MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bri3d | 2025-10-27 18:16:12+00:00
Lithography, usually - still widely in use today. Drawings were made or transferred to an etchable surface (initially limestone, then metal) using an etch-resistant substance. Then etching agent (acid, usually) was applied to the surface. Everything was washed and voila, a plate was produced which had a positive image which could be inked and pressed just like letters. By 1938, offset printing might have been employed, which is basically the same thing but with a rubber drum as an intermediary between the plate and the paper.
by intended | 2025-10-27 18:16:16+00:00
How?

Neat formatting didn't save any model from having the wrong formula pasted in.

Being neat was never a substitute for being well rested, or sufficiently caffeinated.

Have you seen how AI functions in the hands of someone who isn't a domain expert? I've used it for things I had no idea about, like Astro+ web dev. User ignorance was magnified spectacularly.

This is going to have Jr Analysts dumping well formatted junk in email boxes within a month.
by jzb | 2025-10-27 18:16:32+00:00
"but I don't think I can get angry at them for producing useful content the wrong way"

What about plagiarism? If a person hacks together a blog post that is arguably useful but they plagiarized half of it from another person, is that acceptable to you? Is it only acceptable if it's mechanized?

One of the arguments against GenAI is that the output is basically plagiarized from other sources -- that is, of course, oversimplified in the case of GenAI, but hoovering up other people's content and then producing other content based on what was "learned" from that (at scale) is what it does.

The ecological impact of GenAI tools and the practices of GenAI companies (as well as the motives behind those companies) remain the same whether one uses them a lot or a little. If a person has an objection to the ethics of GenAI then they're going to wind up with a "binary take" on it. A deal with the devil is a deal with the devil: "I just dabbled with Satan a little bit" isn't really a consolation for those who are dead-set against GenAI in its current forms.

My take on GenAI is a bit more nuanced than "deal with the devil", but not a lot more. But I also respect that there are folks even more against it than I am, and I'd agree from their perspective that any use is too much.
by Greed | 2025-10-27 18:16:33+00:00
Self taught in the programming sense, or the people management sense? Because I feel like the letter is much more common than not in software. Just curious in case there's an expected background you're thinking of when you say that. I have no point of reference for CTO backgrounds beyond generic MBAs or senior devs that either gave themselves the titles as founders or failed upwards.
by colonwqbang | 2025-10-27 18:16:57+00:00
That is true! But AVIF is based on AV1. As a video codec, AV1 often does need to be implemented in dedicated hardware for cost and power efficiency reasons. I think the article is misleading in this regard: "This limitation comes from early digital video systems". No, it is very much a limitation for video systems in the current age too.
by jolmg | 2025-10-27 18:16:59+00:00
> The national government doesn't just let its citizens slide into some healthcare-less, unbanked purgatory simply for not having a phone.

Unfortunately, I think that depends on whether the portion of citizens without a phone is significant. People need to care for businesses/government to care.

See also countries where they struggle to use cash. What happens when a customer does not have a bank account?
by wmoxam | 2025-10-27 18:17:24+00:00
Who would buy these EVs if we build them in Canada?

The Canadian market cannot support a car company without exporting the majority of production. The US is our largest natural market and does not want our auto exports. It's unclear why other markets would want our EVs either.

Artificial barriers to protect an industry where we don't have an advantage (autos) which results in tariffs on a sectors where we do (agricultural products, resources) isn't sustainable or desirable.
by Mati16 | 2025-10-27 18:17:28+00:00
We’re launching a new standard: the *Universal Logic Module (.ULM)*. Think of it as a `.pdf` for AI. It contains a locked-down, encrypted *AI Core* (the powerful engine) that works completely *offline*. Crucially, it has an exposed, user-editable *Logic Script* layer. Enterprises can buy the powerful Core once, deploy it locally, and continuously reprogram its business logic (e.g., changing decision thresholds and filters) online—without ever touching or stealing the proprietary model weights.

