MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bccdee | 2025-10-08 16:50:56+00:00
> I don't think four year olds demonstrating the ability to read several levels above their grade level is 1.) rare and 2.) a talent you can realistically tease out from over-parenting at that age.

Sure, but shouldn't those kids be in an environment where they can practice reading instead of being painstakingly re-taught the alphabet? As you said, it's not all rare.

I was one of those kids, and I was extremely disruptive in class because I couldn't bear to be made to sit and trace the letter "A" for 45 minutes when I was already reading novels at home. When they stuck me in a different class, things got much better for me, and it's not like doing that cost the school board any extra money.
by kragen | 2025-10-08 16:52:00+00:00
You can't store food and water on a hard disk, but you can get food from a combine harvester. Agricultural productivity is critically important for food and drink. The Lykov family partly starved to death one winter because their food production was so marginal that a late frost that spring wiped out their millet production for the year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family#History
by reaperducer | 2025-10-08 16:52:18+00:00
So make sure you fully read the fine print before signing an agreement for something.

The article makes it sound like that wouldn't have helped.

It states that the terms of the contract were "unilaterally" changed, without anyone being told -- Something that the tech industry has normalized.

Reading the fine print of the signed contract wouldn't have helped, since the contract changed since then.

These days you're lucky if you even get an e-mail saying "Our terms of service have changed, and if you don't like it, tough noogies." People who are not lawyers on HN will say it's illegal, yet it still happens constantly, and doesn't seem to have been struck down in any court, or it wouldn't keep happening.
by fragmede | 2025-10-08 16:52:37+00:00
Google spends a shitton on their employees. A large majority of that is on training. And of that, a large amount of that is because what you know about computers from the outside world isn't useful at Google. At the lowest level, Google's computers are still the same as everyone else's, but because of all the layers of automation that have been built up around them, you need to learn all the Google systems on how you interact with them, especially at Google scale. Some of that training is applicable elsewhere, but the trope in our industry is (and I'm as guilty of this as the next Xoogler, try as I might to not do this) "well at Google we did..." and for it to not be useful in the current job's context because the current job isn't Google and doesn't have that kind of resources or culture.

Their "solution" rides on an unfathomably large tsunami of money. Which is great for them (and by extension, my bank account while I was there), but how do we accomplish that when there isn't one?
by catapart | 2025-10-08 16:52:41+00:00
I actually don't think you are wrong, but I'm not backing that up with any actual data.

I happened to know it because of how the hyperHTML micro-library works; the author went into great detail about it and a ton of other topics. But my gut would say that the average js dev doesn't know about it.

But then... it's useful for creating component frameworks which... most js devs use. Which doesn't mean they know how they work under the hood. But... a lot of devs I've met specifically choose a framework because of how it works under the hood.

... so... I really have no idea how many people know this. I'm still betting it's less than average.
by johnisgood | 2025-10-08 16:53:10+00:00
> I'm quite aware that Rust doesn't have the same ability to verify behavior that SPARK does ... what I'm trying to get at is that `unsafe` is not "meaningfully different" because it serves a similar purpose to `SPARK_Mode(Off)` for the respective language constructs.

I understand your point about the structural analogy that in both languages you can have a function body where the usual automated checks are relaxed or treated as opaque. That said, the resemblance is syntactic/structural, not semantic. SPARK's off-proof body is embedded in a proof-driven model: the spec generates verification conditions for callers automatically, and those obligations are enforced by the prover. Rust's `unsafe` merely lifts type/borrow restrictions for the implementer; there are no automatic, prover-enforced obligations for callers, and correctness must be established by review/tests or by external verification tools.

> `unsafe` in the function body does not affect how the compiler uses the function signature in the rest of the program; in this way, `unsafe` works similarly to `SPARK_Mode(Off)` in that "the [function signature] is verified for all callers; the body is hidden but the interface guarantees are enforced".

