MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by adornKey | 2025-11-17 11:27:50+00:00
The thinking that sinus are basic building blocks and own frequencies is part of the problem. Fourier is a breakdown into frequencies of "sinus" waves. Sinus are fundamental in physics of some idealistic conditions, but using Sinus is just a choice, mathematically you could just as good use other bases. A triangle has mathematically the same right to own a frequency as a sinus.

Reality is often different from ideal and not that linear. So basic wave-forms often aren't really sinus. But people usually only know sinus, so they'll use this hammer on every nail. Some guys into electrical engineering maybe know about rectangles, but there's, not yet, enough deeper understanding out there for playing with the mathematical tools correctly.
by mlrtime | 2025-11-17 11:28:06+00:00
Why is everything so black and white?

Do kids need more places to run free, yes.

Should they be running in mall food courts, no.

Just because this trend of kids having less free play outside doesn't excuse parents of these kids from taking any space they want. Any reasonable person can see there are still boundaries, are we just disagreeing on what those are? Kids still can't/shouldn't run at swimming pools, it's been that way for decades (just an example).
by danaris | 2025-11-17 11:29:06+00:00
In a city, you'll never have to worry about the "road" you're supposed to follow being a dirt track that barely looks different than the muddy fields on either side.

In a city (especially in SoCal and the American Southwest, which is, AIUI, where all the self-driving cars are today), you can be nearly certain that the various mapping companies have accurately plotted the roads and destinations, and if you're trying to get to a popular Finger Lakes winery, you won't be directed down a limited-use seasonal road that's entirely covered in ice.

In a city, you can be pretty well guaranteed that there are speed limit signs anywhere the speed limit actually changes.

Just off the top of my head, as someone who's lived 40 years in the rural Northeast.
by selfhoster11 | 2025-11-17 11:29:11+00:00
o3 and GPT-5 will unthinkingly default to the "exposing a reasoning model's raw CoT means that the model is malfunctioning" stance, because it's in OpenAI's interest to de-normalise providing this information in API responses.

Not only do they quote specious arguments like "API users do not want to see this because it's confusing/upsetting", "it might output copyrighted content in the reasoning" or "it could result in disclosure of PII" (which are patently false in practice) as disinformation, they will outright poison downstream models' attitudes with these statements in synthetic datasets unless one does heavy filtering.
by pessimizer | 2025-11-17 11:29:20+00:00
There have always been people who went into schools to kill children. In 1927, a guy blew up a school in Bath, Michigan, killing 38 kids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

The fact that you think heaven and earth have to be moved over a single school shooting (as terrible as it was) is a symptom. School is the safest place where children are. They're more likely to be murdered and abused at home.

I'm 50, but when I was a kid I took the bus by myself: when I was 12, on the South Side of Chicago, which had an order of magnitude more violence than your kids will ever be exposed to. I ran around with my friends within a block or two, we were big into BMX bikes. Kids got hurt periodically, but sometimes kids will get hurt; sometimes kids will die. A few hundred years ago, most kids would die. Now we (not we, but mostly a certain demographic whose aesthetic is imposed on everyone else) find it unacceptable to hear about kids dying on television, nowhere near us.

It was bad when 50% of kids died, but I've had the belief that whatever the number it now is too few. We need the number of kids who die through "death by misadventure" to go up. Raising kids in a box leaves them dumb and unsocialized. Kids need independence, and to be allowed the ability to make some bad decisions with real consequences. They need to be able to fall off the monkey bars.
by Tade0 | 2025-11-17 11:29:36+00:00
> Afterwards they are divided between little geniuses going into „Gymnsasium“, average ones going to „Realschule“ and good-for-nothings going to „Mittelschule“.

I would totally land in Realschule because I had an educational slump in fourth grade.

Over here they tried a similar system - middle school spanning classes 7-9 inclusively, named "Gymnsasium" as well, but it included everyone[0] and I recall having a similar sentiment, thinking: "why shove people around like that? So that we don't form lasting friendships and thus make better worker drones?"

