MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by colordrops | 2025-10-14 20:55:29+00:00
Demand exists for a lot of things that don't exist. There's no technical reason that the internet couldn't have stayed mostly decentralized, with everyone hosting a node at their house, controlling their own data and feeds, with an experience not much different from current services and social media, and people would absolutely want this if the experience was reliable and had good UX. But so much effort has been shunted to centralized services that it never materialized. The demand is there, I've asked many people. Just one counterexample.

I'm working on a project myself but it's taking forever considering the large scope. Getting close to having it ready for technical individuals to try it out.

https://homefree.host
by eitally | 2025-10-14 20:56:29+00:00
This really bugged me. I led adoption of Telegram as our family-internal standard chat tool several years ago because I was more anti-Zuck than I was concerned about backdoors or overt politicization of Telegram. Since the Ukraine war began, there has been literally no positive news about Telegram and Durov has become increasingly political (especially since his arrest in France) in his all-users blasts.

With the amount of known use of Telegram by unsavory actors, combined with Durov's own leveraging of his platform for activism, I've been using Whatsapp more and more lately, and don't feel bad about that.

I respect Signal, but it's missing too many product features and it doesn't have the reach Whatsapp does, so it's not compelling as a switching option at this point, even for family use.
by orochimaaru | 2025-10-14 20:56:40+00:00
>>>If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed.

It sort of is already. The segregation of Americans by school district based on what their property taxes are already accomplishes this. Observe the standards to which schools that are wealthier (because of better taxes) vs schools in areas with lower taxes. The parents of the kids in the former are expected to play a more imperative role, the kids are challenged a LOT more. My fourth grader was expected to do at least 3 detailed book reports, each book at least 200 pages per book, including learning to present her findings in a timed manner. They were graded informally on a detailed rubric. They advance kids to higher math grades based on the child’s skill level. So there are 4th graders doing 5th and some exceptional ones 6th grade math.

This contrasts with another school district we were in earlier. Very loving teachers. But they had no space to challenge the kids. Because the teachers had to own the responsibility of getting each kid across the finish line for the grade.
by busymom0 | 2025-10-14 20:56:47+00:00
A lot of these UI bugs are also of the kind where once I notice them, I can no longer un-notice them. The border around the Home Screen icons being one. When you swipe up from bottom to go back to Home Screen, the app icon doesn't initially have border while the animation is ongoing. Once the animation finishes, the border suddenly shows up. Once I noticed this, it's been annoying me everytime I swipe to go back.

I thought the latest dev beta of iOS would fix this but it's still here.
by nutjob2 | 2025-10-14 20:56:56+00:00
I think the point is that you want to see typical results or process. How does it run when you use it 10 times, or 100 times, what results can you expect generally?

There's a lot of wishful thinking going around in this space and something more informative than cherrypicking is desperately needed.

Not least because lots of capable/smart people have no idea which way to jump when it comes to this stuff. They've trained themselves not to blindly hack solutions through trial and error but this essentially requires that approach to work.
by judahmeek | 2025-10-14 20:56:57+00:00
If you're going to make a claim like this, then why not provide enough information so that the rest of us can actually verify it?

What would have been the exact right month in 2000, the exact right month in 2008, and the exact right month in 2020?

What were the majority of your holdings at those times?

What would have happened if you had diversified a month earlier in all three cases?
by tptacek | 2025-10-14 20:57:16+00:00
First, the setting for secure messaging cryptography assumes a compromised provider, so this is all entirely besides the point. But second, no, it's not exclusively a problem for a "purely malicious provider". It's also a problem for any provider that is compromised; a serverside compromise is completely fatal to the privacy of every user of a client-server-encrypted system.

There isn't an amount of hand-waving that's going to get you to a place where client-server-only encryption is sufficient for secure messaging.

I am also more concerned about supply chain attacks than I am about attacks on E2EE, generally. But that stops being true in the specific case of secure messaging.
by mtlynch | 2025-10-14 20:57:40+00:00
No, I saw that bug in the issue log, but I never hit that personally.

