MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by CompoundEyes | 2025-10-26 23:21:31+00:00
One thing I can’t find anyone mention in reviews - does inference screech to a halt when using large context windows on models? Say if you’re in the 100k range on gpt-oss. I’m not concerned about lightning inference speed overall as I understand the purpose of the spark is to be well rounded / trainer tuner. I just want to know if it becomes unusable vs reasonable slowdown at larger contexts. That’s the thing people are unpleasantly surprised to find about a Mac Studio which has prevented me from going that route.
by debtta | 2025-10-26 23:23:19+00:00
Australians, Jamaicans, African Americans and English-speaking South Africans do not have their own Wikipedia, despite all these dialects having more legitimate demographic and linguistic claims to being languages than 'Scots'.

James Joyce wrote in English, no Irish person pretends that he wrote in a third language distinct from English and Irish. The fact that they do not do so does not compromise the political basis for independence, republicanism or reunification.

If a Cork taxi driver, addressed you in Irish (very unlikely), and you asked him to speak English, the request would be both coherent and reasonable. The point you missed is that the Glasgow taxi driver would look at you with consternation and say "But, I am speaking English! What's wrong with my English?' (insert dialect spelling if you like)

Rabbie Burns wrote in the same language as his compatriots Louis Stevenson and Scott.

It would be ignorant if I did not know about the meretricious claim of a minority of Scottish people to have their own language, but it is not ignorant to reject that claim. I am Scottish fwiw.
by travelalberta | 2025-10-26 23:24:47+00:00
“Sports are the opiate of the middle class” as a reframe sucked all the fun out of sports for me. Overvalued to watch in person, too many ads to watch digitally. Not to mention having sports betting rammed down my throat. Professional sports is like any other medium from my childhood, monetized into the abyss and not as fun to interact with.
by ricardobeat | 2025-10-26 23:26:16+00:00
In the earlier years, maybe. Last year you’d immediately see a 3m47s time for a puzzle that for most people would take at least an hour. Unless you were actively watching the clock for a new puzzle daily, odds are it would have already been solved a thousand times over by the time you started.

It’s like excitedly arriving to a potluck with your beef bourguignon, only to find twenty michelin-starred chefs competing against each other.

Not exactly my idea of “fun” :) to me AoC was much more of a neighborhood party than an olympic event.
by Forgeties79 | 2025-10-26 23:26:42+00:00
> EVEN though the accomplishment is through the fucking roof.

I agree with this but also, the output is almost entirely worthless if you can’t vet it with your own knowledge and experience because it routinely gives you large swaths of incorrect info. Enough that you can’t really use the output unless you can find the inevitable issues. If I had to put a number to it, I would say 30% of what an LLM spits out at any given time to me is completely bullshit or at best irrelevant. 70% is very impressive, but still, it presents major issues. That’s not boredom, that’s just acknowledging the limitations.

It’s like designing an engine or power source that has incredible efficiency but doesn’t actually move or affect anything (not saying LLM’s are worthless but bear with me). It just outputs with no productive result. I can be impressed with the achievement while also acknowledging it has severe limitations
by ethbr1 | 2025-10-26 23:27:49+00:00
> While not knowing how to cook might be cute or excusable by a potential partner in your 20s, by your 30s or 40s it is no longer funny and definitely a liability.

And the generalization of this -- work 'a bit, regularly' towards the big things you want in your 30s during your 20s.

There isn't enough time in the day (or willpower) to overcome 10 years of missed regular practice.

In your 20s, because everyone is somewhat similar, people focus on current state (in a skill, socioeconomically, etc) rather than growth rate.

In your 30s+, you will start to see serious differences in your peers' outcomes as a consequence of that growth rate (and luck / clever risk mitigation). By then it will be too late to start growing.

So identify your goals and start making small amounts of progress towards them daily.

