Gmail - done!

Apple ID, on the other hand - if you use an Apple device then a whole lot of (safety) features are literally tied to an Apple a/c and don't even exist without it. I can't remember I ever had a MSFT ID.

I dream of a day when device makers are forced to expose APIs where one can add a device account provider a/c or device id provider a/c which offers various features like theft protection, remote lock et cetera or a self hosted solution. Yeah, that's just a dream.

[0] I do use one for work/testing and there's a throwaway Google a/c added on that created using a disposable email from SimpleLogin.
by pjc50 | 2025-10-03 09:25:45+00:00
> If you have an address, you have a proof of address

No! This is another one of those things that ends up being a serious problem for a few people, because the current proof of address standard is "utility bill".

> you are changing topic

This seems to be particularly bad in the "digital ID" discussion, almost every speaker including official sources seems to mean something slightly different by this phrase.
by AlecSchueler | 2025-10-03 09:26:04+00:00
I can visualise arbitrary things in my mind, same with sounds, I can build up quite a decent level of polyphonic music and have it play in my head.

Certain things I visualise as a matter of course, I give them colours and shapes etc., and in those things I do well at reasoning. But then I hear other people talk about how they visualise things like arithmetic and I notice they're much faster than me, I think because I'm not just "seeing" it, I have to actively "calculate" it.
by netdevphoenix | 2025-10-03 09:26:10+00:00
What is Google's competitive moat? There's no product stickiness here. What prevents people from just using Altavista/Yahoo/[any other search engine].

You vastly underestimate the power of habit and branding combined together. Just like then, the vast majority of people equate ChatGPT with AI chatbot, there is no concept of alternative AI chatbot. Sure people might have seen some AI looking thing called Copilot and some weird widget in the Google Search results but so far ChatGPT is winning the marketing game even if the offerings from rivals might be the same or even superior sometimes
by piokoch | 2025-10-03 09:26:52+00:00
I keep wondering how all of this ICE stuff will eventually play out. Number of illegal emigrants in the USA is estimated to be between 11-20 millions. How much does it cost to send ICE team after a single emigrant? Then holding this emigrant in custody, then costs of deportation to the country of origin.

This looks like another enterprise like "war on terror" that costed trillions, hasn't given anything USA, but lack of money for infrastructure, healthcare, education and degradation of the middle class, which is in every democracy a stabilizing power - they have a lot of to lose, so they don't vote on extremists.

Current administration is very right about bringing back manufacturing back to USA, but they forget that without roads, railways, electricity lines and, the most important, workforce, they will not be able to do that.
by adastra22 | 2025-10-03 09:27:32+00:00
You could be describing me. Some very ingrained jingles I can (often involuntarily) reproduce in my mind, but that’s it. I suspect that this is the result of some other learned skill that is repurposing other neural wiring to store these audible memories, since I seem utterly incapable of forming or recalling melodies otherwise.
by Xelbair | 2025-10-03 09:27:40+00:00
>(eg can't work based on visa rules, can't access public/health services at all without legal residency)

You aren't a citizen in such case - you aren't legally allowed to do so. This is another issue with law being in power but it's enforcement over the years was spotty - and people just got used to it.

What you are saying is that government blocks you from committing a crime - which it should try to do so as government's responsibility should be first and foremost towards it's citizens.

Whether you agree if such law is moral or not is irrelevant in this case. As an active participant in the system you could vote for parties that want to change it or campaign to have it changed(even by talking to people) if you find it immoral.

Digital ID on the other hand affects citizens, and allows power abuse towards citizens from government, including unelected officials and middle-level clerks.
by brap | 2025-10-03 09:27:56+00:00
I’m seeing this happening in real time in my company. The product keeps getting worse.

It should have been a form and about 3 buttons but instead it’s an increasingly complex UI with incoherent, overlapping, confusing features, many of them are footguns. The things you actually want the product to do are hard to find and are like 10 clicks away.
by ajyotirmay | 2025-10-03 09:28:29+00:00
Not a clue about what you're seeking. I'm using mailbox, and thunderbird as a client for my devices (android, windows, linux and macos).