Structurally, yes, both expose an interface and localize unchecked operations but the enforced guarantees are not comparable. In SPARK, the spec is visible to the prover and the implementation is opaque to the prover; the prover enforces machine-checked contracts for all callers. In Rust, the function body remains visible to `rustc` (and `unsafe` only grants access to unchecked capabilities); the compiler enforces type/ownership rules but does not ensure higher-level behavioral correctness across `unsafe` boundaries. That semantic difference is what makes SPARK "proof-driven" vs. Rust `unsafe` a "capability marker"[1].

TL;DR: They may look analogous at the interface/body level, but only SPARK actually enforces semantic guarantees. `unsafe` is a marker that shifts responsibility to the programmer; it does not create verifier-checked obligations for callers.

[1] By "capability marker" (privileged/block-scoped permission, escape/privilege annotation, whatever) I mean that `unsafe` is an annotation that grants permission to perform low-level/unchecked operations; it does not, by itself, create machine-checked behavioral contracts for callers.
by p_ing | 2025-10-08 16:53:26+00:00
/r/politics or similar if you want political-only threads. Many of us want HN for technology/finance, which sometimes are government-related.

Otherwise I flag all non-technical/finance government-related threads (i.e., ICE raids on XYZ city), even as a left-wing anti-capitalist socialist. This just isn't the place for those threads. They never lead to a good discussion, and most people discussing those topics are simply farting into the wind.

There's no mis-use or "suppression" with the flag, flagging is an individual choice with individual determination. Just like the American government taught me to be!

(And I flagged this thread, too. Email the admins like you're supposed to if you have complaints about HN.)
by Bender | 2025-10-08 16:53:36+00:00
People have already mentioned the guidelines but I will only add it just takes 4 people to click flag to get something flagged. No site moderator required. The site is community moderated by anyone with a karma higher than 499. Someone can click vouch for a period of time and it may conditionally be un-flagged, but then it can get flagged again. Either way if it was flagged even once it will fall off the main page. A site moderator can bump it back to the main page. There is no way to definitively answer your question because flags do not require a "reason". Some take off and some do not. Political leanings play a big part of which direction they go based on my experience. Political discussions would be better served on a site or forum dedicated to such things and I say that having submitted articles that are both technical and political.

Some externally documented HN features: [1] not my repo

[1] - https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
by lossolo | 2025-10-08 16:53:51+00:00
I agree that computational irreducibility and chaos impose hard limits on prediction. Even if an intelligence understood every law of physics, it might still be unable to simulate reality faster than reality itself, since the physical world is effectively its own optimal computation.

I guess where my speculation comes in is that "simulation" doesn’t necessarily have to mean perfect 1:1 physical emulation. Maybe a higher intelligence could model useful abstractions/approximations, simplified but still predictive frameworks that are accurate enough for control and reasoning even in chaotic domains.

After all, humans already do this in a primitive way, we can't simulate every particle of the atmosphere, but we can predict weather patterns statistically. So perhaps the difference between us and a much higher intelligence wouldn't be breaking physics, but rather having much deeper and more general abstractions that capture reality's essential structure better.

In that sense, it's not "magical thinking", I just acknowledge that our cognitive compression algorithms (our abstractions) are extremely limited. A mind that could discover higher order abstractions might not outrun physics, but it could reason about reality in qualitatively new ways.
by renewiltord | 2025-10-08 16:53:53+00:00
Great technical blog. Good pathway for narrative, tight examples, description so clear it makes me feel smarter than I am because so easy to follow though the last time I even read assembly seriously was x86 years ago.

Also, fulfills the marketing objective because I cannot help but think that this team is a bunch of hotshots who have the skill to do this on demand and the quality discipline to chase down rare issues.

I assume these are Ampere Altra? I was considering some of those for web servers to fill out my rack (more space than power) but ended up just going higher on power and using Epyc.
by mszcz | 2025-10-08 16:54:28+00:00
Same here. I recently started thinking about upgrading my Synology NAS to something newer they offered. When I read about the hard drive restrictions I thought no-one would be _that_ stupid. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be 100% true. I mean, what the fuck?

