MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Mistletoe | 2025-11-29 13:59:13+00:00
What you are implying would work great in a world that had prioritized education. We don’t live in that world in America for sure unfortunately.

> The statement is a popular anecdote from the 1980s, illustrating a widespread misunderstanding where many consumers thought that a 1/4 pound burger was larger than a 1/3 pound burger because the number "4" is larger than "3". This led to the failure of a new third-pound burger campaign by the fast-food chain A&W.
by CPLX | 2025-11-29 13:59:18+00:00
I’m a dyed in the wool GenX-er and I think the comment you’re responding to has insight.

For those of us that grew up in the punk-rock anti-corporate adbusters rage against the machine WTO protest era the current culture around commerce and wealth is a disorienting hellscape.

The boomers and their children, the millennials, were wrong in their belief that fashion choices and good vibe thinking by the affluent set would lead to a better culture.

Should have listened to the Nirvana generation a little more. Turns out the cynicism was justified.
by simne | 2025-11-29 14:00:21+00:00
> how do you avoid the voting circuit becoming a single point of failure

They do not. Just make voting circuit much more reliable than computing blocks.

As example, computing block could be CMOS, but voting circuit made from discrete components, which are just too large to be sensitive to particles.

Unfortunately, discrete components are sensitive to overall exposure (more than nm scale transistors), because large square gather more events and suffered by diffusion.

Other example from aviation world - many planes still have mechanic connection of steering wheel to control surfaces, because mechanic connection considered ideally reliable. Unfortunately, at least one catastrophe happen because one pilot blocked his wheel and other cannot overcome this block.

BTW weird fact, modern planes don't have rod physically connected to engine, because engine have it's own computer, which emulate behavior of old piston carburetor, and on Boeing emulating stick have electronic actuator, so it automatically placed in position, corresponding to actual engine mode, but Airbus don't have such actuator.

I want to say - especially big planes (and planes overall), are weird mix of very conservative inherited mechanisms and new technologies.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-11-29 14:00:47+00:00
> This doesn’t seem super obvious to me, and it’s a bit more than just assuming area scales with the square of hypotenuse length, it indeed needs to be a constant fraction.

The second half of your sentence is not correct; if area scales with the square of any one-dimensional measurement (including hypotenuse length, because the hypotenuse is one-dimensional), that is sufficient to prove the theorem.

The statement you're looking for is: "triangle A is similar to triangle C with a length ratio of a/c, therefore the area of triangle A is equal to the area of triangle C multiplied by the square of that ratio".

It is in fact necessary that the area will scale with the square of hypotenuse length, because the hypotenuse is one-dimensional and area is two-dimensional. If you decided to measure the area of the circle that runs through the three corners of the triangle, the triangle's area would scale linearly with that.

It isn't clear to me what scenario you're thinking might mess with the proof.

> This proof assumes that the area a triangle is some function k c^2 of the hypotenuse c where k is constant for similar triangles.

So, for similar shapes, you can set your own measurements.

1. Say I have two triangles X and Y and they're similar. I take a straightedge, mark off the length of the longest side (x) of triangle X, and say "this length is 1". Then I calculate the area of triangle X. It will be something. Call it k.

2. Now I take a second straightedge, mark off the length of the longest side (y) of triangle Y, and I label that length "1". I can calculate the area of triangle Y and, by definition, it must be k. But it is equal to k using a scale that differs from the scale I used to measure triangle X.

3. We can ask what the area of triangle Y would be if I measured it using the ruler marked in "x"es instead of the one marked in "y"s. This is easier if we have the same area in a shape that's easier to measure. So construct a square, using the "y" ruler, with area equal to k.

4. Now measure that square with the "x" ruler. The side length, measured in y units, is √k. Measured in our new x units, it's (y/x)√k. When we square that, we find that the x-normed area is equal to... k(y/x)².

This is why it's obvious that k must be constant for similar triangles. k is just a name for the scale-free representation of whatever it is that you're measuring. It has to be constant because, when you change the scaling that you use to label a shape, the shape itself doesn't change. And that's what similarity means.
by pessimizer | 2025-11-29 14:00:56+00:00
You believe that things only happen to people because they don't "speak up" but it is a goofy belief. There are people that will first fire you, then hit you with sticks and jail you, then shoot you and your kids.

You are not the first person to complain. There is no manager to call. Standing in the street with your friends is a social event. If you're not telling people where and when to show up, what to bring, and why it will work, you're just on the internet stealing valor from real heroes.
by SEMIPREMIUM | 2025-11-29 14:01:57+00:00
Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't include it as this post was intended for feedback on the concept as a whole. I just uploaded a new video of the assembly on Etsy. Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4380354553/bluetooth-ad-skipper...

