MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by array_key_first | 2025-11-07 17:14:44+00:00
> For people that need the complex stuff, they can access it via menus/formulas.

Yes, this is an obstacle. This makes your software worse for power users. Because now they have to jump through hoops.

If they just took all those options and dumped them somewhere, that would be better.

Okay, another example: a datagrid or table. In naive apps targeting consumers, they're filled with whitespace and they're simple to look at. Great, right?

Oh... you need to see more information than the absolute bare bones? It's okay, you can click 'show more'. The problem is that, now, it takes too much time.

What if I want to see 50 results at the same time? Gulp. If I have to click show more 10 times to do that, I'm taking my computer and throwing it out the window. I don't give a rats ass about your whitespace or visual hierarchy. I want the software to do the thing for me so I can move on with my life.

This is why people will SWEAR by old software. There are many people who refuse to use modern versions of Excel. Because it's too annoying to use, and they use it all day long, so that's not acceptable.
by zbentley | 2025-11-07 17:14:52+00:00
How so? Genuine question. Duck typing is “try it and see if it supports an action”, where interface declaration is the opposite: declare what methods must be supported by what you interact with.

In Python, that would be a Protocol (https://typing.python.org/en/latest/spec/protocol.html), which is a newer and leas commonly used feature than full, un-annotated duck typing.

Sure, type checking in Python (Protocols or not) is done very differently and less strongly than in Go, but the semantic pattern of interface segregation seems to be equivalently possible in both languages—and very different from duck typing.
by BobaFloutist | 2025-11-07 17:15:35+00:00
News isn't supposed to be a democracy, it's supposed to be a hunt for truth and accuracy. If news is intentionally subjecting itself to systemic bias in the hopes of attracting people with firmly held patently absurd beliefs, they shouldn't cry "how did this happen" when people who financially supported them in the hunt for truth and accuracy stop doing so.
by westurner | 2025-11-07 17:15:43+00:00
If you don't handle NaN values, and there are NaNs in the real observations made for example with real sensors that sometimes return NaN and outliers, then the sort order there is indeterminate regardless of whether NaN==NaN; the identity function collides because there isn't enough entropy for there to be partial ordering or total ordering if multiple records have the same key value of NaN.

How should an algorithm specify that it should sort by insertion order instead of memory address order if the sort key is NaN for multiple records?

That's the default in SQL Relational Algebra IIRC?
I'm abandoning a techstack because of it's community (or lack there of)
by fullstacking | 2025-11-07 17:16:04+00:00
I'm not gonna bother saying what tech stack it was or even the specific tech issues I had with it or liked about that given tech.

I could do that but honestly who cares? I've already moved on and have a profound realization.

My issue with it was never the tech, it was with it's community.

I tried to engage in a non contentious way but it was always hijacked by it's community "try hards".

You know who I'm talking about, those people who literally post daily in their respective communities, always engage in other peoples conversations.

They claim to provide constructive criticisms but you know its just about their ego and being contentious.

It's the whole bro-grammar issue that has only seemed to age like milk in today's society.

I'm sure they will show up here.

Long story short, you can compare X, Y and Z all day but it's never really about the tech, its the people who use it and abuse it.

Today I moved on to a new lang I've never really used before and tried a whole new stack I've never believed in before and found I was mostly wrong about all my prior bias and assumptions.

It's the everything is a trade-off and no one is doing it 100% correctly and more importantly than performance is your happiness.

I encourage you to drop what ever you are doing and go explore something new just to see what its like.

I bet its not the tech that makes you want to say or leave. I bet its the community.
by rekabis | 2025-11-07 17:16:10+00:00
I have long since come to the conclusion that happiness is a bullshit goal. It’s like trying to capture Fae - are you sure it even exists? I’m not so sure.

Buddhism, in particular, teaches that wants will only ever cause pain and suffering, and when happiness is not something you can directly control - it arises out of conditions and situations you find yourself in - seeking and pursuing happiness is a fool’s errand. You will always suffer in those periods between bouts of happiness.

