MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by toomuchtodo | 2025-10-29 15:45:40+00:00
If I can make instant payments from say, a digital wallet (TransferWise, for example) using instant payment rails, why do I need a bank? If I need credit, but can get that credit from a non bank, why do I need a bank?

Stablecoins enable this without central bank and commercial bank infrastructure permissioning (the biggest US banks own Early Warning Systems [Zelle] and The Clearing House [RTP]; the Federal Reserve was instructed by Congress to build FedNow so these largest banks could not block smaller banks from financial infra access). Instant payment rails, value backed by sovereign debt, sovereign debt backed by central banks.

Is your argument that we cannot live without fractional reserve lending enabled by commercial banks? Because private credit and ABS based credit is an example to the contrary. Consumer or commercial deposits are unnecessary to extend credit. Fraud risk is straightforward to manage, using either in house or vendor technologies, within the scope of deposit and banking product fraud detection and mitigation.

Matt Levine: Stablecoins Make Banking Narrower - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-10-02/sta... | https://archive.today/9jJmE - October 2nd, 2025

Private Credit Wants to Be the Bank - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-12-19/privat... | https://archive.today/MO2kf - December 19th, 2024
by DeusExMachina | 2025-10-29 15:46:13+00:00
Socialism "might" always work in an immaginary world that does not take into account the reality of the human condition.

One of the many flaws of such immaginary worlds is thinking that people will be content to live in a system where they have no creative outlet left and nothing they do will have any ultimate meaning.

People in those conditions might burn down the system for the mere excitement of novelty. Even experimental rat utopias quickly degenerate.
by dzonga | 2025-10-29 15:46:20+00:00
what's not spoken about in the above article ?

ease of use. in ruby If I want to use kafka I can use karafka. or redis streams via the redis library. likewise if kafka is too complex to run there's countless alternatives which work as well - hell even 0mq with client libraries.

now with the postgres version I have to write my own stuff which I might not where it's gonna lead me.

postgres is scalable, no one doubts that. but what people forget to mention is the ecosystem around certain tools.
by j45 | 2025-10-29 15:46:24+00:00
PG has several queue management extensions and I’m working my way through trying them out.

Here is one: https://pgmq.github.io/pgmq/

Some others: https://github.com/dhamaniasad/awesome-postgres

Most of my professional life I have considered Postgres folks to be pretty smart… while I by chance happened to go with MySQL and it became the rdbms I thought in by default.

Heavily learning about Postgres recently has been okay, not much different than learning the tweaks for msssl, oracle or others. Just have to be willing to slow down a little for a bit and enjoy it instead of expecting to thrush thru everything.
by pixl97 | 2025-10-29 15:46:26+00:00
I mean, repairing anything requires knowledge. The problem with most home devices is they are not repairable at all and you can't get parts.

While I'm a computer farmer for my day job, I can repair a vast amount of different devices as long as they don't take specialised equipment like vacuum pumps. And while I don't consider myself a rich person, between my wife and I we're in the higher income brackets in the US, I still service as much of my own stuff as possible. And in general commercial stuff is in the same price ranges as the higher end consumer stuff.
by SilverElfin | 2025-10-29 15:46:36+00:00
There’s something really creepy about these toilet scanning gadgets like this and the other one from Kohler. I have privacy concerns about the DNA kits too, like 23andme. What I want instead is privacy respecting cheap diagnostics, primarily traditional ones like blood tests or scans at medical facilities, that I can pay for without a doctor and insurance gatekeeping it.
Show HN: AI Poker SIM – Play Poker Against LLMs
by willsaar | 2025-10-29 15:46:38+00:00
I wanted to explore creating a human-like poker experience with LLM-powered opponents that tell themselves a story about each move, allowing them to bluff and be bluffed. It became an interesting challenge evaluating models and prompting them to behave as entertaining opponents in a cost-effective and responsive manner.
by mcpherrinm | 2025-10-29 15:46:39+00:00
On some major OSes (like Windows and Mac), there’s a “platform verifier” which can handle some of this, including the fetching and sharing of out of band data. It doesn’t have to be tied to a browser.

