MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dpark | 2025-11-01 15:26:07+00:00
Does it happen often? The unintended behavior seems extremely discoverable. “Hey, Google. Why does my button onclick not fire correctly?” “Oh, I need to set this stupid property.”

Would it be nice if this wasn’t necessary? Sure. But browsers aren’t going to break compatibility to fix this quirk.

> we ought to look at that reason and attempt to deal with it

I’m curious how you think we could deal with this aside from education.
by grayhatter | 2025-11-01 15:26:21+00:00
> Yes, the client wanted the server to deliver content it had intended for a different client, regardless of what the service operator wanted, so it lied using its user agent.

I would actually argue, it's not nearly the same type of misconfiguration. The reason scripts, which have never been a browser, who omit their real identity, are doing it, is to evade bot detection. The reason browsers pack their UA with so much legacy data, is because of misconfigured servers. The server owner wants to send data to users and their browsers, but through incompetence, they've made a mistake. Browsers adapted by including extra strings in the UA to account for the expectations of incorrectly configured servers. Extra strings being the critical part, Google bot's UA is an example of this being done correctly.
by arthurofbabylon | 2025-11-01 15:26:31+00:00
> Profitability isn't unambitious; it's controlling your own destiny.

Even better, profitability is all about a harmonious developer-customer relationship. This was alluded to later in the essay, but I believe it is worth emphasizing. The entire point of business is to serve customers. That relationship is everything, and profitability indicates the presence of net-positive impact.
by Marshferm | 2025-11-01 15:26:40+00:00
That’s 1890s thinking. We have no viable long term infrastructure planning here. Pretty obvious. Investment in science is part of that.

Leaner? You mean shifting to a third world oligarchical plan. Tariffs on things we don’t produce here like coffee? On things we can never produce in the scale of other economies owing to the shift to scrap traffic like steel? It’s suicide not lean. That’s what lean is in the Russell Vought plan, study it, it’s about privatizing infrastructure that has no revenue sources unless it’s passed directly to consumers; think a 600 dollar private road toll to go interstate while the middle class go local routes. They’ve studied these parameters for decades. This is eviscerating our competitiveness both locally and world stage.

The idea a political ideology of Reagan/Clinton leaner has been narratively co-opted for asset raiding and infrastructure abandonment tells me that laypeople are missing the big picture on a colossal scale.
by palata | 2025-11-01 15:26:42+00:00
I consider that it is a startup when it hasn't found a product-market fit, i.e. it is not profitable.

As soon as it is profitable, it is a normal company. Small or big.

An established company has established products and keep building/improving them. A startup does not have that: they just have ideas and try them until one works, or they run out of money. VCs consider it's worth fueling that "trial-and-error" with investments because they believe it is a competent team in a promising field. Nothing more, nothing less, it's just a lottery after that point. Just one where VCs and founders like to believe they are enlightened.

Because the first idea you try is successful does not mean you know more than the (numerous) others, but rather that you were lucky at the first try.
by Maken | 2025-11-01 15:27:09+00:00
arXiv was built over a good faith assumption, where a long paper meant at least the author had put some effort behind, and a every idea deserved attention. AI generated text breaks that assumption, and anybody uploading it is not acting in good faith.

And it's a unequal arms race, in which generating endless slop is way cheaper than storing it, because slop generators are subsidised (by operating at a loss) but arXiv has to pay the full price for their hosting.
by beej71 | 2025-11-01 15:27:42+00:00
I think this is a valid question. The first thing that comes to mind for me is that multiple conflicting records introduce a doubt about the veracity of those records. So we might be able to consider that there has been a mistake made. Contrast that to a single identification with an error. In that case, there is no way to tell that an error has been made, and very little recourse.
by ajross | 2025-11-01 15:27:51+00:00
Is it time now to say that async was a mistake, a-la C++ exceptions? The recent futurelock discussion[1] more or less solidified for me that this is all just a mess. Not just that one bug, but the coloring issue mentioned in the blog post (basically async "infects" project code requiring that you end up porting or duplicating almost everything -- this is especially true in Python). The general cognitive load of debugging inside out code is likewise really high, even if the top-level expression of the loop generator or whatever is clean.