For me, I have focused on a much more concrete goal: *satisfaction.*

Particularly, satisfaction from having achieved the goals and targets I have set for myself, and in general, even the random shit that life throws at me. To tackle them and process/overcome/complete them to a quality or level or degree that I can be satisfied with.

And as someone with a nasty Voltron of ADD and Asperger’s, that threshold for satisfaction can often be disturbingly high.

Satisfaction does bring a certain degree of pleasure and happiness in of itself, but far more importantly it brings a degree of encouragement to keep moving forward in this capitalistic hellhole that is hurtling the human race (and potentially even the planet) towards full extinction within our lifetimes.

And as a coping mechanism, it works. Quite well, actually.
by never_inline | 2025-11-07 17:16:16+00:00
I tend to evaluate how well engineered a system is based on these pillars.

* Reliability - Includes HA, fault-tolerance on single node, reconciliation or reliable rollback of failed transactions, ability to manually intervene if something is wrong, and observability

* Security - privilege separation and defense in depth

* Performance - Are basic operations fast? Are there worst case performance pathologies? Are batch interfaces available for efficient processing? How many concurrent users can you handle (if server based).

If we consider all these and perfectly implement, it's already pretty rigorous as an engineering discipline. I think companies at Google scale can do that, on projects with budget. But everywhere else, we make lots and lots of compromises. So there's it.

For example, building high performance network systems or DB engines is more "engineering" than building line-of-business application. Because more of these "engineering" concerns are the part of specification.

I am intentionally leaving out UX, because its a product design problem.
by greener_grass | 2025-11-07 17:16:26+00:00
Applicative Computation Expressions are a big deal (added in F# 5). Recent changes have been smaller in scope.

Unfortunately lots of the more advanced stuff seems to be blocked on C# team making a decision. They want a smooth interop story.

But F# remains a solid choice for general purpose programming. It's fast, stable and .NET is mainstream.
by wrenky | 2025-11-07 17:16:44+00:00
> Our hope is that these extensions can over time be contributed to upstream OCaml.

Yeah, its more just extensions to support their use cases at scale. Think of it more as bleeding edge ocmal, once they work out kinks/concerns they'll get merged back into the language OR if it remains ultra specific it'll stay in oxcaml.

Not a complete own version lol
by abustamam | 2025-11-07 17:16:45+00:00
We as a society. If everyone just thought about their own pod because they can't be bothered about govt corruption then that's how dictatorship wins. MLK had a family too. We can't all be MLK but it doesn't mean we need to be okay with shitty things happening just because they're not as shitty as other things we let happen.
by Telaneo | 2025-11-07 17:17:45+00:00
Just as many wiki's are called Wikipedias, by analogy with the biggest ones; that is, they aren't. Or maybe more fitting here, the word 'download', which can mean data transfer or modification in pretty much any way with a person not knowledgeable about computers.[1] Those uses aren't uncommon, but they are nevertheless wrong.

I think you just finished a circle there, so I don't think there's much reason to continue this line of enquiry, given neither of us is going to change our stance.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/download#Verb
by james_marks | 2025-11-07 17:18:12+00:00
So they’ll call you first with the fake video of your mom.

You’ll be suspicious and ask for the pass phrase. The attacker now knows the nature of the protection you setup between you and your mom.

And then the real attack on your mom, with you describing the system you’d agreed to, and claiming you can’t remember the word/phrase.

Better is the Terminator-style lie to see if it gets detected.
by DFHippie | 2025-11-07 17:18:42+00:00
Any problem with externalized costs or benefits is a collective action problem. You get a benefit everyone pays for or you incur a cost which everyone pays. The individual incentive is to freeload on the resources of others. It is functionally theft.

Regulation and other government actions can solve these problems by internalizing these costs/benefits. Any solution to these problems involves collective control of individual actions, which is to say, government at some scale.

There is some irony in the people who say "taxation is theft" ignoring the theft of the commons counteracted by taxation and the government services it supports.
by jaredklewis | 2025-11-07 17:19:13+00:00
Yea, I’m aware of that. Problem is that it is innumerate. Raising $6 to $8 billion in revenue is not enough to cover a $5 billion deficit and something like $50 billion in additional services and housing development.

