MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by AlienRobot | 2025-10-05 16:50:48+00:00
When I read the title I couldn't help but think "did everyone forgot about hard disks?"

I'm sure Tim Berners-Lee is much smarter than me, but I kind of feel there are some parallels between the idea of "owning" posts you made in a platform and the ludicrous idea of "owning" game items as NFTs in a blockchain. The latter promises interoperability that games would never deliver. I wonder about the former.

At least I feel the major dealbreaker with this technology is just that it's not worth it for both parties involved.

Right now, Facebook hosts all the posts and monetizes them with ads. So long as they are making money with ads, they have no reason to delete the posts they're hosting, as the posts are their money maker.

But what happens if Facebook no longer "owns" the posts?

So now your posts are in your "personal cloud", which means that unless they are encrypted any website or local app can display them, even without any ads. This means Facebook is no longer making money off the posts. Why would they accept this?

On the flip side, who is paying for the hosting? Facebook? It's no longer their servers hosting the content, so I don't think so? Is Facebook supposed to pay the cloud service for metered API access? Can a cloud service offer different rates to different companies? Is the user supposed to pay for their cloud storage? So you're going to make users pay money to use facebook?

What happens if a post violates the ToS? Can facebook delete my post in my cloud storage against my will? What happens if content that is legal where facebook operates is illegal where the cloud servers operate?

Can I manually edit the data in my cloud storage like I'd be able with a file and then facebook has to treat every post as if it were untrusted input?

What happens if my cloud storage closes my account? I just lose everything? Will I be able to back up my cloud to my hard disk and reupload it to another cloud so facebook can access it? How is facebook going to handle a single user with 2 clouds that have different content?

I feel like this is a very complex thing and there are infinite questions that we can have about how this would be implemented in practice, while it's presented as simply "you own your data."
by shermantanktop | 2025-10-05 16:50:54+00:00
I have humanities academics on both sides of my family tree (dad and maternal grandfather, both tenured with long careers at good schools) and classics as an omnipresent topic in my growing years. Out of my undergrad program, I got accepted to the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. I opted instead to get a history degree at a smaller school and dropped out after my MA.

It became clear to me along the way that the world that a young humanities academic would have joined in the 1960s just didn’t exist anymore. Departmental politics, publish or perish, shrinking funding, and the declining prestige of the fields meant the gravy train was over.

It also became clear that unhappy academics are amongst the most miserable, impotent, and self-loathing people around.
by theideaofcoffee | 2025-10-05 16:51:13+00:00
Absolutely wild. Sounds like there were organizational problems where the correct technically-minded people weren't invited into the vendor eval process for that "insurance" provider, nor were they given the ability to push back on insane requirements from a customer.

This is a symptom of hiring the cheapest, least sophisticated box-ticking compliance and insurance providers. How do I know? Because I've worked with more than I want to count. And that's all that they know how to do. Sure, they'll give you the certification, or the insurance, but it will be non-stop pain starting the day you sign the contract with them.

A real, competent provider/insurer would take the problem on head-on and be the adviser that you are hiring them to be. They would advise you about the real, actual risks and positives. Then you would have air-cover to go tell the customer during the procurement stage to go pound sand. Insane that you would actually allow a prospective customer to dictate how you do things internally. That also smacks of the customer not having the technical sophistication to even know about the things they are demanding, they just read about the random lines they can throw in a contract because others did.

