MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sombragris | 2025-11-19 14:06:46+00:00
In 1999-2000, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) started something similar in my country (Paraguay) trying to fight "piracy", but with real teeth. They had access to judges and the whole law enforcement system. They targeted a company, they sent a polite letter requiring the company to grant them access to the company's full IT systems to "audit" them for piracy. This meant, of course, running some foreign software in company IT, and of course getting access to the whole company data. If you refused, they could get a court injunction in a matter of hours and they would forcefully enter the premises, with police, press, the works. Most companies had to comply. The main player behind this was a certain azure copilot company.

Granted, most companies here at the time had unlicensed software, but this tactic pissed me off so much, that I decided to begin to use Linux and try to use Free Software for all my computing needs. In May 2000 I ordered from the U.S. a boxed set of Red Hat Linux 6.2 Deluxe Edition (at an enormous expense, given currency exchange rates and shipping expenses to Paraguay). When it arrived, I installed it on my PC. The rest is history.

I still have a Windows partition but I just use it to test compatibility with MS Office documents required by my clients, some light gaming, and nothing else.

So I'm now a quarter-century Linux user thanks to these heavy-handed tactics.
by JKCalhoun | 2025-11-19 14:06:53+00:00
I hate ads as much as everyone, but I think you need to at least take a modicum of steps to block ads before posting to HN that you hate seeing all the ads.

(Perhaps your point though is to broadcast to everyone—who presumably are in fact blocking ads—that the site is pure awfulness without any ad-blocking. Of course you're preaching to the choir at that point anyway.)
by archerx | 2025-11-19 14:07:07+00:00
Old hosts used to do that. 20 years ago when my podcast started getting popular I was hit with a bandwidth limit exceeded screen/warning. I was broke at the time and could not have afforded the overages (back then the cost per gig was crazy). The podcast not being downloadable for two days wasn’t the end of the world. Thankfully for me the limit was reached at the end of the month.
by jamesblonde | 2025-11-19 14:07:14+00:00
Cloudflare tried to build their own feature store, and get a grade F.

I wrote a book on feature stores by O'Reilly. The bad query they wrote in Clickhouse could have been caused by another more error - duplicate rows in materialized feature data. For example, in Hopsworks it prevents duplicate rows by building on primary key uniqueness enforcement in Apache Hudi. In contrast, Delta lake and Iceberg do not enforce primary key constraints, and neither does Clickhouse. So they could have the same bug again due to a bug in feature ingestion - and given they hacked together their feature store, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Reference: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/building-machine-learni...
by mike_hearn | 2025-11-19 14:07:27+00:00
Really not! This is a huge faceplant for writing things in Rust. If they had been writing their code in Java/Kotlin instead of Rust, this outage either wouldn't have happened at all (a failure to load a new config would have been caught by a defensive exception handler), or would have been resolved in minutes instead of hours.

The most useful thing exceptions give you is not static compile time checking, it's the stack trace, error message, causal chain and ability to catch errors at the right level of abstraction. Rust's panics give you none of that.

Look at the error message Cloudflare's engineers were faced with:

thread fl2_worker_thread panicked: called Result::unwrap() on an Err value

That's useless, barely better than "segmentation fault". No wonder it took so long to track down what was happening.

A proxy stack written in a managed language with exceptions would have given an error message like this:

com.cloudflare.proxy.botfeatures.TooManyFeaturesException: 200 > 60 at com.cloudflare.proxy.botfeatures.FeatureLoader(FeatureLoader.java:123) at ...

and so on. It'd have been immediately apparent what went wrong. The bad configs could have been rolled back in minutes instead of hours.

In the past I've been able to diagnose production problems based on stack traces so many times I was been expecting an outage like this ever since the trend away from providing exceptions in new languages in the 2010s. A decade ago I wrote a defense of the feature and I hope we can now have a proper discussion about adding exceptions back to languages that need them (primarily Go and Rust):

https://blog.plan99.net/what-s-wrong-with-exceptions-nothing...
by drob518 | 2025-11-19 14:07:36+00:00
Cool. I didn’t realize ML had such a focus on immutability as well. I have never done any serious work in ML and it’s a hole in my knowledge. I have to go back and do a project of some sort using it (and probably one in Ocaml as well). What data structures does ML use under the hood to keep things efficient? Clojure uses Bagwell’s Hashed Array-Mapped Tries (HAMT), but Bagwell only wrote the first papers on that in about 2000. Okasaki’s book came out in 1998, and much of the work around persistent data structures was done in the late 1980s and 1990s. But ML predates most of that, right?
by bee_rider | 2025-11-19 14:08:12+00:00
FWIW I was trying to disagree with the person I responded to and agree with you. Sorry if it came off some other way. Actually, thinking of it “we don’t have much insight into what it really means” could look be read as sounding negative toward your post; not intentional!