Would be great if Democrats can stay the party of serious governance and not style drift to the post-truth style embraced by modern Republicans. I’m glad we’re nominating young, charismatic candidates, but we need to stay in reality.

For a more sober look at the proposals (you sent a link to campaign material) see https://www.cato.org/blog/mamdanis-wishful-thinking-tax-reve...
by enslavedrobot | 2025-11-07 17:19:16+00:00
The competition argument is common. The counter point is that Tesla makes their products with greater efficiency. For instance no car company outside of China except Tesla makes a profit on EV sales. If Tesla lost as much money per car as Rivian, a model Y would be under 30k.

Waymo cars are ~$200k each the new robocab will be closer to ~$20k to produce. These business advantages are why the market has some degree of faith that Tesla will out compete companies like waymo in the quest for .30cents per mile costs. Currently Waymo is well above $2per mile and has no clear path to 30cents. Getting to 30 cents is the only way to unlock the trillion dollar opportunity, otherwise you're just recreating Uber.

These are the types of considerations that make Tesla attractive to risk tolerant investors.
by losvedir | 2025-11-07 17:19:27+00:00
I appreciate the goal of demystifying agents by writing one yourself, but for me the key part is still a little obscured by using OpenAI APIs in the examples. A lot of the magic has to do with tool calls, which the API helpfully wraps for you, with a format for defining tools and parsed responses helpfully telling you the tools it wants to call.

I kind of am missing the bridge between that, and the fundamental knowledge that everything is token based in and out.

Is it fair to say that the tool abstraction the library provides you is essentially some niceties around a prompt something like "Defined below are certain 'tools' you can use to gather data or perform actions. If you want to use one, please return the tool call you want and it's arguments, delimited before and after with '###', and stop. I will invoke the tool call and then reply with the output delimited by '==='".

Basically, telling the model how to use tools, earlier in the context window. I already don't totally understand how a model knows when to stop generating tokens, but presumably those instructions will get it to output the request for a tool call in a certain way and stop. Then the agent harness knows to look for those delimiters and extract out the tool call to execute, and then add to the context with the response so the LLM keeps going.

Is that basically it? Or is there more magic there? Are the tool call instructions in some sort of permanent context, or could the interaction demonstrated in a fine tuning step, and inferred by the model and just in its weights?
by chucksta | 2025-11-07 17:19:38+00:00
You need to read up on the difference between a charge, a crime, and a conviction.

You are found "not guilty" if the prosecution fails to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt during a trial . This can happen because the evidence was insufficient, improperly obtained, or the jury was not convinced by the evidence presented. A "not guilty" verdict is not the same as being found "innocent"; it simply means the state did not meet the legal burden of proof required for a conviction

What happened is they did not meet the burden of proof it was assault
by palmotea | 2025-11-07 17:19:41+00:00
> "Woke" is currently an euphemism for the N-word. Replace it in every right-winger speech or text, and the message won't change at all :)

No it isn't, and to say so is some hyper-polarized bullshit. For instance: if you were to call someone "woke" I'd be far more likely to picture a white person than anyone from a minority group.
by prmph | 2025-11-07 17:19:47+00:00
I'm not sure your argument is making any sense.

Are you saying the reason roads are bad in some parts of Africa is that the people there are too dumb to know how to repair the roads? That their problem is figuring out how to mix and pour asphalt, cement, or gravel on their roads?

That would be very dumb, if that's what you are saying.
by charcircuit | 2025-11-07 17:19:49+00:00
>but it was higher than 50%

I don't relate with this at all. I get ads for normal insurance companies, uber eats, air bnb, and gacha games to name a few. None of them are scams, so I can't understand understand why so many people on hacker news complain about scams.

Do you live in a region with barely any ad inventory?
by deaddodo | 2025-11-07 17:20:16+00:00
Also your style. Game design is influenced by the mind of the designer. Some take a systematic, methodical approach to it. While others treat it like a painting, designing as they go from a core of an idea. And others go full ad hoc, with multiple prototypical designs until they find something that hits.

