MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by borski | 2025-10-03 15:30:12+00:00
In 3rd grade, my mother went in for a parent-teacher conference, and my teacher (who was a complete asshole) gave me terrible marks on behavior, but then said I was great at math. She literally said “whenever I have a math problem or something I don’t understand, I always ask Michael.”

My mom nearly fell out of her chair. What 3rd grade teacher has 3rd grade math problems they need a 3rd grader’s help with?!

My mom got me a math tutor literally the next day, and I’ve never been more thankful (in hindsight). That tutor focused on teaching me advanced math (for my age), and suddenly my behavior improved. Funny that.

So my recommendation would be, if possible, find a math tutor for enrichment. I don’t mean “start studying for the SAT,” so hopefully don’t take it that way. :)
by thewebguyd | 2025-10-03 15:30:30+00:00
> How I wished I could have similar remote control over her Android phone.

A bit of work (and it's not free) to set up initially, but you could use an MDM for this. Most allow remote access/ screen control over Android devices, with the bonus that you also can remotely install & uninstall apps for her, control settings, etc.

TBH I think there's a market opportunity for a consumer-oriented MDM for families. There's a lot of features and control that's only possible for businesses with these devices, and I'm not sure why no one is making any kind of centralized management but for consumers.
by gkoberger | 2025-10-03 15:30:39+00:00
The premise is true, but I disagree with the conclusion. There are many companies with outsized valuations, and few will ultimately survive. The valuations of these companies will go down; there clearly is no way the market can handle it all.

But the revenue going into AI will not go down. The job loss will not go down. What you're seeing isn't AI being an empty promise, but rather many different people trying to win the market.

It's like "tech"... 20 years ago, there was a category of companies we called tech and it was getting outsized valuations. Now every company is a tech company, whatever that means – there's as many programmers at Goldman Sachs or Walmart as there are at Airbnb or Dropbox.
by nyarlathotep_ | 2025-10-03 15:31:18+00:00
> The modern Apple experience is defined by removing the head phone jack, the silent switch, and worse, the home button.

I only "upgrade" phones every 4 years or so, typically to a new old-stock model off eBay and I've been floored by how new phones don't include chargers anymore.

How is this considered acceptable?
by armitron | 2025-10-03 15:31:26+00:00
Flud vision IOL has been in trials for years and looks very promising. Unless you really need an IOL NOW, I'd wait a few years for accommodating IOLs to hit the market. They make monofocals/trifocals seem like medieval technology as they work at all distances, in the same manner as a natural lens (ie. continuous focus). For someone with myopia/presbyopia, they're an occular enhancement that can give better than 20/20 vision.
by latchkey | 2025-10-03 15:31:58+00:00
It always falls back on the software. AMD is behind, not because the hardware is bad, but because their software historically has played second fiddle to their hardware. The CUDA moat is real.

So, unless they also solve that issue with their own hardware, then it will be like the TPU, which is limited to usage primarily at Google, or within very specific use cases.

There are only so many super talented software engineers to go around. If you're going to become an expert in something, you're going to pick what everyone else is using first.
by dentemple | 2025-10-03 15:32:14+00:00
They already censored the not-porn (but still NSFW) photos. I don't think it would've made as much of a difference censoring the porn photos as well, especially when trying to convince people that they're not just creating click-bait.

A lot of folks use TikTok on a regular basis. This article is the one making the claim that's far and away different from what most folks experience on the platform.

Since I'm not about to go on there, pretend to be a 13-year old boy, and start seeking out the porn myself, I really need to see some evidence that this is a thing that is actually possible before I start picking out a pitchfork.
by acheron | 2025-10-03 15:32:26+00:00
The Saxon and Norse kings didn’t use numbers, and the numbers that the post-Norman invasion kings used only started with them (so Edward “Longshanks” was Edward I, despite several Saxon kings Edward).

