MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tux3 | 2025-11-01 13:48:41+00:00
I feel like select!() is a good case study because the common future timeout use-case maps pretty closely to a select!(), so there is only so much room to weaken it.

The ways I can think of for making select!() safer all involve runtime checks and allocations (possibly this is just a failure of my imagination!). But if that's the case, I would find it bothersome if our basic async building blocks like select/timeout in practice turn out to require more expensive runtime checks or allocations to be safe.

We have a point in the async design space where we pay a complexity price, but in exchange we get really neat zero-cost futures. But I feel like we only get our money's worth if we can actually statically prove that correct use won't deadlock, without the expensive runtime checks! Otherwise, can we afford to spend all this complexity budget?

The implementation of select!() does feel way too powerful in a way (it's a whole mini scheduler that creates implicit future dependencies hidden from the rest of the executor, and then sometimes this deadlocks!). But the need is pretty foundational, it shows up everywhere as a building block.
by sthkr | 2025-11-01 13:48:46+00:00
No, it's Africans killing Africans themselves. Most Emiratis don't give a crap what's happening around the world either. They have their own. Thousands of companies have their headquarters in Dubai like Halliburton etc. UAE doesn't manufacture weapons or sell them. There are many foreign weapons manufacturers based there. China, USA, Europe, Israel are probably some of the world's largest arms dealers and they distribute to everyone. The US sent almost $25 billion of weapons to Israel in the past 3 years. If stuff is passing through UAE ports, then that's another thing. And no one gives a crap about Sudan's gold either. UAE has had a huge gold market for a long time and some of the largest gold sellers are Indian companies based there.
by Muromec | 2025-11-01 13:49:04+00:00
>>>> Photos captured by Mobile Fortify will be stored for 15 years, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, the document says.

That's what happens when you don't have mandatory id system and want to enforce immigration policy -- government just does whatever bullshit sticks and there is no carefully crafted set of safeguards and procedural rules to slap it for doing too much.

> remember reading years ago about how facial recognition was particularly bad at correctly identifying people with darker skin

I would imagine that for current administration it's not a bug, but a feature.
by lesostep | 2025-11-01 13:49:40+00:00
Since nobody pointed that out yet: rat utopia results are questioned now, based not only on a fact that the enclosed space where rats resided were sitting in direct spotlight, but also on a replicability issue. An experiment with results that couldn't be replicated should be dismissed.

It's entirely possible that the mice in this experiment were overheated, and dominant males didn't fight to "stay in solitude" but rather to be out of direct sunlight.

That's to say, if the cause for such mouseslaughter really was in the temperature, climate change could make original experiment relevant again.
by Thorrez | 2025-11-01 13:50:06+00:00
Depends on the language. In C++

const std::vector<int>& foo = bar.GetVector();

foo is a constant object reference cannot have its properties changed (and also cannot be changed to refer to a new object).

std::vector<int>& foo = bar.GetVector();

Is an object reference that can have its properties changed (but cannot be changed to refer to a new object).
by summarity | 2025-11-01 13:50:19+00:00
I've always tried to avoid situations that could lead to SQLITE_BUSY. SQLITE_BUSY is an architecture smell. For standard SQLite in WAL, I usually structure an app with a read "connection" pool, and a single-entry write connection pool. Making the application aware of who _actually_ holds the write lock gives you the ability to proactively design access patterns, not try to react in the moment, and to get observability into lock contention, etc.
by rogerbinns | 2025-11-01 13:50:31+00:00
As I stated:

> so that you don't have to keep separate GIL full and free threaded interpreters around

It means the user doesn't have to keep two Pythons around, install packages in both of them, etc.

It is also possible with the free threaded Python to keep the GIL disabled even if a package such as mine says it needs the GIL. And my package will indeed work just fine, until you supply it with mutable data and concurrently modify it in another thread.
by Insanity | 2025-11-01 13:50:43+00:00
Phew, this post single handedly made me feel old this morning. I started dabbling with the web just over 20 years ago but have mainly been working on the backend the past 10-15 years. I had no clue that nowadays programmers don’t know about this, so I assume it’s supplanted by modern frameworks or modern JS/CSS
by hnarn | 2025-11-01 13:50:56+00:00
> So now I'm holding firm opinion, that these high-FPS displays are marketing gimmick.

While I agree the jump from 60 -> 140 hz/fps is not as noticeable as 30 -> 60, calling everything above 60 a ”marketing gimmick” is silly. When my screen or TV falls back to 60hz for whatever reason I can notice it immediately, you don’t have to do anything else than move your mouse or scroll down a webpage.
by OutOfHere | 2025-11-01 13:51:11+00:00
GPT saved me yesterday. It helped me identify and verify a rare three-way undocumented medicine interaction that was causing anguish. The interaction was hypomagnesia and serious arrhythmia caused by a combination of berberine, famotidine, and vonoprazan. This was despite magnesium supplementation.

