MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by macNchz | 2025-10-13 16:32:04+00:00
I rented a Jeep Wagoneer recently and found it to have such comically glitchy electronics that this comes as no surprise. The second day we had it, the liftgate stopped latching entirely, it beeped and popped some error messages on the dashboard and simply wouldn't latch shut at all, no matter what we did. Searching the internet produced lots of people with the same problem, reporting that it required a software update to fix. There was no manual override to the electronic latching mechanism.

Luckily we were near a location of the rental car company—rather than deep in the middle of nowhere where we were headed—and exchanged it for another of the same model, which was all they had available. The next 1000-something miles we drove were filled with endless weird glitches:

- When a passenger plugged in their Steam Deck in the back, the entire infotainment system cut out and went black, including the instrument panel, and then started glitching in and out until they unplugged it.

- When parking, the driver's seat would retract slightly to make it easier to get out, but it never moved forward again, so the seat would get further back at each stop until it was manually repositioned.

- The entire drive the system flashed an un-dismissable error about a rear seat latch, which seemed completely functional.

- The TPMS light went on and off periodically as it seemingly lost and then regained signal from one wheel or another.

- The system flashed errors related to the automated cruise control being unavailable/broken at random times.

- The electronic parking brake kept applying itself while briefly paused in parking lots.

- There was something inscrutably wrong with the climate control that we never really figured out where sometimes it'd just get hot inside the car despite no change to the AC settings.

When we got back I found tons of people online talking about similar (often worse) issues. Incredibly terrible for any new vehicle, never mind one that costs $80k.
by abhaynayar | 2025-10-13 16:32:41+00:00
I have a similar great+simple system for curbing consumptive screen-time, i.e. I don't keep any of those apps on the phone, I block all of those websites on phone/laptop web-browser using an extension like Leech-Block and Un-Hook (YT). Some things that I allow are - YT long-form videos from subscriptions only, Hacker-News, and Linked-In.

THE biggest impediment for me has been stuff like getting sick. When I am sick, I just cannot lie there and do nothing. And it is TOO difficult to do stuff like read books or go out and talk to people or whatnot, it's too much effort. I HAVE to get back on consumptive screen-time. And then it devolves into something uglier - an ugly spiral, of gluttony & consumption, and I keep at it even beyond getting better.

Then it takes days or weeks of laziness and excuses to get back on track. And not just sickness but anything of that level. Anything that just kinda derails my life for a bit. I really need to find a middle-ground solution for the worst-case scenarios. I'm still working on it. I think I should be able to figure it out. It took me a while to figure out my best-case system as well.
by IAmBroom | 2025-10-13 16:32:45+00:00
> I believe something like 10 years ago, the declassified sonar capability was that it could reconstruct a 3d image of a goldfish 10 miles away.

I'm in optics, not sonar, but I have a hard time believing that sound waves are such unbelievably reliable tools for accurate FFT's of a target. Ultrasonics begin at 100 mm, while "long" visible light is 200x shorter (and wavelength is proportional to resolvable detail). Noise and dispersion in the ocean are significant.

Reminds me of when the CIA planted stories that they could recover data from multiply-erased hard drives using electron scanning microscopes. Possibly - one bit at a time.
by poisonborz | 2025-10-13 16:33:05+00:00
It's not AI that is losing trust, it's the US. It was always the US, the "West". They may invent fusion reactors tomorrow, if they can shut access to my assets on a whim, take direct hostile actions against their allies / my home, or I see they are at a brink of a deep societal chasm / civil war, if I see another economy outpacing them in industrial output, I will just not put my money there.
by diamond559 | 2025-10-13 16:33:20+00:00
Endless progress huh, tell that to the Indian slaves trapped in the Middle East. Or the Uyghurs. Or the Ukrainian children captured by Russia. More widgets were sold though, great job humanity. At least those starving Africans w/ diseases we've beaten in the developed world are clothed w/ the failed superbowl teams merch, this is true progress.
by TheOtherHobbes | 2025-10-13 16:33:30+00:00
In tech it was the switch from creative corporatism, which is focused on opportunities, invention, and infrastructure, to extractive corporatism and oligarchy, which are focused on scams, exploitation, and the creation of rigid hierarchies of privilege.

We're now in the end stage of the latter in the US.

The US still plays at invention - or rather a few of its oligarchs do - but it's far, far behind what's happening in other countries.
by echelon | 2025-10-13 16:33:31+00:00
> I read or heard someplace that at many universities tuition paid by students in the social sciences is effectively subsidizing the STEM fields

Diploma mill universities in my state are consolidating the smaller STEM universities and trade schools to build football and sports programs, gyms, and "lifestyle" amenities.