It works. For E2EE, I have GPG setup on all of my devices. It costs me a little over €1/month for paid account as I use my own domain.

The experience has been good, and something I absolutely advocate for and promote.
by creer | 2025-10-03 09:28:33+00:00
Sure. And in the US there is a noticeable class with little savings but not "poor": Particularly noticeable when they have clearly not low income - but cannot manage to accumulate savings or have no interest in accumulating savings. They like more expensive cars than necessary, and homes, vacations, eating out, whatever. Little savings but can't be described as "poor". And for them also, inflation is not a significant factor. Their savings are low compared to income.

Still: inflation not a tax on the poor but a tax on anyone with savings and investments. Some of which are poor, yes.

One might say "liquidity" savings are particularly difficult to protect - but really, many investments are not a great defense either. Defending any investments against inflation is difficult. Among which, "throwing it in a fund" might keep it a little above official inflation numbers - but also might not provide serious return above that, and exposes emergency funds to volatility. So, to me, that doesn't solve the problem of inflation - poor or not. A tool, not a solution.
by regularfry | 2025-10-03 09:28:39+00:00
Speaking to people in the know a little while ago, the main barrier to scaling up quantum computation by interconnecting separate devices was that you couldn't run a quantum network at a high enough bandwidth to be useful. You just couldn't generate coupled states fast enough.

Assuming I've not entirely butchered the interpretation, does this help with that? It sounds to me like the transmission is at a useful frequency, but that says nothing about the bandwidth you can practically achieve.
by wickedsickeune | 2025-10-03 09:28:57+00:00
In Denmark a similar system (NemID) gave you a piece of paper with long alphanumeric codes to be used instead of the app. Now it's replaced by another system (MitID) which I haven't verified that supports those, but it's highly unlikely that it stopped supporting physical codes.

It's actually quite a good idea to have this, even if you have a smartphone, in case that you lose access to it temporarily.
by jcgl | 2025-10-03 09:29:00+00:00
GGP does express interest in Algorithm-as-a-Service (AaaS), but I don't see why AaaS or server-side anything would be required to have non-chronological feed algorithms. Client-side is perfectly suitable for the near-univeral case where feed servers don't overwhelm the client with spam (in which case you remove the offending server from your feed).

To your points about YouTube-style algorithmic discovery, I do agree that that would require the server to do things like you describe. So I think that there could be both client-side and server-side algorithms. In time, who knows? Maybe even some client-server protocol whereby the two could interact.
by lambdaone | 2025-10-03 09:29:02+00:00
Right now email is true One True SSO. I suspect that the root of trust for the digital identity of most people here is something like a Gmail account, unless you have gone to vast efforts to secure personal digital sovereignty in terms of having entirely self-hosted domain, email, DNS etc. The question is: in the long run, do you trust your government more than Google?
by deep_lol | 2025-10-03 09:29:14+00:00
Don't forget couple of things:

Dutch digid is tightly coupled with your address. All documents only go via regular post to your registered address in the Netherlands. No address? Moved to another one? Didn't register new address? Moved out of country? Good luck getting or updating digid.

Digid verification goes to your phone. Lost phone or get stolen? Changed mobile number? Guess what, no digid for you anymore.
by willvarfar | 2025-10-03 09:30:20+00:00
Can there be 'latent talent' then?

The dictionary def of talent is an innate ability; application and practice are not mentioned.

Lady Catherine hilariously claimed "There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient."
by imiric | 2025-10-03 09:31:13+00:00
I agree with the article's premise, but would add one thing: warts might be a sign that the software is too flexible, and/or is doing too many things. For programming languages and databases this, of course, doesn't apply, since they're designed to be flexible. But simple tools that follow the Unix philosophy rarely have warts. I've never experienced warts with Unix tools such as `cat`, `cut`, `uniq`, etc., which I believe is primarily because they do a single thing, and their interface is naturally limited to that task. Maybe there were some growing pains when these tools were new, but now their interfaces are practically cemented, and they're the most reliable tools in my toolbelt. More advanced tools such as `grep`, `sed`, and particularly `awk`, are a bit different, since their use cases are much broader, they support regex, and `awk` is a programming language.

