MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by linguae | 2025-10-25 03:04:20+00:00
I remember trying out Plan 9 a few years ago. I like its underpinnings; I like how the designers pushed the Unix notion of "everything is a file" to its limits, with various services being presented to the operating system as file servers implemented using a protocol named 9P. It's a cool research operating system with a lot of very interesting ideas, but ultimately it's not my daily driver due to a lack of hardware and software support, though I am working on a research project (but for conventional *nix operating systems) that takes advantage of 9P.

Carmack's description of the rio GUI is apt; rio is heavily based on Xerox PARC's Cedar environment from the mid-1980s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_dt7NG38V4). I had a hard time getting used to rio, though eventually I learned it. I even purchased an old Sun three-button mouse (with no click-wheel) since Plan 9 didn't like my click-wheel mouse. rio does not adopt a lot of the conventions that were introduced by the Apple Lisa, Apple Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows, resulting in a completely foreign experience for most new Plan 9 users. There is a misconception that Apple and Microsoft simply stole the idea of GUIs from Xerox PARC without further innovating on it. This misconception is false; the Apple Lisa and the Apple Macintosh introduced many GUI conventions that were not present in Xerox PARC's GUIs (this video comparing the Apple Lisa to the Xerox Star highlights the differences: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBiWtJJN5zk), and Windows introduced additional innovations. Back to Plan 9, the result is a GUI that has many conventions that were explored by Xerox PARC but were not adopted by the Mac or Windows, such as mouse chording (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_chording). Hence, there's a learning curve for those accustomed to conventional GUIs.

Even so, the ideas behind rio seem to do a good job with exploiting Plan 9's architecture and showing how it could support a more tools-oriented design. Moreover, it was borrowed from Xerox PARC's Cedar. It would have been quite a research effort to create a Mac- or Windows-like GUI for Plan 9 that made full advantage of Plan 9's "everything is a file" architecture. Merely implementing a Mac- or Windows-like GUI to Plan 9 might not have taken full advantage of Plan 9's architecture, which I think is the key difference between Plan 9 versus other operating systems.

Perhaps in some alternate universe where Apple and AT&T merged in the 1990s and Apple built their successor to the classic Mac OS on top of Plan 9 with Apple people like Larry Tesler, Bruce Tognazzini, and Alan Kay joining forces with Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, and Rob Pike....come to think of it, it's quite interesting to think about that possibility, though I don't think Apple would have made its post-1997 comeback without Steve Jobs, no matter how good "Mac OS Plan 9" would've been.
by karlitooo | 2025-10-25 03:04:32+00:00
I attended Montessori in the 80s up to high school level and was part of a "gifted" group who went on to a public school a couple of years younger than typical. I was completely unprepared for student bullying in HS and the generally harsh attitudes of teachers. Also my learning style had to completely change, and I did not adapt well.

My Montessori persona was to be competitive about "finishing my weeks work first" usually on Monday or Tuesday, so I could enjoy working with other students on their work lists, and getting a crack at the highschool algebra book when the teacher would let our group at it. I had some strengths in English, math and computing, but weaknesses in foreign language and science where there were fewer opportunities for social learning. Obviously there were no opportunities for that in HS.

In addition to terrible grades, the transition to public school completely destroyed my social confidence and I had to stop playing sports due to my small stature. My dad noted this year (in my 40s now) later that I was unrecognisable after just a few months but he lost the argument to pull me out. It wasn't until my late 20s that I started to find my original confidence.
by Brajeshwar | 2025-10-25 03:04:48+00:00
I’ve designed interfaces that have stood the test of time and the criticality of their use. I’ve created before there were design systems/tokens, the bootstraps, and the tailwinds. They are used spanning decades in clinics, hospitals, publishing houses, banking, and by many other MNCs to deploy interesting products.