This university in particular [1] mints basket weaving degrees and has used consolidation to build sports programs [2] and lavish facilities for sports.

It's also been a revolving door of politician to high-ranking, high-compensation executive staff positions.

This university [3] has used funding to acquire properties from the state, such as the 1996 Olympic Stadium [4].

Neither of these universities does real, impactful research. The latter is ranked as an R1, but everyone at the "real" R1s in our state will tell you this is a fabrication. They're diploma mills and extract six figures from their student body. They turn this money into sports facilities and upper level faculty pay.

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_State_Owls_football

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_State_University

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Olympic_Stadium
by some_guy_nobel | 2025-10-13 16:34:19+00:00
Raising (already record high) tuitions that have far, far outpaced wages and inflation should be a last resort. You can start by cutting bloated admin, reduce fraudulent procurement/graft (e.g. the $700k Berkeley Chancellor's fence: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/700k-iron-fence-co...), vanity construction, study abroad admin budgets that dwarf actual student grants, and the executive compensation/perks by admin.

And this is just mentioning a sample of admin bloat, never mind the other areas.
by galoisscobi | 2025-10-13 16:34:25+00:00
Makes sense. I think they're lucky to be around you. Since you're hanging out on HN, I'd imagine you care about tech, doing things well and have a natural curiosity.

Back when I started out, I was deep in debt, insecure about my skills and being around highly skilled people who had many more years of experience only deepened those insecurities. Luckily, people were kind and patient with me and gave me the apprenticeship I needed. They deeply cared about technical expertise and doing things well, probably like you if I am guessing right. I have my dream job today, and I am in a position to mentor new grads. I continue to pay it forward as the senior engineers did when I started out. Not all my colleagues do this, but I see so much potential around me and I try to grow it. It's one of the most satisfying when I get a note from a new grad/junior engineer on how they've grown after our work together.

Thank you for caring!

On a side note, I can't imagine the anxiety they must go through now between the economy being what it is and AI exacerbating the gaps in technical skills. Seems like a scarier time than when I graduated. It's harder to mentor in this environment, but it's a fun challenge to learn how to mentor in this environment.
by constantcrying | 2025-10-13 16:34:28+00:00
>The argument that the shift from corporate research labs (Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc.) to stock buybacks killed basic science investment is compelling.

It is not compelling at all. The difference between dividends and share buybacks are not big enough to explain this at all. The argument is totally absurd, companies could always reward their shareholders with their profits.

Bell Labs did not end because of share buybacks, it ended because Bell was broken up and their free money printer did no longer exist.

>If the US is increasingly relying on universities for foundational research, and corporate R&D is only focused on short-term, applied projects, we're definitely running the innovation engine on fumes.

Why? This is just total nonsense. The only difference is the physical location of basic researchers. And that the government decides what to fund. That is literally it.

Basic university research is still funded by corporations. Only they are paying the money to the government, which then decides what to fund.
by kswzzl | 2025-10-13 16:34:51+00:00
My 4xe died in my driveway on Saturday after the update. Let me explain, from the perspective of a 4xe owner, how bad the response has been from Jeep/Stellantis:

- As of Monday 8am ET, zero legitimate communication from any Jeep-related accounts on any social media platform, or any other form of acknowledgement from the company (unless I've missed something?)

- I only found out about the issue after finally searching a few Jeep groups on Facebook (of all places) to see if anyone else was experiencing the weird failure mode I was after the update.

- The only remotely-official info was from a 'JeepCares' account (which is ran by Jeep) on some random off-roading forum? We were seriously all living off of screenshots from this forum, and the advice coming from the JeepCares accounts was contradictory: they claimed that the Uconnect update was separate from the telematics update, and that there was no way to stop the telematics update if the vehicle received it. Later they gave advice to defer the Uconnect update, making it sound like they were coupled.

- Due to the lack of info from Jeep, people were coming up with all kinds of "if you reboot Uconnect while the Jeep's in ACC mode, it clears the check engine light". This probably did clear the CEL but didn't fix the fault.

- There is no way to tell if you received the bad update.

- There is no way to tell if you received the 'fix' either.

- Dealerships have literally no idea what is going on.

- You're basically at risk of your Jeep going limp (power loss, unable to safely make it to the shoulder) and being stranded on the highway, even as I write this.
by billev2k | 2025-10-13 16:35:02+00:00
The Android Developer Blog called it "an ID check at the airport which confirms a traveler's identity but is separate from the security screening of their bags."