I though they were applying an overly-restrictive definition of “agree with 97%,” and was trying to point out that what you actually wrote “97% similar,” left plenty of room for reasonable interpretations (like the one you posted).
by ta12653421 | 2025-11-19 14:08:35+00:00
>> Personally, I think any individual on their own that claims they are doing anything in the algorithmic / ML high frequency space is full of shit. <<

do you want to have a chat by Whatsapp then I can show you quite the opposite! :-) And in my case: Nobody knows, only one friend who is also deep in the stuff; people doing this are usually more quiet, since nobody is interested at all. I have some contacts in academia and shared my ideas with them - none of them said: "this wont work"

(Disclaimer: 25+y IT experience, 15 of them in finance)
by zorlack | 2025-11-19 14:08:51+00:00
The fun thing about learning to boot from PXE, is that you have to learn it every time you onboard a new type of hardware... or a new VM hypervisor... or new NIC firmware... or new BIOS firmware.

God help you if you actually want to install an operating system.

PXE is such a vital capability for working with on-prem servers. But it's ten different things which all have to play nicely together. Every time I build a PXE system I feel like I'm reinventing the universe in my tiny subnet.
by patwolf | 2025-11-19 14:10:08+00:00
The funny thing is that CS1 probably wouldn't have been as successful had EA not dropped the ball on the SimCity franchise. There was a decade between SimCity 4 and SimCity (2013/5), and when it finally came out it was a completely underwhelming.

On the bright side, maybe another developer can pick up the reins and release the next generation's city builder game.
Show HN: MemBrowse - CI/CD memory footprint tracking for embedded firmware
by revolmich | 2025-11-19 14:10:33+00:00
Built this after working with Intel’s Bluetooth firmware team - we kept seeing builds suddenly fail because memory crept up a few bytes at a time until it overflowed. Then everyone lost hours/days bisecting symbols and linker maps to figure out which commit pushed it over.

So I made a CI tool that tracks firmware memory footprint across commits and flags bloat before it breaks the build.

How it works:

CLI parses ELF + DWARF, extracts per-section/per-symbol/per-file size info

CI uploads reports; the platform stores history and generates diffs

Shows exactly what changed between commits (what grew, where, and by how much)

Optional memory budgets via commit keywords (acts as a CI gate to block regressions)

The report generator is open source: https://github.com/membrowse/membrowse-action

Works with GitHub Actions or any CI, tested on ARM, ESP32, ARC, x86 (multiple toolchains).

There’s also a live demo analyzing MicroPython firmware builds at membrowse.com.

Curious to hear from embedded folks: * How do you track code size / memory usage today?

* What would stop you from adding this type of check to CI?

* What’s missing that would make this genuinely useful for your workflow?
by anthk | 2025-11-19 14:10:34+00:00
The best RPG of all time should be either Ultima IV, Chrono Trigger+, that's it, with the Plus patch or Pokémon Crystal (a hacked ROM) with improving patches, such as:

- all mons ingame

- level cap

- no trading

- improved Battle Tower

Ultima VII shines with the in-game simulation, but today Cataclysm DDA:Bright Nights curb-stomps U VII in that area. Pokémon, well, it's about battling with your favourite mons, the game story it's just a placeholder with nice Japanese pixelated vistas.

Also, I'd put Slashem on par, too. Because it's damn silly and fun to raise a Samurai with Yakuza weapons, an anachronistic madness like the Discworld series (and OFC you have the Tourist role from the books too). More than strategy, Slashem/Nethack it's about lateral thinking and doing crazy stuff to advance into your goal. Throwing potions as weapons? Done. A Doppleganger Kung Fu monk doing DBZ-like attacks while using your Wand of Digging against rock based foes? OFC, done.
by ta12653421 | 2025-11-19 14:11:09+00:00
In general, I agree - but there is one exception, I think: However you put AI into an stat arb context, I think it may help for trading on a daily base like "tell me where i should enter this morning and exit this evening". (not daytrading throughout the whole day)

But, I havent tested it so far since I do not believe it either :D
by macNchz | 2025-11-19 14:11:38+00:00
I don’t think anybody has a concrete answer yet, I’ve seen speculation that the texture of the food may be a component, and the extreme palatability that causes people to eat more than they otherwise would. There are so many potential root causes that it will take time to pinpoint specific ones, but what is becoming clear that eating lots of foods with additives and highly altered basic ingredients (like mechanically separated meat) is not good for you.
by marcosdumay | 2025-11-19 14:11:43+00:00
It's confusing, but bankruptcy destroys mainly money, and only has second order effects on wealth.