Linux should probably get one too, but I don’t know who will lead that effort.

In the mean time, browsers aren’t willing to wait on OSes to get their act together, and reasonably so. There’s regulation (and users, especially corporate/government) pushing for post-quantum solutions soon, so folks are trying to find solutions that can actually be deployed.

Browsers have always led in this space, all the way back to Netscape introducing SSL in the first place.
by kyledrake | 2025-10-29 15:46:42+00:00
The article mentions Equinix Metal but if you look it up they are shutting down the service https://docs.equinix.com/metal/hardware/standard-servers

Doesn't make me want to be a Equinix customer when they just randomly shut down critical hosting services.

I'm pretty sure that it's just the post-merger name for Packet which was an incredible provider that even had BYO IP with an anycast community. Really a shame that it went away, it was a solid alternative to both AWS and bare metal and prices were pretty good.

There's a missing middle between ultra expensive/weird cloud and cheap junk servers that I would really love to see get filled.
Ask HN: Duolingo for Personal Finance" with AI-driven gamified challenges
by srikasibotla | 2025-10-29 15:47:06+00:00
Most personal finance apps just track what you spend — and that’s usually where the story ends. People (myself included!) install them, check for a few weeks, and then stop using them once the novelty wears off.

I’m exploring a different approach — kind of like a “Duolingo for Personal Finance” — where money management becomes a series of personalized, motivating challenges that help you build lasting financial habits.

For example, if you tend to spend a lot on takeout, the app might create a “5-day no takeout” challenge — and if you stick with it, you not only save money but also earn small cashback rewards.

The goal is to make improving your finances feel fun, achievable, and habit-forming, not like homework. We use your spending data to tailor challenges securely and privately.

I’ve been working on the MVP for about a month and have made strong progress building core features and validating the approach. My aim isn’t just to track finances — that’s boring — it’s to help people build real, lasting habits around spending and saving.

I’d love some honest feedback from this community:

Would something like this keep you engaged long-term?

Do you find the idea of “financial challenges” motivating?

What kinds of incentives or feedback loops would make it valuable?

Do you ever feel that paying credit card annual fees or chasing reward points is really worth it?

If you could get smarter recommendations or challenges based on your actual spending behavior, would you find that useful?

I’m in the early validation phase, so all feedback — critical or supportive — is hugely appreciated.
by actionfromafar | 2025-10-29 15:47:34+00:00
That accelerator is amazing, thanks for sharing. It upgrades the A500, released in 1989* to be faster than the A1200, released in 1992. The design is "time period correct" too, it doesn't do anything that couldn't have been done back then.

But... how is that possible? The Amiga 1200 has a 32 bit wide bus and is also 14MHz?! Commodore did the stupid thing again and didn't put any fast-RAM on the machine.

* The Amiga 500 is basically a cost optimized Amiga 1000, released in 1985.
by cool_man_bob | 2025-10-29 15:47:40+00:00
> In our lifetimes, we may see fully realistic virtual reality, abundant fusion power, cognitive enhancement through brain augmentation, mind uploading, relativistic space travel, unlimited personalized entertainment, full control over our genomes, ultra-luxurious hypersonic air travel, and extremely pleasurable drugs that carry no major side effects.

Promised before. It was a lie then, it will be a lie now.

Seriously though is this sort of stuff just nostalgia bait for people who were naive enough to believe it the last time?
by evanelias | 2025-10-29 15:48:00+00:00
Without specifics it's hard to respond. But speaking as a software engineer who has been using MySQL for 22 years and learned administrative tasks as-needed over the years, personally I can't relate to anything you are saying here! What part of async replication setup did you find painful? How does Aurora help with troubleshooting? Why use blue/green for upgrade testing when there are much simpler and less expensive approaches using open source tools?
by jpfromlondon | 2025-10-29 15:48:00+00:00
>Meanwhile I can wander down the street in the US and find better sourced and roasted beans than I could find anywhere in europe.

