MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by imiric | 2025-11-17 23:16:41+00:00
The features you mention might be useful, but they're certainly not required.

If your program has grown so complex that users would benefit from modular configs, references, and so on, then a configuration file is the wrong approach for configuring it. You should rather provide a custom UI for users to modify the program's behavior, and persist the configuration transparently in the background for them. This can be done via a CLI, GUI, API, whatever.

The fact that tools like GitHub Actions, Ansible, Kubernetes, etc., abuse a format like YAML to make it work as a DSL, and we needed to invent tools like CUE, Dhall, and Jsonnet to manage this mess is absolute insanity. Most programs don't need such level of complexity. And for those, plain JSON, or minimal configuration formats like the one discussed here, are good enough.
by psunavy03 | 2025-11-17 23:16:59+00:00
Neither of these have anything to do with running a well-regulated nuclear power program. Chernobyl happened because of the apathy and incompetence endemic to any Marxist-Leninist system, not because a modern democratic state is incapable of regulating the nuclear power industry.

Know what else spreads a thin layer of poison over the whole of the world? Coal power.
by oconnor663 | 2025-11-17 23:17:09+00:00
I think it's pretty rare to do a straight up atomic load of a refcount. (That would be the `use_count` method in C++ or the `strong_count` method in Rust.) More of the time you're doing either a fetch-add to copy the pointer or a fetch-sub to destroy your copy, both of which involve stores. Last I heard the fetch-add can use the "relaxed" atomic ordering, which should make it very cheap, but the fetch-sub needs to use the "release" ordering, which is where the cost comes in.
by _heimdall | 2025-11-17 23:17:10+00:00
In the github issues I have followed, including those linked above, I primarily saw Google engineers arguing for removing XSLT from the spec. I'm not saying they are the sole architects of the spec removal, and I'm not claiming to have seen all related discussions.

I am sharing my view, though, that Google engineers have been the majority share of browser engineer comments I've seen arguing for removing XSLT.
by kjkjadksj | 2025-11-17 23:17:34+00:00
At least in LA transit was never really removed. The streetcar system evolved into a bus network that is far more comprehensive today than the streetcar system ever was. What changed was really income levels. Already by the 1920s streetcar systems were in decline as the used car market started kicking into gear and making a direct transport option affordable to most all working people. To this day it is still highly affordable to have a car. There are used car lots advertising $0 down $50/mo financing with merely holding a job at all being enough to qualify for that financing. "Tu trabajo es tu credito" painted on the walls.

Other places you see more transit use usually come with significant cost barriers to driving for most of the working population. In nyc this includes bridge tolls and paying for parking.
by Eddy_Viscosity2 | 2025-11-17 23:17:36+00:00
How long before face readers are everywhere and sending bills to your home when you use a public toilet as a fee or cross the street wrong as a fine. Meanwhile every movement is logged forever. I've heard China already has this, and most people see it as dystopian and bad and ripe for abuse. But in countries like Sweden, trust in government is high, and convenience is convenience, so it becomes a norm that no one questions. This, imho, is not a good thing.
by kcplate | 2025-11-17 23:17:47+00:00
You have obviously not spent much time at a golf course if you believe it only attracts upper income/rich people. Go to your local course and drive around the parking lot sometime on a Saturday…my guess is you are going to see far more older Hondas, Hyundais and Kia’s than Bentleys.

Yeah, not gonna attract the lower income folks because it’s not a zero dollar hobby, but from experience I know the middle class is well represented.
by marginalia_nu | 2025-11-17 23:18:03+00:00
This is extremely tangential, but I was working on setting up some manual network namespaces recently, basically manually reproducing what docker does to fix some of its faulty assumptions regarding containers having multiple IPs and a single name causing all sort of jank, and had to freshen up on a lot of Linux virtual networking concepts (namespaces, veths, bridge networks, macvlans and various other interfaces), made a ton of fairly informal notes to make myself sufficiently familiar with the thing to set it up.

