MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by HeinzStuckeIt | 2025-11-20 15:07:00+00:00
It really depends what field. In some branches of history, archaeology, and linguistics, for instance, many matters of emerging consensus often reach students only through lecturers’ handouts that are not put online. What a curious person will find on the internet and in general-reference books can be a decade or more behind, and viewed within the field as horribly out of date.
by ModernMech | 2025-11-20 15:08:03+00:00
This is America, we have perfected the art of spending more to get less. That doesn't mean cuts to education aren't happening. See also: the entire healthcare system.

I specifically mentioned: teachers paying for supplies out of their own pockets, underpaying teachers, not investing in safe teaching environments, increased litigation, demonizing the profession, increased political targeting, and lack of teacher agency in disciplining students.

Fact is when I look at my district, over the last decade we've had to do more with less, and I don't know a single teacher who can say the opposite. So it is true we are spending more overall, it's not true we aren't cutting education.
by VLM | 2025-11-20 15:08:09+00:00
The microline series, antique stores are full of them. Every high school or lower undergrad boomer had one or a similar clone and they show up in antique stores and on ebay all the time. The 80 and 120 are about the same size and sell for about $20 and I don't bother buying them anymore when I see them. The 80 puts the T scale on top and the 120 more usefully puts it in the slider IIRC so you can chain calculations.

Grad students or undergrad STEM students would have something like a 900 series, I have several, very nice. This is a desk rule it will not fit in a pocket. Something like a 600 series is a short pocket model, anodized aluminum, very nice and desirable.

The microline series was definitely made to a price point and unless you find one in unusually good condition or its your first collector rule I would not bother picking it up. They stick very strongly and the cursor cracks after half a century and they are slippery in the hand and warp more than most rule and I don't think they're easy to read. They were cheap to make and cheap to buy.

Slide rules in the 2020s are an efficient market; something that barely works "the walmart solar calculator of its generation" like a microline series sells for around $20 today, a VERY desirable N600 series sells for like a hundred bucks and I think its a bargain at that price.

If you mean most popular as in most desired today not most sold back in the day, that's probably the 600 series or specialty rules like I have a N-16-ES with the electronics engineering scales. The latter sells for about as much as a working HP48 calculator, which is interesting. If you mean popular as in attractive that is surely the Faber-Castell short 83N series, I think that's a 62/83N. I would like one of those LOL. Unleash 1960s German graphics artists on industrial design and tell them to make the coolest looking slide rule possible under 60s industrial design rules, you get the 83N series, very very cool way to spend $300 or so, its the kind of thing you put in a lighted display case to admire.
by iLemming | 2025-11-20 15:08:11+00:00
There's 'FP stacks' and "FP stacks" and some aren't expressly similar. Volumes of money/data get handled by FP stacks - Jane Street famously uses OCaml; Cisco runs their entire cybersec backend on Clojure; Nubank covers entire Latin America and about to spread into the US - runs on Clojure on Elixir; Apple has their payment system, Walmart their billing, Netlfix their analytics on Clojure; Funding Circle in Europe and Splash in the US; etc. etc. There are tons of actual working products built on FP stacks. Just because your object-oriented brain can't pattern match the reality, it doesn't mean it's not happening.
by Izkata | 2025-11-20 15:08:12+00:00
> the splitting of byte strings and character strings alone (an obvious move towards sanity) was plenty annoying for many projects.

Python 2 had both, it was a rename, not a split. unicode -> str, and str -> bytes. The "u" string prefix was also removed, which made migration of string-heavy code more of a pain than it needed to be, until it was added back in in 3.3
by mythz | 2025-11-20 15:08:14+00:00
Basically Matthew Garret sued owners of www.techrights.org and news.tuxmachines.org for libel, was successful and was awarded £70,000 in damages.

