MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by GrumpyGoblin | 2025-10-01 12:45:39+00:00
This is really helpful. Every comment is about immersion, I get it people, but how do you achieve that in the real world. Most of those comments seem to ignore that fact that many people can't move to another country for a couple years and leaving their significant other to get a new one that natively speaks the desired language isn't a great suggestion. I understand those are the best ways to learn, but let me run that by my wife and kids and we'll see how that goes.
by jorangreef | 2025-10-01 12:46:22+00:00
Joran from TigerBeetle!

Without much sweat for general purpose workloads.

But transaction processing tends to have power law contention that kills SQL row locks (cf. Amdahl’s Law).

We put a contention calculator on our homepage to show the theoretical best case limits and they’re lower than one might think: https://tigerbeetle.com/#general-purpose-databases-have-an-o...
by podlp | 2025-10-01 12:46:40+00:00
Are there viable options? I run Asahi on my M1 Air and it performs quite well, but certain software like Android Studio has issues and hiccups. I’d love a decent ultrabook to replace my Air, but I hate Windows and got overwhelmed with reading Reddit forums to know which PCs will and won’t work with Linux. I don’t mind doing some setup, but I’d rather not be disappointed by non-functional or missing drivers for WiFi, Bluetooth, display, etc.
by dangus | 2025-10-01 12:46:55+00:00
In the age of AI it seems wild to blame developers for being “lazy” and needing more resources.

Like, if I were buying a new workstation right now, I’d want to be shelling out $2000 so that I could get something like a Ryzen AI 395+ with 128GB of fast RAM for local AI, or an equivalent Mac Studio.

That’s definitely not because I’m “lazy,” it’s because I can’t run a decent model on a raspberry pi
by eloisius | 2025-10-01 12:47:05+00:00
I also love Gorsky’s pictures! When I first saw his picture of the power turbines in Budapest I thought I must be looking at some ML-colorized daguerreotype, but nope it’s in true color.

I see you’re in Tokyo. If you ever end up in Taipei or if I’m in Tokyo I’d love to talk photography over coffee.
by zadahmed | 2025-10-01 12:47:09+00:00
We’ve been researching hiring workflows and noticed that reference checks are still one of the slowest steps in the process.

Recruiters told us they spend 7–10 days waiting on referees.

Some skip references entirely because of delays.

Others complain that answers are vague, biased, or unreliable.

I’m wondering how HN folks handle this today:

Do you still call references directly?

Do you rely on automated forms or ATS integrations?

Have you ever seen candidates “game” references (e.g., providing friends instead of managers)?

We’re building a tool in this space, but I’m mainly curious about real-world workflows outside of HR tech marketing slides.

Would love to hear your experiences.
by scarface_74 | 2025-10-01 12:47:35+00:00
I used DuoLingo two or three years ago to try to learn Spanish. I knew a little of the basic grammar from high school and some words. By the time I got to lesson 20, I was completely loss. I also got sick of the gamification and just the grind of it. I just stopped.

That and I realized the continuous click buttons got tiresome.

Then, earlier this year my wife and I decided that we wanted to start spending at least a couple of months every year in Costa Rica starting next year and maybe alternate between there and other Spanish speaking countries in us time zones.

This time, I had ChatGPT and a Trello board I put together of concepts and categories of words I wanted to learn based on the CEFR level A1 list. I would create various drills, ask ChatGPT to explain concepts, etc. I became more focused on production - mostly writing. ChatGPT is a good teacher to get through the list of topics of my known gaps.

I even asked it to summarize the most important current event at an A1 level and ask me questions.

As far as speaking, I used Apple’s voice to text and not the better one built into ChatGPT. It’s pretty good with my English native southern twang so I figured any mistranscription in Spanish was caused by my bad pronunciation. The one built into ChatGPT is better. But that’s actually a bad thing when trying to pronuncie words correctly.

After a few months of ChatGPT, I did recently go vac to DuoLingo. I do the first exercise in a unit, then see if I can skip the rest (which it does let you do). If I don’t know vocabulary or a concept, I go back to ChatGPT for drills.