Would anyone be interested if I polished it up and maybe added a refresher on the relevant layer 2 networking needed to reason about it? It's a fair bit of work and it's a niche topic, so I'm trying to poll a bit to see if the juice is worth the squeeze.
by daspq | 2025-11-17 23:19:08+00:00
Has no-one bothered to reverse engineer the app and see what it's actually doing before launching into hundreds of words of breathless conjecture?

If not, this article and almost every comment on this submission is a colossal waste of time.

This is supposed to be a technical website full of inquisitive hackers, right? Then perhaps try to examine the facts instead of guessing and bullshitting.
by ablob | 2025-11-17 23:19:08+00:00
It's true for new projects. For rewrites (such as a shell) it can mean a lot of regressions. The rust-replacements for coreutils are a good negative example. The new programs do not reach feature-parity, added regressions, and in some cases also had security vulnerabilities.

So for battle-proved software I wouldn't say so per-se (if your goal is to replace them).

Nonetheless, if you add truly new rust-code to a new or existing codebase when it's without much of hassle with the interop it should hold.
by Thossndjsj | 2025-11-17 23:19:12+00:00
Most people from what I've seen don't want unique as much as they want somewhat famailiar. If it deviates too far away from that then they are repulsed, and I can give you an example right here.

I'm going to commit suicide. I've known this for the last 15 years. It'll probably be another 10 years before I'll die, but I know my end is half laying down with a 1.5 inch nylon strap tied cinched on my neck and a tree trunk in the dead of night so that no one will be able to find me in time. The reason I haven't is because I'm taking of elderly relatives, but they are the only reason I'm still here.

That's the real me. The one that looks forward to dying even though there doesn't seem to be any reason why I want to die.

I wonder how many in this thread would be utterly horrified by this vs accepting of this.
by poszlem | 2025-11-17 23:19:22+00:00
While looking at Google Maps’ satellite view of North Korea, I noticed something unusual in several areas:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.8416379,124.6971993,599m/dat...

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7064561,124.9519379,871m/dat...

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7917888,127.4197521,1723m/da...

Much of the landscape is divided into rectangular parcels, almost like a factorio layout, or something from sim city 3000, rather than natural terrain. Does anyone know the reason for this pattern?
by amirouche | 2025-11-17 23:19:30+00:00
This repository was generated by Claude (Anthropic) as an experiment—to explore how Claude works and to reverse-engineer its approach. I spent a few hours discussing the idea with both Claude and ChatGPT, focusing on how to build a content-addressable, multilingual infrastructure for Python.

Two small PRs, each based on a single prompt, resulted in a CLI that captures the core idea. The goal was to make it relatable to others—let me know if it resonates with you.

Observations & Process: Claude asked a lot of clarifying questions, while ChatGPT "hallucinated" a broader "cognitive ecology" (likely because I’d mentioned the project under the name "mobius"). The final README reflects a blend of ChatGPT’s grandiose vision and Claude’s more grounded approach. It frames ouverture as a symbiotic post-LLM relationship—a bridge between existing knowledge (including code) and post-LLM AI systems.

The Bigger Picture: If ouverture succeeds, it could become an infrastructure like npmjs—but with less friction, less drama, and fewer barriers. The irony? The README’s vision remains relevant even without LLMs. The core idea—content-addressable, multilingual code—stands on its own.

Origins & Goals: This idea has been brewing for over a decade. My original goals were:

Code as a reusable resource: Write a function, store it, forget it, and retrieve it later—dependencies and all—without the hassle of reinventing wheels (e.g., leftpad or buried helper functions). Lowering cognitive barriers: Enable people to contribute to code without requiring English proficiency, aligning with the "think globally, act locally" ethos.

Inspirations: Key projects that shaped this thinking:

- Unison (content-addressable code) - Abstract Wikipedia (multilingual knowledge) - Situated Software

ouverture.py is my answer to [this Lobste.rs discussion on easing the production of micro-libraries](https://lobste.rs/s/ebbaed/how_ease_production_micro_librari...).
by ZeroGravitas | 2025-11-17 23:19:57+00:00
That's the current load when the pricing structure actively encourages people to use power at night, because that was when it was cheapest to produce in the last century.