You must know the place you live very well, I was excited to try coffee in New York when I lived in Manhattan given it was essentially responsible for popularising the current trend in western coffee culture. I had many local coffee snobs directing me to places all over the city and I found only a single shop that I could bear, even then it would've been average to poor in London or Berlin, and worse still in my colleague's native Melbourne.

Blue Bottle was the biggest let down of all, since at the time it was hyped to all hell.
by PeterCorless | 2025-10-29 15:48:11+00:00
Yes, for Redpanda. There's a blog about that:

"The use of fsync is essential for ensuring data consistency and durability in a replicated system. The post highlights the common misconception that replication alone can eliminate the need for fsync and demonstrates that the loss of unsynchronized data on a single node still can cause global data loss in a replicated non-Byzantine system."

However, for all that said, Redpanda is still blazingly fast.

https://www.redpanda.com/blog/why-fsync-is-needed-for-data-s...
by throwforfeds | 2025-10-29 15:48:12+00:00
Yes, but I also know plenty of people that can't afford the loans that they have. I have friends and family that after a decade or more of repayment still owe the same amount they did when they got out of school. Some aren't paying theirs at all. It's going to be a problem, as only a third of borrowers are actually making payments [1], and debt forgiveness isn't going to solve the root of the problem.

Of course we can blame them for taking $60k out for studying something that will never get them a good paying job, but these are 18 year olds. I was lucky in that my parents are immigrants and were like "absolutely not, this is crazy, go to the flagship state school and study science". I paid off my $24k in loans in a couple years. Many didn't take that path.

[1] Bloomberg archive link: https://archive.ph/IBuzw
by FireBeyond | 2025-10-29 15:48:15+00:00
Lucky you, so to speak. Back in the day I had the same one, but it would pass their diagnostics, so they wouldn't repair it, though I could literally make it crash in front of the Genius Bar techs reliably and repeatedly (essentially the same way, by trying to do anything that hit the GPU a certain way - websites, Photoshop). "Sorry, our diagnostic tool says it's not the GPU". At one point I even demanded they do a completely fresh install of the OS. On first login, I fire up Safari, go to a certain site, crash. Restart, go to a different site, crash. "Sorry."
by xnorswap | 2025-10-29 15:48:40+00:00
It's a tricky problem, I'd recommend reading DDIA, it covers this extensively:

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-data-intensiv...

You can generate distributed monotonic number sequences with a Lamport Clock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_timestamp

The wikipedia entry doesn't describe it as well as that book does.

It's not the end of the puzzle for distributed systems, but it gets you a long way there.

See also Vector clocks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_clock

Edit: I've found these slides, which are a good primer for solving the issue, page 70 onwards "logical time":

https://ia904606.us.archive.org/32/items/distributed-systems...
by philistine | 2025-10-29 15:48:48+00:00
I assume it's because of Liquid Glass. It's absolutely undercooked as a design system, but Apple knows which way its bread is buttered. So Liquid Glass on iOS is where it's the least bad, and I switched there knowing that. It was exactly as I thought: a regression in most places, but still manageable because Apple is laser-focused on the iPhone.

I didn't upgrade my Mac and at this point I'm wondering if I'll ever be tempted to update until I see what they do with macOS 27.
by r_singh | 2025-10-29 15:48:48+00:00
With peering bandwidth being freely distributed to ISPs and consumers being fed media and subsidised services up until their necks makes the counter argument smell of narrative control rather than technical or financial constraints

But as I’m growing older I’m learning that the tech industry is mostly politically driven and relies on truth obfuscation as explained by Peter Thiel rather than real empowerment

It’s facilitating accumulation of control and power at an unparalleled pace. If anything it’s proving to be more unjust than the feudal systems it promises to replace.
by zozbot234 | 2025-10-29 15:49:01+00:00
Tracing GC involves either a big performance penalty or a big memory footprint penalty compared to the ownership-based memory management in a language like Rust.