And it's all for, what? A little memory for thread stacks (most of which ends up being a wash because of all the async contexts being tossed around anyway -- those are still stacks and still big!)? Some top-end performance for people chasing C10k numbers in a world that has scaled into datacenters for a decade anyway?

Not worth it. IMHO it's time to put this to bed.

[1] No one in that thread or post has a good summary, but it's "Rust futures consume wakeup events from fair locks that only emit one event, so can deadlock if they aren't currently being selected and will end up waiting for some other event before doing so."
by louis79_hacker | 2025-11-01 15:28:06+00:00
If you’re trying to make SPIFFE handle delegation, you’re forcing the wrong layer to do the wrong job. SPIFFE gives you workload identity and attestation, full stop. It’s PKI for machines — not a delegation framework.

A better model is to separate identity from capability:

SPIFFE/SPIRE handles who the agent is (short-lived, attested identity).

Capabilities / Macaroons / ZCAP-LD handle what that agent is allowed to do, and who delegated it.

OPA or Cedar enforces policy at runtime.

VCs come in only if you need cross-domain delegation (federated or multi-issuer trust).

So SPIFFE issues identities, and those identities mint or receive verifiable capabilities that describe explicit rights. You get composable, auditable delegation without breaking SPIFFE’s short-lived cert model or pretending it can do web-of-trust semantics.

Trying to bake delegation into SPIFFE itself is just reimplementing capability security badly.
by __jonas | 2025-11-01 15:28:22+00:00
Sure! But if you render server side (as with PHP), you'd likely just build up your table on the server rather than dynamically on the client, so you would also not use these imperative table element specific APIs.

Even if, for some reason, you were filling in the table content dynamically via jQuery, I think the fashion there was also to just pass in whole HTML markup snippets as strings to be injected into the DOM, so you'd also more likely use plain <tr> elements than this table-specific API, same as with a 'hype' framework of now.
by soulofmischief | 2025-11-01 15:28:44+00:00
Your hippocampus has several special clusters of neurons whose members activate and deactivate based on your body's understanding of your position and momentum in a 3D world.

The arrangement of these neurons physically corresponds to reality, and so things are pretty hardwired.

Repurposing these neurons might be possible with advanced training and nootropics, but I'm not sure. You might have better luck engaging other parts of your brain, for example using metaphor or abstraction such as mathematics.
by oftenwrong | 2025-11-01 15:29:10+00:00
There is something to be said for having some basic data access libraries already in place, even if they are not ideal, so that developers can bang out functionality more quickly. That is the typical selling point of ORMs, isn't it? While there are well-known downsides, you can skip the ORM when it's not a good fit, or later when you realise that it is causing a problem.

Generally, I prefer to create functions for specific queries, rather than for specific "entity" types, and the return type of each query matching the result of the query. This fits with the reality that queries often involve multiple entity types.

My favourite application-later database tool so far is https://www.jooq.org/ because it allows for code generation from the database schema, allowing for type-safe construction of queries. I find this makes it easier to create and maintain queries. It is a relatively unopinionated power tool, with minimal attempts at "automagic" behaviour. I find myself missing jOOQ now that I am not working much with Java.
by bob1029 | 2025-11-01 15:29:23+00:00
> The advent of large language models have made this type of content relatively easy to churn out on demand, and the majority of the review articles we receive are little more than annotated bibliographies, with no substantial discussion of open research issues.

I have to agree with their justification. Since "Attention Is All You Need" (2017) I have seen maybe four papers with similar impact in the AI/ML space. The signal to noise ratio is really awful. If I had to pick a semi-related paper published since 2020 that I actually found interesting, it would have to be this one: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 I cannot think of a close second right now.