What does it look like if you actively encourage people to use power when it is cheapest to produce now?

I guess we'll find out when 3 hours of free electricity at noon becomes a standard offer next year.
by HeinzStuckeIt | 2025-11-17 23:20:07+00:00
Sometimes I wonder about the survival of insect cuisines in non-Western countries if the West keeps holding out in its general disgust. Will this cuisine fade in the face of the West’s cultural juggernaut, just as traditional music in so many countries has been marginalized by imported hip-hop, or traditional clothing was replaced by the suit-and-tie or other Western dress? All people need to get is a subconscious message that this is poor-people food and uncool, and then it goes.
by legerdemain | 2025-11-17 23:20:18+00:00
The weird vibe people are picking up from this essay is because half the phases are about customer service.

As in, the author was working as a waiter or a coach at the time.

A waiter's job is to keep your butt in the seat, get you to order some stuff, and then leave a tip. The waiter may or may not give a shit about you as a person, but it's secondary to their job. That simulation is the creepy vibe.

I've probably never eaten at the kinds of stratospherically high-end restaurants the author writes about. I've eaten at restaurants with Michelin stars. I've never had a waiter flirt with me, daydream with me, or offer ad hoc therapy. And if I ever do, I suspect I might find the charade off-putting.
by smcin | 2025-11-17 23:20:18+00:00
Okay but who are you referring to by "pro biz democrats in NY are losing traction"; the NYC mayor election, Hochul retaining governor, Stefanik's ambitions for 2028/32, or else who? It seems the wrong take to read Mamdani's broad-based support as ideological; it was the combination of an affordability crisis plus an awful opponent who should have been replaced (plus a spoiler third candidate). Kind of like a localized 2025 update of "it's the [city] economy, stupid".
by vablings | 2025-11-17 23:20:24+00:00
Part of the reason why these companies are still around and strong is because they continue to innovate. Facebook spun up Instagram for younger folk, Amazon has some of the best shipping/warehousing/distribution in the world. eBay has slowly become less relevant for local p2p purchase because its market share got eaten up by Facebook Marketplace.... Twitter had a big chunk of its userbase eaten up by Threads, hey I'm seeing a pattern here?
by angadh | 2025-11-17 23:20:47+00:00
The author of this piece—which I am—is reporting on Huxley’s MIT talk. He predicted a drug that improves mental efficiency/focus. And the talk discusses alternative non-pharmacological approaches.

You are welcome to either actually read my piece or, better, listen to his talk. There is no judgment against the substance but a call for additional approaches to enhance a person.
by kjkjadksj | 2025-11-17 23:20:55+00:00
I'm not sure when it started per say. I just think its really odd how you have this pocket of very high income people and no one is bothering trying to cater to that demographic, but instead to the demographic that cleans their house or mows their yard. E.g. the flats of beverly hills fill with taco trucks during the work day specifically for the housecleaners and landscapers to get their lunch. Maybe this high income class of people just puts on very low demand for goods and services relative to lower income classes of people.
by magarnicle | 2025-11-17 23:21:00+00:00
It depends. TFA's Good Will Hunting example is good storytelling, because the whole point is that Will was not ready to hear that direct conversation. In fact, Ben Affleck's character basically says that to him at the end of the movie, when he has finally grown up enough to hear it.

Bad examples include almost every episode of Friends, where all the drama is based on a stupid, unnecessary lie.
by andybak | 2025-11-17 23:21:24+00:00
I'm getting slight "Is this your first day on Planet Earth?" vibes from this. They are pointing out something real and true and valid. And yet - they seem to think that just saying stuff out loud will fix things.

I mean - yeah. Sometimes it might - but usually there's layers of scar tissue and pain and misunderstanding in the way.

In fact - if there's one myth movies perpetuate, it's that of the "epiphany". Two characters finally name the thing, talk it though and there's permanent change.