From the mouths of rubes, I guess. The ID check at the airport has zero to do with safety or security and everything to do with the airlines' business model (no secondary market for tickets), enforced by government.
by dsign | 2025-10-13 16:35:08+00:00
Even following your model, in twenty years we end up with 0.95*20=0.36, that's a whopping 64% of the population not-needed. People will do their best to adapt, but the article rightly points out that even when blue-collar jobs were off-shored and there were plenty of white-collar jobs, most people couldn't adjust in a decade or two, and that it still resulted in significant social strain.

Now imagine most white-collar jobs gone too, our cracked democratic institutions finally crumbling, and survtech and repressive police everywhere to squash protesters and dissidents... I've coined a term for a way to get out of that dystopia, if we manage: The Grim Revolts[^1]. I hope it remains the fiction of my feverish mind that it's supposed to be, and that we do manage to find good ways to prevent things from spiraling.

[^1]: https://w.ouzu.im/
by jleyank | 2025-10-13 16:35:19+00:00
If you want new disease treatments and cures, you need to fund applied science (using the aforementioned definitions). Follow-on compounds can almost be engineered, but finding novel targets and coming up with candidates is a research problem. And dealing with the side-effects that appear can flip back from engineering to science. The Ozempic class of compounds has done wonders driving research in obesity and (I think) addictive behaviours.

Bringing it to market requires money and management and luck. Many/most of the promising candidates fall out along the way.
by neutronicus | 2025-10-13 16:35:36+00:00
You're on HN, though. In some sense, reeling in people like you has been a solved problem for decades, since forums were invented.

I apologize for what is doubtless egregious projection on my part.

I am like you in the sense that I seem "immune" to TikTok/Reels, especially relative to my wife, who can definitely get sucked into it for 30-60 minutes. However, I'm easily-snared by things like "the last year of drama in the NixOS community". I can easily spend an hour I don't have reading forum threads in which people are accusing moderators of abusing their position in a forum about a piece of technology I don't use.

So in some sense the tech industry didn't need to "innovate" in order to suck me in. I was getting sucked into reading about web forum drama 20 years ago.
by Froztnova | 2025-10-13 16:35:40+00:00
I remember back in the 90s, when I was REALLY young, having a computer in my room that I figure was basically my dad's old hand-me-down computer, with a few basic toy programs like Kid Pix and the like. The CRT was a bit of a mess, and would occasionally 'go yellow' and need to be degaussed and otherwise fiddled with to get the color tone back to normal.

I can definitely appreciate the draw of the old monitors, and I wouldn't mind owning a few myself for when I get the fancy, but it feels like a very 'vinyl' sort of impulse. There are certainly attractive factors, but I think in the pursuit of those people are willing to overlook the inherent flaws. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's an interesting quirk of psychology.

I think LCD/OLED is definitely an improvement, though I've never been a fan of the 'softness' in comparison to the rigidity of the glass CRT screen. It's always seemed fragile to me.
by Zarathruster | 2025-10-13 16:35:40+00:00
> This makes no sense. You could equally make the statement that thought is by definition an abstract and strictly syntactic construct - one that has no objective reality.

No.

I could jam a yardstick into the ground and tell you that it's now a sundial calculating the time of day. Is this really, objectively true? Of course not. It's true to me, because I deem it so, but this is not a fact of the universe. If I drop dead, all meaning attributed to this yardstick is lost.

Now, thoughts. At the moment I'm visualizing a banana. This is objectively true: in my mind's eye, there it is. I'm not shuffling symbols around. I'm not pondering the abstract notion of bananas, I'm experiencing the concretion of one specific imaginary banana. There is no "depends on how you look at it." There's nothing to debate.

> There's also no "magic" involved in transmuting syntax into semantics, merely a subjective observer applying semantics to it.

There's no "magic" because this isn't a thing. You can't transmute syntax into semantics any more than you can transmute the knowledge of Algebra into the sensation of a cool breeze on a hot summer day. This is a category error.
by newpavlov | 2025-10-13 16:36:03+00:00
IIUC graphitosis, silicosis, and black lung require to inhale ungodly amounts of dust. It's orders of magnitude more than we can expect from flaking-based trace contamination.

Why do you expect a different result from "tiny sheets of graphene flaking off everywhere from nanocoatings" compared to the same flaking from graphite smeared across paper?
by elzbardico | 2025-10-13 16:36:05+00:00
China modern culture is incredibly materialistic and status oriented. Women in China have extremely high requirements for a candidate mate in the money department, and paradoxically is a highly sexist society, which led to people aborting their female babies during the one-child policy era to ensure their only son would be a man. Because of that, China has a surplus of males in reproductive age, for a proportional lower stock of fertile age females compared to the population.

On the other hand, having kids outside marriage is frowned upon.

Frankly, there's no way out of an aged population followed by a drastic population reduction for China.