Tindie: https://www.tindie.com/products/40190/
by jinnks1881 | 2025-11-29 14:02:12+00:00
Disclaimer: This text is also generated by Claude sonnet 4.5

I had an idea: What if AI agents could be packaged and distributed like npm packages? Portable, versionable, and platform-independent. The problem I'm solving: • OpenAI's GPTs are locked to their platform • LangChain requires heavy coding for custom agents • No standard format exists for AI agent distribution • Creators can't easily share or monetize agents across platforms So I created the .sagent package format - a standardized way to package AI agents. What it is: • A ZIP file containing YAML config, system prompts, examples, and knowledge bases • Portable across any LLM platform that supports it • Versionable with semantic versioning (1.0.0, 1.1.0, etc.) • Includes validation and safety checks • MIT licensed, fully open specification I've also built a reference implementation - a marketplace prototype where you can upload .sagent packages and chat with agents in real-time. Tech stack: • Python 3.12 + Flask 3.0 • gevent for async I/O (handling concurrent chats) • Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet API • SQLAlchemy Full transparency: This prototype was built entirely with Claude Code (Anthropic's AI coding assistant). I came up with the idea, but Claude wrote all the implementation code. This is both a test of AI-assisted development and a real product I want to build. The .sagent format specification: https://github.com/jinnks/special-agents/blob/main/AGENT_PACKAGE_SPEC.md GitHub: https://github.com/jinnks/special-agents I'd love feedback on: 1. Is this package format useful? What would you change? 2. What other metadata should .sagent files include? 3. Security concerns with user-uploaded agent packages? 4. Better ways to handle agent knowledge bases? 5. Thoughts on AI-assisted development? (This entire codebase is AI-generated) This is very much a prototype - I know it needs work. Looking for contributors who find this problem interesting. What would you want in a standardized AI agent format?
by dgacmu | 2025-11-29 14:02:48+00:00
The more correct and general answer is that:

- EDAC is a term that encompasses anything used to detect and correct errors. While this almost always involves redundancy of some sort, _how_ it is done is unspecified.

- The term ECC used stand-alone refers specifically to adding redundancy to data in the form of an error correcting code. But it is not a single algorithm - there are many ECC / FEC codes, from hamming codes used on small chunks of data such as data stored in RAM, to block codes like reed-solomon more commonly used on file storage data.

- The term ECC memory could really just mean "EDAC" memory, but in practice, error correcting codes are _the_ way you'd do this from a cost perspective, so it works out. I don't think most systems would do triple redundancy on just the RAM -- at that point you'd run an independent microcontroller with the RAM to get higher-level TMR.
by foldr | 2025-11-29 14:03:02+00:00
The official report doesn't identify the lack of sidestick linkage as a factor in the accident. Neither of the two pilots who were at the controls had any idea what was happening. Both pulled back on their sticks repeatedly right up to the moment of impact. The captain, who eventually realized (too late) that the plane was stalled, was standing behind them, and so would not have benefited from linked sticks.

There's a detailed breakdown here: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-cr...
by reeredfdfdf | 2025-11-29 14:03:04+00:00
"I think people who kept saying there is no moat in AI is about to be shocked at how strong of a moat there actually is for ChatGPT."

I'm not sure that really is the case. Most non-techies I know use ChatGPT far less than they use Google search, let alone various social media apps they're addicted to.

Perhaps it is a threat to Google search, but I can't see how it's going to be threat to ad revenue from Meta, Youtube etc - the services that are actually addictive due to the content they serve. At least for me there's absolutely nothing addictive about ChatGPT. It's just a tool that helps me solve certain types of problems, not something I enjoy to use.
by KronisLV | 2025-11-29 14:03:12+00:00
> “You’re a senior engineer - why did fixing this take so long?” Because of the garbage I had to wade through to even find the problem. Because I wasn’t yet working here when this was written and I have to take time to get my head around the insanity.

The arguably unproductive part of my brain craves to reach a day where I can say literally everything straight - if this would be a true description of the circumstances, then say exactly that.

Unfortunately, in addition to not only not being a “team player” this would also be really mean to people that had different time and resource pressures when they wrote the original flawed implementation. So both burning bridges and being kind of a dick.

At the same time, there’s sometimes people that develop stuff in such a way that I will never agree with them and a few people like that are enough for me not to want at a particular team/org even if it’s maybe like just 5 to 10% (and even then often it’s about them being inherently mean/nitpicky/whatever, rather than purely technical stuff).

Obviously the irony of the above isn’t lost on me so I just bite my tongue, focus on being professional and fixing the things I can and let the rest be without picking fights that will lead nowhere - otherwise I’d be a hypocrite and the situation couldn’t be described as anything other than “a bad culture fit” from an outside perspective.

But I’ve seen a lot of really shit code and it baffles me that alarm bells don’t go off more often and people just trudge along.