This industry is fucked and deserves every ounce of comeuppance coming its way.
by fnordpiglet | 2025-10-05 16:51:13+00:00
I was looking for the frontier curve where they tested their benchmark across different models since this sort of behavior is highly parameter, architecture, training, and fine tuning sensitive. It’s a practically useful question so I was really disappointed when a) they didn’t publish their code so you could test yourself, b) they didn’t do even a cursory examination of other models and sizes.
by usrusr | 2025-10-05 16:51:26+00:00
Don't know about OVH (it might be a very similar story?) but Hetzner is from my region and I've known the brand since back in the 1990ies. The difference to most (all?) large American hosting services is that they never went through some big investment scale-up of the type "spend now to earn later" where costs just don't matter as long as there is some growth to handwave it away, but have come to where they are now through continuous bootstrapping. The same applies to hundreds of much smaller hosters, but few (none?) reach anywhere close to Hetzner's economy of scale.
New Updates for Biobridge and Osxiec
by Okerew | 2025-10-05 16:51:28+00:00
Improved the gel electrophoresis simulating to be better, removed control module in https://github.com/Okerew/biobridge Fixed wrong usage of execute_command in osxiec, Bumped json-c to 0.18 https://github.com/Okerew/osxiec
by marcosdumay | 2025-10-05 16:51:45+00:00
> Nothing is as cheap as hardware-accelerated AES.

Yes, and at the same time all of modern crypto is incredibly cheap and can be added as wished on almost every application without any visible extra costs.

So the answer to the GP is not that trivial one. The actual answer is about software complexity making errors more likely, and similar encryption schemes not really adding any resiliency.
by mercutio2 | 2025-10-05 16:52:14+00:00
Thermal power cycle infrastructure has a pretty high lower bound on price even if you’re ignoring the cost of containing a fission reaction.

It’s not that there wouldn’t be learning curves, it’s that we’ve already seen the learning curve for the easiest part of the stack, and it’s not competitive.

I’m all in favor of continuing to throw VC money at small nuclear, to be clear. The regulatory situation everywhere outside of Texas is so bad that there will be niches where “power plant arrives on a semi, no external interconnect required” is a great business proposition.

But if we had a sane regulatory environment for building transmission and interconnect, nuclear wouldn’t get enough custom to ever climb the learning curve.
by badc0ffee | 2025-10-05 16:52:39+00:00
This is notable because Westjet is not an ultra low-cost airline. It's one of Canada's two major carriers.

For daytime flights within North America, I have to say I haven't reclined my seat in years. The person in front of me doesn't recline half the time, either. It just seems like there isn't the space for it, and it barely makes a difference in comfort, anyway. It's not like reclining increases legroom. So, I can see where Westjet is coming from.

(I think I might change my tune if I was on flight long enough to sleep/nap on.)
by rkomorn | 2025-10-05 16:52:39+00:00
I think 12th based on (and I cannot emphasize this enough) vibes instead of data would be fine.

10th definitely feels too soon (it's basically the 9th), and the 11th still kinda feels too soon too.

If anything, I'd argue it should be fine to ask your closer/reliever to pitch an extra inning (the 10th) "as-is". The 11th makes you burn an extra reliever, and that should be okay.

The 12th is where I'd start to say "okay, wind it down, we're all losing now".

Again, just vibes.
by wkat4242 | 2025-10-05 16:52:50+00:00
Part of the problem is that this "free" stuff is obviously not remaining free. I'm very hesitant to invest my time in it because I don't want to run it into my workflow and then be held by the balls when they make it paid.

I'm definitely not hoping for a crash but I do think it's inevitable. The amount investment is insane and I don't see how this can be recouped. It's a textbook bubble. And the collapse of a bubble always has pretty bad effects on the industry which will impact all of us. This is probably the biggest bubble to blow since the dotcom crisis.
by card_zero | 2025-10-05 16:52:59+00:00
It's not like you depend on the AI to craft your apologies for depending on the AI, or anything. You can quit any time you want!

I think it would improve your writing if you go off at tangents, use weird idioms, prefer obscure references to cliches, attempt implausible feats of lateral thinking, and yell at people and call them wrong. This may also make you unpopular, but that's a detail.
by blibble | 2025-10-05 16:53:01+00:00
the game pass domination strategy was always going to fail in a world where Steam exists

it must be very frustrating for Microsoft

their usual tactic of buying out the competition isn't an option because Gabe Newell is already a billionare (and a gamer), who won't sell for any price

and their backup strategy of tightening the screws of their competition on Windows can't work either, because he's funded a credible (almost) replacement for Windows

so for once they have to compete on fair terms

and when they do that: they lose
by Dylan16807 | 2025-10-05 16:53:36+00:00
The self-hosting machines are plenty to avoid the problem you described, where there's massive slowdowns getting anything at all, including tiny little text comments. I hope you don't need me to walk through every detail of how a distributed system can do comments in a reasonable way?