So, I started to look around and landed on Ugreen. They offered a NAS with more RAM (and the ability to upgrade), better connectivity (2.5GbE + 10 GbE), faster CPU, ability to install custom OSes (like TrueNAS), the OS resides on a separate, user-replaceable M.2 NVMe drive. All that for less money. Plus, since I control the OS, there's no way they can push some garbage it's-for-your-own-good-wink-wink update down my throat.

Bought it, didn't even start their OS and put TrueNAS Scale on it and I've never been happier. The caveat here is that I use my NAS as a NAS - no apps, no docker, no photos app. All that is on a separate box in the rack.

For me to ever trust Synology again I'd have to see some punitive action towards the idiots there that thought that whole HDD restrictions mess was a good idea. Even then, now that I've had a look around what else is available, I'm pretty sure I'll stay clear for a couple of years.
by tracker1 | 2025-10-08 16:55:06+00:00
Once you have the case, an hour or two is pretty reasonable... you can even have your boot device pre-imaged while waiting on the case to get delivered.

Not to mention the alternative brands that allow you to run your own software... I've got a 4-bay TerraMaster (F-424 Pro) as a backup NAS. I don't plan on buying another Synology product.
by Manuel_D | 2025-10-08 16:55:08+00:00
https://share.google/OfLzb9jqQywV1ZxOt

> While European health authorities aren’t instituting bans on treatment, currently minors in six European countries—Norway, U.K. Sweden, Denmark, France and Finland—can access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones only if they meet strict eligibility requirements, usually in the context of a tightly controlled research setting. (Italics in the original)

Read through your quotes carefully:

> The Council for Choices in Health Care allows the use of puberty blockers in transgender children after a case-by-case assessment if there are no medical contraindications.

And how many of such cases were granted? This could be a de facto ban, if no such cases are granted.

> issued a non-binding report finding "there is insufficient evidence for the use of puberty blockers and cross sex hormone treatments in young people" and recommending changing to a cautious approach.

Again, how many new patients are being put on blockers after this recommendation?

You're trying to spin this false narrative that patients with gender dysphoria are still being prescribed puberty blockers as normal treatment for GD. This is not the case. Even though the legislatures in these countries haven't banned the treatment, effectively nobody is getting puberty blockers for childhood GD in these countries.

Actions speak louder than words. You can split hairs about how "recommending" the discontinuation of puberty blocks is not ban. But at the end of the day, what unambiguously true is that the vast majority of patients who are prescribed blockers in the US would not be prescribed blockers in these countries. If you have actual stats on the number of new patients prescribed blockers in these countries in 2025, by all means share it.
by dcminter | 2025-10-08 16:55:12+00:00
I usually flag such stories when I see them. Per the Site guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

It's rare that I see something political that passes the "interesting new" test. The political stories almost always turn into partisan shouting and no real conversation. In my very subjective opinion the vitriolic tone then leaks into other more interesting threads.

For better or for worse the moderators will in fact occasionally disable the flagging for threads.
by pron | 2025-10-08 16:55:42+00:00
Because I reached that position 15 years ago, I can tell you that this is untrue (in the sense that the experience is completely different from an LLM).

Training is one thing, but training doesn't increase the productivity of the trainer; it's meant to improve the capability of the trainee.

At any level of capability, though - whether we're talking about an intern after one year of university or a senior developer with 20 years of experience - effective management requires that you're able to trust that the person tells you when they've hit a snag or anything else you may need to know. We may not be talking 100% of trust, but not too far from that, either. You can't continue working with someone that doesn't tell you what you need to know even 10% of the time, regardless of their level. LLMs are not at that acceptable level yet, so the experience is not similar to technical leadership.