The current AI and design is in a honeymoon period, focused more on experimentation and functional components, using working design patterns, philosophies, templates, and components in abundance. I trust that it is indeed a good thing to accept “Good Enough Design” and layer in the better and best ones later. Right now, we have good enough designs everywhere.
by bsenftner | 2025-10-25 03:04:55+00:00
Until there is a formal and accepted definitive distinction between intelligence, comprehension, memory, and action all these opinions are just stabs in the dark. We've not defined the scene yet. We currently do not have artificial comprehension. That's what occurs sorta during training. The intelligence everyone claims to see is a pre-calculated idiot savant. If you knew it was all a pre-calculated domino cascade, would you still say it's intelligent?
by Aspos | 2025-10-25 03:05:50+00:00
I would argue that accurate sizing is not that important as labor constitutes the bulk of the cost. My total bill was about $20K and going for 30% less capacity would net about $19K so its easier just to go for the maximum. Calling in an IR imaging drone would certainly cost more than the potential savings from accurate sizing.

Unlike gas furnaces which basically can only do ON or OFF, heat pumps can regulate the heat with much higher granularity.

What certainly calls for innovation is managing the labor costs. In my case installation involved way too many people and way too many visits.
by a-dub | 2025-10-25 03:06:28+00:00
the hardware support was pretty bad. it ran on x86 with only the most basic of hardware with a vga graphics adapter in some basic vesa mode.

it never felt serious, just more like a technology demo. it was also hard to really see the beauty of the 9pfs on a single host... i always assumed it needed to be on some bell labs network with a bunch of other plan9 stuff to really shine.
by westurner | 2025-10-25 03:06:50+00:00
There is no support for writing multiple xattrs in one transaction.

There is no support for writing multiple xattrs and file contents in one transaction.

Journaled filesystems that immediately flush xattrs to the journal do have atomic writes of single xattrs; so you'd need to stuff all data in one xattr value and serialize/deserialize (with e.g JSON, or potentially Arrow IPC with Feather ~mmap'd from xattrs (edit: but getxattr() doesn't support mmap. And xattr storage limits: EXT4: 4K, XFS: 64k, BTRFS: 16K)

Atomicity (database systems) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomicity_(database_systems)
by heavyset_go | 2025-10-25 03:07:32+00:00
It's rough hearing that something similar is still an issue. I had a similar problem[1], like... 10 years ago now, with the original iPad Mini.

Apple support told me they couldn't do anything about it and I was essentially locked out of my own device forever.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26482635
by Eisenstein | 2025-10-25 03:08:49+00:00
He wrote tons of them. I find them great reads.

Here is an archive for anyone interested. I think the most interesting stuff is when accelerated GPUs started becoming available to consumers and he talks about the developments in that area. From what I recall that is in the 1997 - 1998 era.

* https://github.com/oliverbenns/john-carmack-plan

EDIT: I found one...

* https://github.com/oliverbenns/john-carmack-plan/blob/master...
by mycodendral | 2025-10-25 03:10:01+00:00
Asking about the protest as part of an investigation doesn’t imply the protest itself is the crime. If the police ask you about the restaurant you were at last night, it doesn’t mean you’re being targeted for eating dinner. This whole reaction is performative victimhood, like saying ‘Oh, I guess I can’t even go out to eat anymore because of government tyranny.’ That’s absurd.

The FBI’s legal mandate confines it to investigating potential criminal activity. Assuming otherwise without evidence implies they’re operating outside their authority, which would be a serious breach. If that’s what you believe, show proof, it would be front page news.
by godelski | 2025-10-25 03:10:12+00:00
> The docs say "search before asking"...did you do that?

This was a typical response that makes people hate communities.

I cannot stress this enough

Just because the user didn't find it doesn't mean they didn't search

It especially pisses off the noobs, because, frankly, they are noobs! They didn't even know what to search for yet! They're learning. Search is still a hard problem. Get a few words wrong and you'll get nothing of value. Worse, it'll lead you to lots of irrelevant information you don't yet know is irrelevant.

The worst part is when it's claimed it's been discussed and no link is provided. If you know it's been discussed, prove it with a reply with the link, then move on. At worst you have made the issue easier to find. At best the issue isn't actually related and you've gained clarifying context.