Ironically I'm still in touch weekly with the three guys who were my only friends at the time, even though we live in different cities now.

[0] The split between college material and the rest only happened around high school.
by braza | 2025-11-17 11:30:01+00:00
> There’s no point in whining about the impulses endowed to them by several hundred thousand years of evolution. Don’t hate the player; hate the game. And if you really hate the game, make a better one.

I have contact with kids from 3 different places, 2 with high independent mobility and 1 with low independent mobility, and as much I like to agree that kids needs to be free, there's an important parental argument that needs to be talked about that is risk vs reward function if the kids get hurt.

In places with high mobility (at least 2 of them in the chart) there's some state support in terms of children's sick leave if something happens, plus work protections if you need to be absent for more than 6 weeks, and the education system has mechanisms to not let this kid be left behind (for example, if a kid breaks his/her legs).

In those places with low independence, I talk with some parents, and all of them are scared of the possibility of something permanent happens or something that can demand continuous support during working time; in those cases I can see why they play safe.

In the other hand, another second-order effect is that in those places with low independency, one thing that I noticed is that the motor coordination takes way more time to develop, and it cascades down for instance during sports activities (of the lack of), physical development and so on.
by jiggawatts | 2025-11-17 11:30:19+00:00
> Where are you getting that stat?

Basic population dynamics. For a population to remain steady, a breeding pair can only have on average two surviving children that procreate themselves.

If you want to get into the weeds, there's obviously some "fudge factors" that bring this a little bit up above two.

1. Not every kid that survives to adulthood will go on to procreate themselves, so the remainder need slightly more than two to make up the slack.

2. During periods of population growth, the average survivorship has to be higher.

3. The percentage surviving depends on how many were born per family to begin with. I didn't state a percentage, I said two. Okay, fine 2.4 or whatever, but not a fraction, that "depends" on too many variables.

> For the majority of human history the childhood mortality rate has hovered around 50% not 80%.

RECORDED history, which is a short blip in our evolutionary history as a species. I said megayears, a.k.a.: millions of years, for most of which we have scant evidence. Extrapolating from our wild animal cousins and just observing how these "uncontacted" tribes live, it's pretty obvious that for 99% of the time we could be called human, we had five+ kids per couple, and ten+ wasn't uncommon... of which two-point-something survived.

That's just the way it is, for essentially all species. It has to be, otherwise populations would explode in numbers until it's standing room only for the entire surface planet.

PS: Next time you watch some BBC documentary about some species giving birth to hundreds of offspring, well... now you know. They didn't make it. Certainly, statistically, most of them must not have, because if they could and did, then that species would have their population numbers grow astronomically fast!

PPS: You hand-waved away a 50% loss rate as if it's a detail. That in no way undermines my argument that if you have an only child, or even two or three, that losing half of them is not considered acceptable parenting in this day and age. There is absolutely no way anyone I know would trade half of their children so that they can have a wild, carefree, and unsupervised childhood like "nature intended"!
by slightwinder | 2025-11-17 11:30:35+00:00
Yes, this site reads like it's written by someone not enjoying games and understanding the concept of gaming. There is nothing dark about most of these concepts individually. The harm comes from combination and/or excessive usage. The dose makes the poison.

Though, learning them and being aware of them is not bad. But I'm curious how much the phrasing pushes the mindset of the readers in the wrong direction.
by mo_42 | 2025-11-17 11:30:51+00:00
I spent 15 minutes looking at the diagram in the article and tried to figure out how I can conclude whether it's a bubble.

I couldn't conclude it.

It's just a diagram that shows the economic relationship between companies. If they'd all merge into MegaAI, these flows would just be departments supporting each other on different AI projects.

It's not suitable to prove a bubble.

I think a bubble is nothing else than a sudden change in expected value. Currently, the market expects that AI is very valuable because of actual practical value. In this expectation there's also future improvements which might or might not come.