But if the next king of the UK decides to use the name “Aethelstan”, he wouldn’t be a II. (However, they are supposed to count Scottish kings now, so he could be “Macbeth II”.)
by WorldMaker | 2025-10-03 15:32:57+00:00
The common answer (especially from Fly.io) is "at-the-edge" computing/querying. There is network latency involved in sending a query to MySQL or Postgres and getting the data returned, whereas with Litestream you could put a read replica of the entire SQLite DB at every edge. Queries become fast and efficient only to the local read replica. There's still network latency associated with updating that read replica over time, but it is amortized based on the number of overall writes rather than the number of queries, is more fault tolerant in "eventually consistent" workflows (you can answer queries from the read replica at the edge in the state that you have it while you wait for the network to reconnect and replay the writes you missed during the fault), and with SQLite backing it still has much of the same full relational DB query power of SQL you would expect from a larger (or "proper") database like MySQL or Postgres.
Show HN: Tab completion for my small browser-based programming language Easylang
by chrka | 2025-10-03 15:33:11+00:00
Hi HN! Tab completion makes it much faster to type variable names (correctly) and also helps you finding possible built-in commands.

The information about which inputs are possible is available, because the code is parsed up to the current position when the tab key is pressed.

Easylang is a small programming language designed for teaching and learning, but not only for that. It is also open source.

Have fun with it! C
by gengstrand | 2025-10-03 15:34:06+00:00
I used a graph database in https://www.exploravention.com/products/askarch/ because software architects typically need to understand the dependencies of a complex software system before they can suitably lead that technology. A dependency graph is a good data structure to use when reasoning about dependencies and a graph database is a natural choice for capturing dependency graphs. See https://www.infoq.com/articles/architecting-rag-pipeline/ for more details on the architecture of this AI product. The graph database works very well for this use case.

If you are considering the use of a graph database for AI based search and you are not already familiar with graph database technology, then you should be advised that graph databases are not relational databases. If you cognitively model nodes = tables and edges = joins, then you will be in for some nasty surprises. You should consider some learning, and some unlearning, to do before proceeding with that choice.
by sfn42 | 2025-10-03 15:34:32+00:00
The only problem here is apple. Just don't buy apple products and you're fine. You can have. A windows or Linux pc and use Google sheets or whatever. I don't know whether the office suite is available on Linux but you have options for creating files that are office compatible.

The only problem here is apple, I don't think it seems fair to include MS and Google, they're much less walled than apple is. Maybe they could do better too, but apple is much worse.
by adamqureshi | 2025-10-03 15:34:41+00:00
One man band - https://flyswifttail.com/

Do you fly private ? please refer me. FLIGHT PROFILE - first product

Empty leg alerts - $99/month ( building )

Using claude to provide a FLIGHT PROFILE for your private aviation needs I am having a problem hooking up stripe. The tests in claude keep failing. :-) Thank you .

As soon as i make a sale i will add more features.
by bob1029 | 2025-10-03 15:35:10+00:00
I find myself mostly in this camp now.

In every case where I had a SQLite vertical that required resilience, the customer simply configured the block storage device for periodic snapshots. Litestream is approximately the same idea, except you get block device snapshots implicitly as part of being in the cloud. There is no extra machinery to worry about and you won't forget about a path/file/etc.

Also, streaming replication to S3 is not that valuable an idea to me when we consider the recovery story. All other solutions support hot & ready replicas within seconds.
by cs702 | 2025-10-03 15:36:37+00:00
Hmm... I'd say most AI emperors have no clothes -- that is, no profits and no prospect of them in the foreseeable future.[a]

A tiny number of them are actually wearing something, like a fig leaf. They are the ones won't be caught in embarrassment when an innocent child points most emperors are walking around in the buff.

---

[a] Cloud providers, who do earn profits, are service providers to emperors, not emperors on their own.
by rkomorn | 2025-10-03 15:36:54+00:00
Sarcasm aside, yes, I 100% agree with you.

When the "why" isn't explained, you end up with things like someone refactoring code and spending time (at best) trying to figure out why some tests now fail or (at worst) breaking something in production.

I'd argue that even the "how" sometimes is better explained in plain words than in code (even if that opens the door for outdated comments when code is changed).
by thewebguyd | 2025-10-03 15:37:22+00:00
> They make software the user is scared to interact with.