If anything, I would say the communist party is focusing on humanoid robots to meet the coming explosion in demand for aged care.
by dateutli | 2025-10-13 16:36:05+00:00
I've been working on Listening Facts[0] for a while now. Basically, it's a year in review of your listening facts presented in a "nutrition facts" label format. It works with Apple Music, Spotify (via waitlist due to recent API changes[1]), and LastFM.

I'm currently working on language detection to expand the "facts" with a language distribution on each generated label.

I tried getting Adsense on the website but I keep getting denied on "Low Content Value" grounds. I tried some alternatives but the quality of their ads was ridiculous (stuff like "your device has a virus, click here to clean it up") so I just gave up on that.

Here[2] you can find what one of the labels looks like and many more from some user submissions

[0] - https://listeningfacts.com/

[1] - https://developer.spotify.com/blog/2025-04-15-updating-the-c...

[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/lastfm/comments/1mnk5wj/listening_f...
by JohnMakin | 2025-10-13 16:36:42+00:00
There was a critical thinking requirement that multiple courses fulfilled. One was a critical thinking english class that involved a lot of writing. I didn't want to write, so I chose the philosophy course (which still involved writing).

Here is a state school that has a foundation requirement in critical thinking with several courses:

https://www.csulb.edu/student-records/ge-approved-courses-ca...
by anon84873628 | 2025-10-13 16:36:44+00:00
What can we even imagine that would be so transformative? Cold fusion? Wagyu synthesis from GMO yeast? Healthcare nanobots?

Whatever it invents needs costumers who haven't been driven into poverty already.

If we could replace the human serfs with robots, we're not even socially configured to yield the benefits. Seems like revolution or dystopian surveillance state are the only realistic options.
by znort_ | 2025-10-13 16:36:52+00:00
indeed, but they're not talking about your phone, they're talking about android, which is something you don't buy nor own, you buy a license to use it on the provider's terms.

linux phones can't come soon enough ...

your point about the termn "sideloading" is spot on, though. perverting the language is the first step of manipulation: installing software is "sideloading", sharing files is "piracy", legitimate resistance is "terrorism", genocide is "right to defend oneself" ...
by IshKebab | 2025-10-13 16:37:00+00:00
> You can write great Python, Ruby, Go or Rust, or you can write crappy Python, Ruby, Go, or Rust. ... the programming language is never the differentiator itself

This is called "the fallacy of grey". Very common.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallac...
by kasey_junk | 2025-10-13 16:37:11+00:00
Usually (and I don’t want to put words in the posters mouth) when people complain about the loop being dangerous what they mean is that they are more proximate to homeless people than they are used to. Which is a bias that incorrectly associates homelessness (and it’s frequently paired mental illness) with danger.

If you replace “dangerous” with “frequented by the homeless”) you get more candidates. The now closed McDonald’s on state. The one at wells and Adam’s and (not in the south loop) the one at lake and lasalle.

Though I’d bet money that the most dangerous in terms of being involved in or witnessing violence is the “rock and roll” McDonald’s in river north because of its hours and proximity to drunks. Most people would _not_ assume it was dangerous though.
by BuildTheRobots | 2025-10-13 16:37:16+00:00
Very interesting.

I had a similar problem a few years back with a technophobe Grandma who wouldn't use whatsapp and a stingy aunt who'd moved to the states.

Used a Fritz!Box as it'll act as a DECT<->SIP server so my grandma could keep picking up her usual handset. Had a rule which matched the aunt's phone number so it got bounced via my FreeSwitch server rather than her PSTN, and some least-cost routing rules to pick a US based provider SIP provider with a +01 PSTN number so my aunt saw the incoming call looking local and could ring back if necessary at a cheap rate.

Honestly, the weird technical abominations we come up with to try and serve family members. The same Grandma went through a phase of falling, not being able to get up and then waiting hours for an ambulance to arrive. Would she tell the family? Would she sod. Was her regional ambulance service still dispatching jobs via pager message? You betcha. Did this end up with an SDR, POCSAG decoder and a regx looking for her postcode? Absolutely not; why would you ask such a thing?
by epistasis | 2025-10-13 16:37:18+00:00
I think TVA's elaboration, which I linked to, is not only far more authoritative and trustworthy than me, a random internet poster, but here goes:

1) Our coal plants are old and trip off all the time, putting the grid at high risk. 2) The cost to upgrade a coal plant or build a new one is far higher than the gas alternative, so no financially competent entity is going to go with coal unless they are forced to by political manipulation/strong arming/bad incentives that hurt ratepayers.

Prices in China have literally nothing to do with the US, for either construction or gas or coal, so I'm not sure why you're linking to that in favor of our actual utilities' opinions here in the US. Is China's experience with coal really the reason you think that coal is either reliable or cheap?