We might see a crash if we realize that this technology reached its limits. Then, we'll all look poorer on paper in the reverse way that we look richer on paper now than 12 months ago. However, I don't think anything serious will happen if such a crash would occur. It's not that people take loans to bet on these stocks.

(Even the 2008 housing bubble could be seen as a temporary market correction when looking at the long-term real estate prices. Housing is much more expensive today than on the peak of that bubble.)
by bob_theslob646 | 2025-11-17 11:31:15+00:00
>I wonder how much psychologically we can be more confident and less anxious when we're doing something for others vs ourselves

Thank you for taking the time to type this up. I would be extremely interested in any sort of research around this and may add( maybe others face the same ) that's incredibly difficult to introspect yourself and solve problems for yourself as easily as you can for others.
by ljm | 2025-11-17 11:33:01+00:00
I don't think anything has pushed me towards low-key single player indie gaming more than the industry's relentless endeavour to blur the lines between gaming and gambling.

Multiplayer? I loved the asymmetrical co-op ones like It Takes Two, The Past Within, Tick Tock: A Tale For Two.

Give me an experience that is thoughtful and enjoyable over one that is intended to frustrate any day. The Seance of Black Manor, The Return of the Obra Dinn, The Outer Wilds, Star of Providence, Disco Elysium, etc. etc.
by rkagerer | 2025-11-17 11:34:07+00:00
The little puzzle the article opens with is fun, but solving it is not what I'd associate with an "aha" moment.

To me it felt more like a brute force search, or like solving a Wordle puzzle.

I consider "aha" more creative, like recognizing that key insight that crystalizes a solution to a problem you're working on. (Or maybe a pattern or analogy that cleanly collapses a swath of the complexity).
by spacecadet | 2025-11-17 11:34:29+00:00
Yaaaawn. If you know you know. This is script kiddy child's play with LLMs relative to security... My team is winning CTFs with fully local/distributed/private LLMs and automated agents. We deploy advanced AI honeypots and "chaos agents" using game theory orchestration and other cutting edge research. Anthropic isn't even on the radar relative to this. Microsoft/OpenAI are light years ahead given their proximity to gov/MIL... Adversarial machine learning is a fascinating area of study and practice, and relatively quiet when it comes to hype.
by samarthr1 | 2025-11-17 11:34:36+00:00
The definition of prosperity, atleast to me is that even if something as natural as there being a bit less wind, or a few more clouds, or a small riot in the next town, my life can go on unchanged.

Just knowing that you don't need to plan and budget for scarcity is something that takes an incredible load off my mind.

I come from a place which has seen wide spread blackouts during hot summers, and know that I do not want my children to face that.

Maybe I am being naive here, but to me, the whole point of doing more with less is so that we can bring up the billions of people less fortunate than us, to have the same or better standards of living as usual, not making our standards worse!

The aim should be to grow the pie, not shrink our shares.
by WA | 2025-11-17 11:35:30+00:00
Your scenario paints an overly negative picture. Neither do the majority of the kids move between schools every year, nor do they switch up classes within a school every year. They usually stay with the same class 2-3 years and only switch for individual courses for a couple of hours per week.

You can criticize the way how kids are separated into different levels by 5th grade, but this has nothing to do with being able to find friends.

Furthermore, your argument doesn't make much sense, because the school system is like this way before smartphones even existed and kids were able to find friends back then. It's not like the school system forces them into escapism. Just that smartphones are simply addictive.
by arcade79 | 2025-11-17 11:35:35+00:00
Scary statistics from the US. Here's some anecdotal data from Norway (my daughter being the data, she's 11):

- Walked in a different aisle at a store. My daughter started going to the store alone from she was about 7.

- Talked with neighbours without parent. Uhm. That's just weird. I'm assume she was around 4? That's when we moved here..

- Made plans with friends, yeah, from she was around 5/6 or thereabouts.

- Walked/biked w/o parent: From 6/7, to/from school, and to friends.

- Built a structure outside: She's been part of building various structures in scouts.