Apple isn't unique here either. This is a sentiment across nearly all OSes, on mobile and on desktop.

It's one of the primary sources of help desk tickets where I work (I'm IT manager, grew up doing helpdesk->sysadmin). People are afraid to even try some basic troubleshooting, afraid to click on dialog boxes, afraid to mess with settings. Even auto-save in Office freaks people out, they are afraid to close their documents because that Ctrl+S feedback loop is gone, and autosave is ambiguous. Is it instant? How do I know it's saved the change I just made? So now there's users that need to go and double check the modified timestamp on the file before closing the document.

I get downvoted and called old every time I say this but Win 95/98 was peak UX. We are chasing aesthetics now instead of actual usability design. Marketing got too involved in how things looked, everything needs to be a customized, branded "experience" and it's causing severe learning curves vs. just following OS conventions and widgets where every app more or less looked and operated the same way.

Where's all the UX designers and researchers? Oh right, we've laid them all off or just spent too many years not listening to what they had to say and letting the rent seeking marketing and accounting folks drive the products.
by lordofmoria | 2025-10-03 15:37:23+00:00
A small warning for folks.

I once was responsible for migrating a legacy business app to Azure, and the app had a local MSSQL server co-running with the app (the same pattern that Litestream is using).

As have been mentioned below, the app had been developed assuming the local access (and thus <1ms latency), so it had a ton of N+1 everywhere.

This made it almost impossible to migrate/transition to another configuration.

So, if this style of app hosting doesn't take off and you're at all worried about this being a dead end storage once you reach a certain scale, I'd recommend not doing this, otherwise your options will be very limited.

Then again - I bet you could get very very far on a single box, so maybe it'd be a non factor! :)
by ESibio | 2025-10-03 15:37:46+00:00
Thank you for this! There are super emotional and engaging TTS models that exist, but they're also very expensive when you're generating between 1 hour and 15 hours of content per course. We use one thats balanced between not a robotic terrible TTS, but also affordable and scaleable.

I also take ton of courses, and to be honest, I am usually taking one of my own courses in the background for professional development. Right now I am listening to a course on "Secrets of Sand Hill Road" by Scott Kupor. It helps me to pick up concepts more quickly without the filler as it would take me 9 hours to listen to the audiobook and its about 1.5 hours in course form with quizzes.
by CharlesW | 2025-10-03 15:37:49+00:00
> Arguably that's a GPU?

Yes, and to @quadrature's point, NVIDIA is creating GPUs explicitly focused on inference, like the Rubin CPX: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/nvidias-new-...

"…the company announced its approach to solving that problem with its Rubin CPX— Content Phase aXcelerator — that will sit next to Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs to accelerate specific workloads."
by johnnyanmac | 2025-10-03 15:37:56+00:00
>’m not a democrat or a republican, I’m not rooting for either one

You clear are of you're rooting for your own Healthcare premiums to go up. This really isn't a left or right issue.

Heck, this proportionately hurts red states more. Must be so tiring in office to try and defend people who actively wish for your destruction.
by zippyman55 | 2025-10-03 15:38:22+00:00
I saw the train wreck approaching back in 2007 but was not able to do much financially at the time. I see this train wreck also. The AI buildout of data centers is like the overbuilding of homes back in 2007. At some point, the math to provide cooling and power, and the depreciation of the GPUs in these centers and the lack of being able to charge accordingly for these services, not to mention the insane real estate prices will cease to work out.
by BrandoElFollito | 2025-10-03 15:38:34+00:00
Yeah. I have an engineering degree, a PhD in physics, I code, and I build IoTs for fun -- and I did not manage to use the new water cooler at the office.

I tried all the tricks gathered over 40 years of dealing with ever-evolving technology and then this WTF of not being able to switch on water.

It happens, not everyone catches on to new tech. And then I heard my whole team explain among them where a "working water cooler" is. Fortunately, one of them knew how to use the closest one. The whole herd (me included) trotted for a demonstration and now I know that I have to press 3 buttons, then when the incorrect button is lit up, I need to continuously press the small "start" triangle which you see in video programs. All the lights flicker, something something and, tadaaam, the water flows.