If you're running into it, I'd test again with the latest release (0.5.1) and see if it's still present. If so, I suspect it would get more traction from the dev team if the report was complete, as it's currently missing repro steps and the litestream.yml is not compatible with 0.5.0 (it still has "replicas" plural).
by ofalkaed | 2025-10-14 20:57:41+00:00
>Of course, there's nothing about an array language that requires using symbols; but for some reason most do.

The idioms become words and you read them like words, you don't step through each letter of a word when you read it, you recognize the shape. The same thing happens in APL and its ilk, any commonly used sequence is instantly understood as its function without having to parse each individual symbol and what it does.
by noir_lord | 2025-10-14 20:58:00+00:00
Agreed.

Or debuggers that would take out the entire OS.

Or a bad driver crashing everything multiple times a week.

Or a misbehaving process not handing control back to the OS.

I grew up in the era of 8 and 16 bit micros and early PCs, they where hilariously less stable than modern machines while doing far less, there wasn’t some halcyon age of near perfect software, it’s always been a case of things been good enough to be good enough but at least operating systems did improve.
by lexarflash8g | 2025-10-14 20:58:06+00:00
I notice the trend that people are reading much less in public and on public transporation -- before if you went on a long-haul flight you would bring a couple of books or magazines, now people much prefer to consuming video content. On a flight every row I saw passengers either watching a movie on their phone/laptop/ or screen seat.

If you walk into a cafe it would be odd to see someone reading a book. And its almost impossible to buy physical newspapers even the Sunday edition for the NY Times as most grocery stores or convenience stores don't carry them.

Personally I'm also guilty of listening to more podcasts and background play -- but I only watch YT visual content when its interesting there is just too much stuff out there. I consume most of my news online -- so my reading comes from mostly articles. Its just more convenient and practical now -- though requires much less effort than say reading longer form content of a book or long essay.

Lately I've been going on TikTok just out of curiosity for entertainmentto watch amusing or funny videos. Its basically like digital crack -- before you know it you spent an hour just watching mindless content and its designed to get you hooked. It really is low-effort instant gratification at its worst (probably worse than porn -- because you stop after a while once satisfied.)

And you see kids as old as 1-2 years old with personal devices watching videos -- so it seems to be a disturbing trend And I heard that professors don't even assign books since they know their students won't read them and will just ChatGPT for summaries.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-10-14 20:58:34+00:00
I'm hoping that some of the senior management will realize what a clusterf**k this is, and let it stay (they still support ObjC apps, and I will bet that lots of AAA apps can't be easily converted to LG).

The thing that we have to keep in mind, is that some very "strong-willed" folks have staked their egos on LG, and will choose it as their hill to die on. We've seen that happen in many other instances (not just at Apple).
by ACCount37 | 2025-10-14 20:58:59+00:00
The conventional wisdom is that real world text is the most valuable pre-training data.

There is some experimentation on using algorithmically generated synthetic data in pre-training, as well as some intentional inclusions of "weird" data - like CSV logs of weather readings. But generally, it's seen as computationally inefficient - compared to "normal" pre-training done on natural data.

In a world where compute is much cheaper and getting new data is much more expensive, I would expect this kind of thing to be pursued more. We're heading for that world. But we aren't there yet.

I haven't experimented with baseN encodings myself, no. But if I were to down the expectations in advance:

1. Base64 is by far the best-known baseN encoding in LLMs.

2. This is driven mainly by how well represented meaningful base64 strings are in the natural "scraped web" datasets. LLMs learn base64 the way they learn languages.