But self-hosting machines are susceptible to the "I can only upload pictures and videos at 5-10mbps" problem. That requires more difficult peer-to-peer systems.

The first problem only requires getting small bits of data onto the same machine. The second problem requires getting large amounts of data onto many machines. Or reasonably symmetrical upload speeds.
by ednite | 2025-10-05 16:53:51+00:00
Yes, that’s always been true. What feels different now is the volume of undermining authority that’s popped up and how so many people feel overconfident. For example, that recent dating app that went viral and became a security nightmare. Most likely created by a very confident non-dev person. Or like the author in the piece (spoiler: that’s me) now has the confidence to give people advice, thanks to AI.

I’m not really questioning that it happens, I’m stating how much energy it now takes to keep pushing back (or approving) and how easy it is to just agree with an AI output these days. Just my experience and two cents.
by kriops | 2025-10-05 16:54:02+00:00
Irrelevant. I only bring up the stochastic element because of the implicit argument that people are being victimized by gambling against their will.

Since you would be extremely off-topic if you tried to extend this argument to, e.g., Daniel Negreanu engaging in a game of poker, I wanted to explicitly preclude individuals competently engaging in whatever activity is being deemed 'problematic.'

It was mostly to help the 'other side' stay on topic; otherwise, I could trivially refute their arguments by counterexamples, e.g., Daniel Negreanu.
by chasing0entropy | 2025-10-05 16:54:02+00:00
This sound amazing; possibly superior to protostructure...but I refuse to invest in an ecosystem that requires an internet connection and active login to re-build from bare metal. Docker is not Self-hosted.

If you really want traction, post binaries. No counter response for why you can't generate regular binaries will overcome the sheer volume of users(beta testers) who will hard pass and never check on your progress again.
by reaperducer | 2025-10-05 16:54:29+00:00
What somewhat puzzles me about these early portables (also including e.g. the Macintosh Portable, sold 1989–1991, in a similar form factor) is the manufacturers’ insistence on putting a (heavy) mains transformer inside the chassis.

The transformer was outboard on this machine, like a modern computer. It had its own Velcro compartment in the carrying bag.
by realusername | 2025-10-05 16:54:29+00:00
Not everything is related to tech, in my company for example, they picked React Native because they have the ability to tap into the front-end job market (or they think they do), certainly not for it's intrisic qualities.

Personally I've done a 50k+ line project in Flutter and I didn't hit any of these. There's been a few issues for sure but nowhere near what I experienced with React Native (and don't start me on native itself)
by searine | 2025-10-05 16:54:33+00:00
I think our impasse is for some reason you have this idea that PI's hate their work / are gaming the system. I just don't understand where you are coming from. Maybe that's true sometimes, but most all PIs I have worked with are not gaming the system. They are just working on a decades-long line of inquiry.

>I am aware of researchers who use a technique where they get funding for a project that is basically finished, and use the funds for more speculative research. Their sources of funding expect more predictability than they can realistically provide. Wouldn't you say that represents a gap in the public's visibility?

Their grant is public record. Their oversight during that grant is public record. Their regulatory approvals are public record. Their publications are public record.

"Basically finished" is not finished. It is not finished unless it has been published. Your statement is like saying "its wrong for a baker to buy an oven if he already has the flour and sugar. The cake is basically finished. He is just putting future costs into this current cake".

Most grant applications include prior work, current work, and future work. A program officer will make site visits and assess current work and upcoming work. Funding of a grant is not "do X thing and publish, end of project and money:. It is the pursuit of an idea. If task 1 is "basically finished" the PO will push for publication of that and moving on to the next aim.