Think of it as the life version of compounding interest. ;)
by xp84 | 2025-10-26 23:29:20+00:00
In the related world of task management at work, this reminds me of Walt Disney World’s “Cast Deployment System.” 20 years ago, it worked entirely on desktop PCs connected to standard thermal receipt printers. It would print and cut a little slip when you clocked in, showing you who to bump and where, and you’d hand the slip to them, because it also had printed where that person should go (their break timing, or to return to PC themselves). If they didn’t need you to assume a position just yet, it would give you a task to perform - e.g. “straighten plush in Store X until 9:08” or “sweep floor in Store Y until 9:10” - thus ensuring certain tasks got done on a regular basis without it being something a manager would have to constantly monitor. All of this was like science fiction to me in those days compared to anything else I’d witnessed in the entry-level service sector.

Note: no idea how it has evolved over the years but I’m sure “something something app” sums it up
by klevertree1 | 2025-10-26 23:29:47+00:00
I'm tackling part of the issue of food toxin remediation with my new venture, NeutraOat (neutraoat.com). It's a modified oat fiber supplement that selectively traps BPA, PFAS, and plasticizers in the gut and reduces levels in the blood serum.

The funding for this is tough, though. Everyone loves the idea, but it's difficult to find people to fund R&D to make sure the product actually works over brand building and marketing. I've had to be very scrappy. Hopefully this will change in the future as we build momentum and awareness, but for right now it's tooth and nail.
by aDyslecticCrow | 2025-10-26 23:29:48+00:00
It's a range, but rust is closer to Node than it is to c and c++ in this culture.

I would probably place rust in-between python and node. It is made worse by the relative in-maturity of the ecosystem which contributes to the fragmentation. Rust will likley improve, but I have little faith for Node, as it's cultural as you mention.

Case in point; here is a list of most used crates. Some of these contain a single macro or wrapper. https://lib.rs/std
by astrange | 2025-10-26 23:30:31+00:00
I think that definition is missing something, yes. Modern(?) British twee is less "dainty" and more "manic and campy". Which is not to disparage Monty Python, who were good at it, but everyone descended from them can't really pull it off.

https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/the-unstoppable-rise-of-british-t...

(nb I'm not sure about the political analysis here but the citations are good.)
by kragen | 2025-10-26 23:31:49+00:00
The reason Linus wrote Git was specifically because he was unwilling to accept the centralization of the existing popular source-control systems like CVS and SVN, and Linux's license to the unpopular proprietary decentralized source control system it was using got revoked because Larry McVoy threw a tantrum. Linus needed an open-source alternative, so he tried the unpopular open-source source-control systems like Monotone, but he felt they suffered from both featuritis and inadequate performance, so he wrote a "stupid content tracker" called Git.
by pfdietz | 2025-10-26 23:32:14+00:00
You ignore the counterargument I already gave you to what you're saying there.

Nuclear can be made technically flexible. It can't be made economically flexible. The large fixed costs prevent the technical ability you are describing there from being useful. It's pyrrhic engineering, straining to achieve an outcome that's useless. Even France depends largely on the rest of Europe to deal with variations in demand rather than spooling their power plants up and down.
Show HN: Learn Basic Chess Movements
by patrickdavey | 2025-10-26 23:32:25+00:00
I made this basic website for my daughter (6) to learn how to move chess pieces. I wanted a simple game which didn't have all the rules, just how to get from A to B with a piece. Admittedly, as soon as I made this a friend pointed out https://lichess.org/learn which is really nice!

There are a bunch of settings you can tweak to set the difficulty etc. Anyway, maybe will be a fun (short) diversion.
by garciansmith | 2025-10-26 23:32:32+00:00
I definitely complain about advertising in Google Maps all the time. The only time I swear out loud while using my phone is when I use maps, like each time an ad for a business blocks the area I'm actually trying to see to navigate, or each time it shows me where Taco Bell and Arby's is when I'm searching for something like "Indian Restaurant". You can argue that they need to do this to make money or whatever, fine, but don't argue that the user experience isn't shitty.
by ethbr1 | 2025-10-26 23:32:54+00:00
To this, consider the services of a skilled relationship therapist before a serious relationship goes bad.