But banning is just a silly response that's clearly going to enrage people. Are you building a community to work together or a community to circle jerk?

At least when Linus yells at people he explains to them what the issue is.
by Merad | 2025-10-25 03:11:23+00:00
The heat pump will always produce air that is warmer than the temp in the house, but as the temp outside drops the temp of the air coming out of the vents also drops. So on a very cold day when the house temp is say 70F, the system might only be putting out air that's 75-80F. The air coming out of the vents doesn't really _feel_ warm and it may take an hour or two to raise the temperature in the house when you wake up or get home in the evening.

In my experience at least with relatively modern heat pumps (roughly 2000 and newer) it doesn't matter that much when outside temps are above freezing. But it quickly starts to become noticeable as temps drop into the 20s.
by ChristopherDrum | 2025-10-25 03:12:29+00:00
Author here. I address data portability in a step-by-step process in the blog post. Long story short, it’s too much hassle while still being imperfect. If data sharing is important, it’s not a good choice. If you’re content to build a little spreadsheet that exists solely within the VisiCalc and VisiClone world, then it might suffice. I suspect the average user has higher baseline expectations than VisiCalc can deliver. You need to really try it out yourself (Dan Bricklin has the 80-column DOS version for free on his site) and see what it lacks firsthand.
by fluoridation | 2025-10-25 03:13:15+00:00
>For example, if I asked gamers what the best GPU is, most would say the NVIDIA RTX 5090. Its price-to-performance ratio is terrible, but it still holds the crown.

Not for me. My 3090 can already max out my UPS. Being gifted a 5090 would be a terrible inconvenience for me. What you mean is that it's the fastest gaming GPU. Is that what "best" means? Something is the best in its product category if it tops the chart on the primary property of that category that applies to some abstract consumer? An abstract gamer with no other constraints would just want the fastest GPU, so the fastest one is the best? Fine. But then I'm forced to ask, where do categories begin and end? The 5090 is the best gaming GPU, but it's not the best GPU. Macs may be the best laptops (I don't know, but I'll grant it), but they're not the best PCs, or the best gaming laptops. Or, if I'm feeling cheeky, not the best laptops for under $(price of a Mac - 100).

>If you have a laptop sitting on a table and you start using it, there’s nothing in the experience that tells you what it costs.

I didn't realize arguing like this was possible. So if the laptop instead of being borrowed was yours, but if you ever type and send an email with "テスト" on the subject and body it would explode, but you never send that email (because you don't speak Japanese), that's a perfectly fine laptop, right? I mean, it's the same thing; in one instance the price is irrelevant to you (because you didn't pay it), and in the other the little lithium bomb is irrelevant to you (because you can't ever set it off). So they're both equally good products, at least subjectively.

>build quality, display, battery life, input feel, and so on

Those are the way they are not in small part because of how much they cost. Do you think Dell wouldn't rather make make much higher quality laptops for the same cost and the same price? Yes, you can get a feel for the price of something by using it. Haven't you ever heard someone say "ugh, this feels so cheap"? It's a vague feeling that's difficult to attribute, but it is informed by real experience. Inexpensive products often "feel cheap" and bad to use, while more expensive products don't, or to a lesser degree.
by haiji2025 | 2025-10-25 03:14:53+00:00
Our founder and our users look forward to each upload—seeing the fresh banner and the new game title on the platform is the highlight of the day. Many people, just like our founder, love to play. Our platform is completely ad-free, completely free, and instantly playable with a single click. We don’t use any misleading claims, and we hope you’ll get to know this product.
by bsenftner | 2025-10-25 03:18:38+00:00
Current AIs cannot comprehend on the fly, meaning if they are presented with data outside of their training, the reply generated will be a hallucination interpolated off the training data into unknown output. Yet, a person in possession of comprehension can go beyond their training, on the fly, and that is how humans learn. AI's cannot do that, which is critical.
by EngCanMan | 2025-10-25 03:19:42+00:00
The reality is that this is all solving a problem that people don’t have.

Forced air is a terrible way to heat a building yet thats how most homes are heated, and it is good enough for most people.