- Sharp knife: Since she was about 6 or 7.

And now I realize I need to wag my hands a bit back and forth with all the 6-7 stuff.

Anyhow; one of the best things we did was ensuring she joined the scouts. Creates incredibly independent kids. I've seen threads on reddit where people are wondering if it's OK to leave the 9 year old at home alone for 30 minutes, and I'm wondering what kind of lunacy that is. My daughter has been capable of walking / biking home from school since she was 6 or 7, and proceed to make her own afternoon snack before we arrive home from work. She's been baking since she was 8. Making toasts, omelets and whatnot since the same age. Scouts taught her how to use a gas burner outside when she was about 8 or 9.

I mean; come on.
by bool3max | 2025-11-17 11:35:43+00:00
We really are in the trenches. How is this garbage #1 on the front page of *HN* right now?

Even if it was totally legitimate, the "landing page" (its design) and the headline ("Learning Zig is not just about adding a language to your resume. It is about fundamentally changing how you think about software."?????) should discredit it immediately.
by seritools | 2025-11-17 11:35:50+00:00
> am I right in thinking the DirectX library only exports a single function and _everything_ else is through DX interfaces

Yup! That's why I didn't have to create a gazillion passthrough functions.

The original DLL in my modern Windows installation has these 8 exports:

DirectInputCreateA DirectInputCreateEx DirectInputCreateW DllCanUnloadNow DllGetClassObject DllRegisterServer DllUnregisterServer

The game only calls DirectInputCreateA, and the rest happens via the COM object that that function creates.
by Nukloop | 2025-11-17 11:35:58+00:00
I built a small tool that generates and edits mindmaps from simple text prompts. You type your ideas in plain text, and it creates a structured map that you can refine, reorganize or expand.

The goal is to reduce friction when ideas are still messy. It is part of a personal challenge to release 52 products in 52 weeks.

If you want to try it: https://textstruct.com/
by matharmin | 2025-11-17 11:36:21+00:00
We're relying on logical replication heavily for PowerSync, and I've found it is a great tool, but it is also very low-level and under-documented. This article gives a great overview - I wish I had this when we started with our implementation.

Some examples of difficulties we've ran into: 1. LSNs for transactions (commits) are strictly increasing, but not for individual operations across transactions. You may not pick this up during basic testing, but it starts showing up when you have concurrent transactions. 2. You cannot resume logical replication in the middle of a transaction (you have to restart the transaction), which becomes relevant when you have large transactions. 3. In most cases, replication slots cannot be preserved when upgrading Postgres major versions. 4. When you have multiple Postgres clusters in a HA setup, you _can_ use logical replication, but it becomes more tricky (better in recent Postgres versions, but you're still responsible for making sure the slots are synced). 5. Replication slots can break in many different ways, and there's no good way to know all the possible failure modes until you've run into them. Especially fun when your server ran out of disk space at some point. It's a little better with Postgres 17+ exposing wal_status and invalidation_reason on pg_replication_slots. 6. You need to make sure to acknowledge keepalive messages and not only data messages, otherwise the WAL can keep growing indefinitely when you don't have incoming changes (depending on the hosting provider). 7. Common drivers often either don't implement the replication protocol at all, or attempt to abstract away low-level details that you actually need. Here it's great that the article actually explains the low-level protocol details.
by pron | 2025-11-17 11:37:20+00:00
Zig is so novel that it's hard to find any language like it. Its similarity to C is superficial. AFAIK, it is the first language ever to rely on partial evaluation so extensively. Of course, partial evaluation itself is not new at all, but neither were touchscreens when the iPhone came out. The point wasn't that it had a touchscreen, but that it had almost nothing but. The manner and extent of Zig's use of partial evaluation are unprecedented. I have nothing against OCaml, but it is a variant of ML, a 1970s language, that many undergrads were taught at university in the nineties.