3. Every LLM pre-trained on "scraped web" data will be somewhat capable of reading and writing base64.

4. Base64-encoded text is easier to read for an LLM than encoded non-text binary data.

5. The existence of a strict, learnable "4 characters -> 3 bytes" map is quite beneficial, but not vital.
by itsnowandnever | 2025-10-14 20:59:28+00:00
I wouldn't call these guys civilization. the Tepe sites are more like an ancient UN for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers than a settlement. they visited seasonally for a feast and then left. the only evidence we have is that they were partying. but they had no social organization at all

funnily enough, the lack of neolithic culture, social hierarchy, or permanent sedentary lifestyle (all hallmarks of "civilization") and all archeological evidence suggests they were much healthier and more peaceful than neolithic humans. that's why people link "Garden of Eden" mythology originating in ancient Sumeria to the ancient peoples' observation that people became "civilized" but at what cost since it made humans less healthy, more violent, and presumably less happy due to the novel concept of social inequality
by mystraline | 2025-10-14 20:59:29+00:00
I had some friends who worked in CISA. Had, cause they were fired, RIF'd, early retirement, etc. They have been gutted.

During the Biden campaign, there were a few people doing rudimentary data gathering and election machine investigations. After they announced to their bosses, order came from the top to cease all voting machine research and destroy what they did.

We dont know why the order to cease and destroy was issued. But, yeah. A guess was that the existing players bribe both parties, and bribe was called in.

If you want to snoop more, go look at what Defcon's Election village is doing. Quite a few of those findings were damning.
by rufo | 2025-10-14 20:59:33+00:00
Pretty much that. The SDR enthusiast's docker guide the parent comment linked to uses this ultrafeeder container, which has instructions on how to connect directly to dump1090 running on a port. Pairing that[1] plus the rest of the guide instructions should get you a decent ADS-B setup that can feed any of the services you might want - and if you don't want to use the Docker container(s), you should be able to at least use the services and configuration they use as a guide.

[1]: https://github.com/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-adsb-ultrafeeder/t...
by yesco | 2025-10-14 20:59:38+00:00
I like Telegram because it gets my friends & family to not do everything in SMS or iMessage. If I'm the only one using it, what's the point after all? Feature-wise, the app is nice to use, and one I can use on all platforms, even Linux.

Since it has a public API, I can easily make a custom frontend if I ever want to. Most social media does not offer this or tries to lock you into their shitty ecosystem.

I basically just treat it as unencrypted, but the pretend encryption features at least puts the company in a position where blatantly selling data would be a liability. In this respect, I place it on the same level as WhatsApp. Because even if WhatsApp has solid encryption, all it takes is one forced update from Meta to undo all that. They are like the inverse of each other.

My uncle is the only one I know who refused to use Telegram, insisting Signal was better and because he didn't want to use something with vague connections to Russia. Yet even he did not actually use Signal, and simply insisted if we should all switch to something it's either that or he sticks to SMS. So well, when I couldn't sell Signal to anyone else, Telegram it is, sorry uncle, but Verizon is pretty transparent about how they sell all my data.
by vladms | 2025-10-14 20:59:39+00:00
Do you know personally some CEO-s? I know a couple and they generally seem less empathic than the general population, so I don't think that like/dislike even applies.

On the other hand, trying to do something "new" is lots of headaches, so emotions are not always a plus. I could make a parallel to doctors: you don't want a doctor to start crying in a middle of an operation because he feels bad for you, but you can't let doctors doing everything that they want - there needs to be some checks on them.
by nostrademons | 2025-10-14 20:59:53+00:00
Same way they used to teach it in 1st grade, but 2 years earlier. There's often more of an emphasis on visuals, manipulatives, and songs too, eg. my kid's kindergarten teacher linked us to this song [1] on the first day, and there's dozens of similar resources on YouTube.

A family friend of ours (retired Tesla engineer) taught his 18 month the alphabet. He did it with a bunch of alphabet puzzles [2] and blocks. My 16mo is showing similar interest, but unfortunately I don't have the time to sit down with him, go over each letter, and explain how they go together. He will grab a book (or 5) off the bookshelf, bring it over to me, and say "Read this", though.