I have the same problem when I have to use a shower I do not know. This reminds me a time when I was trekking and saw my friends taking a shower under the faucet of the shower (yeah, the shower had a faucet) because they did not work out what needed to be pulled, turned, pushed, and whatnot.
by simonw | 2025-10-03 15:38:55+00:00
Claude Code can run commands like curl. Curl can be used to fetch data from the web.

See comment here for more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45427324

You may think you're not going to be exposed to malicious instructions, but there are so many ways bad instructions might make it into your context.

The fact that you're aware of this is the thing that helps keep you safe!
by jayveeone | 2025-10-03 15:39:00+00:00
The things people are willing to publish.

The "Hamas is the elected government therefore women and children deserve to die" is Israeli propaganda.

It was a single election 20 years ago for a party running on change, not what Hamas stands for now. It was a protest vote. Palestinians have been experiencing genocide for decades.

Your seething hate for brown people is apart though. I'm glad you're willing to share it for the world to see.
by strenholme | 2025-10-03 15:39:05+00:00
My font stack looks something like this:

font-family: "Roboto Serif", Verdana, sans-serif;

(Because of the OFL, “Roboto Serif” is replaced by another name since I modified the font when I subsetted it)

Large font stacks made sense in the days of IE6 for the following reasons:

• Dial up users did not have enough bandwidth to download webfonts.

• Only IE supported webfonts, in a weird proprietary “eot” format

• 99% of desktop operating systems all had the same web safe fonts “Verdana/Georgia/Trebuchet/Times New Roman/Arial/etc.”

Here in 2025, font stacks no longer make as much sense:

• 100k for a webfont package is a small file, even on a 4g network in a third world country. [1]

• All mainstream current browsers support woff2 webfonts [3][4]

• On Android, font support is very limited and has no support for the old school “web safe” core fonts for the web (Verdana/etc.)

As an aside, if metric compatibility (i.e. all of the fonts letters are the same size) with an OS core font is needed, “Arimo”/“Liberation Sans” is metrically compatible with Arial, “Liberation Serif”/“Tinos” is metrically compatible with Times New Roman, and “Cousine”/“Liberation Mono” is metrically compatible with Courier New.

[1] CJK users have font files large enough where the download size might be an issue. In that case, we either accept the download size as part of a modern website, or we accept that Android users will get Noto [2] while Mac/Windows users will get different looking system fonts.

[2] These font stacks linked in this article by and large all end up using Noto on Android phones. [5] I personally await the day when Apple and Microsoft include Noto by default with their OSes, so “font-family: Noto, sans-serif;” always does the right thing.

[3] 96% over at https://caniuse.com/?search=woff2

[4] Some people will turn off webfonts, but those people have made it clear they don’t care whether or not they get a font which looks like the design the webmaster intended. Again, use https://screenspan.net/fallback to find a reasonably metrically compatible fallback font.

[5] Looking at them in Firefox on my Android phone, “System UI” works, “Neo-Grotesque” gives a pencil thin font which is very difficult to read (“Inter” on my phone is pencil thin), “Slab Serif” actually looks nice (both in Windows, with Rockwell, and on Android, with Roboto Slab), and “Handwritten” works for its purpose (Android uses a “Cursive” fallback font). All the other font stacks are giving me the system default serif/sans/mono fonts (either Noto or Roboto). With Chrome on my Android phone, source sans pro is used a lot, as well as Google specific metric compatible versions of “Arial”, “Georgia”, “Courier New”; “Slab Serif” doesn’t work there even though Roboto Slab is installed on my Android system. Point being, Android has made web safe fonts a thing of the past.
by mikepurvis | 2025-10-03 15:39:28+00:00
I agree that this is an odd comparison— blockchain and especially NFTs really are a scam and a pyramid scheme, whereas modern generative AI has dozens of real applications where it's already been massively disruptive.