Candidly, they can only do so much to save a relationship, if both people aren't invested in that.

What it will do, if you lean into it, is ensure you introspect and realize mistakes, so you don't make them in your next relationship.

The only thing worse than making mistakes is ignorantly making the same ones over and over again. And in the heat of a troubled relationship, it's far too easy to assign blame to your partner rather than yourself.
by flkiwi | 2025-10-26 23:33:06+00:00
(1) AI isn't educated. It has access to a lot of information. That's two different things.

(2) I was rebutting the paper's standard that AGI should be achieving the status of a well-educated adult, which is probably far, far too high a standard. Even something measured to a much lower standard--which we aren't at yet--would change the world. Or, going back to my example, an AI that was as intelligent as a labrador in terms of its ability to synthesize and act on information would be truly extraordinary.
by xp84 | 2025-10-26 23:33:57+00:00
When California mandated prop 65 warnings to be posted in every single parking garage in the state, that’s when I decided we’ve truly jumped the shark. These giant signs on every garage are now admonishing us to be careful not to spend any time in these garages because of the so dangerous fumes. I want to add on to it in sharpie: “Also, stay at least 200 feet away from any road, street or highway, so just basically go camp in the fucking woods for the rest of your life!”
by xp84 | 2025-10-26 23:36:26+00:00
What country is this? I haven’t seen a dot matrix printer at a store in a decade.

Fun fact: when Apple first opened retail stores, they printed receipts on big Lexmark laser printers, 8.5x11, on VERY nice paper, like resume paper, it was absurd how nice and thick the paper was. It was preprinted with return policies etc on the back (and maybe a color Apple on the front?) It only lasted a few years like that and they eventually got cheap thermal printers installed.
by rpdillon | 2025-10-26 23:36:57+00:00
I have a hard time getting on board with that paper.

> The paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. An idea of woman stands as lynch pin to the system: it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire too make good the lack that the phallus signifies.
by andy99 | 2025-10-26 23:38:02+00:00
This reminds me a bit of a private group that did a big study (I thought in SFBA) looking at the amount of microplastics in different stuff, for example delivered food. Just thinking about it because of the startup he mentioned and I was wondering if it was them, but can’t find the article now. I know it was discussed at length here.

Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42525633
by pedalpete | 2025-10-26 23:38:20+00:00
Tau and it's relationship to Amyloid, are the current top hypothesis.

Another way to look at why the removal of amyloid may not be effective in repairing damage is to think of it like a blocked pipe.

A pipe gets blocked, and the pipe itself gets damaged, causing a leak. The block can be removed, but that doesn't repair the pipe.

In my example, the pharmaceuticals are removing the blockage, but the damage is still done.

Having said that, I believe that as we learn more about what we currently call Alzheimer's, we'll discover that we've been lumping multiple diseases under a single label. I believe the amyloid hypothesis, and Type 3 diabetes hypothesis, both have merit. There may well be others.
by dylan604 | 2025-10-26 23:40:50+00:00
Of all of the Clancy-esque fictional warfare I've consumed, I've never read anything about what these scenarios would be like. I'd imagine an armada of planes (or whatever you call the equivalent for planes) would be available as support to NEACP. Not just fighters for defense but fuel tanker support, possibly AWACs in case ground stations are taken out as well. But where they'd actually fly is an interesting question. They could go out over the Atlantic and turn south and be away from targets faster than flying over land. Of course, that's assuming they know where any hostile fleets would be to avoid. Lot's of options though, which is the point of being airborne instead of stuck in a bunker
by amenhotep | 2025-10-26 23:41:22+00:00
Your general point about how complicated it is is well taken, but a theoretical pill that stages off Alzheimer's at the expense of immunocompromise and means you die of pneumonia with your faculties mostly intact seems like a huge win. I don't think we're bothered about Alzheimer's as a proxy for old age, I think it's because dementia is a uniquely horrible disease.
by halostatue | 2025-10-26 23:41:35+00:00
MacPorts separates `node` and `npm` packages like many package managers do:

npm10 @10.9.3 (devel) Description: npm is a package manager for node. You can use it to install and publish your node programs. It manages dependencies and does other cool stuff. Homepage: https://www.npmjs.com/ Library Dependencies: nodejs22 Conflicts with: npm3, npm4, npm5, npm6, npm7, npm8, npm9, npm11 Platforms: any License: MIT Policy: openmaintainer