> In my judgment, in all these circumstances, the minimum sum necessary to convince a fair-minded bystander of the baselessness of the allegations against him, to vindicate his reputation and restore his standing, and to compensate him for the consequences he has suffered, is £70,000.
by johnisgood | 2025-11-20 15:08:37+00:00
People still complain about PHP saying how it is not secure at all, how shitty of a language it is, and so on, because they are stuck at PHP 5. Everyone should just start from PHP 8.

I have no clue what the future brings for PHP, but PHP 8 is definitely a good start, and we should put PHP 5 to rest.

PHP 10 might not be that different from PHP 8 for all I know.

We do not know if there will be "constant change". Out of curiosity, what programming language do you use that you also love?

FWIW, if by "constant change" you mean improvements or bug fixes, then I do not see why we should not have those. I do not even mind breaking backwards compatibility if the reasons for breaking justifies it, but it has to be a really good reason.
by MrBuddyCasino | 2025-11-20 15:08:52+00:00
PSA: Chris Langan has never achieved a super high score on a real IQ test.

Since the 90's he is feuding with Rick Rosner, when they both edited the Mega Society’s journal Noesis, over the title of smartest guy. They both took an untimed Richard Hoeflin test (that maybe only a few hundred people have actually taken and therefore impossible to norm) with completely arbitrary scoring criteria and self-assigned “record setting” IQs.

Neither has any outstanding intellectual contributions to their name. They are weirdos who have made "being smart" their identity.
by keiferski | 2025-11-20 15:09:01+00:00
Everyone always interprets this guy's situation to mean that IQ tests aren't actually that accurate/are flawed as a tool.

But I think it's much more likely that intelligence itself is just a bit overrated amongst "intellectual" / white collar types, as in, people that define their identity and self-worth by how smart they are, or think they are.

At the end of the day, being disciplined, sociable, focused, or even just having a narrow set of interests is probably more of a recipe for success than mere raw intelligence. And ironically I think there are a lot of people that would be more successful – in careers, personal relationships, etc. – if they were a little bit less intelligent.
by senordevnyc | 2025-11-20 15:09:01+00:00
I have no idea what you're even trying to say here. Australia is welcome to try and confiscate goods that are mailed without paying sales tax, but we both know they lack the ability to actually execute that. And their ability to do anything about digital sales is basically non-existent.

So if I'm understanding your analogy correctly, the guards can't really do anything, so the merchant and the buyer will be the ones going about their business.
by maeln | 2025-11-20 15:10:02+00:00
While it seems unlikely, I wouldn't find it impossible (edit: learning more about IQ score, yeah 276 is definitly BS). You can be "intelligent" as in very good at solving logic puzzle and math problem, and the most obtuse and subjectively dumb person when it comes to anything else. It might be less likely but definitely happened. I have met people working in very advanced field having the perspective and reflection of a middle schooler on politics, social challenges, etc. Somewhere also clearly blinded by their own capacity in own field and thought that it would absolutely transfer to other field and were talking with authority while anybody in the room with knowledge could smell the BS from miles away.
by froobius | 2025-11-20 15:10:07+00:00
See also: "Major IQ differences in identical twins linked to schooling, challenging decades of research" [1] [2]

I.e. the idea that IQ is some innate fixed quality has evidence against it. It seems obvious that this is the case, given that people get their children tutors so they can do better at IQ tests to get into schools...

[1] https://www.psypost.org/major-iq-differences-in-identical-tw...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000169182...
by doe88 | 2025-11-20 15:10:49+00:00
With age and experience I learned that intelligence has a lot of axis, IQ test is only one of them, it is meaningful but narrow. My favorites questions I like to ask people I know or I don't see often are: what are you passions, what do you like in life? It's often much more interesting about what it reveals of the person, than their ability of solving logic puzzles.
by numbers_guy | 2025-11-20 15:11:06+00:00
IQ by its own is not enough. A higher than average IQ is probably the result of a larger than average working memory, and maybe also some ability to make more "long-range" connections between concepts in the brain. That's raw processing power. But raw processing power isn't everything. You also need an otherwise healthy mind, the sustained motivation to accomplish great things and the ability to focus to dedicate enough time towards those goals.