What makes it hard to understand is that the Oracle going bankrupt on their debit because OpenAI took all their money is what would destroy the money. AFAIK, OpenAI itself doesn't have a lot of debit to burn. It would burn money that is currently on the hands of Oracle's creditors.

And bankruptcy is a bit of an extreme example, but just people thinking Oracle is less credit-worthy would destroy some money already. Repeat that for every company that invested in OpenAI.
by bhouston | 2025-11-19 14:11:53+00:00
It does feel like they bet on Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline and it locked them into a specific way of development that was hard to escape from once it proved problematic.

City simulation games (Sim City, Factorio, etc.) are sort of a unique beast in that they have a ton of small scale detail that is animated and and dynamic.

The choice of engine here matters a lot, because engines are often highly optimized for specific assumptions and the assumptions of standard games (mostly static worlds with just a few dynamic entities - a platformer, a first-personal shooter) do not hold.

The studio taking this over should ensure they have some really good low level 3D devs guys on the team and a flexible engine.

I think that a home built engine could work in these cases, but only if you have the right guys for the job.
by jjk166 | 2025-11-19 14:12:17+00:00
The addition of ingredients is the processing. The different levels of processing refer to what types and quantities of ingredients are added. It's like complaining that people are labelling food as poisoned when they should really be concerned about whether it contains poison.

Likewise the categorization of processing is useful for exactly the same reason the category of poisoned is useful. I'd rather not consume poisoned food of any variety even if I'm uncertain which poison has been added to it.
by rkomorn | 2025-11-19 14:12:34+00:00
As a former CF employee, I'd say it's a mixed bag.

There are plenty of resources , yet it's somehow never enough. You do tons of pretty amazing things with pretty amazing tools that also have notable shortcomings.

You're surround by smart people who do lots of great work, but you also end up in incident reviews where you find facepalm-y stuff. Sometimes you even find out it was a known corner case that was deemed too unlikely to prioritize.

The last incident for my team that I remember dealing with there ended up with my coworker and I realizing the staging environment we'd taken down hours earlier was actually the source of data for a production dashboard, so we'd lost some visibility and monitoring for a bit.

I've also worked at Facebook (pre-Meta days) and at Datadog, and I'd say it was about the same. Most things are done quite well, but so much stuff is happening that you still end up with occasional incidents that feel like they shouldn't have happened.
by crazygringo | 2025-11-19 14:12:59+00:00
> If its nota built up area there are virtually no kids playing in "front yards".

I guess the UK is different then. Here in the US, there are lots of houses in the country that are not part of any "built-up area", that have big front yards, and where there is no street lighting.

So yes, "we" know better because we drive too. And this is a global conversation, not a UK one. You were the one trying to making claims about how there's virtually nothing meaningful to collide with on country roads, and we're saying that's just false.
by pjc50 | 2025-11-19 14:13:39+00:00
Could you suggest an example such application we can try / look at screenshots of?

(I've been aware of Qt for like two decades; back in the early 2000s my employer was evaluating such options as Tk, wxWindows, and ultimately settled on Java, I think with AWT. Qt seems to have a determined survival niche in "embedded systems that aren't android"?)
by piva00 | 2025-11-19 14:14:24+00:00
It's insane but your tirade is also insane, it's the reality, datacenters will exist, Facebook and Google will exist. Electricity is needed and if we find ways to overproduce it with minimal enviromental impact while electrifying as much as possible our energy usage it will get humanity to a much better place.

Deal with the reality that is here: those things will keep chugging along, finding sources of energy that are abundant while not burning fossil fuels is our best bet for the near/mid-term future... It's probably much easier than amassing enough political capital to destroy huge money-making machines with extreme power behind them.

No, I don't like the waste from Bitcoin mining, exploding AI bubble, etc. either but it is what it is.
by ta12653421 | 2025-11-19 14:14:36+00:00
Good one! The thing is, you are assuming "perfect/symmetric distribution" of all known/available technologies across all market participants - this far off the reality. Sure: Jane Street et al are on the same level, but the next big buckets are a huge variety of trading shops doing whatever proprietary stuff to get their cut; most of them may be aware of the latest buzz, but just dont deploy it et.
by dbingham | 2025-11-19 14:14:36+00:00
I'm exploring various systems of community moderation.

Right now experimenting with a "demote" button that people are encouraged to use on: disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, spam, and slop.

Communities' default feed is just chronological, but it also has "Most Active" and "Most Recent Activity". Right now, Demote knocks things down the "Most Active" feed.

Eventually, a high enough percentage of demotes would result in posts being removed from public feeds. A second, higher threshold, would result in it being removed from all feeds.