Permanent change is rare - more so permanent change precipitated by a single conversation.
by inChargeOfIT | 2025-11-17 23:21:32+00:00
A month or two after a visit to Iceland (my favorite country by far by the way), I received a ticket in the mail for speeding. It included a picture of the car I rented and a closeup of the driver's face- a face that did not belong to me (presumably another renter).

Luckily, a quick phone call and a copy of my drivers license cleared things up, but systems like these inevitably lead to "guilty until proven innocent" scenarios instead of "innocent until proven guilty".
by oconnor663 | 2025-11-17 23:22:51+00:00
The boring answer is that standard atomics didn't exist until C++11, so any compiler older than that didn't support them. I think most platforms (certainly the popular desktop/server platforms) had ways to accomplish the same thing, but that was up to the vendor, and it might not've been well documented or stable. Infamously, `volatile` used to be (ab)used for this a lot before we had proper standards. (I think it still has some atomic-ish properties in MSVC?)
by righthand | 2025-11-17 23:23:45+00:00
Open wen doesn’t mean WHATWG gets to decide what is and isn’t useful in the browser.

> What’s happening is that Google (along with Mozilla and Safari) are changing the html spec to drop support for xslt. If you want to argue that this is bad because it “breaks the web”, that’s fine,

Not only does it not break the web, they are flat out lying about that being the reason they’re doing it. That is also very dangerous.

You’re doing a lot of sideways handwaving to say killing off this specific technology is not killing the open web, but others are.

XSLT is not a source of security errors and this is your disingenuous argument from last time, (please state if you work for any of these companies). Libxslt has security vulnerabilities not XSLT itself. Futhermore there are replacement processors they could contribute and implement to and a myriad of other solutions, but they have chosen to kill instead.

That is killing the Open web.
by xg15 | 2025-11-17 23:24:10+00:00
> To be an Empire, wouldn't Israel need to defacto control _some territory_ and then be trying to expand their empire into Palestine?

They very openly do both those things in the West Bank.

Then you have the more extreme settler types talking about the biblical "Land of Israel" that would extend into modern Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.

But as far as I understand it, Israel is usually not the empire itself, but a bridgehead or particularly glaring example of imperialism from the West, starting with the British Empire.

> Or is the idea that the US is the Empire?

So, yes.

It were those countries that conquered those regions from the Ottoman empire and then decided among themselves to support the project of a Jewish state, against the wishes of the existing population of the region.
by mrinterweb | 2025-11-17 23:24:18+00:00
When some people see a child without parents in arms reach, they assume the worst and report the situation. Many parents live in fear of being perceived as negligent, and for good reason. There are some real horror stories about parents getting in big trouble for situations no one would have batted an eye at in the 80s. Even if a kid has earned trust and the parent knows the kid would be fine, there is still the looming threat of someone reporting negligence.

If children do not learn independence, they will not be prepared and will carry a lot of anxiety when they need to be independent.
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-11-17 23:24:48+00:00
Nothing in America is left un-exploited. Incredibly tragic to see yet another sizable contingent of Americans, often particularly vulnerable ones, squeezed by capital. What foes.

Private equity is such a vicious foe to mankind. Hostis humani generis: this profit motive corrupts our world, erodes at humanity, in every way it can. Just once, I'd like to see amalgamated capital try to improve the lot of the world, help humanity along. But no, never: always the swirling draining negative to suck life from the world.
by colechristensen | 2025-11-17 23:25:06+00:00
With recent experience I'm thinking the correct solution is a separate agent with prompting to exclusively be a test critic given a growing list of bad testing patterns to avoid, agent 2 gives feedback to agent 1. Separating agents into having unique jobs.

An agent does a good job fixing it's own bad ideas when it can run tests, but the biggest blocker I've been having is the agent writing bad tests and getting stuck or claiming success by lobotomizing a test. I got pretty far with myself being the test critic and that being mostly the only input the agent got after the initial prompt. I'm just betting it could be done with a second agent.
by sequoia | 2025-11-17 23:25:40+00:00
I looked into it a bit (another commenter called it "not that complicated" which is not a phrase I usually hear in relation to Israeli/Palestinian politics!) and it's pretty interesting: https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-curious-tale-of-israels-sh... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93North_Korea_rel...