Then again, you do see a lot of drama in plenty of open source projects, so maybe that’s just human nature.
by mistersquid | 2025-11-29 14:03:29+00:00
Thoughtful piece with a different and engaging tack to the “Developers don’t understand marketing” commonplace. Kozlowski describes indirectly his mother’s professional organizing business, which indirectness asks readers to consider the churn of consumer culture and the goals (if any) of capitalism.

It’s just a trace, but the following paragraph (quoted in part) hits hard in this season of thanks and bounty. Thank you, Fred K, for writing it.

> The business has been a giant blackpill on Temu. Seeing people pay my mom to throw away bags full of internet purchases has been depressing. Bringing yet cheaper goods into the States hasn’t actually increased quality of life whatsoever over the already cheap goods on Amazon[. . . .] Unfortunately — despite the very real benefits that mass affluence and consumer culture have, it’s difficult in my position to not think that we’ve gone too far.
Ask HN: In December 2025 what agentic tool should I try?
by Humorist2290 | 2025-11-29 14:04:45+00:00
I have a recipe web application I built a while back with Svelte. Very fun, but I've got too much else to do and I don't have time to implement features. I am a daily-ish user of chat bots, find them mostly not very useful, but the hype is strong and this seems like a good playground.

My goal is some agent programmer that takes a Gitlab issue (e.g. "implement a timer in the UI") and makes a pull request implementing it. The only other constraint is I want to control spend: I would rather wait for it to implement stuff than spend more than X$ per week etc.

I could imagine building something like this which makes me think it's already built. Have any of you setup something similar? What did you use? What were the pros and cons?
by dylan604 | 2025-11-29 14:04:55+00:00
Why would they need to beat Meta/Google, and at what game? They just won’t let any other add network work in their app. Voila! You just beat Meta/Google, and they didn’t even compete with them. I guess they could provide some sort of SDK for websites to embed that tracks users, or they could come up with a browser extension that tracks users too. They already have an app that people are freely giving them so much info. Where else could the compete as you suggest? Being a generic ad platform to serve ads not through their app?
by 20k | 2025-11-29 14:06:09+00:00
I do virtually everything through tortoisegit, and much prefer it over a CLI. When you right click, you get this:

https://i.postimg.cc/hG4g8pjp/tgit.png

Which gives you basically everything you could ever possibly want. My main use cases for it vs a terminal interface are:

1. When you commit, you get this:

https://i.postimg.cc/90YJBtz1/boaty.png

Clicking the files brings up a diff, which makes pre commit reviews extremely easy. Its a lot faster to add files via an interface like this, rather than using a cli

2. The graphical log feature is pretty indispensable for complex projects. Eg check out this:

https://i.postimg.cc/qRb76Wxj/godot-mergy.png

This is much nicer than trying to do grok this through the cli for me. Reverting commits, cherrypicking, merges, splicing the history, seeing all the available branches, keeping track of orphaned commits etc, is all super easy

3. If I have to pick between not remembering the CLI commands off the top of my head, and having to memorise and alias a whole bunch of commands to be able to use git fully, I'll pick the former every day. Its the same reason I use an IDE

I wouldn't object to it being a standalone tool, but the nice thing about it being on the context menu is that it doesn't intrude when you don't need it
by nickpsecurity | 2025-11-29 14:06:27+00:00
Re fairness

Not giving anything back is fair because the author's license specifically allows them to do that. A gift has no expectation of anything in return. God blesses such generosity because it's a a truly, selfless act.

re compensation

Compensation is not orthogonal to FLOSS. Copyright was mainly designed to ensure work couldn't be shared without paying the author. Anything given for free dramatically decreases the chance of getting paid. OSS and FLOSS almost guarantee no money is made on standalone software but GPL with CLA's allows dual licensing to recover some.

If anyone uses permissive licenses, it's a gift where they're not (in legal terms) expecting money. Some try to sell it or ask for donations, too, which is incompatible with the license. The free license usually undermines that. It works for some people to some degree, though.

Re roll backs

I didn't argue against any scenario. The original person I replied to appeared to be arguing that it was evil to give software away with no obligations. I had to explain what a gift is and why it's morally good to give. I believe the reason is years of people promoting FOSS politics which I now see are rooted in ideas similar to socialism or communism. It wouldn't surprise me if Stallman was a closet communist and just repackaged those ideas into software licensing.

(Note: I feel like I'm going to have to think more on that political angle given I've been influenced by such people for years on these sites. I'll do a fresh take at some point.)

On companies being unsustainable, I've already explained what happened. Their goal included selfish gain (money/contributions) from selfish entities who normally take but don't give. Their goal was also to build, individually or collectively, a shared work. They used a license that said it's a one-time gift with no obligations. So, entities took the gift and felt no obligations to return anything. Surprise!

