MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by scottlamb | 2025-10-19 17:51:52+00:00
I doubt you'd be able to get a signal through from inside the fridge. I made a Home Assistant "food safety" dashboard and alerts. I found two challenges:

* Connecting to the outside world. I didn't go wireless because a fridge/freezer cavity is basically a Faraday cage, because I didn't want to deal with replacing batteries, and because high humidity + low temp = wet, sad microcontroller. And even a "flat" 4-conductor telephone cord disturbed the magnetic seal enough that there was a noticeable gap. I ended up buying a 4-contact, 1mm pitch, 200mm flat flexible cable to run across the seal. I separated the contacts with a utility knife, soldering them to other cables on both sides. I also heatshrinked the conductors individually and the whole junction together for strain relief. Then I superglued it into place. And 4 conductors is enough for ground, supply voltage, and either TX/RX or 1-Wire+unused.

* Getting a reading that matches what foods actually experience rather than the air temperature. The latter fluctuates a lot more when you open/close the door or depending on what the defrost/compressor is doing. I ended up buying waterproof 1-Wire temperature sensors (elecrow sells them for $1.20 each + reasonable shipping), 4 oz plastic bottles, cable glands, and propylene glycol (relatively safe antifreeze, though I wouldn't chug it). I drilled holes in the lids for the glands to run the sensors in, then closed the bottles up while immersed in the solution. Cheap DIY buffered temperature probe.

I currently measure buffered temperature, air temperature, and humidity, but really only the buffered temperature matters.
by cluckindan | 2025-10-19 17:51:59+00:00
Analog was before, though. General computing was never realized using those architectures; granted, they were mechanical in nature, so that is a big ask, both figuratively and literally.

Maybe we could create continuous-valued electrical computers, but at least state, stability and error detection are going to be giant hurdles. Also, programming GUIs from Gaussian splats sounds like fun in the negative sense.
by asveikau | 2025-10-19 17:52:50+00:00
Sorting is language specific even if you're restricted to languages using Latin characters. Eg. How do you sort N relative to Ñ? How do you treat the Turkish variations on the letter I?

Doing a dumb sort by character or byte values is obviously the wrong call for any diacritics, but the right call may also depend on the language.
by terhechte | 2025-10-19 17:52:54+00:00
Hey Marcin :) Really dig this. A much friendlier alternative to Swift development than having to use the monstrosity that is Xcode. Especially for people that want to get something done quickly. The Linux support is also really cool. The Xcode-alternatives market is really starved, so I'm very happy this exists. It's possible to configure VSCode to support Swift, but that's a lot of configuration and messing around.

When Vim bindings? ;)
by jackling | 2025-10-19 17:53:32+00:00
Lots of good advice in this article.

My favorite pieces that I agree with 100%:

> Reading and understanding IS NOT the same as replicating the content.

This happens to me all the time. It's really important to try and replicate everything that you learn. I would go even further and constantly reaffirm that you still know how to prove facts that you take for granted.

> NEVER. EVER. EVER. Leave a test early.

Every time I find a mistake.

Some pieces that I really disagree with:

> Study very intensely RIGHT before the test.

I don't think this works, at least for me, it doesn’t. I never studied on test day unless the test was in the evening. Even in cases where I had ample time to study, I focused on preparing for my later tests. By the time test day rolls around, you either know the material or you don’t. I don’t think short-term memory is as valuable as the writer is making it out to be. I also worry that the added stress may cause you to confuse yourself when trying to frantically read through your notes or textbooks.

> If things are going badly and you get too tired, in emergency situations, chug an energy drink.

Your health is more important than the tests you take. These energy drinks are terrible for you and your brain, in my opinion. After hours of sitting, drinking such a high concentration of sugar and caffeine is terrible for you. Just go out for a walk, take a shower, and if that doesn't help, go to sleep. Trying to cram in as much knowledge as possible when your brain is fried isn't going to help you all that much.
by dragonwriter | 2025-10-19 17:53:34+00:00
> Use the return keyword in a lambda, it returns from the lambda, just like if you call return in a method. In a block or Proc, it returns from the calling method.

In a block or proc, it returns from the method in which the block/proc was defined, not the calling method. These may or may not be the same; the proc may be called deeper in the call chain, or it might (erroneously) be called after the defining method had exited, producing a LocalJumpError.

This also means that implicit returns from a block/proc have different semantics than explicit returns, unlike lambdas/methods where implicit returns have the same semantics as explicit returns. (From a block/proc, the last evaluated expressions behaves as if it were passed to "next" rather than "return", resulting in a local return to the calling method rather than a return from the defining method.)
by wafflemaker | 2025-10-19 17:54:40+00:00
I've met lot of smart guys never getting anywhere, because they were always looking for a shortcut and not to do the real work.