For math - my kid had learned the powers of two up through 4096 by kindergarten through playing Snake-2048. My wife and I started introducing addition and subtraction just in ordinary life - we'd say "Okay, if we have 4 strawberries, and you reserve one each for mommy and daddy, how many do you get to eat?"

Now (age 7) he'll quiz me in the car with seemingly random numbers like "What's 177 * 198?", and it's a good opportunity for me to introduce a bunch of mental math tricks like binomial expansions for multiplying numbers near 50 or 100, or prime factorizations. I'll usually turn the questions back on him too, like "Well, that's 200 * 177 - 2 * 177. What's 2 * 177?" and then he's like "I dunno" and then I'll say "What's 2 * 180?" and he says "360" and then I say "Now subtract 2 * 3" and he says "354" and then I'm like "Okay, if 2 * 177 = 354, what's 200 * 177" and he'll say "35,400" (because he already knows the trick for adding zeros) and then I'll say "Subtract 354" and he'll say "35,046" which is the correct answer.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36IBDpTRVNE

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Attmu-Toddlers-Alphabet-Preschoolers-...

[3] https://www.miniplay.com/game/snake-2048-io
by Terr_ | 2025-10-14 21:00:11+00:00
> retained for another year

It strikes me that US K-12 systems don't have a clear architecture to support, er, non-uniform progress. A student either moves to the next grade in all classes, or "repeats" a year. Or perhaps has remedial classes over the summer? Maybe in high-school the concept of "honors" classes becomes available.

Perhaps that represents a conflict between the social goals (keeping cohorts together) versus per-subject educational ones.
by shortrounddev2 | 2025-10-14 21:00:21+00:00
Tech illiteracy at some age groups is insane to me. I understand that my 93 year old grandma wasn't great at this sort of thing. But I encounter people who are in their 20s who don't know how to print a document, or people in their 50s falling for obvious AI scams. Didn't Jurassic Park come out in 93? Did they just think people were getting eaten by dinosaurs?
by fragmede | 2025-10-14 21:00:22+00:00
Leading AI researcher Andrej Karpathy created a NanoLLM using available training data and $100 worth of (high-end) rented Cloud computer time. The original post is https://github.com/karpathy/nanochat/discussions/1 The post this is on is commentary from simonw about Karpathy's post. The NanoLLM he created is, um, not very good. So you wouldn't want to use it for anything other than learning and entertainment. But it's really small, which means it runs on small underpowered computers. There's a web-gui, so you interact with it just like ChatGPT on your little computer. Also for learning purposes, Karpathy shared the code he used to create NanoLLM, so you can run it at home and create your own model and chat with it.

Given that GPT-5 reportedly cost $100 million to train, being able to create one, even a terrible one, for $100, shows how the field keeps marching on.
by someothherguyy | 2025-10-14 21:00:24+00:00
Why have grade levels at all? Instead, have a directed graph of skills that you need to advance through. Then, in order to advance, you can focus the labor effort toward correcting skill deficits in a dynamic way. This is not possible with how educational institutions are traditionally organized, but it doesn't seem intractable to restructure to support this methodology.

It would remove the stigma of "being held back", as there are no levels in a strict sense, just cumulative progress.
by surgical_fire | 2025-10-14 21:00:25+00:00
"AI will take over the world".

I hear that. Then I try to use AI for simple code task, writing unit tests for a class, very similar to other unit tests. If fails miserably. Forgets to add an annotation and enters in a death loop of bullshit code generation. Generates test classes that tests failed test classes that test failed test classes and so on. Fascinating to watch. I wonder how much CO2 it generated while frying some Nvidia GPU in an overpriced data center.

AI singularity may happen, but the Mother Brain will be a complete moron anyway.
by mikece | 2025-10-14 21:00:34+00:00
The fact that a C library can easily be wrapped by just about any language is really useful. We're considering writing a library for generating a UUID (that contains a key and value) for reasons that make sense to us and I proposed writing this in C so we could simply wrap it as a library for all of the languages we use internally rather than having to re-implement it several times. Not sure if we'll actually build this library but if we do it will be in C (I did managed to get the "wrap it for each language" proposal pre-approved).
by ho_schi | 2025-10-14 21:00:54+00:00
I listed native apps for all of these platforms. That’s the solution.