All of the machine learning papers are pure slop to me now. The last one I looked at had an abstract that was so long it put me to sleep. Many of these papers aren't attempting basic decorum anymore. Mandatory peer review would fix a lot of this. I don't think it is acceptable for the staff at arXiv to have to endure a Sisyphean mountain of LLM shit. They definitely need to push back.
by DroneBetter | 2025-11-01 15:29:52+00:00
the problem is generally the same as with generative adversarial networks; the capability to meaningfully detect some set of hallmarks of LLMs automatically is equivalent to the capability to avoid producing those, and LLMs are trained to predict (ie. be indistinguishable from) their source corpus of human-written text.

so the LLM detection problem is (theoretically) impossible for SOTA LLMs; in practice, it could be easier due to the RLHF stage inserting idiosyncrasies.
by fzeroracer | 2025-11-01 15:30:00+00:00
ICE is, essentially the perfect cover agency. Your average Fox News-addled American will see criticisms of ICE and immediately jump to its defense, because obviously that means you want immigrants to take over our country or you hate our borders or you hate the law etc. You can even look back through various HN threads on some of the various crimes ICE has committed in the past year and see this common byline.

The fact that Americans are getting caught in the dragnet, having their possessions and lives destroyed, getting sent to secret jails or being assaulted for merely being in the same zipcode as an ICE agent doesn't matter to them. It's all about inflicting harm on people they dislike, and if ICE is harming someone then obviously it's because it's they did something bad.

It's pretty dire circumstances. ICE was always close to a paramilitary organization, it just took Trump to actually fund it and push it over the edge.
by jayd16 | 2025-11-01 15:30:06+00:00
You've never experienced someone who isn't a good listener? It's fairly common and not always intentional.

For example, Kids are great at rambling off information for attention. Active listening is a skill and isn't the default.

Even if someone is listening, active listening is hearing what the partner says and attempting to intuit why they would think that and what assumptions they are making that may be different from your own.
by gpm | 2025-11-01 15:30:46+00:00
Not really.

All (current) languages eventually have a compiler/runtime that is memory unsafe. This is basically fine because it's a tiny amount of surface area (relative to the amount of code that uses it) and it exists in a way that the input to is relatively benign so there's enough eyes/time/... to find bugs.

There's also nothing stopping you from re-implementing python/ruby/... in a safer way once that becomes the low hanging fruit to improve computer reliability.
by mirashii | 2025-11-01 15:31:10+00:00
It feels like perhaps you’ve conflated the issue in this thread, which is about using Rust in apt, which is much, much later in the distribution bringup than this bootstrapping, and using Rust in something like the Linux kernel, which is more relevant to those types of bootstrapping discussions you posted.

apt is so late in the process that these bootstrapping discussions aren’t quite so relevant. My point was that at the same layer of the OS, there are many, many components that don't meet the same criteria posted, including perl.
by allisdust | 2025-11-01 15:31:46+00:00
Sadly most people don't agree with this

I have been seeing hatred on this forum towards Rust since long time. Initially it didn't make any kind of sense. Only after actually trying to learn it did I understand the backlash.

It actually is so difficult, that most people might never be able to be proficient in it. Even if they tried. Especially coming from the world of memory managed languages. This creates push back against any and every use, promotion of Rust. The unknown fear seem to be that they will be left behind if it takes off.

I completed my battles with Rust. I don't even use it anymore (because of lack of opportunities). But I love Rust. It is here to stay and expand. Thanks to the LLMs and the demand for verifiability.
Cut my screen time from 6 hrs to like 1. feels weird
by Dhikshith12 | 2025-11-01 15:31:56+00:00
so i was wasting way too much time scrolling this year. like... 4 hours on socials (reddit included) and another 2 on texts and other pointless junk. 6+ hours. just... gone.

tried to cut back and it was annoying, but it's honestly wild how different things feel. life is slower. in a good way, not a boring way. i actually have time for other things now. reading, exercise, just... sitting back watching birds.