For example if you read the biography of Von Neumann, it's remarkable that he was able to focus and work in the most noisy and distracting environments.
by mrweasel | 2025-11-20 15:11:50+00:00
Some years ago some TV show found presumably "the smartest man in Denmark". The title is disputed, obviously. Turns out he's basically some redneck type person who tinkers in his workshop, never held a job, just sells inventions/solutions to people who comes around asking for them. He put no value on IQ, but admitted that it might be what allows him do make a small living of his tinkering.

Then there's my wife's co-worker, member of Mensa and self-proclaimed intelligent person. She's barely functional in normal society, completely locked in a "I'm smart, so I'm right" mentality. Even if she may be technically correct, she completely fails to understand that rules might be wrong or needs to be bent to make society work. Yet somehow she also manages to overthink things, needlessly complicating things and designs procedures that requires a higher than average IQ to understand and gets upset when those procedures aren't followed. You'd think that smart people would design simpler and easier solutions, but apparently that's not a given.
by JohnFen | 2025-11-20 15:11:53+00:00
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that people in the '60s were twice as smart as people now.

The average IQ of the people then would be 100, and the average IQ of people now would also be 100, even though there was a huge difference in intelligence. This is because 100 is defined as being the average rather than being an absolute measure.
by argiopetech | 2025-11-20 15:12:28+00:00
Faber-Castell had new-old stock in the mid 20-teens, but they ran out (of stock or patience) around 2016–2018. Picked up a 2/83N for under $100, and I wish I'd gotten more. I'd suggest some of those are on eBay now.

Most of my like-new rules came from antique malls, though I've also purchased one from Etsy. Estate sales are occasionally fruitful. As long as they were stored properly (e.g., in a desk drawer, like it seems they mostly were after the electronic calculator took over), they don't degrade. Occasionally you see minor yellowing that is cured by some time in the sun. Carrying cases (often leather) are typically more affected by time. I soak new (to me) leather cases in neatsfoot oil and give them at least a week before putting the rule back.

You could make your own with prints from the Slide Rule Museum [0]. 3D printing would make quick work of it, but I'm sure wood or metal units could be accomplished. The cursor benefits from spring loading,

They also have some pretty nice simulators [1], if that's your thing.

[0] https://sliderulemuseum.com/SR_Scales.shtml [1] https://www.sliderulemuseum.com/VirtualSR.shtml
by dmoy | 2025-11-20 15:12:38+00:00
Yea English be like that sometimes

Look up some crazy sounding 20+ character word, takes three steps, and then you get a definition of the sub-sub-sub word and it says ".... blah blah, derived from the Greek base <abc>- and then also the Latin base -<xyz>", and you realize you had no chance at getting it from any kind of first principles or anything.
by tetris11 | 2025-11-20 15:12:45+00:00
Dunno - I think it's hard for a lot of us who rolled the dice on our interests early on, picked the winning combo of CS + Finance, and then just raced ahead in the career ladder over our peers as software work consumed the world.

Now it's ten years later, those ladders have disappeared, many of us seeing the writing on the wall, and wondering whether we were anything special at all.

(The answer of course is no, but it's a tough pill to swallow)
by r_lee | 2025-11-20 15:12:46+00:00
This guy is a fraud, he isn't measured by any legit institute, only by some random one which stated he is intelligent and he claims he was measured at 276 IQ.

He's low-key just trolling at this point, aaying he wants asylum in the US and making videos about how jesus/God is real with some scientific methods etc.

Just go check out his YouTube you'll see what I'm talking about.
by cogman10 | 2025-11-20 15:13:12+00:00
It certainly has increased. The question isn't whether the increase is enough, but rather if the destination of the funds is the right location.

There's also an issue with home life that heavily impacts educational outcome.