In many cases having an aim "basically finished" is a good thing. It shows that prior work is successful and future work can produce similar success. Most grants have multiple aims and several sub-aims. If one aim is finished, they move on to the next. If all the aims are complete, the grant usually indicates next steps. The PI and PO will have discussed the next steps long before they are carried out.

If the PI chooses use some funds from a grant to carry out speculative research. Good. GOOD. That is what scientific inquiry is meant for. Not all research can be speculative. Not at research can be mainstream. It is a mix, based on opportunity and expertise.

This is grants 101. Please, again, I'm not lecturing you on software development, because it is not my expertise. Please understand scientific funding before lecturing me about it.

>Name calling doesn't sound intellectual to me. I choose not to reciprocate.

Its not name calling to call out your anti-intellectualism. You are contributing to the decline of American science, and I will not stand for it.
by lapcat | 2025-10-05 16:54:47+00:00
> But the professors also seemed reluctant to define the success of a program by how many professors it creates—after all, most humanities PhD students at Chicago do not pay tuition and receive stipends to cover their living costs, and getting paid to learn and read is not the worst fate.

I think this neglects the stark opportunity cost: PhD students are devoting years of their life to this endeavor, which may pay modest living expenses during school but otherwise provides no current or future financial benefit to the student unless they get a job in their field. Those years become lost years in their lives, years they can never get back.

Moreover, if the ultimate goal of training graduate students is to preserve human knowledge, how is that goal going to be accomplished when those students are forced to leave the field and find some other way of supporting themselves after grad school? Ultimately, the knowledge will still be lost, won't it?

In fairness to the University of Chicago, this is not a problem specific to the University of Chicago, certainly not the first straw but only the final straw. When the humanities are defunded across the board, and tenure-track jobs become nonexistent, the training of humanities PhDs becomes futile. We can't look to Chicago for a solution to this larger problem. Every university, no matter how big and prestigious, should and indeed must face the stark reality.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-10-05 16:55:24+00:00
> Don't we tacitly agree as a society, in other contexts, that certain experiences aren't worth having at all if they're below some quality threshold?

I think the reasonable delineation is that we do for safety and we don’t for comfort.

Otherwise, it strikes me as patronizing to decide someone else shouldn’t fly so you and I can avoid the friction of paying for a more-comfortable seat.

> not sure economists have properly modeled

Given you didn’t recognise friction as having been extensively modelled, maybe reduce confidence in your intuitions around what economists have and haven’t done?
by bawolff | 2025-10-05 16:56:41+00:00
This is never going to happen.

The incentives do not make sense.

Any utopian future that requires a party to put in a lot of effort to change something in a way that would be a net negative for them, is just not going to happen.

People do not spend money to change the world in a way that would be worse for them but better for other people.
by s3r3nity | 2025-10-05 16:56:45+00:00
“… FTC when it challenged Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a convoluted process that didn't formally end until May of 2025—almost two years after the deal closed.”

This process needs to be faster for these types of challenges to be more successful - both in the market and in consumer opinion. Markets move too fast, and the answer can’t be “FTC needs more of my money to hire more people.”
by drob518 | 2025-10-05 16:56:46+00:00
Well, you would be foolish to design the x86 now if you had a choice in the matter. Zen5 is a RISC at heart, with a really sophisticated decoder wrapped around it. Nobody uses x86 or keeps it moving forward because it’s the best instruction set architecture. You do it because it runs all the old code and it’s still fast, if a bit power hungry. BTW, ditto with IBM Z-series.
by runamok | 2025-10-05 16:56:48+00:00
Here is a good podcast on his terribleness: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aEv08Zzunfc Some high points: Incredibly abusive to his employees, stole from Woz, screwed over his employees when Apple went public and Woz covered, refused to admit his daughter Lisa was his for many years. The man had great taste but the way he is worshipped in Silicon Valley is off-putting. Woz is a much better person to wish to emulate in my opinion.
by doctorpangloss | 2025-10-05 16:57:24+00:00
Hmm, on the other hand, I could sit around and knowing nothing, predict “prices for legacy cultural products will rise, sometimes significantly” and I’d be right, no?