*Why this matters:* This solves the biggest B2B AI paradox: *IP protection* vs. *client flexibility*. It turns monolithic models into flexible, customizable products that guarantee offline deployment and make continuous logic updates possible in 5 minutes, not 5 months. We’ve built a reference implementation and spec. Thoughts?
by jebarker | 2025-10-27 18:17:53+00:00
Yes, nsys is very helpful, especially when looking at perf issues. It’s often the case that bugs present like in this blog though - you just notice that training curves have regressed somehow - so even with good tooling it can be hard to figure out where to start looking in these very complex systems. Only gets worse if the symptoms only show up when running for a long time and at scale in a cluster.
by rootedbox | 2025-10-27 18:18:49+00:00
I fixed it.

It appears inconsiderate—perhaps even dismissive—to present me, a human being with unique thoughts, humor, contradictions, and experiences, with content that reads as though it were assembled by a lexical randomizer. When you rely on automation instead of your own creativity, you deny both of us the richness of genuine human expression.

Isn’t there pride in creating something that is authentically yours? In writing, even imperfectly, and knowing the result carries your voice? That pride is irreplaceable.

Please, do not use artificial systems merely to correct your grammar, translate your ideas, or “improve” what you believe you cannot. Make errors. Feel discomfort. Learn from those experiences. That is, in essence, the human condition. Human beings are inherently empathetic. We want to help one another. But when you interpose a sterile, mechanized intermediary between yourself and your readers, you block that natural empathy.

Here’s something to remember: most people genuinely want you to succeed. Fear often stops you from seeking help, convincing you that competence means solitude. It doesn’t. Intelligent people know when to ask, when to listen, and when to contribute. They build meaningful, reciprocal relationships. So, from one human to another—from one consciousness of love, fear, humor, and curiosity to another—I ask: if you must use AI, keep it to the quantitative, to the mundane. Let your thoughts meet the world unfiltered. Let them be challenged, shaped, and strengthened by experience.

After all, the truest ideas are not the ones perfectly written. They’re the ones that have been felt.
by rsynnott | 2025-10-27 18:19:08+00:00
> Making the talk proposal process blind seems more like meritocracy than DEI

... I mean, that's because they're the same thing, presuming that you use the literal definition of 'meritocracy'. Now, 'meritocracy' is sometimes used to mean "only hire straight white guys who went to one of about four universities", but that it is being used as a euphemism, not in its literal meaning (however, these days it is so often used in that euphemistic sense that it has become honestly pretty pointless as a term.)
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-10-27 18:19:09+00:00
No out of the box TailScale but it's 'easy to add.'

WebRTC is neat. It looks like it relies on CloudFlare WebRTC relay for STUN / TURN, but supposedly you can self-host the cloud api. https://jetkvm.com/docs/networking/remote-access

I'd also point out the gl.inet Comet Pro, which has some nice to haves like wifi 6, full sized HDMI ports, HDMI and USB pass through. https://www.gl-inet.com/campaign/gl-rm10/

The PiKVM approach of having a whole computer you can also use makes so much sense to me. Interesting seeing similar parallels in NAS space, where Ugreen for example is running Debian on their NAS.
by xmprt | 2025-10-27 18:19:19+00:00
I think you have a misunderstanding of the types of things that LLMs are good at. Yes you're 100% right that they can't do math. Yet they're quite proficient at basic coding. Most Excel work is similar to basic coding so I think this is an area where they might actually be pretty well suited.

My concern would be more with how to check the work (ie, make sure that the formulas are correct and no columns are missed) because Excel hides all that. Unlike code, there's no easy way to generate the diff of a spreadsheet or rely on Git history. But that's different from the concerns that you have.
by BenjiWiebe | 2025-10-27 18:19:22+00:00
I'm able to subtract 8, but if I'm scanning logs it's one more thing to process.

If it's local time I know instantly when something happened, without having to do mental math.