Being able to listen in Spanish in real time at an A1 level is the next step. I can use ChatGPT for that first and then watching kids tv shows in Spanish
by bzzzt | 2025-10-01 12:47:41+00:00
There's plenty of choice in the Netherlands just for small electric cars: Honda E, Fiat 500E, Corsa E, BMW i3, Mini electric, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe (or even Twizy), Smart Fortwo EQ, Citroen C-zero, Dacia Spring

If that's not small enough there are city cars like Citroen Ami and others but those are more glorified golf carts with very limited range.
by ileonichwiesz | 2025-10-01 12:48:30+00:00
A lot of apps are nagware, but I’ve never seen any as blatant and forceful as Duolingo.

They diligently A/B test their notifications, constantly looking for the variations that’ll show a higher click rate. They’ll hit you with “[Your friend’s name] will hate you forever if you don’t do Duolingo right now!” if you start slipping.

I’ve dropped it after a year or so when I realized that I wasn’t really learning any Turkish, but I was caught in some sort of corporate-designed psychological trap.
by kayo_20211030 | 2025-10-01 12:49:50+00:00
I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's not essentially the effort, it's the satisfaction. The former is the means, the latter the ends. If something is satisfying then the effort seems worth it. If using a push-bike satisfies you then carry on. If you have only five minutes to catch that train and the push-bike's not going to get you there on time, then use the e-bike and catch that train. That's satisfying too; this time as an outcome, but still satisfying.
by somenameforme | 2025-10-01 12:51:09+00:00
One other addendum here. I didn't really put this into context of the exact numbers. So you might be thinking 'yeah, whatever - those top games are just the AAA stuff anyhow.' But those numbers are based on an average of 40 games being released per day. So in other words an average of 3.5 games are released per day that will make over $200k+!

That's kind of insane really, and I think basically puts to rest the claim that mid-range games aren't being reached. Because there's obviously nowhere remotely near 3.5 big titles, or even remotely well known titles for that matter, being released each day.
by GrumpyGoblin | 2025-10-01 12:51:16+00:00
I like the realistic idea of Duolingo. I know I'm not going to get fluent with it and I'm not trying to, but I do want a good app to expand vocabulary and basic structures that I can do in 30 minutes a day. And I'm a sucker for streaks, but not all the other gamification. I don't need gems or XP or potions, just a streak to form habits, which I am bad at and need that positive affirmation.

Does anyone know any alternative apps that achieve the same goals with less of the fluff?
by mystraline | 2025-10-01 12:52:16+00:00
This is simple. Dont live in flood planes. Dont buy houses in flood planes. And dont build houses in flood planes.

And also, dont count on the government, like FEMA, to help. Now with phrases like "climate change", and "green" now banned from federal discourse, we're not permitted to say the obvious.

And its safe to say that 10 year flood planes are now 1 year. 100 year is now every 10, and 1000 year is every 100.

In my part of the country, we've also moved 2 bands warmer in USDA ag bands in just 25 years. But no, according to the current idiots at the top, banned language, fake news, and not happening.
by Qem | 2025-10-01 12:52:54+00:00
> Any flaws with Excel haven't been due to the actual program or data, but just how the files are managed within projects.

Not sure of that. Examples:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01679...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2105-5-80
by pavel_lishin | 2025-10-01 12:53:03+00:00
> When Helene’s storm surge hit, three and a half feet of water filled her garage. Nine inches of water swelled antique wood furniture and destroyed her vintage Schwinn bicycle, books, clothes and record collection. Her washing machine was afloat.

> In the end, she was able to restore her home without elevating it, after a reassessment found the damage did not exceed half its market value. After almost a year away, she moved back in just in time for her birthday.

> “I’m rolling the dice and hoping we don’t have this kind of situation again,” she said.

Gambling is a hell of a drug.
by flir | 2025-10-01 12:53:10+00:00
Interesting comment. I don't think Starmer's trying to get invited to a Shadowy Jewish Cabal, though. That's... a bit out there.