The Portfile that I created specifies that if `npm` is present in $PATH (which isn't the user's $PATH because MacPorts uses `sudo`) then it should be used and assumed correct; otherwise, it says that the `npm10` port must be installed (because the instructions for oxdraw indicate that one must run `npm install && npm build`).
by Fnoord | 2025-10-26 23:41:36+00:00
100k USD per year for a family is poverty in the USA? I had to look that up [1].

> Real wages averaged $67,521 in 2022, and average household incomes averaged to $87,864.

Further down it says:

> In every country, there are levels of the middle class, with low middle-class earners and high middle-class earners. In America, the states all have their own middle-class medians as well. For example, in Alabama, low-middle-class families start at $38,582 while higher middle-class ranges can end at $161,524.

So without knowing where you're from, we don't know.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-fam...
by weavejester | 2025-10-26 23:42:14+00:00
Stack Overflow is one of those sites that benefit from a network effect. If there are few users of a particular technology on it, people are less likely to get questions answered and therefore less likely to interact with it again.

That said, it's always worth checking the numbers, so I took a look at the 2024 State of Clojure Survey. Around 18% of those surveyed used Stack Overflow, while the 2024 Python Developers Survey had at least 43% of respondents using Stack Overflow.

Now, you might well say that even so Clojure is still a niche language - and I agree. But it may be the case that instead of a 1.3% share, Clojure has a 3% share - if we assume that the Python community's usage numbers are more typical.
by masfuerte | 2025-10-26 23:43:24+00:00
The .Net runtime generates code that relies on bools being either 0 or 1. It's quite easy using interop to inadvertently set a bool to something else and this leads to very odd bugs where simple boolean expressions appear to be giving the wrong result.

(Tangentially, VB traditionally used -1 for true. VB.NET uses the same 0 or 1 internal representation for a bool as C# but if you convert a bool to a number in VB.NET it comes out as -1.)
by crazygringo | 2025-10-26 23:43:42+00:00
That doesn't work -- I've tried it.

I mean, it works fine for a few days or weeks, but then it gets corrupted. Doesn't matter if you use Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, whatever.

It's apparently something to do with the many hundreds of file operations git does in a basic operation, and somehow none of the sync implementations can quite handle it all 100.0000% correctly. I'm personally mystified as to why not, but can attest from personal experience (as many people can) that it will get corrupted. I've heard theories that somehow the file operations get applied out of order somewhere in the pipeline.
by rglullis | 2025-10-26 23:43:43+00:00
> "Need in order to" is a common construction in English.

I was paraphrashing. OP's original comment said "For some guys a high-end electric assist bike is how they stay riding with the A-group while they're recovering."

What I question here is, simply put, why "stay riding with the A-group" is in any way important? While one is recovering from surgery, what is so bad about riding with a B-group? Or why not ride with that A-group, but for a shorter distance?
by brailsafe | 2025-10-26 23:44:06+00:00
> My political views are pretty centrist, and I thought I understood the views of most liberals and conservatives.

I think that effect comes from astroturfing, algorithms, and tribalism.

The only way imo that a person gets any kind of genuine small sample of the varying vibes outside their circle is to speak with randoms in different geographic regions with a sense of humility, curiosity, and friendliness, in real life.
by pansa2 | 2025-10-26 23:44:46+00:00
Yeah, Lua's implementation is fantastic - but the language is "quirky" at best.