A less efficient alternative would be using one of these toolkits on the others platforms. Lets say Gtk? Common well known Gtk apps like Gimp or Inkscape excel well on all of these. And are better on macOS and Windows than any kind of Electron.

Back when Chrome wasn’t considered a memory hog it used native toolkits of each platform! Yes. Gtk, Coca and Win32. That was a an effort. And yes. It was fast and convenient.

Put back to begin. Nobody asked for a fat Electron build. They searched and found a bad solution for a problem which doesn’t exist. You gave the very best example for the way to go.

PS: And ** Apple for turning off the APIs for Push Mail Notification on iOS. Now mail providers need to consider own apps for iOS. APPLE! Just turn on Push Mail for all other than iCloud!

We’re living in a world with hacks for problems that never should have existed.
by dannyobrien | 2025-10-14 21:01:14+00:00
Can somebody point out the "MAGA Oligarch" link here? Scott Leiendecker is a former Republican election official, and the linked article says the company is "repped by" (presumably a PR agency?) that uses Trumpian imagery, but that seems to be the extent of the connection.

(I know that already might seem a lot to some people, but I was wondering if there was anything to justify the title beyond that.)
by magicalhippo | 2025-10-14 21:01:41+00:00
I tested a few STM32F103 dev boards, using a Siglent SDM3055 multimeter and Siglent SPD330X power supply.

The chip has a 12bit SAR ADC. Layout and board design mattered a lot, but even the worst ones had 10 bits worth, and the best one had nearly 12 bits effective.

That was without doing too much on the software side, meaning the other modules weren't running, besides a single serial output. On the bad boards the serial affected it, but on the good board very little.
by danaris | 2025-10-14 21:01:42+00:00
I think your assessment of homelessness in the US misses some things, though (or at least leaves them unstated):

First, that it's not just that people "don't know how to live more simply", and thus cling to their homes too long when they "should" otherwise be downsizing and cutting expenses. For a lot of people, the fall is sudden—some medical emergency drains all their savings and leaves them unable to work (at least for a time), and there it goes.

Second, what are they going to downsize to? We don't have whole rural villages in the US that are living, essentially, pre-industrialized lives (except with the Amish, I suppose, but that's a whole other kettle of fish). (Also, I don't know for sure that such places exist today in China—I know that they did not too many years ago, but my information is not current.) There isn't really anywhere you can go in the US to live securely, but simply, on $100 a month or whatever. And even if there were, that would involve leaving whatever job you had to begin with, which removes the "securely" part.
by aeternum | 2025-10-14 21:01:52+00:00
Charts like this are misleading because they don't take age into account. It's not really noteworthy that old people die of heart disease and cancer.

I believe a better chart would be weighted by life expectancy loss. For example if a 12yo gets murdered society considers it a much more significant loss than a 90yo having a heart attack.

Similarly your level of safety in a city is more a function of the rate of random crime vs. the often cited city's overall murder rate. This difference explains why some cities that feel safe actually have a high homicide rate and vice-versa. In some cities crime is unpredictable whereas in others it is more confined to areas where visitors rarely travel.
by stuffn | 2025-10-14 21:01:52+00:00
> It’s kinda dumb that Wikipedia still treats newspapers as some sort of ultimate truth.

Wikipedia is arguably worse than the sloppiest news slop the media machine can manufacture. It's lawless, it's been shown majority of articles are written and edited by a single cabal of people, and it's also been shown a distinct bias towards one side of the political aisle.

I wouldn't trust Wikipedia any more than anything Rupert Murdoch owns. Perhaps slightly less, because at least in theory Murdoch can be held accountable for fake news and Wikipedia is powered entirely by fake news and accountable to literally no one.