Simpler take: The middle ground has been hollowed out. The old method (appeal to the centre) does not appear to be working. Starmer's throwing stunt policies at the wall to try to get some purchase.
by Aurornis | 2025-10-01 12:53:42+00:00
> I'm confused about how it gets things like the floor colour and clothing colour correct.

The model was trained on the room.

It would produce images of the room even without any WiFi data input at all.

The WiFi is used as a modulator on the input to the pre trained model.

It’s not actually generating an image of the room from only WiFi signals.
by amanaplanacanal | 2025-10-01 12:53:49+00:00
That is certainly what JD Vance is claiming. He knows it's not true, but he keeps saying it because he also knows he can lie to his supporters and they either won't care, or won't actually try to find out the truth.

Same with his lie that there are liberal groups funding people like the Utah shooter. It's complete bullshit and he knows it.

He is one of the most sleazy people in politics right now, and that's saying something.
by remexre | 2025-10-01 12:55:10+00:00
> These so-called dynamic types are merely the equivalent of tags in a discriminated union/variant type.

That's far more true in a language like JavaScript or Scheme than in an "everything is an object" language like Python; the only reason why you would need a variant type for PyObject is to avoid the circular data structures the actual implementation uses.

If you allow the circular data structures, your dynamic types instead are "merely" a relatively complicated codata type, but it's far less obvious that this is actually what anyone considers to be "merely."
by FollowingTheDao | 2025-10-01 12:55:20+00:00
If one person with high cholesterol does not get heart disease then cholesterol is not the problem. Fact. Logic.

Why don’t you stop your appeal to authority arguments and focus on the facts.

It’s not that I haven’t died yet either. My calcium artery score was zero. I have no plaque in my arteries and I’ve had high cholesterol for probably 30 years of my life because of my genetics.

If that is not interesting to you then you have an odd bias. I merely saying that inflammation is the risk factor that matters more than high cholesterol. You can lower cholesterol for someone who has high inflammation and reduce heart disease, but reducing inflammation is more important overall.
by SideburnsOfDoom | 2025-10-01 12:55:33+00:00
Everything that Cambridge Analytica did is another good example [1]. Granted that it doesn't rise to the level of a "25k+ dead disaster", but it's not nothing, it's a lot of bad things. And it also stems from lack of regulation, not from the opposite. As will other examples.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Elections
by mrbigbob | 2025-10-01 12:56:15+00:00
while id love a more affordable EV for sure I dont see that happening anytime soon in the US with current administrations hatred of electric vehicles. Second, i dont understand how a website dedicated to car news thinks a very small car will sell well in the US when it sadly seems clear to me that the vast majority prefer larger cars for at least the last 30 years.
by myrmidon | 2025-10-01 12:56:32+00:00
Israel is facing a ton of backlash for the latest conflict too (even from countries like Germany!).

But I would argue that in the Ukraine war it is much more obvious who "good guy/bad guy" is, because you have a totalitarian aggressor on one side and a somewhat democratic defender on the other.

In Israel, you have a democratically controlled army vs a terrorists group (Hamas), and it is much less clear where the justifiable limit for collateral damage is or whom to blame primarily for the current level of escalation.
by card_zero | 2025-10-01 12:56:50+00:00
That's not a real Popper quote, is it. The sentiment is nice, but it must be radically paraphrased, because he doesn't generate pithy quotes very often.

> To conclude, I think that there is only one way to science—or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part—unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem, or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting though perhaps difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days.

https://archive.org/details/realismaimofscie0000popp/page/8/...

Edit: if I heed the content of the paragraphs just before this quote, maybe I should prefer the rewritten version.
by duxup | 2025-10-01 12:56:50+00:00
It took me longer than I care to admit that I was unsure why he was denied boarding an airplane / didn't just throw the ring away ... then I finally figured out he couldn't take it off.

I do wonder how they noticed ... but good that they did.

Do airplanes have a policy for if they're in the air and they see "device looks like it might burst and start a fire"?
by oldjim798 | 2025-10-01 12:57:42+00:00
There was the time facebook enabled a genocide in Myanmar, there is the Uber and AirBnb operating criminally without consequence having significant negative economic impacts to countless cities, there is all the research that shows the deep emotional damage done to teens on social media.