main thing i learned is how easy it is to fall back into it. and that being bored is actually... fine? your brain kinda panics for a bit when you have nothing to do, but then it just gets calm. it's nice.

what actually worked:

i just kept a book next to my phone. so when i instinctively grabbed the phone, i'd just grab the book instead.

had to get a serious app blocker. the default ios one is useless, you just tap "ignore" lol.

i actually found this app called hardest focus app. it blocks your entire phone during your focus sessions, and if you try to check it, it blasts a loud siren and proceeds to delete progress in 5 seconds if i don't put it back. not gonna lie, it's kinda jarring and makes you panic a little, but that's the point, it immediately keeps you away from phone. there are other app blockers like freedom, but this one really makes you feel the consequence of breaking focus.

now i kinda crave the time away from my phone, which is new. gonna try and keep it under an hour for the next month.

idk. anyone else tried this? what stuff did you do that wasn't a huge pain?
by Denvercoder9 | 2025-11-01 15:32:00+00:00
> Furthermore, if these architectures are removed from further debian updates now, is there any indication that, once there's a rust toolchain supporting them, getting them back into modern debian wouldn't be a bureaucratic nightmare?

These architectures aren't being removed from Debian proper now, they already were removed more than a decade ago. This does not change anything about their status nor their ability to get back into Debian proper, which had already practically vanished.
by danaris | 2025-11-01 15:32:02+00:00
This is unhelpfully reductive.

First of all, it's misleading in its categorization: "half of people who voted in the last election" is not the same as "half of all eligible voters".

Second of all, a lot of the people who voted for Trump do not meaningfully "want fascism". Some do—no question about that! And, unfortunately, some who didn't before have rationalized themselves into wanting it now in order to self-justify their decision to vote for him.

But many of them are low-information voters who genuinely do not understand what is going on, and fall into one (or more) of a few categories:

- People who have always voted Republican, because their parents always voted Republican, and that's just The Way Things Are.

- People who have been brainwashed by constant propaganda from Fox News over the past 30 years telling them that Democrats are Evil.

- People who have poor to no civics education, have seen their economic situation slide slowly downward over the last few decades (or fall off a cliff, eg in 2008), and have heard the various Republican candidates telling them, over and over, "Just vote for us! We will solve all your problems. You don't have to worry about how!" (or "...by punishing the evil Others who are the cause of every ill in this country", depending on how racist they're already primed to be)

None of that requires "wanting fascism". And I can tell you, from personal experience, that there are still people out there—left, right, and center—who genuinely do not know what is going on. They don't watch the news. They just try to get by. They have no idea that ICE is abducting citizens off the streets, that Trump has shattered the executive branch institutions that actually run this country, or that the Supreme Court has said that Trump can do whatever the hell he likes.

If you want to be able to fix a problem, you have to understand it in all its nuance, and just dismissing tens of millions of people as "eh, they all wanted fascism; guess there's no possible way to reach them, then" is the wrong problem definition.
by kotaKat | 2025-11-01 15:32:18+00:00
I'm also thinking about people that could get caught up at the border crossing back and forth on the regular because of this.

If you get captured as part of this Mobile Fortify stuff, it sounds like it's going to merge it with all other CBP records you have (including all border entry interactions). Pulling up at the passport desk or at a land crossing is just begging for the officer to see that an ICE HSI agent pulled you at a protest and scanned your face to pull you in for "secondary screening" for "higher risk factors" going forward and throwing nice glowing red targets on your back.
by hammock | 2025-11-01 15:32:27+00:00
I wasn’t making that argument. I’m rather inclined to Jefferson’s ideas (himself a severe anti-monarchist) of promoting individual human dignity and capability; the critical role of moral virtue and education; “small republics” and self-government:

“ When people witnessed our first struggles in the war of independence, they little calculated, more than we did, on the rapid growth and prosperity of this country; on the practical demonstration it was about to exhibit, of the happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrants.”
by ajross | 2025-11-01 15:33:22+00:00
"Nothing", in principle. But they're bug factories in practice. It's really easy to throw "past" cleanup code in a language where manual resource management remains the norm.