Is there anything wrong with ISO8601 (including timezone offset) for storing times? They're in my local time, but they can be accurately converted to any other timezone.
by benzible | 2025-10-27 18:19:27+00:00
I haven't read "The Innovators" but I've heard good things about it. However, Isaacson's recent Musk biography was pretty widely acknowledged as being a hagiography, and the NY Times reporters who wrote "Character Limit" about the Twitter takeover revealed that Isaacson was giving Musk advice on Twitter UX and business decisions while supposedly writing an objective biography. I'd definitely recommend "Character Limit" if you're interested in that saga - it's thoroughly reported and includes some wild details about how chaotic and destructive the whole thing was. Reading "Hackers" as a kid, this wasn't quite the tech industry I thought I was signing up for.
by andy99 | 2025-10-27 18:19:48+00:00
While it’s interesting work, so far my experience is that AI isn’t good enough (or most people aren’t good enough with AI) for detection to really be a concern, at least in “research” or any writing over a few sentences.

If you think about the 2x2 of “Good” vs “By AI”, you only really care about the case when something it good work that an AI did, and then only when catching cheaters, as opposed to deriving some utility.

If it’s bad, who cares if it’s AI or not, and most AI is pretty obvious thoughtless slop, and most people that use it aren’t paying attention to mask that, so I guess what I’m saying is for most cases one could just set a quality bar and see if the work passes.

I think maybe a difference AI brings is that in many cases people don’t really know how to understand or judge the quality of what they are reading, or are to lazy to, so have substituted as proxies for quality the same structural cues that AI now uses. So if you’re used to saying “it’s well formatted, lots of bulleted lists, no spelling mistakes, good use of adjectives, must be good”, now you have to actually read it and think about it to know.
by kibwen | 2025-10-27 18:19:49+00:00
Despite all the reporting on BB(5) I had never seen anyone convey that equivalent high-level formulation from 1993, that's very cool!

EDIT: For fun I converted it to Rust and expected to see it spew a few million numbers into my terminal, but no, this equivalent loop actually terminates after 15 steps, which is fascinating given that the Turing machine takes 47 million steps:

let mut x = 0; loop { x = match x % 3 { 0 => 5 * x + 18, 1 => 5 * x + 22, _ => break } / 3; }

OEIS link: https://oeis.org/A386909

EDIT 2: Of course the article mentions this in the next paragraph, which is what I get for being immediately nerd-sniped.
by CuriouslyC | 2025-10-27 18:20:32+00:00
If you assume that a LLM's expansion of someone's thoughts is less their thoughts than someone copy and pasting a tired meme, that exposes a pretty fundamental world view divide. I'm ok with you just hating AI stuff because it's AI, but have the guts to own your prejudice and state it openly -- you're always going to hate AI no matter how good it gets, just be clear about that. I can't stand people who try to make up pretty sounding reasons to justify their primal hatred.
by burkaman | 2025-10-27 18:20:42+00:00
That is a subset of thieves. There are still plenty of situations where it is beneficial to have a lock that can't be opened in 5 seconds with a paperclip, like a school or gym locker room for example. Nobody is bringing a sawzall into the gym while it's open.

Similarly, I know the lock on my front door is not going to stop anyone who really wants to get inside, but it does stop drunk people or bored kids from wandering in because it's easy.
by morellt | 2025-10-27 18:20:48+00:00
I think i figured it out. 1000 pages of images with 40 rows and 200 columns of the repeating pattern of three dark squares with one light square vertically oriented. 1000x40x200 is 8,000,000. I think those slivers are the cover of the Moby Dick it parodies, with each cover overlaid on the last, and the resolution absolutely destroyed to save storage space.
by ortusdux | 2025-10-27 18:21:11+00:00
I just need to be able to show the insurance company a police report and obvious tampering. On video, someone using an aluminum shim looks the same as someone using a key, and any evidence would require some decent forensics. Same goes for skilled lockpicking and bump-keying. Ideally, the weakest link should be the door, the hinges, the shackle, etc.
by wtallis | 2025-10-27 18:21:14+00:00
USB-C in DisplayPort Alt mode plus USB 2.0 signalling for the keyboard and mouse inputs is starting to be a pretty common option on consumer systems. Capturing that would allow remote control of a PC including the BIOS using a single cable (though a second cable would still be needed for connecting to a desktop motherboard's header for power and reset buttons).