This is why my first instinct when automating a task is to write a shell script. Yes, shells like Bash are chock-full of warts, but if you familiarize yourself with them and are able to navigate around them, a shell script can be the most reliable long-term solution. Even cross-platform if you stick to POSIX. I wouldn't rely on it for anything sophisticated, of course, but I have shell scripts written years ago that work just as well today, and I reckon will work for many years to come. I can't say that about most programming languages.
by DrScientist | 2025-10-03 09:32:11+00:00
Sadly I think you are mistaken to paint it as an irrational Israel lashing out - that's too generous.

I think it's quite the opposite - there has been a very clear, cold, calculated strategy - which is to use the conflict as an cover for doing what some in the government have always wanted to do ( and been quite open about it ) - which is to create a greater Israel - drive out all Palestinians from the river to the sea ( Gaza and West Bank ), as well as push to the river in the north into Lebanon and take more of Syria.

Those in government understand the potential reputation loss - but see that as temporary and something that can be managed under the protection of the US, while viewing the gain of territory as permanent.
by noelwelsh | 2025-10-03 09:32:15+00:00
Nah, there is definitely a genetic basis that allows you to pick things up faster or slower than average. I have one kid who is very uncoordinated, and one who picks up movement effortlessly. The kid who is good at sport (but doesn't actually play any sports) knocked out 16 pullups a few days ago, with no prior training. My all time PR is 17 pullups, and I had to train for years to get that. Some people just are built different. (I've always found symbolic reasoning very easy, so I have my fair share of gifts.)

In other words, it's not nature vs nurture, it's nature and nurture. If you want to excel at a field you have to start with some genetic advantages but then you need to put in the work. (Yes, there is a undertone of frustrated parent in this post.)
by dspillett | 2025-10-03 09:32:52+00:00
MS are tinkering with things a little in that direction with recent versions of SQL Server (usually in AzureSQL first then pushed to on-prem releases), though this is mostly around avoiding over-caching. A significant problem with query planners is that to make them better you make them slower, so you introduce caching, but that means you might end up using a bad plan when inputs change.
by mytailorisrich | 2025-10-03 09:33:07+00:00
> because the current proof of address standard is "utility bill".

Because utility bills are the simplest. Obviously you can show a tenancy or lodger agreement, or letters from "official sources".

If you have nothing then Digital IDs won't help you anyway because, if they do include address, you will also need to start by providing a proof of address to the Digital ID system!
by 1659447091 | 2025-10-03 09:33:40+00:00
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-citizen-wrongfully-d...

> The new lawsuit describes repeated raids on workplaces despite agents having no warrants nor suspicion that specific workers were in the U.S. illegally, and a string of U.S. citizens — many with Latino-sounding names — who were detained.

Working at a workplace that has a large immigration workforce is also not a crime or a reason to be detained. Yes, these things are working their way through the legal system -- as it should. But US citizen rights are being violated and sticking one's head in the sand or hand waving away these things is crazy to me, a US citizen, it's not how I was raised in the South. I can understand non-citizens/residents thinking that way though. They have their own experience

Having brown pigmented skin, working with brown pigmented skin people or speaking spanish doesn't weaken a citizens rights to make these rights violations "reasonable". If someone is "actively interfering" with ICE that's not immigration enforcers job to deal with, and should be handled/handed over to the local police force and taken to a police center, not immigration detention.
by adastra22 | 2025-10-03 09:34:17+00:00
Dictionary definitions often reflect false folk psychology, but we are still stuck with these words as a common vocabulary.

What I mean is that your talent at Thing was not that you are innately skilled at it, but that you really enjoy doing and getting better at Thing. That is something that it is very hard to cultivate from scratch, and either you have it or you don’t.
by inglor_cz | 2025-10-03 09:34:18+00:00
"This is just a bunch of cold-war style anti-science critique stuff. It's frankly not worth responding to."