It enabled crypto, which is a criminal exercise to defraud people.

It also massively enabled echo chambers and conspiracy theories, undermining our social cohesion and community.

The way we rolled out the internet was a mistake and obviously so.
by phil21 | 2025-10-01 12:57:50+00:00
I find a good use in it via making legal, but otherwise “high risk” transactions traditional financial institutions either don’t touch or make very difficult to engage in.

Much easier for me to send a small amount of crypto to a VPN provider, or a custom parts supplier in a “strange” country where Visa/MC/bank wires are a huge hassle if available at all.

It’s not a huge use case, but it removes a ton of unnecessary friction from transactions traditional banking left behind as deemed “not worth the hassle” to them.

Or as I describe it: Digital cash. I don’t need the flea market vendor to need to be vetted by some financial provider to sell me their 3d printed parts collection.
by cmcconomy | 2025-10-01 12:57:53+00:00
reminds me of the recently enacted FAIR plan in California for last-resort wildfire insurance. It got state dispensation to carry otherwise-disallowed, lopsided balance sheets to cover more people -- but if a small fraction of those people do experience wildfire it'll go bust!

--

edit: see below, I was wrong about FAIR being newly enacted
by jorangreef | 2025-10-01 12:58:08+00:00
DBMS design has also changed. The bottleneck for a DBMS has moved from spinning disk to CPU and per core memory bandwidth. That's also key to TigerBeetle's design. For example, with static allocation and zero-copy techniques such as zero-deserialization.

If you were to design an OLGP DBMS like Postgres today, it would look radically different. Same is true for OLTP.
by nortonb82 | 2025-10-01 12:58:55+00:00
I've been trying to recall 'Devoa' since 7 years - what a great surprise to finally come across the brand again, and then on HN.

They have a very interesting approach to alot of fabrics, eschewing traditional western, static cuts and instead base the pattern on the bodies movement ('anatomical cuts'). https://www.reversible.com/user/tpat/listings/devoa-8-pocket...
by 4ad | 2025-10-01 12:59:10+00:00
Yes, that's true. And there are various logical systems which hint at mutability (apart from linear logic itself). I already mentioned how we can find shared-memory futures in semi-axiomatic sequent calculus. Those futures are mutable, but write-once. This write-once aspect induces a degenerate monotonicity property which can be generalized to arbitrary monotonicity. Mutable variables can exhibit a form of CH as long as writes to them are monotonic in a certain sense, in particular new writes must not refute old reads. For example logical variables in a logic languages are exactly this. Safe, shareable mutable variables which denote evolving proof state during proof search.
by Arnt | 2025-10-01 13:00:25+00:00
I googled briefly now, and found https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/china. Looking at that (note that the X axis is not zero) it's clear that Chinese imports cannot account for any significant part of the changes to the the USA graph on https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...
by duxup | 2025-10-01 13:00:38+00:00
Maybe I'm taking your words to mean something other than intended, but are sharp corners on a car in a car vs pedestrian situation more dangerous than any other? Or is it more the angle + materials?

This is one of those things that seems visually more dangerous, but I'm not sure if it is in real world results.

Outside say a pike sticking out I wonder...
by amanaplanacanal | 2025-10-01 13:00:41+00:00
So they pass a CR, and the president ignores the budget and fires whomever they want anyway. The only people who can fix this are the Republicans in Congress, by pushing back on the president and making him actually obey the laws that they pass. Democrats are completely powerless here.