Linux instructor Jason Canon wrote once that there's a lot of people who spend 90% of the time reading articles on how to learn Linux, but only 10% really practicing.

OTOH it's a really cool way to stay focused and engaged with the lecture.
by hshdhdhj4444 | 2025-10-19 17:54:42+00:00
This only makes sense if they’re reviewing the ban to enforce it even earlier.

Otherwise the market is gonna make the decision for them well within 10 years.

The gap between ICE and EVs is already extremely pronounced and EVs still have room to improve and also get a lot cheaper.

And as ICE vehicles lose numbers, while EV numbers rise, the economies of scale cost advantages that ICE vehicles have will start working the other way, especially since ICE vehicles are far more complex with a much more intricate and far reaching supply chain that will be greatly affected by the failure of a few key, often very small, suppliers.
by harshreality | 2025-10-19 17:54:44+00:00
As far as I can tell, rentable square feet (total) per building footprint sqft goes up with height, just sub-linearly. Until adding more height is technically infeasible or decreases total projected profits (whether that's due to decreased profits/sqft, or not enough demand to fill a taller building, or both), developers in land-constrained areas like city centers will build taller buildings.

(Land-constrained, as in, when buying two equivalent lots and building half-height buildings becomes less profitable than building a skyscraper or supertall, due to massive demand for high-floor views, combined with sky-high nearby lot prices.)

Point of trivia: apparently there are terms for each 100m of height: Lowrise -> Highrise -> Skyrise (Skyscrapers) -> Supertalls.
by alganet | 2025-10-19 17:55:48+00:00
> They called them “stories,” and “epics,” and recorded them in Jira, but they were more like technical tasks.

Yep. Mostly title-only technical tasks that will end up as a point in a graph, and an excuse to put tools over people instead of people over tools. A true perversion of the agile core principles. Jira-oriented product development killed agile.
by cloverich | 2025-10-19 17:55:50+00:00
It took me a long time to come around to simplifying it all to sugar. Its not the only reason of course but my mind now thinks: There are other countries like ours, except not everyone is fat. Sugar bypasses our normal satiety - you can put dessert and sugary drinks on top of a regular diet, easier than you can a second or third serving of the entree. Sugar is cheap and an easy way to make money in the food business. And we have sugar factories galore selling candy disguised as coffee. Add one coke a day to a balanced diet, and you add 5-10lb of fat to a person per year.

My bias is now simply, its the sugar. No not only. But far and away the number one culrpit.
by MaxBarraclough | 2025-10-19 17:56:59+00:00
I'm sceptical of that article, it's making guesses about the limitations of SQL query optimisers.

Consider the Simple example it presents. The article is in effect implying that no query optimiser would be able to figure out the equivalence of the two predicates.

(Let's ignore that the two predicates aren't actually equivalent; the first version may raise an exception if myIntColumn is negative, depending on the DBMS.)
by lanyard-textile | 2025-10-19 17:57:03+00:00
The discussion continues for the lifetime of an RFC, even after its acceptance. The idea is to continually keep it in a challenged state so that we remember anything can be possible.

If we desire something new, the RFC invites us to build upon it and not accept it as gospel.

Whether you, your project, or your organization accept it is completely disconnected with the concept of the RFC. You may procedurally accept it as unchallengeable gospel, but the truth remains that you can always have an opinion about it regardless.
by nickpsecurity | 2025-10-19 17:57:19+00:00
Biology is ideologically neutral. People who disagree with that position are anti-biology (anti-science) on this topic. It certainly makes sense to begin with how to treat men and women by noting they're biologically different instead of whatever they imagine themselves to be.

We certainly don't issue degrees based only on what expertise they identify as. We don't allow them in office based on whether they identify as President or Principal. We should likewise not use their feelings or unsubstantiated beliefs to determine if they're a man or a woman when biology has the answer almost every time. Intersex, the exceptions, we'll handle on a case by case basis.
by defgeneric | 2025-10-19 17:57:38+00:00
It's garbage opinions like this that makes PG so tiring. The superficial air of reasonableness makes it attractive to younger SF tech people who haven't experienced the context out of which these arguments arose and have no idea who he's plagiarizing/channeling. (For starters, the distinction between wealth and money/capital goes back at least to the 17th century.) For those who are more interested in being the "next unicorn" than engaging seriously with ideas, his little "essays" serve as kind of armor--we don't have to think about that problem because PG wrote about it!
by b112 | 2025-10-19 17:58:46+00:00
There are loads of 'put them in the fridge/freezer' temp sensors out there, made just for this. I did buy lithium AA batteries (which work down to -40C even) for the sensor end.