My own school district spent a fortune making a palace for the district admin. Meanwhile, the public schools are falling apart with the kids packed in like sardines. They've literally started adding cheap prefab trailers to the school grounds to accommodate.
by jimmydddd | 2025-11-20 15:13:14+00:00
---innovate instead of litigate. Agreed, but there has to be a balance. In some cases, it could also be looked at as favoring marketers over innovators. On the copyright side, you could also argue about why ChatGPT should have to be slowed down by these copyright trolls (i.e. authors) who want to extract funds from them. Just let them innovate!
by rmoriz | 2025-11-20 15:13:14+00:00
IRC is back.

>This is a dispute between prominent ‘free software movement’ activists. The free software movement advances a philosophy and practice which values the freedom of users to create and share software enabling internet access, and challenges the dominance of ‘big tech’ software and systems over the online experience. That includes a preference for internet relay chat (‘IRC’), an online instant messaging system dating in origin from the 1990s, over the big social media platforms. The challenge the free software movement makes is not only of a technical, but also of a social, economic or ethical nature, and it espouses some wider sets of values accordingly
by nis0s | 2025-11-20 15:13:26+00:00
Be wary of success measure games, a lot of people with a lot less intelligence/capability are doing so much. Luck and network effects trump intelligence, ability and so on. It’s better to always just reflect on yourself…unless you’re some unlucky schmuck that someone took time out of their precious life to personally disadvantage somehow.

The other thing that’s occurred to me lately is how some “impressive” resumes and experience just won’t be possible about nation state level backing. So yeah, if you’re going to talk about games, be aware that there’s always more than one at play.
by bell-cot | 2025-11-20 15:13:59+00:00
> The ban stems from years of noise complaints by residents near Forest Hill Park, located in the center of the ultra-wealthy coastal hamlet south of Monterey.

Idea: Instead of banning, sell the pickleball facilities (at a "location, location, location" price), and use the money to buy land for a bigger and nicer public pickleball park elsewhere.
by Herring | 2025-11-20 15:14:09+00:00
That's the Baumol effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

1) Two-Sector Economy: In Baumol and Bowen's observations, the economy is divided into two parts:

- A Progressive Sector: Productivity grows rapidly due to technology and automation (e.g., manufacturing, data processing).

- A Stagnant Sector: Productivity grows slowly, if at all, because the service is labor-intensive (e.g., a string quartet performance, a haircut, K-12 teaching).

2) Wage Linkage: Both sectors compete for labor from the same pool of workers. As productivity gains allow wages to rise in the progressive sector, the stagnant sector must also increase its wages to attract and retain employees.

3) Divergent Cost Impact:

- In the progressive sector, the higher wages are offset by the gains in productivity. The labor cost per unit of output can remain stable or even decrease.

- In the stagnant sector, there are no corresponding productivity gains to offset the higher wages. The labor cost per unit of service must therefore increase.

4) Resulting Price Trend: The prices for services in the stagnant sector (e.g., concert tickets, college tuition, healthcare) must therefore rise and faster than the prices for goods from the progressive sector (e.g., electronics, cars). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect#/media/File:Pric...

5) A lot of European countries fund these expensive services through general taxation rather than direct user fees. In the US that's not going to fly, so cost pressure incentivizes orgs to cut corners and reduce quality and automate as much as possible.
by Izkata | 2025-11-20 15:14:11+00:00
Not sure why this was downvoted, 3.3 was when they started re-adding things that were removed in 3.0, to make supporting both 2 and 3 reasonable for libraries. I think it kept going in both 3.4 and 3.5 with more features, but the 3.3 restoration of the "u" string prefix is the one that I remember.
by raeroumeliotis | 2025-11-20 15:14:33+00:00
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by tehbeard | 2025-11-20 15:14:49+00:00
You can still write php 5-esque slop and have it run... mostly (some particulars like the half dozen ways of interpolating a variable into a string have been paired down, some extensions left in the dustbin, but the fundamental "shit out a script and run it" capability still remains doable).

non of the "modern" things are particularly taxing to teach someone with more than two braincells. If they don't understand them then they haven't kept up with ANY programming trends in the past decade and are best placed infront of the TV with an iPad than left to mess with the possible critical infrastructure of a business.
by programjames | 2025-11-20 15:15:15+00:00
> What I deeply believe is: We're never going to invent superintelligence, not because its impossible for computers to achieve, but because we don't even know what intelligence is.