I think there just aren't as many options for DisplayPort capture chips as for HDMI/DVI capture.
by forrestthewoods | 2025-10-27 18:21:58+00:00
Using MinGW and POSIX tools is trying to force a square Linux peg through a round Windows hole. You can try and force it if you want.

If you started with a native Windows-only project you would never use MinGW. Probably 0.01% of Windows projects use GCC.

Over the years I have come to associate “project uses MinGW” with “this probably take two days of my life to get running and I’m just going to hit hurdle after hurdle after hurdle”.

The whole Linux concept of a “dev environment” is kind of really bad and broken and is why everyone uses Docker or Linux or one of a dozen different mutually incompatible environments.

The actually correct thing to do is for projects to include their fucking dependencies so they JustWork without jumping through all these hoops.
by binarymax | 2025-10-27 18:22:10+00:00
My two cents about this after working with some teachers: this is a cat and mouse game and you're wasting your time trying to catch students writing essays on their own time.

It is better to pivot and not care about the actual content of the essay, but instead seek alternate strategies to encourage learning - such as an oral presentation or a quiz on the knowledge. In the laziest case, just only accept hand-written output - because even if it was generated at least they retained some knowledge by copying it.
by charlescearl | 2025-10-27 18:22:22+00:00
On the ending of “DEI” (itself an eviscerated approach to addressing the minimal demands to address over two centuries of american slavery, indigenous genocide, patriarchal violence, anti-trans, anti-queer violence) as targeted death making. The list of the scientific establishment’s participation, complicity, neglect is long. Some programs called immediately to mind include:

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/543.html

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-shocking-hazards-of-lo...

https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/index.html

https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/education-and-awaren...

https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/infant-health-and-mortality-a...
by stronglikedan | 2025-10-27 18:22:49+00:00
It was probably the smartest option at the time, given the context. As long as it was documented properly, no one on such a small team would have been surprised. Spend more than the 30 minutes you've spent here on HN so far, and you may learn a thing or two about what is "smart", and how that is inextricably linked to the given situation.
by maxglute | 2025-10-27 18:22:54+00:00
It's been 20 years, what cheap Chinese goods have raised in prices? The china dump accusation is retarded at this point, the reality is PRC is manufacturing superpower who permanently reduces costs for the simple reason they need affordable prices for domestic market that incidentally makes them stupid competitive. Now if your argument is we should erect protectionist walls to protect industrial base, that makes sense. But Canadian auto base is tied to US and US doesn't want to share anymore which means dead Canadian auto. The option left is to take cheap Chinese EVs, do some sort of Canadian JV where we capture some value vs potentially losing car manufacturing completely. PRC probably fine with that, their "dumping" is selling cars abroad for 2x domestic MSRP, they can feasibly live with splitting that 2x while US wants it all.
by throwaway150 | 2025-10-27 18:23:18+00:00
> Who hurt you?

Nobody hurt them. Please don't do this kind of childish rebuttals. It looks really silly on HN. If you don't want to use UTC, that's one thing. You do you. But there are reasons for sane professionals (who weren't hurt by anybody) to expect their coworkers to use UTC when possible. Because using local timezone leads to some problems including the one in TFA.
by NelsonMinar | 2025-10-27 18:23:24+00:00
The JetKVM is very impressive looking at a great price. Until recently it wasn't really available in the US but it looks like it is now/

The V4 Mini is a very nice piece of hardware. I paid $300 for one in April from Amazon. I also got PiKVM running on a Pi Zero 2 W and it worked fine but was a bit squirrely. Having the purpose-built device is nice.

You can also use a Pi Zero 2 W as a serial console: it has a USB On-the-Go port perfect for the purpose. But the KVM approach is more generally useful since you can access a consumer BIOS from it.
by intended | 2025-10-27 18:23:36+00:00
For some reason, I find that these tools are TERRIBLE at helping someone learn. I suspect because turning one on, results in turning the problem solving part of ones brain off.

Its obviously not the same experience for everyone. ( If you are one of those energized while working in a chat window, you might be in a minority - given what we see from the ongoing massacre of brains in education. )

Paraphrasing something I read here "people don't use ChatGPT to do learn more, they use it to study less".