My thoughts are, these things are special built, and only wake every few minutes or so to burst send. Batteries tend to last a couple of years (but with the lithium ones!), and I get beeeeps from the receiver if it dies.

(Not knocking your solution, it gives you more flexibility)
by pumplekin | 2025-10-19 17:58:52+00:00
I've always thought we could put a bit of general purpose TCAM into general purpose computers instead of just routers and switches, and see what people can do with it.

I know (T)CAM's are used in CPU's, but I am nore thinking of the kind of research being done with TCAM's in SSD like products, so maybe we will get there some day.
by brandensilva | 2025-10-19 17:59:09+00:00
The problem isn't the failure of the mathematicians and engineers who succeeded at the task of automating humanities mundane tasks in life.

It's that the people failed to elect and wield a government that ensures all humanity benefits from it and not a select few who control it all.

And I think it will become clear that the governments that are investing in it to benefit their people who have ownership versus the ones who invest in it to benefit just a handful of the rich are the ones who will keep society stable while this happens.

The other path we are going down is you will have mass unrest, move into a police state to control the resistance like America is doing now, and be exactly what Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Larry Ellison want with AI driven surveillance and Orwellian dystopian vision forcing people to comply or be cut out of existence deactivating their Digital IDs.
by ryandrake | 2025-10-19 17:59:19+00:00
I've always wondered what the world would look like if these huge powerful corporations were run by average people instead of multi-billionaires completely out of touch with what it's like to live in the world. Like have a lottery where everyone gets a single ticket, and the person whose name is drawn gets to be the CEO of Apple for a year, and the 10 next-drawn tickets get to be the senior staff.
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-10-19 17:59:29+00:00
The good part is that, now that we are up to numbers like these, you just can't sign onboard to this.

You bet your behind Greg Abbott (Texas Governor) is doing everything he can to kiss the ring, gut his local university, push UT to joining. But no one could take UT seriously ever again, it'd be a laughingstock joke to accept state control like this.
by crote | 2025-10-19 17:59:56+00:00
> Notably though, for all the know-it-alls on this site. Its not the spy agencies getting these powers.

How could you possibly know, though? A big issue with these schemes is the complete lack of transparency and any form of due process. Websites are getting blocked without any information being provided, so how are you supposed to distinguish a copyright-related block from a block demanded by a spy agency, or the ISP CEO's golf buddy?
by Theodores | 2025-10-19 18:00:05+00:00
There is also the aspect of freedom - for whom?

A 'free market' means freedom from monopolistic and rent-seeking practices (according to a Marxist). Yet we have a different capitalist take on what a 'free market' is, which is more like a choice between Pepsi, Coca Cola and own-brand cola, with plain old tap water not on the menu.
by vjvjvjvjghv | 2025-10-19 18:00:19+00:00
I always find it interesting that people who went to elite schools like Stanford are telling others that this is not needed. Or CEOs who make multi million salaries explaining that work is about culture and fulfillment and you should not be after money.

Thiel’s philosophy and that of a lot of other Silicon Valley guys seems to condense to “ we are smart and right and everybody else is stupid”.
by hinkley | 2025-10-19 18:00:28+00:00
That’s only the first question. Occam’s razor suggests that since almost no cases showed up prior to Columbus, that it was spread by his men. If a few cases show up before that? That’s not usually how infections spread it’s possible a weaker strain was here, maybe one that affected some other species and crossed over.

But if it means someone else got to the Americas first, that’s a cultural bomb that would immortalize your name for documenting. So it’s worth looking at it from one side or the other to determine if the second question is worth the payoff times the probability of being true.
by dullcrisp | 2025-10-19 18:00:41+00:00
I concur that ascribing understanding to the machines that we have is a category error.

The reason I believe it was brought up is that understanding is not a category error when ascribed to people.

And if we claim to have a plan to create machines that are indistinguishable from people, we likely first need to understand what it is that makes people distinguishable from machines, and that doesn’t seem to be on any of the current AI companies’ roadmap.
by dragonwriter | 2025-10-19 18:02:08+00:00
> The cost of robots will be zero because robots will mine ore, process it and make other robots.

This assumes, among other things that are unlikely to be true, that the only cost of extraction is (robot) labor, and that mining rights are free, rather than being driven by non-zero demand and finite supply.

(Another critical implicit assumption is that energy is free rather than being driven by non-zero demand and finite supply, as failing that will result in a non-zero price for robot labor even if the materials in the robot were free.)
by atleastoptimal | 2025-10-19 18:02:18+00:00
There's a difference in scale and potential consequences though

What if there were some robot with superhuman persuasion and means of manipulating human urges such that, if it wanted to, it could entrap anyone it wanted to complete subservience? Should we happily acquiesce to the emerging cult-like influence these new entities have on susceptible humans? What if your parents messaged you one day, homeless on the street because they gave all their money and assets to a scammer robot that via a 300IQ understanding of human psychology manipulated them to sending all their money in a series of wire transfers?
by dangus | 2025-10-19 18:02:39+00:00
As I recall GE is also one of the few/only brands that operates its own service business.