I'm not saying everyone should like Zig, but its design is revolutionary:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45852774
by PeterStuer | 2025-11-17 11:37:58+00:00
"People who want to bypass it will use non-commercial VPNs, open proxies, or cheap virtual private servers that the law doesn't cover. They'll find workarounds within hours. The internet always routes around censorship."

This is naive. The goal is not to make VPNs technically impossible, it is to move the use of VPNs into the realm of illegality. If successfull, it is just a case of selective enforcement, another vector of going after anyone you don't like.
by jumski | 2025-11-17 11:38:53+00:00
Worth mentioning that WAL is enabling and used by Supabase Realtime [0] and WalEx [1] which both are doing very similar thing - polling the WAL changes in order to emit them as Websocket events.

I never worked with WalEx but have experience with Supabase Realtime and it is a joy to work with and fits great into the Supa ecosystem. So many layers are disappearing when you rely more on Postgres!

[0] https://github.com/supabase/realtime [1] https://github.com/cpursley/walex
by PaulRobinson | 2025-11-17 11:38:54+00:00
This looks like more data towards the "LLMs were involved" side of the argument, but as my other comment pointed out, that might not be an issue.

We're used to errata and fixing up stuff produced by humans, so if we can fix this resource, it might actually be valuable and more useful than anything that existed before it. Maybe.

One of my things with AI is that if we assume it is there to replace humans, we are always going to find it disappointing. If we use it as a tool to augment, we might find it very useful.

A colleague used to describe it (long before GenAI, when we were talking about technology automation more generally) as following: "we're not trying to build a super intelligent killer robot to replace Deidre in accounts. Deidre knows things. We just want to give her better tools".

So, it seems like this needs some editing, but it still has value if we want it to have value. I'd rather this was fixed than thrown away (I'm biased, I want to learn systems programming in zig and want a good resource to do so), and yes the author should have been more upfront about it, and asked for reviewers, but we have it now. What to do?
by jiggawatts | 2025-11-17 11:40:15+00:00
> losing your one child now?

You have likely not lived in a society where every family has many kids, so extended families have dozens of grandkids/cousins. It gets to the point that in times of plenty there's an "excess" and societies go to war in some sense just to see if they can carve out a bit of territory at the "mere" cost of some tens of percent of their youth. I mean.. why not? If you have half a dozen that "made it" and enough land for only two to inherit, flip the coin on the rest of them and maybe they'll find glory and conquer some new patch of land. Or not. What other option is there?

That's how people used to think and behave for millenia.

Modern life is very, very different to even just a couple of hundred years ago, let alone for most of human existence pre-history!

I read a statistic that before modern times something like 15%-60% of men died due to violence! For comparison, if you're an adult male in Ukraine, you've had about a 0.5% chance of death from violence, 30x to 120x safer in the middle of a war than during peacetime in pre-state tribal life.
by pessimizer | 2025-11-17 11:40:35+00:00
There's been a destruction of the commons in general, and no place where people are allowed to loiter outdoors without falling under suspicion or actually being arrested. Children are also people. When I was a child, I hung out in the streets all day.

The trapping of children was just the prelude. Adults are also trapped at home, especially when they don't have any money to spend. Even if they do have money, there are no places they can go where they are expected to interact with strangers. The number of adult virgins has gotten absurdly high.

We have a tool that we could use to fight that: adult education. We have state colleges that we could be trying to attract adults to, rather than acting like people are done learning at 22. Chicago had/had a network of "Field Houses" that are community centers associated with parks where you could teach a class, or have a local group meeting, etc.

Instead, people are isolated and atomized into perfect little consumers who can't share things and can't organize politically except through an online petition encouraged by a "social network."
by tpm | 2025-11-17 11:41:45+00:00
The European situation is a bit more complicated. It was very well known for a long time that Russia is a ticking time bomb in our backyard yet we made ourselves nearly dependent on their energy supplies and now combined with the push for renewables (which in my opinion is the right thing to do) we have a crisis. Now there are also lot of countries in the EU with different priorities, so while in theory we could build long-range HVDC connections across borders, it is very hard to do.