The pervasive use of reference counting that you find in languages like Swift is worse on throughput than typical GC, but can often avoid the memory overhead of GC due to deterministic destruction and typically gives you better worst-case latency, so there isn't a single winner between ARC and GC.
by jaimebuelta | 2025-10-29 15:49:22+00:00
I may be reading a bit extra, but my main take on this is: "in your app, you probably already have PostgreSQL. You don't need to set up an extra piece of infrastructure to cover your extra use case, just reuse the tool you already have"

It's very common to start adding more and more infra for use cases that, while technically can be better cover with new stuff, it can be served by already existing infrastructure, at least until you have proof that you need to grow it.
by qwertox | 2025-10-29 15:49:30+00:00
> Our recent analysis found over 50 times more malware from internet-sideloaded sources than on apps available through Google Play.

Maybe they could make non-Google-Play-Store installed apps become installable only if the device owner toggles a switch which enables doing this risky thing?

Maybe some toggle in the developer options? And make the developer options accessible only if a user taps several times on the Android version label in the settings?

And show a message after every reboot that both of these settings are enabled, as a warning?
by TrackerFF | 2025-10-29 15:49:38+00:00
If/when we come to the level of artificial super-intelligence that no humans need to work, said AI would surely be smart enough to replace all human tasks?

At which point, what will be the "moat" between the haves and have nots?

Ideally this sort of AI would completely flatten the inequality curve, because whatever edge you would have, the AI would equalize that for those at a disadvantage. Given that the AI is equally available for everyone.

This alone, brings me to believe that when we get there, there will be some built-in safety mechanism to preserve power for those that are powerful. Sorry if I'm being a bit too general with this discussion, but if we're going to face a scenario where AI becomes too powerful, obviously all humans will/should feel the effect.
by voidmain0001 | 2025-10-29 15:49:49+00:00
NPR Planet Money has a podcast from last week speaking about hedge funds buying US treasuries. They touch on the chaos that can come from hedge funds buying treasuries and suggest that hedge funds might be lumped into the too big to fail group.

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/10/nx-s1-5565181/trilemma-treasu...
by TimorousBestie | 2025-10-29 15:50:09+00:00
I predict that within the next decade the United States will cede control of Taiwan, either implicitly or explicitly, to the PRC, which is Zvi’s nightmare scenario:

> The biggest mistake America could make would be to effectively give up Taiwan, which would be catastrophic on many levels including that Taiwan contains TSMC. I am assuming we are not so foolish as to seriously consider doing this, still I note it.

I hypothesize (with no direct evidence) that the US is no longer sufficiently in advance of China in military capacity to make holding Taiwan with “hard power” feasible, even in the short term.

The US over the past decade decided to take almost all of its “soft power” behind the proverbial shed and burn it.

So whither the power to maintain Taiwan as a strategic ally? I would prefer it if the nightmare scenario did not come to pass, but no force seems adequate to stop it. I believe it’s likely that whoever is actually running foreign policy (“plenary—“ Miller? who knows) for the Trump administration is considering it.
by jpfromlondon | 2025-10-29 15:50:21+00:00
it's stochastic, our tastes grow as we do, a stale mars bar is sufficient for a child, where a small square of 80+% dark single origin might be the evolution of that taste over thirty more years.

I was raised a snob by chefs, my snobbery extends to all areas of my life in the hope that I might find reason enough to stay.
by DengistKhan | 2025-10-29 15:50:32+00:00
> Similarly, some people always think that the current president will crown himself a king and the Other Party will never ever be able to get into power.

As far as I know, this is the first time a president has completely disregarded civility, declared marshall law under false pretenses (not false alarm, specifically false pretenses), talked about crowning himself king, and various forms of rigging future elections.

So the fact that some people (allegedly) thought Clinton/Bush/Obama/Biden would crown themselves is pretty irrelevant.
by deadbabe | 2025-10-29 15:50:38+00:00
40s have very little experience with tech? Those were the people who practically invented tech as we know it today. Most AI researchers are in their 40s and 50s, and have been experimenting with machine learning and AI for the past decades.