This is oversimplifying, most designers fall into a bucket of mixed styles; but the point is, no "book" will be perfect for all. Same as with software engineering, graphic design, etc.
by breakpointalpha | 2025-11-07 17:20:27+00:00
They didn't need to be transactional spaces, they need to be spaces that attract people regularly.

The local chicken farmer who works 16 hours a day to keep his farm running isn't going out of his way three times a week to visit the community center for board game night.

He's definitely in the local Tractor Supply store three times a week though...

It's about creating community where people naturally gather, not creating a gathering space then hoping people show up.
by mkozlows | 2025-11-07 17:20:41+00:00
Because it's usually not that useful. I have a friend who was software-adjacent, and would post all these exciting studies showing that this or that practice was a big deal and massively boosted productivity. And without fail, those studies were some toy experiment design that had nothing to do with actual real-world conditions, and weren't remotely strong enough to convince me to up-end opinions based on my actual experience.

I'm sure there are sub-fields where academic papers are more important -- AI research, or really anything with "research" in the name -- but if you're just building normal software, I don't think there's much there.
by yodon | 2025-11-07 17:20:56+00:00
> For the layman: These plots show a sudden burst of acceleration on the object, and the push points mostly in one steady direction within the orbital plane. A normal comet warms up and ramps its outgassing gradually, and breaking apart would look chaotic with the direction of thrust changing randomly.

> Here we see one short, powerful jet, like a sealed pocket finally venting, so the speed jumps sharply while the path stays in the same plane; it accelerates but it surprisingly doesn’t change direction.

> It resembles what a single thruster would do (what an incredible prospect!), but it can technically still be explained by a natural rupture of volatile ices in an ancient space rock.
by bojo | 2025-11-07 17:21:11+00:00
My team still has 8 year old Haskell systems in production. We pivoted away from the language a few years ago, which I discuss here a bit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37746386

I personally love ML languages and would be happy to keep developing in them, but the ecosystem support can be a bit of a hassle if you aren't willing to invest in writing and maintaining libraries yourself.
by burningChrome | 2025-11-07 17:21:25+00:00
>> care for the affected and substantial funding on the ground level

Not sure what you would expect, but on a state level. My state has hundreds of millions in funding for free clinics, free treatment centers, free methadone clinics, free housing, and free welfare. If people really want to get clean, they can.

This isn't a problem of funding either on the state or federal level, its a bunch of NGO's getting rich making sure the situation continues by handing out free tents, clean needles, narcan and "safe zones" where people can do their drugs without interference.

When you make it easier to stay addicted and homeless? Those who are in that situation will continue to take the easy route. Its not easy getting clean and this is 100% on the individual to make the choice to get clean. When you encourage addiction and make it socially acceptable, is it any wonder this issue isn't getting any better and in fact, is well past a crisis point now.
by vivzkestrel | 2025-11-07 17:21:49+00:00
what about splinter cell conviction, 15 yrs and nobody has figured out its map file format .unr that uses custom unreal engine 2.x. It even has a tool that lets you unpack its UMD files https://github.com/wcolding/UMDModTemplate The library on github requires this tool unumd https://www.gildor.org/smf/index.php/topic,458.msg15196.html... The same tool also works for blacklist. I would like to change the type of enemy spawned in the map but I cannot find any assistance on it. UEExplorer doesnt work because it is some kinda custom map file
by SunshineTheCat | 2025-11-07 17:22:45+00:00
“I’m worried about younger folks not knowing how to conduct a traditional Google search.”

This has a real “I’m afraid no one will know how to ride a horse when the motorcoach comes out” sense to it.