Wren looks a bit more orthodox, although it's heavily built around class-based OOP - you can't even define and call a top-level function without extra syntax to (1) turn it into an object, and (2) call one of that object's methods:

var sayHello = Fn.new { System.print("hello") } sayHello.call() //> hello
by empath75 | 2025-10-26 23:45:09+00:00
This is a serious paper by serious people and it is worth reading, but any definition of intelligence that depends on human beings as reference will never be a good basis for evaluating non human intelligence.

You could easily write the reverse of this paper that questions whether human beings have general intelligence by listing all the things that LLMs can do, which human beings can't -- for example producing a reasonably accurate summary of a paper in a few seconds or speaking hundreds of different languages with reasonable fluency.

You can always cherry pick stuff that humans are capable that LLMs are not capable of and vice versa, and and I don't think there is any reason to privilege certain capabilities over others.

I personally do not believe that "General Intelligence" exists as a quantifiable feature of reality, whether in humans or machines. It's phlogiston, it's the luminiferous ether. It's a dead metaphor.

I think what is more interesting is focusing on _specific capabilities_ that are lacking and how to solve each of them. I don't think it's at all _cheating_ to supplement LLM's with tool use, RAG, the ability to run python code. If intelligence can be said to exist at all, it is as part of a system, and even human intelligence is not entirely located in the brain, but is distributed throughout the body. Even a lot of what people generally think of as intelligence -- the ability to reason and solve logic and math problems typically requires people to _write stuff down_ -- ie, use external tools and work through a process mechanically.
by lazide | 2025-10-26 23:45:51+00:00
CPM is literally not.

It is counts per minute in an undefined, arbitrary sensor. Which could have a alpha radiation transparent sensor (and hence show alpha particles), or be from a low sensitivity geiger counter which can only detect high energy gamma radiation (for say fallout/emergency use). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger_counter

It could have a small sensor, and hence require high flux for a given CPM, or a physically large one - and catch more disintegrations per minute/CPM for the exact same actual amount of radiation.

As to why it is in a government document is why we’re all wondering what is going on. It certainly isn’t the only WTF thing the government is doing right now, is it?
by SuperNinKenDo | 2025-10-26 23:46:03+00:00
When I was a baby we lived virtually directly under the Sydney Harvour Bridge, I got lead poisoning as a result of runoff from the bridge. The combination of leaded petrol and leaded paint runoff poisoned the soil in playgrounds and the area more generally.

My case and probably those of others lead to a huge cleanup of the bridge.

My life has been absolutetly plagued with chronic health and "developmental" problems. Neurodivergence and other conditions litter my family tree, but they seem to effect me much more severely than they do most of my relatives.

I often find myself wondering these days if my life would have featured significantly less hardship were it not for the lead poisoning.
by geoduck14 | 2025-10-26 23:47:00+00:00
>Why do people continue to go on cruises?

There is a level of convenience that is hard to get elsewhere.

I went on a Disney cruise 2 summers ago. All restaurants were in walking distance. All of deck 5 was dedicated to child care. They took you straight to excursions. Family was close, but not too close.

There were some downsides, too, but let's not focus on those. I think the "king" reason we went is because the grandparents were paying and they wanted everyone to be "there" and not leaving. I think the main reason we aren't going again is cost.
by gambiting | 2025-10-26 23:47:00+00:00
Replace the surgeon with a robotic surgeon operating under some kind of autonomous mode and yes, I think every robot of its kind should be immediately pulled out of use.

>>A self-driving car that kills less people per mile than a reasonably selected cohort of human drivers is probably a good thing.

Hard disagree, and I honestly hate it when people make that argument. The number should be zero.
by serf | 2025-10-26 23:47:38+00:00
>But you’ve basically admitted the previous research didn’t do the job, so all we’re doing is haggling about the price.

it's a poor metric -- research doesn't exist to drive policy, but it does aid in decision making.

There are global policies around the world that make no damn sense from even a basic scientific understanding, with little to no research done.

If some research is done, a policy maker is pointed at it, and the only response is a shoulder-shrug you don't shit-can the research and do it over -- you appoint vocal political types to campaign on the existing research.