If you've ever been tasked with leading one or more significant projects you'd know that if you feel you have to review every line of code anyone on the team writes, at every step of the process, that's not the path to success (if you did that, not only would progress be slow, but your team wouldn't like you very much). Code review is a very important part of the process, but it's not an efficient mechanism for day-to-day communication.
by John23832 | 2025-10-08 16:56:00+00:00
> Just because you have a limit to how much you're willing to care about somebody doesn't mean that you are feigning the care that you do give.

And the limit is just engaging with someone in a way that they didn't ask you for, and in a manner that doesn't serve them at all?

> Most people have reasonable expectations about how much care they can expect from some random colleague from a past project.

The context here is a person who was just let go. Like, not an old buddy from a previous job.

Maybe it's the New Yorker in me, but if you're not going to serve a purpose, emotionally, financially, physically, etc... mind your own business.
by toast0 | 2025-10-08 16:56:17+00:00
There's a fair number of low game count systems where people are really enamored with one game. For example, I'm a big fan of T-Mek (I've got a machine with issues in my barn), but that system only has two games, so it waits for someone who is interested, determined, equipped, and skilled to figure out the protection to enable it to run properly in MAME.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-10-08 16:56:25+00:00
They say the AI bubble is 17x larger than the dot com boom. I was in the bay area for that. It was pretty amazing. Every party someone announced they were pregnant (people were so optimistic they were all starting families). There were new restaurants popping up everywhere. Run down areas being revitalized. Suddenly expensive clothing brands that were just for die hard outdoors situations became streetwear.

I can't imagine how great/amazing it must be there now with AI being 17x that. Everyone where I live is financially stressed. Living in a community that isn't would be so nice. I am sure people in the bay area would miss this current feeling of prosperity/success/optimism to start a family if the bubble burst.
Show HN: KI Song Erstellen Kostenlos – AI Music Generator für Deutsche Musik
by kevinhacker | 2025-10-08 16:56:40+00:00
Kostenloser KI-Musikgenerator für deutsche Songs. Text rein → professioneller Song in wenigen Minuten.

Gebaut für Content Creator, die Copyright-freie Musik brauchen.

https://kisongerstellen.com/ GitHub: https://github.com/kisongerstellen

Probiert es aus!
by peterbonney | 2025-10-08 16:56:43+00:00
I'd say IEX has done remarkably well - it's not likely to displace NASDAQ or NYSE but it has solidified its place as the #3 US exchange by any reasonable measure. If TXSE achieves comparable market share I'd call that a wild success.

You're not wrong to say that most participants don't care about what IEX offers, but enough do to make a meaningful dent in trading volume.
by rufo | 2025-10-08 16:56:46+00:00
I think sometimes the migrations were halted more because MSFT wanted to hold off. Microsoft makes more money selling Azure outside the company, and they needed more power for GPU build-out once LLMs and AI started becoming one of Microsoft's Things™.

That said, the difficulty of the work was absolutely also a factor in deciding not to carry through with earlier migrations, so your point still stands as a whole IMO. Just, now solutions will be found for blockers and engineers will be kept on it, rather than efforts stalling out and being put on hold.
by Gregaros | 2025-10-08 16:56:56+00:00
Impossible to say what was behind any specific request, but what is generally meant by “Have a little emapathy” and its kin is : “Stop criticizingjudging/etc. or communicating with the individual being discussed that sharply, because we feel the individual has good reasons/a good excuse/a good justification for sympathy and/or some leniency here.”
by aaroninsf | 2025-10-08 16:56:58+00:00
<scans description for display technology>

AMOLED

<closes tab>

I would pay a LOT for a true vector display, and I would pay even more than that for a vector display systems that can play faithful recastings of Tempest and Asteroids.

I can already play vector games on rasterized displays. I don't need an injection molded cabinet.
by odogwu200 | 2025-10-08 16:57:06+00:00
I’m building AristoCarWare — a flexible car subscription platform turning idle dealership inventory into recurring revenue.

We’re addressing America’s $1.6T car loan debt crisis by removing banks and long-term financing from the equation. Instead of owning or leasing, users can subscribe — drive any car, swap when they hit a mileage cap, and never worry about negative equity.