If you perfectly size a furnace for the coldest days of the year, it is now oversized for the other 90% of days.

The cheapest way is to install a multi stage heating/cooling system that works on first stage most of the time, and second when it needs to, like having 2 small furnaces. This passes the ‘good enough’ test for the vast majority of homeowners.
by makeitdouble | 2025-10-25 03:21:01+00:00
Average amount of money spent means little in the context of parent's comment (revenue for a US company).

For instance, if you're Netflix, do iOS user bring you more revenue in the US ? What if you're Hertz ? What about Walmart or Costco ? The only factor will be how many of your users are on iOS vs android. It's a different story if you're a gaming company and target whales of course.
by rowanG077 | 2025-10-25 03:21:55+00:00
I see the points you’re making, but I think there are a few misunderstandings in how you’re framing the discussion.

1. "Best" versus "fastest" or "most expensive"

When I said the RTX 5090 is "the best GPU" for gaming, I meant it objectively tops the category on the core property most gamers care about: raw performance. That’s exactly why review sites separate "best overall" from "best value", they are acknowledging that there are multiple ways to judge a product. If you’re defining "best" by convenience or personal constraints, that’s fine, but that’s a subjective criterion, not the same as evaluating intrinsic qualities of the product. Conflating the two muddies this discussion.

2. Thought experiments

The "laptop that explodes if you type a certain email" analogy is clever, but it’s not equivalent to price. Price is an extrinsic property. It doesn’t affect the physical functionality or design of the laptop itself. A latent, never-triggered bug or trap is intrinsic, because it could affect you at any time if the condition arises. By contrast, whether you paid $50 million or $500 for the laptop doesn’t change its display quality, weight, or battery life.

3. "Feels cheap" argument

It’s true that price influences how companies allocate resources, and a higher-priced laptop can often feel better due to higher-quality materials. But that’s a correlation, not an inherent property. You can measure build quality, screen brightness, or input feel directly without knowing the price. Saying "Dell could make a higher-quality laptop for the same price" is exactly my point: price itself is not part of the intrinsic definition of quality, it’s part of the product offering.

I get that you’re making thought experiments and analogies to illustrate points, but many of them subtly shift the definitions or mix subjective preferences with objective qualities. That makes it hard to have a clear discussion about the intrinsic qualities of products versus their price or accessibility. If you keep ignoring this point and try to again shift the discussion I will stop engaging because I don't consider you acting in good faith.
by throw10920 | 2025-10-25 03:23:44+00:00
Yes, of course, I'm not claiming that Steam is some utopic paradise or that GabeN is a saint or anything. Steam has problems too - most notably the huge skins gambling issue that you mention. I'm just specifically saying that out of all of its problems, "rent-seeking" is definitely not one of them.

> The same is true for linux/Windows as well. You could say that windows has the market at work but the point becomes moot.

Yes, there's additional detail that I didn't add - that, unlike Microsoft, which used (and continues to use) anticompetitive tactics like paying PC manufacturers to include Windows as the default option, Steam didn't do anything anticompetitive to become the most popular - they were just the best - and they haven't done anything to unfairly leverage their dominant market position. That doesn't strike me as a problem - and my point to the GP was specifically that they're the most popular because they're the best, not because they did scummy backroom deals to get there.

I agree that GOG is probably better. But Steam is "good enough", and modulo the gambling problem, isn't really "bad".
by Stevvo | 2025-10-25 03:24:39+00:00
In every other developed country, driving around school buses is not illegal, and less children are hit by motor vehicles than in the US. This is a damnation of American drivers; there should be no need need for a law forbidding passing school buses because you should be driving safely at appropriate speed. There is no suggestion the Waymo did anything unsafe here, only that it failed to follow the law.
by anon291 | 2025-10-25 03:25:47+00:00
Well no one should get MRIs with contrast for fun. Moreover, doctors regularly use contrast off label.