Now, they've changed to licenses that suit their commercial and/or property goals. That may or may not work for them. Whereas, the companies successfully marketing proprietary software are able to build it up to their hearts' content. Some companies give out the source or dual license under GPL/AGPL. They should probably do Parity License to close remaining gaps and see if FOSS people are really about the free commons.

License Zero and Polyform have new licenses to help. I conceptualized some in the past that allow modifications, forks, etc so long as the customer keeps paying. Then, redistribution among paying customers. I'd like to see more models for people aiming for sustainability with software freedoms baked in.
by afavour | 2025-11-29 14:06:42+00:00
> most normal people don't know what Claude or Gemini are

In think the point is that they don’t need to know what Gemini is, they just need to know Google, which they most definitely do.

IMO ads rollout won’t be as simple as you’re describing it. A lot of people have switched from Google search to AI specifically because it isn’t filled with SEO, ad filled nonsense. So they’ll need to tread very, very carefully to introduce it without alienating customers. Not to mention mollifying advertisers who are nervous what their product will be shown alongside and OpenAI will probably struggle to offer iron clad guarantees about it. And people generally speaking don’t like ads. If competitors like Google are able to hold out longer with no ads (they certainly aren’t wanting for ad display surfaces) they might be able to pull users away from OpenAI.

IMO pivoting to ads is a sign of core weakness for OpenAI. Anyone trying to set up their own ad network in 2025 has to reckon with Google and Meta, the two absolute behemoths of online ads. And both also happen to be major competitors of OpenAI. If they need ads that’s a problem.
by tonetegeatinst | 2025-11-29 14:07:03+00:00
3 major problems no matter what you do that can't be avoided.

1. Water will rust metal. Some allows resist corrosion but they cost more which increases cost and engineering complexity.

2. Water freezes at a higher temp than diesel.... Which means you need to worry about keeping the water warm enough it dosnt freeze or turn into a slushie.

3. Water varies based on location. I doubt this works for salt water but let's say we decided to add water to the combustion process....now you need to worry about hard vs soft water and how that wears down everything or impacts efficiency. Or do you need reverse osmosis or distilled water?
by boppo1 | 2025-11-29 14:07:35+00:00
I did it once. Felt like my consciousness rocketed "up" out of my body, but not up through physical space, through some 'adjacent' space. Then I saw/felt "infinity". There was no time, and I saw a hundu-esque god/goddess with infinite arms. I had no interest in eastern religion prior. Not disinterested either. I just didn't think about it, the way I don't think about golf.

It was a neat thing to experience.
by staminade | 2025-11-29 14:07:46+00:00
Sure thing, here's a report from the Greater London Authority tracking the history of air quality in the city since the "Great Smog" event 1952, which caused an estimated 4000 deaths.

https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/environment-...

The main takeaway is that yes, urban air quality (including fine particulate matter) has improved massively over time, but most of it had little to do with road traffic, as for decades it wasn't a significant contributor to the overall mix. The important change was the move away from burning solid fuels like coal for household heating and in power stations within cities, to using gas and electricity with larger, out-of-town power stations.

As other sources have declined, road traffic has indeed become the largest contribution to urban air pollution, but even here there has been progress. Fine particulate emissions have continued to decline as car manufacturers have adapted to more stringent regulation (cheating scandals notwithstanding). A bigger problem now is higher non-exhaust emissions caused by larger and heavier vehicles. This is something else that will need to be solved via regulation. Other policies like Low Traffic Neighbourhoods can also help to restrict the worst pollution to major roads and away from where most people live.

Urban air quality is never going to be as good as that in the countryside, but it's not true to believe that no progress has been made, and that it's simply been a switch in the type of pollution.
by boltzmann64 | 2025-11-29 14:08:29+00:00
Google's engineers when they were copying Java API for Davlik (and later ART), they had access to and consulted Java source code. The infamous Oracle v. Google judgement siding Google set precedent at the highest level, SCOTUS that looking at the code is not an issue.

So, it doesn't matter if a AI can or cannot do clean room implementation. Unless it is a patent or trade secret violation, cleam room implementation doesn't matter.
by mattlondon | 2025-11-29 14:09:02+00:00
But the missing part is "we know they need this!" but they don't have the ad network to have the pixels on the vendor sites to track the conversion (or not for remarketing!). They only have half (at most) of the picture. This is why they tried to create a browser (remember that? Nope me neither) to try and get the full picture.

Advertisers are accustomed to pay for conversions now. If you can't track it, you cant prove it happened.

Open ai will need to spin up the entire infrastructure (Inc sales teams, support teams, servers etc) to run the ad network. Not impossible but it is a big lift and they're already burning money.

Their best bet is probably to just sign up for selling their ad space with Google, like all the other apps and websites do