Republicans made this mess, they are the only ones that can fix it, and now they own it. I guess we'll find it if this is what their constituents really want. Midterms are coming up.
by gabrielgio | 2025-10-01 13:00:56+00:00
As a developer interested in zig it is nice to see books being release, but I'd be a bit resitant to buy anything before zig reaches 1.0 or at least when they settle on a stable api. Both the builder and the std keep changing. Just 0.15 is a huge breakage. Does anyone knows how those changes would affect this book?
by jwsteigerwalt | 2025-10-01 13:00:57+00:00
A few years ago I spent some months consulting on a large FL based residential insurance agency’s order creation processes. By the end, I was floored by how much Citizens (FL’s last resort insurance) and federal backed flood insurance distort the natural balance of the risk/expense/exposure market. As long as the true cost of the risk associated with a given property is suppressed, moral hazard will prevail.
by Jaber_Said | 2025-10-01 13:01:38+00:00
Hey HN! I'm Jaber, and I built Prompt Builder. What it is: A block-based editor for composing AI prompts. Think of it like Notion blocks, but purpose-built for prompt engineering—drag to reorder, toggle visibility, wrap in tags (XML/JSON/etc.), and see a live combined preview. Why I built it: After 6 months of juggling 100+ ChatGPT/Claude prompts across Notion, Slack DMs, Apple Notes, and random text files, I got tired of the chaos. Every developer and marketer I talked to had the same problem—no good place to save, organize, and reuse prompts. Most tools are either marketplaces (buy prompts) or plain text boxes. I wanted something that treats prompts like code: modular, version-controlled, and shareable. What makes it different:

* Block-based composition: Each prompt is built from collapsible blocks (system message, instructions, examples, constraints). Reorder via drag-and-drop, toggle which blocks appear in the final output. * Live preview with character count: See your combined prompt update in real-time as you edit. * Voice-to-prompt: Click the mic icon on any block, speak, and it transcribes. Pro users can translate on the fly (50+ languages). * Share without signup: Generate a shareable link (with optional password/expiration for Pro). No account needed to share or view. * Tags & variables: Wrap content in custom tags (JSON schema, XML, whatever). Pro users get variables for parameterized prompts. * Export/Import (Pro): Download as JSON, Markdown, or plain text. Import existing prompt libraries.

Try it (no signup required): promptbuilder.space What I'd love feedback on:

1. Does the block-based approach feel natural, or is it overengineered? I debated just doing folders + plain text, but blocks let you compose complex prompts systematically. 2. What features are missing? I built this for my own workflow, but I'm sure I'm blind to obvious gaps. 3. Pricing—does $5/month (50% launch discount) feel fair for Pro? Free plan gives you 3 prompts, 5 blocks each. Pro is unlimited + translation, variables, export, etc.

Built this mostly solo over the past month. Would genuinely love to hear what the HN community thinks—especially if you work with LLMs regularly.
by reactordev | 2025-10-01 13:02:03+00:00
Absolutely. I'm definitely not advocating for it to just get a pass because it's ancient "medicine". Understanding it's effects on cells is good science. I'm not dismissing that at all.

What I am saying is, I've had chronic pain for a long time. Side effect of skateboarding injuries, snowboarding injuries, a one-wheel injury, sailing injuries. I've broken dozens of bones. Etc etc. Cannabis is the only thing that consistently alleviates the pain. Not saying it's not damaging, it totally is. The inside of your lungs, if smoked for long periods, turns into tar pits. It can cause COPD, among other smoking related issues.

However, I do think that legalizing it here in the US opens up the doors for further research and medicinal advancements. So I'm all for that. However, keeping laws around operating a vehicle, heavy machinery, etc should still stand. I think those that dismiss it are closed minded and those that fully embrace it without protection from side effects or long term use issues are also closed minded. There's some sort of healthy medium I'm sure of. Edibles or topicals.
by Cheer2171 | 2025-10-01 13:02:07+00:00
The Snapdragon X Elite has tons of laptop models and a few mini PCs like:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaCentre-Mini-x-debut...

The Elite X2 is near release and supposedly on par with these M5 numbers:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M5-9-Cores-Processor-Ben...
by carlosjobim | 2025-10-01 13:02:28+00:00
Interviews have been a core part of serious journalism for much longer than you or me have been alive. If you want to be informed on a deeper level, you have to read or listen to interviews.

World leaders will always lie or side-step the truth in lesser or bigger degrees, because they represent a people or an organizations and committed fully to the interest of those. Part of being mature as a listener or reader is understanding that, and still get the useful information you need. Every person you meet in life will first and foremost speak from their own interest and agenda.

Then these interviews are complemented by regular reporting and interviews with people from the opposing viewpoint, if you so wish.