Demote usage would be moderated, and removal thresholds could be appealed to the official moderation team. Users who abuse or misuse demote would lose the privilege.

It's an experiment and we'll see if it works. It's also really early. But the thing that Communities is doing differently is that the users will ultimately be in control through democratic elections of the board. And I expect moderation to be a frequent and recurring issue in elections. (You know, if the whole thing gets off the ground at all.)
by strogonoff | 2025-11-19 14:14:43+00:00
I think it’s disingenuous to claim that AWS only offers delayed alerts and half-decent cost controls. Granted, these features were not there in the beginning, but for years now AWS, in addition to the better known stuff like strategic limits on auto scaling, allows subscribing to price threshold triggers via SNS and perform automatic actions, which could be anything including scaling down or stopping services completely if the cost skyrockets.
by Waterluvian | 2025-11-19 14:14:51+00:00
This might be speaking the obvious, but I think that the lack of half-decent cost controls is not intentionally malicious. There is no mustache-twirling villain who has a great idea on how to !@#$ people out of their money. I think it's the play between incompetence and having absolutely no incentive to do anything about it (which is still a form of malice).

I've used AWS for about 10 years and am by no means an expert, but I've seen all kinds of ugly cracks and discontinuities in design and operation among the services. AWS has felt like a handful of very good ideas, designed, built, and maintained by completely separate teams, littered by a whole ton of "I need my promotion to VP" bad ideas that build on top of the good ones in increasingly hacky ways.

And in any sufficiently large tech orgnization, there won't be anyone at a level of power who can rattle cages about a problem like this, who will want to be the one to do actually it. No "VP of Such and Such" will spend their political capital stressing how critical it is that they fix the thing that will make a whole bunch of KPIs go in the wrong direction. They're probably spending it on shipping another hacked-together service with Web2.0-- er. IOT-- er. Blockchai-- er. Crypto-- er. AI before promotion season.
by micromacrofoot | 2025-11-19 14:15:16+00:00
But they wouldn't be extinguished? Core is literally offering to pay them per user and the OS is open sourced... how could they be extinguished under the deal as outlined?

Core could easily say "actually we won't support Rebble at all it's too complicated to maintain this relationship"... and Rebble would then only exist as long as people are willing to maintain the now decade-old original watches... which is a difficult task given the availability of superior hardware from the original manufacturer.

With the Core deal they could actually grow and they get a significantly longer lease on life even if the hardware company fails again.
by abixb | 2025-11-19 14:15:31+00:00
Okay, Gemini 3.0 Pro has officially surpassed Claude 4.5 (and GPT-5.1) as the top ranked model based on my private evals (multimodal reasoning w/ images/audio files and solving complex Caesar/transposition ciphers, etc.).

Claude 4.5 solved it as well (the Caesar/transposition ciphers), but Gemini 3.0 Pro's method and approach was a lot more elegant. Just my $0.02.
by thisisit | 2025-11-19 14:16:38+00:00
You seem to be debating a point which was never made by holding on to one word - simple. I didn't say trading code is simple neither I did say that your trading code setup is simple.

Still let me clarify - the trading logic as you say is simple and just 300 lines. That is what LLMs seem to be doing in part in the post. The point I made is that doesn't seem to be a good use case for LLMs given that everything costs token. IMO, you could run this in your complex application without spending that much money on tokens.

If you can explain why original opinion of wasting tokens on something which can "simply" be done in python is wrong, I am all ears.
by ndriscoll | 2025-11-19 14:16:57+00:00
What an odd comment to have as a sibling to mine from yesterday showing how to do it with two small templates in xsl (after a minor tweak to the xml):

<xsl:template match="series"> <h2><xsl:value-of select="@name"/></h2> <table> <tr><th>Skylanders figure</th><th>Note</th></tr> <xsl:apply-templates select="/skylanders/figure[@series=current()/@id]"><xsl:sort select="name"/></xsl:apply-templates> </table> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="figure"> <tr class="element-{ @element }"> <td><xsl:value-of select="@name" /></td> <td><xsl:value-of select="@note" /></td> </tr> </xsl:template>

No explicit loops necessary.
by senbrow | 2025-11-19 14:17:08+00:00
As someone who used to work there, Google will never get product releases right in general because of how bureaucratic and heavyweight their launch processes are.

They force the developing team to have a huge number of meetings and email threads that they must steer themselves to check off a ridiculously large list of "must haves" that are usually well outside their domain expertise.

The result is that any non-critical or internally contentious features get cut ruthlessly in order to make the launch date (so that the team can make sure it happens before their next performance review).

It's too hard to get the "approving" teams to work with the actual developers to iron these issues out ahead of time, so they just don't.

Buck passed, product launched.