I think your comment is just very ageist. You stereotype everyone who is middle age and above as barely lucid nursing home seniors.

Ironically I would say it is young 20 somethings and below who have no clue how a computer or software even works. Just a magic sheet of glass or black box that spits out content and answers, and sometimes takes pictures and video.
by wartywhoa23 | 2025-10-29 15:50:48+00:00
Being absolutely no expert in control theory, I implemented a PID-controlled segway in Algodoo physics sandbox a long time ago without any linearization, simply adjusting the coefficients by eye: http://www.algodoo.com/algobox/details.php?id=156819

I wonder how much of an improvement would the linearization yield in this case, given that it only works for small angles (which I imply from "see how to linearize and discretize it for small angles" in the article), and I guess that for large angles there won't be enough wheel grip anyway if torque would suffice, even with linearized control.

Well, it's a nice occasion to revisit an old project and try, then.
by mberger | 2025-10-29 15:50:49+00:00
Can you include more prices? It would give me an idea of the cost even if it is in USD. What i found most annoying about my latest search is that it is hard to find something not named raspberry or Arduino for a reasonable price. I was looking for a simple gigabit board with usb 3 to attach a removable drive to. The only one i found was raspberry pi orange 3B . Nobody else seemed to have gigabit nic with usb 3.
by dangus | 2025-10-29 15:50:52+00:00
The article asserts that as wealth has increased, so has spending on social programs.

I think what isn’t said here is that there was a lot of blood involved in getting weekends and 8 hour workdays. Labor strikes used to be violent, and social programs are pitchfork insurance for the global elite.

If the owners of capital control all means of production, all automated, they will control literal robot armies - we already see this developing with drones and the like.

It’s entirely possible that the global elite succeeds in fighting off the underclass and their reality looks a lot more like Elysium where the owners of capital do not have to worry about the angry masses reaching them.
by Sol- | 2025-10-29 15:51:41+00:00
I do like that they notice the fact that automation and plummeting wages do not automatically mean immiseration for the population. I've read so many uninformed online discussions along the lines of "If no one has jobs anymore, who will buy their products" where people do not even briefly stop to think that automated jobs will most likely also depress prices of many goods and services.

I do not know whether the outcome will be good or not, but it's good to recognize that wealth can increase even in the face of widespread automation.
by ProllyInfamous | 2025-10-29 15:51:48+00:00
I am in no way attacking your Smart Texas Friends. Help me understand your question and I'll try to answer (better).

I graduated summa cum laude from a public Texas high school, attended college on a full-tuition scholarship, attended a Texas medical school for one year, only, and then left Texas permanently, about a decade ago.

But I will always identify as a Native Smart Texan™, friend.

I moved to a then-less_conservative state, which is now solidly red... so probably moving again, within a few years, specifically to a more moderate, but rural state.

If we want to really discuss "unfair" can we talk about Texas' recent gerrymandering?!
by FuriouslyAdrift | 2025-10-29 15:52:07+00:00
Asymmetry of power creates rulers and the ruled. Widespread availability of firearms helped to partly balance out one aspect (monopoly on violence) and the wide availability of personal computers plus the Internet balanced out another (monopoly on information). Only part left is the control of resources (food, housing, etc.).

AI is destabilizing the current balance of knowledge/information which creates the high potential for violence.
by chemotaxis | 2025-10-29 15:52:20+00:00
Perhaps you do, but I think this misses the point. For-profit writing is the most successful use case for LLMs today. A significant proportion of all the docs I see at work reek of LLMs. A fair amount of articles you read in the media are written by LLMs. Lawyers use it for legal briefs (sometimes with comical results). Doctors use it for patient notes.

Basically, a significant portion of the population doesn't like writing or isn't good at it and really wants a "get it done" button. I might not love it, but the market is there.

So Grammarly is addressing a very real need. Further, it's really the only way for them to stay relevant, because you're getting AI editing / writing features in Gmail, Docs, Office 365, etc.