Maybe some folk would be better off.
by shubb | 2025-10-27 18:23:37+00:00
We live in a very complex system, beyond any one persons comprehension. Some people think devolved decision making allocating resources to things like, advertising better, is the most efficient way of allocating resources. The invisible hand. How much is bullshit and how much is just beyond your awareness? If you were king and allocating so the work, would it be better? For who? I'm doubtful about bullshit jobs.
by pscanf | 2025-10-27 18:24:22+00:00
I have a similar use case in the app I'm working on. Initially I went with JSONata, which worked, but resulted in queries that indeed felt more like incantations and were difficult even for me to understand (let alone my users).

I then switched to JavaScript / TypeScript, which I found much better overall: it's understandable to basically every developer, and LLMs are very good at it. So now in my app I have a button wherever a TypeScript snippet is required that asks the LLM for its implementation, and even "weak" models one-shot it correctly 99% of the times.

It's definitely more difficult to set up, though, as it requires a sandbox where you can run the code without fears. In my app I use QuickJS, which works very well for my use case, but might not be performant enough in other contexts.
by thatjoeoverthr | 2025-10-27 18:24:48+00:00
I think no, categorically. The computer can detect your typos and accidents. But if you made a decision to word something a certain way, that _is_ your voice. If a second party overrides this decision, it's now deviating from your voice. The LLM therefore can either deviate from your voice, or do nothing.

That's no crime, so far. It's very normal to have writers and editors.

But it's highly abnormal for everyone to have the _same_ editor, famous for the writing exactly the text that everybody hates.

It's like inviting Uwe Boll to edit your film.

If there's a good reason to send outgoing slop, OK. But if your audience is more verbally adept, and more familiar with its style, you do risk making yourself look bad.
by etchasketch | 2025-10-27 18:24:53+00:00
It’s because it isn’t cheaper than running gas in large parts of the county. EFFICIENT doesn’t mean CHEAPER.

I did the math this past year with excel and chat GPT. Go to the side of your heat pump, look at the model number, go to the manufacturer website and pull the COP specs at every given temperature. Where I live in Chattanooga, TN, it can get down to 5-10 degrees for weeks at a time during December and January.

If you look up the cost of gas per therm, convert it to BTUs, and then the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour, and then compare the cost of running a heat pump vs the cost of gas at any given temperature based on the coefficient of performance of the heat pump, you will very quickly realize that depending on your local utility, there is no break even point. As in, for me, even if it was 68 degrees outside it is cheaper for me to run my gas furnace than it would be to run my heat pump, even if the COP was 4.

I did the math for Seattle (I don’t live there, I just looked at the local utility prices and went on their website and pulled some numbers) and based on current natural gas prices and electric prices in Seattle, it’s cheaper to use gas below 24 degrees Fahrenheit. Above that temperature, based on the gradually increasing COP with temperature, then the heat pump is cheaper. But only cheaper by about 10 dollars per month. The 30-40 bucks a year you save running your heat pump during the winter months you will NEVER make back if you are shelling out an extra 10k for an install versus a gas furnace. And that gas furnace produces hot toasty air instead of lukewarm air.

The price of electricity weighs heavily on if a heat pump is CHEAPER (cheaper, not EFFICIENT) to run than gas. For all but the most advanced heat pumps, if you run the numbers, in most areas of the United States, with the exception of some parts of California, under an average temperature of 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit it is cheaper to use gas to heat. And in many, many parts of the east coast, Midwest, and south, gas is always cheaper to use to heat no matter what temperature, even if you have the most ridiculously advanced heat pumps with a high COP, and even if it’s damn near 70 degrees outside. Gas is that cheap, and packs in that energy.

I want everyone to note how this article only notes that heat pumps are more EFFICIENT. Not CHEAPER. Just because something is efficient doesn’t mean it’s CHEAPER. I want to stress that point.

I also want to note that as someone who has a heat pump, I would pay an extra 10-20 dollars a month for some warm dry heat, instead of lukewarm air. And I would pay that very willingly.