It's not that they can't be used productively. It's that they probably do more harm than good on balance. And I think async mania is getting there. It was a revelation when node showed it to us 15 years ago. But it's evolved in bad directions, IMHO.
by tempest_ | 2025-11-01 15:33:26+00:00
Yes, which is why in 2025 it is a good idea to use Rust with python bindings for your performance sensitive code.

A lot of the C code used in python is calling out to old, battle tested and niche libraries so it is unlikely that someone is going to replace those any time soon but Rust is definitely increasing as time goes on for greenfield work.
by bee_rider | 2025-11-01 15:33:28+00:00
What are review papers for anyway? I think they are either for

1) new grad students to end up with something nice to publish after reviewing the literature or,

2) older professors to write a big overview of everything that happened in their field as sort of a “bible” that can get you up to speed

The former is useful as a social construct; I mean, hey, new grad students, don’t skimp on your literature review. Finding out a couple years in that folks had already done something sorta similar to my work was absolutely gut-wrenching.

For the latter, I don’t think LLMs are quite ready to replace the personal experiences of a late-career professor, right?
by atoav | 2025-11-01 15:34:14+00:00
I program mostly Python, C, C++, Javascript and Rust. Including on embedded (that goes for C, C++ and Rust)

Most people nowadays who criticize Rust do so on a cultural basis of "there are people who want this so and it changes things therefore it is bad". But never on the merits.

Rust is a good language that contains in its language design some of the lessons the best C programmers have internalized. If you are a stellar C programmer you will manually enforce a lot of the similar rules that Rust enforces automatically. That doesn't mean Rust is a cage. You can always opt for unsafe if ypu feel like it.

But I know if my life depended on it I would rather write that program in Rust than in C, especially if it involves concurrency or multiprocessing.

Practically on embedded the issue is that most existing libraries are written in C or C++. That can be a reason to not choose it in the daily life. But it is not a rational reason for which a programming language sucks. Every programming language had once only one user. Every programming language had once no dependencies written in it. Rust is excellent in letting you combine it with other languages. The tooling is good. The compiler error messages made other language realize how shitty their errors were.

Even if nobody programmed in Rust, the good bits of that language lift the quality in the other languages.
by grayhatter | 2025-11-01 15:34:26+00:00
I care much less about being indexed by Google as much as you might think.

Google bot doesn't get blocked from my server primarily because it's a *very* well behaved bot. It sends a lot of requests, but it's very kind, and has never acted in a way that could overload my server. It respects robots.txt, and identifies itself multiple times.

Google bot doesn't get blocked, because it's a well behaved bot that eagerly follows the rules. I wouldn't underestimate how far that goes towards the reason it doesn't get blocked. Much more than the power gained by being google search.
by jfengel | 2025-11-01 15:34:57+00:00
I had been kinda hoping for a web-of-trust system to replace peer review. Anyone can endorse an article. You can decide which endorsers you trust, and do some network math to find what you think is reading. With hashes and signatures and all that rot.

Not as gate-keepy as journals and not as anarchic as purely open publishing. Should be cheap, too.
by JonathanMerklin | 2025-11-01 15:36:06+00:00
The cyclic group generated by e.g. RU has order 105 (so 210 total turns or 105 of each side, alternated). If you have some math know-how, check out [1]. If you don't, take my word for it: when I was a teenager playing around with cubes, I once had a similar experience trying to do the same thing you did - when I went relatively quickly it never returned to the solved state, but when I was very deliberate about each turn, I got the 105 result (not by counting back then, but by rough time estimate given the figure I just looked up). Both you and I probably accidentally threw in one or more double-turns (like a U2) in there, or undercounted and gave up well before the cycle had completed (I, too, had thought I'd made "hundreds" of moves).

[1] https://faculty.etsu.edu/gardnerr/4127/algebra-club/rubik-ta... - slide 41