I will also point out that the way inflation has tended to work is that you can still buy high quality appliances and other consumer products (e.g., tailored clothes and built-to-last leather shoes), but when you do the inflation math you have to spend a lot to get the equivalent product from decades ago.

In other words, the same quality products generally still exist, the real issue is that a bunch of low price products that didn’t used to exist now do, and average people didn’t own as much stuff as they do now.

If you buy a $2500 Speed Queen or a $10,000 Sub-Zero you’re getting the kind of quality and repairability that used to exist in more appliances.

But when it comes to a $500 washing machine or dryer, when you adjust for inflation that product did not exist 40 years ago.

The other thing I’ve heard about this issue is that the mid-range consumer luxury type stuff is the segment to avoid: built cheaply but with a lot of features that fail and a high cost. E.g., Samsung refrigerators with touch screens on them. You’ll notice that most true luxury built-in brands don’t have a laundry list of gimmick features.
by AlterEgo7 | 2025-10-19 18:03:08+00:00
This seems to be an antiquated view on Scala and the people working on it and it's tooling. Referring to :\ as foldLeft suggests the parent hasn't seen Scala code since 2018 and scalaz which is nowhere to be found nowadays. I've been working professionally with Scala since 2019 and have never come across the symbol soup that was scalaz.

Programming language choice is a matter of taste to a large degree so it's possible the different people value different traits of languages.

"When in doubt leave it out", is a design decision that can be taken to extremes in some cases and many of us feel crippled and don't enjoy such languages. There can be languages that provide powerful abstractions and rely on its users' trust to use them appropriately. Of coyrde, like every tool it can be misused but that should not be the baseline we use for comparison. Because surely we can find dreadful code in every language.

As a closing paragraph I'll just say that Scala 3 is very nicely designed language that simplifies a lot of the sticky point with Scala 2 and allows for a nice blend of OOP and functional programming. Functional programming in Scala is opt-in and progressive and is a good choice for greenfield projects on the JVM. Also a final note, tooling for Scala and Scala 3 specifically has improved a lot to the point where it just works without arcane invitations of the past. Overly confident opinions to the contrary for people who haven't touched the language since 2018, scala 2.11 and sbt 0.13 are quite out of touch.
by xitss | 2025-10-19 18:03:09+00:00
Interesting discussion and article. My work is mostly in the decentralized model of thinking. Many of the arguments assume that some degree of control is necessary at the scale we deal with. The difficulty of true decentralization reminds me of what the founders of our republic wrestled with: avoiding both the over-control of old hierarchies and governing structures (centralized power) and the chaos of anarchy (decentralized power). Their answer was a framework that limited power but preserved individual freedom. Perfection? no. But it is a very interesting experiment to be a part of.

We seem to be facing a similar balance today, only in digital context and on a global scale. Human nature being what it is, no system will ever be perfect. What we can do is build safeguards (structures that empower users and raise the cost of abuse) so that bad actors must find diminishing returns for bad behavior.
by photonthug | 2025-10-19 18:03:11+00:00
> What's to be gained from talking like this in public as a corporate figure?

Diving into the game theory of a 4-player setup with executives/investors/customers/workers is tempting here but I'll take a different approach.

People who actually face consequences have trouble understanding how the "it might help, it can't hurt!" corporate strategy can justify almost any kind of madness. Especially when the leaders are morons that somehow have zero ideas, yet almost infinite power. That's how/why Volkswagen was running slave plantations in Brazil as late as 1986, and yet it takes 40 years to even try to slap them on the wrist.[1] A manufacturing company that decided to run FARMS in the amazon?, with slaves??, for a decade??? One could easily ask, what is to be gained by doing crimes against humanity for a sketchy, illegal, and unethical business plan that's not even related to their core competency? Power has it's own logic, but it doesn't look like normal rationality because it has a different kind of relationship with cause-and-effect.

Overall it's just a really good time to re-evaluate whether corporations and leaders deserve our charitable assumptions about their intentions and ethics.

[1] https://reporterbrasil.org.br/2025/05/why-is-volkswagen-accu...
by swyx | 2025-10-19 18:03:35+00:00
hey sorryjust saw this. i do think its majority serial processing, BUT, parallel calling the same tools also gets issues that i honestly havent spent the time to dig into (something something locks and threading). all i know is ive been stuck in very very super slow/tool calls myself in Windsurf/other AI IDEs and that was a drag.

for another take on latency attribution see https://x.com/silasalberti/status/1979310181424206143