My dad was in this industry when nsf first came out. We would be dragged along to after hours family things at conferences. Doctors openly said they gave contrast off label at dosages not approved by the FDA for organ systems not approved by the Fda. Even children. I'm sure they had their reasons, but I'm also sure they never disclosed the possibility of nsf and just told parents their kids needed it, because they admitted it.
by rasz | 2025-10-25 03:27:26+00:00
Modern 1541 turbo, like Krills Transwarp, tops out just shy of 20KB/s on unmodified hardware https://csdb.dk/release/?id=214786 with steady 16KB/s in normal use https://www.obliterator918.com/benchmarking-transwarp-the-in... The trick is encoding files in special way to minimize drives CPU load.
by danielmarkbruce | 2025-10-25 03:27:31+00:00
That’s not a flaw in parallelism. The mathematical reality remains that independent operations scale better than sequential ones. Even if we were stuck with current CPU designs, transformers would have won out over RNNs.

Unless you are pushing back on my comment "all kinds" - if so, I meant "all kinds" in the way someone might say "there are all kinds of animals in the forest", it just means "lots of types".
by godelski | 2025-10-25 03:27:51+00:00
There's lots of opinions on what is intelligence but I notice a lot of people do not read much about it. You don't have to agree with others, but there is a reason that a precise and formal definition has been so hard to develop. People offer many simple explanations, yet if it was simple, we'd have the definition. All you end up doing is blocking yourself from learning even more.

I'll also add that a lot of people really binarize things. Although there is not a precise and formal definition, that does not mean there aren't useful ones and ones that are being refined. Progress has been made in not only the last millennia, but the last hundred years, and even the last decade. I'm not sure why so many are quick to be dismissive. The definition of life has issues and people are not so passionate about saying it is just a stab in the dark. Let your passion to criticize something be proportional to your passion to learn about that subject. Complaints are easy, but complaints aren't critiques.

That said, there's a lot of work in animal intelligence and neuroscience that sheds a lot of light on the subject. Especially in primate intelligence. There's so many mysteries here and subtle things that have surprising amounts of depth. It really is worth exploring. Frans de Waal has some fascinating books on Chimps. And hey, part of what is so interesting is that you have to take a deep look at yourself and how others view you. Take for example you reading this text. Bread it down, to atomic units. You'll probably be surprised at how complicated it is. Do you have a parallel process vocalizing my words? Do you have a parallel process spawning responses or quips? What is generating those? What are the biases? Such a simple every thing requires some pretty sophisticated software. If you really think you could write that program I think you're probably fooling yourself. But hey, maybe you're just more intelligent than me (or maybe less, since that too is another way to achieve the same outcome lol).
by wppick | 2025-10-25 03:27:58+00:00
> It has come as a shock to some AI researchers that a large neural net that predicts next words seems to produce a system with general intelligence

When I write prompts, I've stopped thinking of LLMs as just predicting a next word, and instead to think that they are a logical model built up by combining the logic of all the text they've seen. I think of the LLM as knowing that cats don't lay eggs, and when I ask it to finish the sentence "cats lay ..." It won't generate the word eggs even though eggs probably comes after lay frequently
by glxxyz | 2025-10-25 03:28:31+00:00
Yes horizontal loop, 200 metre trench ~2m deep with 6 pipes at the bottom. Took 3 days for a 20 ton excavator to dig and fill in the trench. Maybe I got lucky with the installer but it wasn't eyewatering. Vertical loops do cost a lot more. Repairing the lawn with turf or professional landscaping would have cost more than the install, so I did it myself with a tractor, some spare topsoil, and a few bags of Costco grass seed.
by k310 | 2025-10-25 03:29:54+00:00
I am very interested in how this compares to the "export with Quartz filter" in Apple's Preview app, and will try it.

Many scanned documents that I have seen are a compromise between sharp type and whatever images are in the document, and the text ends up with a gray background.

Some documents have line drawings only, and the b/w filter (threshold) works on most of them. Some need a lightening or darkening step before this works. Needless to say, it's a pain, and a slow one. I am retired and don't have money to burn on expensive software or subscriptions.

Looking forward to a better scanned doc or book experience.