Apparently at times some in Israel worked to establish relations with NK, in hopes of improving economic ties & bringing them in the fold I guess, but their efforts were thwarted by others in Israel (intelligence services) and pressure from the USA. And eventually (according to the article) it became clear that "stop selling our enemies weapons to use on us & in return we'll invest and establish ties" was a non-starter, so they gave up.

Also in an interesting reversal of tropes common in US politics, it sounds like the Isaeli government felt they were being unfairly controlled by the US, by being prevented from trying to establish friendly relations with a country the US considered off limits.

It's interesting to think of the counterfactual where Israel invested in NK, NK stopped participating in or arming attacks on Israel, and who knows what else would have happened. Oh well!
by kcplate | 2025-11-17 23:26:13+00:00
On any given Saturday the public parks around me (that are free to enter) have far less people than the golf courses around me. So just because it can serve more people, doesn’t mean that it does.

Also, pretty sure you will be hard pressed in 2025 to find courses actively discriminating anyone who has the $$ to spend to play a round. Every course I have played in the last 40 years seems to have all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds, ethnicities, and income.
by trashface | 2025-11-17 23:26:15+00:00
Its certainly quaint and lucky to be able to solve problems that easily I suppose.

I have 4 people in my immediate social orbit. Two of them have serious behavioral disorders - one has been in inpatient psychiatry (twice), the other has never sought any treatment and in fact denies she has any problems. Another has somewhat less severe behavioral disorders but much more serious physical problems. The last one is simply very old and has health problems.

What is to be gained by "talking about the real problems" with this group? Pretty much nothing, because none of them can or will do anything about it. And the few times myself or someone else has brought up some problem directly, lets just say it didn't go well.

As a meta comment I have yet to see a take from this author that didn't seem to have some pretty clear bubblethink behind it. Not great to be edging into an epistemology domain I associate with Bryan Caplan - like a person whose opinions you pretty much always want to invert to get at closer to the real truth.
by freedomben | 2025-11-17 23:26:46+00:00
I've had reasonable success from doing something like this, though it is my current opinion that it's better to write the first few tests yourself to establish a clear pattern and approach. However, if you don't care that much (which is common with side projects):

Starting point: small-ish codebase, no tests at all:

> I'd like to add a test suite to this project. It should follow language best practices. It should use standard tooling as much as possible. It should focus on testing real code, not on mocking/stubbing, though mocking/stubbing is ok for things like third party services and parts of the code base that can't reasonably run in a test environment. What are some design options we could do? Don't write any code yet, present me the best of the options and let me guide you. > Ok, I like option number two. Put the basic framework in place and write a couple of dummy tests. > Great, let's go ahead and write some real tests for module X.

and etc. For a project with an existing and mature test suite, it's much easier:

> I'd like to add a test (or improve a test) for module X. Use the existing helpers and if you find yourself needing new helpers, ask me about the approach before implementing

I've also found it helpful to put things in AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md about tests and my preferences, such as:

- Tests should not rely on sleep to avoid timing issues. If there is a timing issue, present me with options and let me guide you - Tests should not follow an extreme DRY pattern, favor human readability over absolute DRYness - Tests should focus on testing real code, not on mocking/stubbing, though mocking/stubbing is ok for things like third party services and parts of the code base that can't reasonably run in a test environment. - Tests should not make assumptions about the current running state of the environment, nor should they do anything that isn't cleaned up before completing the test to avoid polluting future tests

I do want to stress that every project and framework is different and has different needs. As you discover the AI doing something you don't like, add it to the prompts or the AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md. Eventually it will get pretty decent, though never blindly trust it because a butterfly flapping it's wings in Canada sometimes causes it to do unexpected things.
by rufus_foreman | 2025-11-17 23:27:13+00:00
>> I have never in my life heard or read anyone, of any social standing, political affiliation, education or station of life discuss the abolition of police entirely

"Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police"

-- New York Times opinion headline, June 12, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

I can remember things that happened 5 years ago.