Maybe compare with something the development of motion pictures, with dozens of small studios trying different approaches to storytelling, different formats, etc, with live performances being the legacy thing getting disrupted. And then the market rapidly maturing and being consolidated down to a few winners that lasted for decades.
by WJW | 2025-10-03 15:39:36+00:00
Well stablecoins by design cannot really fluctuate a lot in value (unless they collapse), so speculation on them is pretty much out.

It's still pretty unclear to me why you'd actually want a blockchain for managing it though, rather than a traditional database hosted by the central bank that is responsible for the currency that the stablecoin is following. You'd get vastly more throughput at much lower costs, and it's not like you really need decentralization for such a system anyway. The stablecoin is backed by something the central bank already has authority over.
by leakycap | 2025-10-03 15:39:46+00:00
> Could we have high-speed rail if we just asked some French or Japanese company to build it for us?

No. Please see SNCF (French rail company)'s involvement in California's high speed rail project.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-...

October 9, 2022

"How California's Bullet Train Went Off the Rails"

The (foreign) company's recommendations [...] were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF
by jlokier | 2025-10-03 15:40:15+00:00
Among other things, some graph DBs are designed to perform the equivalent of "with recursive", filtering by attributes as you chase links and/or calculating statistics over subgraphs, more efficiently than SQL databases.

If you're just pulling up a tree of comments on an article using parent-child relations, SQL will be fine, though for query latency you might be better off with a "flat list" article-comment relation instead and recovering the tree structure after fetching the comments.
by reaperducer | 2025-10-03 15:40:23+00:00
This one surprised me:

Helvetica Win: 7.34% Mac: 100%

I know Microsoft prefers Arial over Helvetica, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But I didn't expect macOS to adopt it so widely.

Arial Win: 99.84% Mac: 98.74%

Then again, the Mac was designed from day one for this sort of thing.
Ask HN: How is Google AI Mode so much faster than ChatGPT
by excitedrustle | 2025-10-03 15:40:41+00:00
After two years of ChatGPT use, over the past month or so, I've found myself using Google Search instead.

The "AI Overview" is often sufficient and is served very quickly. (Sometimes nearly instant. I assume Google is caching responses for common searches).

"Deep Mode" is just one click away. And the responses are much, much faster. A question that might take 10 or 15 seconds in ChatGPT (with the default GPT5) takes <1 second to first token with Google. And then remaining tokens stream in at a noticeably faster rate.

Is Google just throwing more hardware than OpenAI?

Playing other tricks to look faster? (E.g., use a smaller, faster, non-reasoning model to serve the first part of the response while a slower, reasoning model works on more detailed part of the later response).

Web search tool calls are much faster too, presumably powered by Google's 30 years of web search.
by HankStallone | 2025-10-03 15:41:00+00:00
Also, as programming languages have gotten more powerful, I think they've gotten so they require a particular kind of mind to work with. I could teach anyone with a little interest and aptitude to program in BASIC 2.0, because there aren't any hard concepts. Variables are global, there's no recursion, no objects, not really even functions, just subroutines. So you've got looping and variables, just enough to let you do some calculations and put things on a screen. Pretty simple. Also, my Commodore 128 came with a System Guide in which over 100 pages were a pretty solid BASIC instruction and explanation of every command. So if you bought one of those machines, there was a good chance you'd at least tinker with BASIC. You had to learn a couple commands just to use the thing, after all.

Moving to something modern, even a language that's considered easy to learn like python, you very quickly get into more complicated concepts. That seems to have created a situation where the easier and more powerful we make programming for programmers, the more it gets out of reach of anyone else. Though there are still languages specifically for learning (like BASIC), so that doesn't have to be a problem.
by DocSavage | 2025-10-03 15:41:34+00:00
Aside from the better versions of what AI is visibly doing now (software dev, human language translation, video gen, etc), many of the AI bears are dismissing the potential impact of hooking AI up with automated experimentation so it's able to generate new types of data to train itself. The impact on drug discovery, material science, and other domains are likely to be very significant. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold is just a glimpse of this future.