Speak for yourself, not all of humanity. There are plenty of rigorous, mostly equivalent definitions for intelligence: The ability to find short programs that explain phenomena (compression). The capability to figure out how to do things (RL). Maximizing discounted future entropy (freedom). I hate how stupid people propagate this lie that we don't know what intelligence is, just because they lack it. It's quite convenient, because how can they be shown to lack intelligence when the word isn't even defined!
by TheRoque | 2025-11-20 15:15:20+00:00
It's not raw, in the sense that it's not an objective measurement. It's a comparison with other humans of the same age that took the same tests. 100 IQ means that you score in a perfectly average way, you're better than 50% of people that took that test and worse than 50% other people that took that test, it's a comparison, not really an absolute score.

So, to compare 100 IQ now with 100 IQ 50 years ago is hard, since you're not using the same test anymore.

There's an effect called the Flynn Effect which is essentially an inflation of IQ, so the tests are changed every few years so that it keeps the same distribution (so that the averagely intelligent human would score 100)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

In fact, you can't always compare the IQ tests of 2 humans alive, because the given score is comparing you to the other people of your age, not to the global population. So if you compare the IQ of a kid and middle aged man, it doesn't mean that one is more smart than the other in an absolute way (it's more a theoretical potential)
by volkk | 2025-11-20 15:15:37+00:00
SynthID seems interesting but in classic Google fashion, I haven't a clue on how to use it and the only button that exists is join a waitlist. Apparently it's been out since 2023? Also, does SynthID work only within gemini ecosystem? If so, is this the beginning of a slew of these products with no one standard way? i.e "Have you run that image through tool1, tool2, tool3, and tool4 before deciding this image is legit?"

edit: apparently people have been able to remove these watermarks with a high success rate so already this feels like a DOA product
by danby | 2025-11-20 15:15:38+00:00
> I think it's a mistake to apply power to them in their current state since that could cause damage.

One big issue is that these old electrolytic caps can leak and damage the motherboard and this is a common fail state for both the A1200 and CD32, as Commodore used some particularly low quality caps in the 1992-1994 era.

Even if you don't replace the caps they should be removed from the board before they go in to long term storage.

Powering up is unlikely to damage the machines. If the caps have already failed powering up won't cause any additional failure. A cap that hasn't been powered in a long time and is on the very edge of failure can be caused to fail by passing power in to it but that is a vanishingly rare edge case. The most likely issue for the caps, if they aren't working, is that they have already leaked.
by hylaride | 2025-11-20 15:15:50+00:00
The incentives are also all over the place. The shipping industry uses a lot of labour from "poor" countries, but on bulk shipping the labour costs are often a rounding error. The main issue is, of course, working conditions. Americans don't want to sit on a freighter for 6 month tours away from their families. The US navy has a hard enough problem doing it for people in their early 20s, and even then that's usually to get access to education funding. People from the Philippines will do it because it is life-changing amounts of money and the alternative is abject poverty.
by codingdave | 2025-11-20 15:16:26+00:00
It is less meaningful than that. It identifies who does well at tests for those things. That is not the same thing as being "better" at such things, it often just means "faster". IQ tests are also notorious for cultural bias. In particular with the word associations, they often just test for "I'm a white American kid who grew up in private schools."

And I say this as one of the white amercian kids who did great on those tests. My scores are high, but they are not meaningful.
by zug_zug | 2025-11-20 15:17:01+00:00
Well, it is mathematically impossible. Traditional IQ tests have a mean/median of 100, and follow a normal distribution with standard-deviation of 15 points.

So 270 would be 11 standard deviations above normal so 1 in 17,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people.