The answer is, who cares? Why would a better way of doing something “frighten” someone. Not to say it won't come with its own set of issues, but technology constantly evolving/improving should be expected by now, but humanity remains terrified at even the slightest upheaval of the status quo.
by embedding-shape | 2025-11-07 17:23:06+00:00
This seems to be the background story to why this is being added now, so it could be flagged earlier:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/25/microsoft-bloc... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45373564 - 873 points | 43 days ago | 867 comments)
by vkou | 2025-11-07 17:23:14+00:00
Changed to what? Should dang become legally responsible for any of the bad legal advice I've been giving people on this forum? Should Murdoch go to prison for the lies in the paid advertising that Fox anchors and opinion wonks are doing every day?

Let me take things back a step - it's nearly impossible to hold people who are lying accountable. Surely the platform bears less responsibility than the liars on it?
by procaryote | 2025-11-07 17:23:34+00:00
Yeah, but when these things happen I ask myself, is Jane Street successful because of ocaml, or did they just happen to pick ocaml and then make it work?

There might be some power in attracting all the people who happen to love ocaml, if there are enough of competent people to staff your company, but that's more a case of cornering a small niche than picking on technical merits
by bunderbunder | 2025-11-07 17:24:40+00:00
The "shared necessity" factor also means that you regularly meet acquaintances there by accident. It just doesn't happen at the Wal-Mart or Home-Depot 15 miles away anywhere near as often as it would happen at the town general store or the local main street shopping district. Possibly because nobody actually spends time at a big box store or strip mall; they're such deeply unpleasant spaces that you basically just do what absolutely must be done and get out. So now a little extra stroll around to window shop has been replaced by extra time in the car to drive 15 miles across town in the other direction to go to some other big box store.

It's not just a small towns thing, either. The main street shopping district I had in mind just now is in the middle of Chicago. And it doesn't happen so much there, either, anymore, in the post retail apocalypse era. Now it's all bars and restaurants so people go there for a very reduced range of reasons.
by westurner | 2025-11-07 17:24:52+00:00
How often do hardware optimizations get created for lower level optimization of LLMs and Tensor physics? How reconfigurable are TPUs? Are there any standardized feature flags for TPUs yet?

Is TOPS/Whr a good efficiency metric for TPUs and for LLM model hosting operations?

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45775181 re: current TPUs in 2025; "AI accelerators" :

> How does Cerebras WSE-3 with 44GB of 'L2' on-chip SRAM compare to Google's TPUs, Tesla's TPUs, NorthPole, Groq LPU, Tenstorrent's, and AMD's NPU designs?
by tharne | 2025-11-07 17:25:24+00:00
That's fine; I wasn't referring to the academic quality the grammar. It's the ideas themselves that are muddled and unclear. Proficiency in given language and the ability to express oneself clearly are not as related as we typically think they are.

I know plenty of folks with poor English who are nonetheless very clear and concise when it comes to expressing their thoughts in English. I also know many native English speakers who, despite being proficient in the language, cannot express a lot their ideas clearly or concisely.
by throwaway314155 | 2025-11-07 17:25:55+00:00
Wow, thanks for the info. I'm planning on testing this on my M4 Max w/ 36 GB today.

edit:

So looking here https://ollama.com/library/gpt-oss/tags it seems ollama doesn't even provide the MXFP4 variants, much less hide them.

Is the best way to run these variants via llama.cpp or...?
by mmooss | 2025-11-07 17:26:29+00:00
Thanks for your POV.

> those studies were some toy experiment design that had nothing to do with actual real-world conditions

Isn't that the nature of understanding and applying science? Science is not engineering: Science discovers new knowledge. Applying that knowledge to the real world is engineering.

Perhaps overcoming that barrier, to some degree, is worthwhile. In a sense, it's a well-known gap.
by CrimsonCape | 2025-11-07 17:27:12+00:00
Just some quick facts from the article:

The new requirement is that the maximum weight of a clothed worker is 124.7kg or 274.9 lb.

One worker said he was at 118kg (260.1 lb), and his target weight is 110kg (242.5 lb).

Not to throw shade at anyone in particular, but using the USA NIH.gov BMI calculator, for a 5'-11" man, the "healthy" range of BMI is 18.5 to 24.9, in mass that is approximately 60.32kg (133 lb) to 80.7kg (178 lb).