I like Lina Khan but predicting layoffs and price raises doesn’t really have to do with competition in the gaming sector. In fact it is pretty much everyone’s opinion that there are way too many games and way too many developers. That she is talking about price hikes and layoffs because that’s what you need for anti trust actions according to the case law should tell you: the problem is the courts.
by floundy | 2025-10-05 16:57:34+00:00
But to this frequency? (Note: I tried to find a study on the frequency of em dash use between GPT and em-dash prolific human authors, and failed.)

The article has on average, about one em dash per paragraph. And “paragraph” is generous given they’re 2-3 sentences in this article.

I read a lot, and I don’t recall any authors I’ve personally read using an em dash so frequently. There would be like 3 per page in the average book if human writers used them like GPT does.
by karmakaze | 2025-10-05 16:57:36+00:00
> 2–3x cheaper for the same specs compared to DO/AWS

specs != performance

When I was looking for a hobby cloud provider, I did some benchmarking of similarly spec'd instances. Note that the degree of overcommitting CPU/RAM varies by cloud provider and instance type. I found Vultr to be the most consistently faster than DO. I had used OVH in the past and wasn't interested. I also didn't consider Hetzner because it seemed unlikely they could match performance at their prices. I later saw other benchmarking that showed Vultr as being one of the fastest. That was quite some time ago and I haven't checked lately, but also have no reason to switch.
by thunky | 2025-10-05 16:58:15+00:00
> but I don't think there's anything we can do about it.

Just don't post political signs:

- If someone agrees with your sign, you gain nothing. Nobody ever changed their vote because of a bumper sticker.

- If someone disagrees, you've marginalized yourself and potentially made yourself a target, or at least painted yourself in a bad light.
by ksec | 2025-10-05 16:58:26+00:00
Not using Server Grade Hardware. Although one could argue Server Grade Hardware are not worth the premium, that is up to its customer to decide i.e Ryzen vs EPYC. ECC Memory, Server Grade SSD, Power Supply, etc. If you look at their dedicated they aren't really super cheap, there are plenty of other dedicated server out there that goes for similar pricing. The difference is that those companies only offer dedicated options and dont provide the range of VPS OVH and Hetzner offers.

Custom Hardware, down to the DC design, rack, water cooling and economy of scale. There are reasons why some Datacenter are more expensive than others. And the fire at previous OVH DC shows why. Although I remember OVH did explain they dont use that design anywhere else. Doing Custom hardware part like water cooling with Racks isn't the rocket science part, doing it great while doing it at cost efficiency is the most difficult part.

Network quality. OVH owns its own Network. Layering Cables across its own DC along with other exchanges. It used to be slower but this has become less of an issue in 2025. But in the old days the difference between premium network connected and other commodity partners from DC makes a lot of difference. ( It still does but less of an concern )

Minimal Support - Although that is not a concern anymore in 2025 because everyone got used to Cloud computing that has zero support most of the time.

Expectation of Low Margin. I think both Hetzer and OVH have accepted the fact they are in computing commodity business with low margin and aim for volume. While most US business will always try to improve their margin and venture into SaaS or other managed services. Which means both Hetzer and OVH are also the expert in squeezing penny out of everything. As someone who used to work in commodity business I have a lot of respect for these people as they are harder than most people think.

Again, these are things on top of my head when I was keeping an eye on VPS. I just checked LowEndBox ( https://lowendbox.com ) is still alive and well after almost 20 years! Before cloud computing was a thing or went mainstream there were plenty of low cost low end VPS options like OVH and Hetzner. So this isn't exactly new, they just happened to have grown into current size.