This is, ironically, an absurd echo of every autocrat's self-defense. "It is just the commies/right-wingers who hate our Dear Leader and want to undermine his benevolent authority for their own nefarious purposes."

Scientists are humans, prone to every vice that plagues humanity: jealousy, lust for power, greed, willingness to bend data to make their theory work, plagiarism, and, lately, blatant misuse of AI without even acknowledging it aloud.

The scientific community absolutely needs both internal self-policing, external policing, and mechanisms that limit abuse of power by the elders against their subordinates, or it will lose the necessary integrity and thus also any trust of the outsiders.

If you deny this, you basically deny humanity of everyone involved. And I say this as a former young scientist with a PhD from algebra. I have seen enough, with my own eyes.
by yorwba | 2025-10-03 09:35:55+00:00
The other sound ȝ was used for in words now written with 'gh' like 'laugh' and 'night' corresponds to 'ch' in Dutch/German 'lachen' and 'nacht'. If ȝ had corresponded to a single sound in Middle English, it's implausible that it would've split into two different sounds in exactly the same way as in other Germanic languages. So it's more likely that the two sets of words had always been pronounced with different sounds even in Proto-Germanic, and Middle English scribes merely didn't consider it important enough to distinguish them in writing.
by qwopmaster | 2025-10-03 09:36:03+00:00
But this isn't a conversation about people being excluded from the latest JS framework, this is a conversation about people not using a smartphone being increasingly excluded from pretty fundamental things. App only tickets for public transportation? Grandma can't do that. E-voting? Grandma can't do that. Online banking? Grandma can't do that, because grandma struggles to send a text message much less to navigate a modern app with five different dickbars that is outright designed to get people to sign up for marketing trash.

Having an option for digital ID is great, and there are many potential benefits to it. Requiring a modern smartphone for it is wildly out of touch.
by Yizahi | 2025-10-03 09:36:31+00:00
I would also say that for pre-elderly cohort iPhones are also hard to learn. Gestures are completely baffling for unfamiliar people, and Apple generously removed basic on-screen buttons. Dealing with files is nightmare (yes, people still dare to use files in a year of our lord 2025). Back button being inconsistent and badly placed doesn't help. Native mail app works unpredictably (I couldn't be bothered to debug if it was a user error or not), so I've installed them gmail. Other random minor issues often rise up too. For instance I had to teach them icons in a Safari at least three times on separate occasions.
by ViewTrick1002 | 2025-10-03 09:37:26+00:00
The French are wholly unable to build new nuclear power. Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 12 years late on a 5 year construction program.

The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles.

Currently they can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies.

Now targeting investment decision in H2 2026… And the French government just fell because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix.

A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!
by ta20240528 | 2025-10-03 09:37:40+00:00
"people in Africa or Pakistan don’t know what [eco-friendly] means".

My word. I can't speak for Pakistan, but the good folk in Africa know damned well the value of their environment.

For example the objections to Shell's planned seismic oil exploration of the coast of South Africa is vehemently opposed - on largely environmental reasons - by local residents. They have obtained an injunction and are now opposing it in their constitutional court.

No only do they understand ecology, they seem to have a firm grasp of law as well.

Why you would imagine that a billion people don't know that they depend on the environment is something for the mirror.
by Cthulhu_ | 2025-10-03 09:37:41+00:00
This is weirdly common; phone chipset manufacturers did it with phone benchmarks [0], VW with emissions [1], nVidia did it with 3DMark [2], Intel with the SPEC benchmark for its Xeon processors [3], etc.

When it comes to computer graphics, iirc it's pretty normalized now - graphics drivers all seem to have tweaks, settings, optimizations and workarounds for every game.

(As an aside, I hate that I have to link to archive.org, there's a lot of dead links nowadays but these are important things to remember).

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20250306120819/https://www.anand...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20051218120547/http://techreport...

[3] https://www.servethehome.com/impact-of-intel-compiler-optimi...