Over the past month: • I spoke with Sequoia Capital about our vision to modernize how people access cars. Their feedback reinforced that the timing for a fleet-light model partnering with dealerships is right now. • We’ve connected with 40 dealerships, including regional groups in the Bay Area, and refined our MVP around dealer-managed subscriptions.

I used Turo to validate demand and noticed renters prefer long-term access — one booking has lasted over 150 days (since June), effectively behaving like a subscription. It’s clear people want flexibility without ownership. • Our waitlist is live: aristocarware.com

The next step is building our first dealership partnership and scaling the early adopter base.

If you believe the future of mobility is access over ownership, join the waitlist — or share feedback on how we can make subscriptions the smarter alternative to financing.

https://aristocarware.com
by timeinput | 2025-10-08 16:57:10+00:00
Agreed completely when ever I need random example sequences it is often sequences of primes or some subset like even indexed primes (meaning 2, 5, 11, ...) mixed with odd indexed (primes 3, 7, 13...) when dealing with complex numbers, or every fourth if I want two sequences of complex numbers. The only trouble is they do start going pretty large.
by tracker1 | 2025-10-08 16:57:38+00:00
When I looked into it last, I planned to spend about as much as a Synology, but it would have much more compute, memory and as much storage. I was likely going to run ProxMox as a primary OS, and pass the SATA controller(s) to a TruNAS Scale VM... Alternatively, just run everything in containers under TruNAS directly.

For my backup NAS, I wound up going with a TerraMaster box and loading TruNAS Scale on it.
by mikece | 2025-10-08 16:57:55+00:00
I don't know if it's permanently dead or not but I really like QuiteRSS:

https://github.com/QuiteRSS/quiterss

Last update was 4 years ago; I don't know if this means the project is dead or merely "done." One of the last features added was the ability to share a news item to Hacker News:

https://github.com/QuiteRSS/quiterss/issues/1084#issue-33248...

I have used this app on Windows and macOS; I've installed it on Linux but I don't do daily work on Linux so I don't know if it's stable there or not.
by simonw | 2025-10-08 16:58:00+00:00
Yes they are. Guide dogs, hunting dogs, sheep dogs. The comparison to LLMs is genuinely useful here, because dogs are unreliable tools that you have to work with over a period of time to figure out.

I've used this argument for real in the past with people who complain that it's unethical to set sightless people up with vision LLM tools because those tools are unreliable and make mistakes. My counter is that a) so are guide dogs and b) it's rude to discount the agency of people with accessibility needs in evaluating and selecting tools for themselves.
by consumer451 | 2025-10-08 16:59:32+00:00
Person you were responding to here. You do have a solid point/question. To be completely honest: my original thinking was that for once, I am going to go with the flow on something like this. I often fight inertia, but this felt like a bad thing to do it on.

Now, I realize that the best argument for MCP vs function calls in my case, is that I want to allow external products/agents/chatbots to interface with my app. MCP is that standard. I will implement very carefully, but that's what I need to do.
by jacobr1 | 2025-10-08 17:00:18+00:00
Well, that depends on what we are selling. Are you selling the service, black-box, to accomplish the outcome? Or are you selling a tool. If you sell a hammer you aren't liable as the manufacturer if the purchaser murders someone with it. You might be liable if when swinging back it falls apart and maims someone - due to the unexpected defect - but also only for a reasonable timeframe and under reasonable usage conditions.
by roadside_picnic | 2025-10-08 17:00:32+00:00
Have you ever interacted with any "vibe"-based systems of agents in a production environment? Beyond just cool demos online?

My experience with them is they are fragile monstrosities, that are only permitted to exist at all because leadership is buying into the same hype that is irrationally propping up the companies running the models that make these things possible.

To be clear, my experience hasn't been that I don't like them, it's that they don't really work at all. They're constantly under development (often in the dark) and when a ray of light is cast on them they never successfully do the thing promised.

Cleaning up the messes left behind by these has my skills feeling more valuable then ever before.