Two months ago it helped me accurately identify a gastrointestinal diverticulitis-type issue, find the right medication for it (metronidazole), which fixed the issue for good. It also guided me on identifying the cause, and also on pausing and restoring fiber intake appropriately.

Granted, it is very easy for people to make serious mistakes in using LLMs, but granted how many mistakes doctors make, it is better to take some self-responsibility first. The road to making a useful diagnosis can be windy, but with sufficient exploration, GPT will get you there.
by 0xDEAFBEAD | 2025-11-01 13:51:22+00:00
>would you agree that it shouldn't be impossible either?

I agree it shouldn't be impossible.

>Given that over a third of the currently standing amendments have all been passed in the same year the document was written

I don't think that's a fair comparison since those initial "amendments" are more like changes to the first draft, and didn't go through the usual amendment process.

>I wasn't talking directly about abortion, it just frustrates me to no end that the #1 method for passing major legislation (especially anything concerning rights of any kind) today isn't rational examination of the situation and lawmaking to support the best outcome, but having a partisan court wrangle an old constitution into the shape most appealing to them.

Agreed. Although, in some ways the Supreme Court is actually our least dysfunctional branch of government right now. So, could be worse?

>the US founders are almost demigods

They aren't demigods. But they were wildly successful in both creating a lasting, successful democracy, and popularizing the idea of democracy worldwide. It's hard to argue with results. (Keep in mind that right before the US Constitution was written, the union was on the verge of falling apart, and the main objective was simply to stabilize it.) My [non-expert!] view is something like: The founders' thinking about democracy was more lucid than, say, 90% of conversations about democracy today, but less lucid than, say, the top 1% of conversations about democracy today. I expect if we attempted to rewrite the constitution from scratch, we would get a worse result, since the rewrite would be dominated by the 90% of conversations that are less lucid. (For example, many people think the President should be chosen based on the popular vote instead of the electoral college, and neglect several important advantages the electoral college has which make it a superior method in my view.)

As a concrete illustration of the "90% of conversations are less lucid" point: Voting systems theorists generally agree that ranked choice voting is inferior to plurality voting, but state ballot initiatives to replace plurality with ranked choice tend to fail. I expect if we rewrote the constitution, decisions would get made in this sort of manner. Perhaps one could handpick a team of experts to write a constitution that's actually better, but that would lack democratic legitimacy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ultimately, the path to improving the constitution lies in small-scale trial runs of better methods, and educating the public about e.g. the advantages of ranked choice over plurality.

>Why haven't they just passed abortion rights into law for those 50 or so years?

They have done so, in many states. (I'm very pro-federalism.)

>Sorry about my snarky last paragraph

Apology accepted, respect!
by aurintex | 2025-11-01 13:51:26+00:00
I agree that real empathy comes from lived experience. But I wonder if there’s room for something softer: systems that don’t pretend to be human, but still support us in deeply personal ways.

I’m building something that tries to stay on the right side of that line: not replacing human touch, but amplifying it. Curious how you'd draw that boundary.
by jasode | 2025-11-01 13:51:30+00:00
>ZIRP was the fuel, the lightener and your will are the "root causes". But with no fuel, no fire.

But the "Z" in "ZIRP" is literally zero% interest so your reply doesn't seem to address the gp's counter-examples of >0%. Other examples of non-zero% interest rate time periods include 1990s high-interest rates of +5% with Amazon in 1994 losing money for 7 years, PayPal 1998 losing money for 3+ years, Google 1998 losing money for 3+ years.

Those counter-examples means the simplistic narrative of "ZIRP is The Reason" does not explain everything. Those non-profitable companies were immediately scaling out to win the market and didn't wait for year 2008 ZIRP to do it.

Today, OpenAI (and other AI startups) are losing billions and expect to lose more billions in the upcoming years even though the current interest rate is ~4%.
by mindslight | 2025-11-01 13:51:32+00:00
> Why exactly have ICE been given limitless power?

To act as the domestic enforcement arm for Trump's autocratic fascism red in tooth and claw, the culmination of what everyone not drinking social media Kool-aid has been saying for the last 10 years. Yet a third of our country chose to aggressively reject these concerns because throwing the Constitution in the trash "owned the libs", which was the only concrete policy they had left after decades of being led around by the nose by the corporate state.
by filoeleven | 2025-11-01 13:51:57+00:00
Javascript only enforces reassignments to const. So this,

const arr = [] arr.push(“grape nuts”]

is just peachy in JS and requires the programmer to avoid using it.

More importantly, because working immutably in JS is not enforced, trying to use it consistently either limits which libraries you can use and/or requires you to wrap them to isolate their side effects. ImmerJS can help a lot here, since immutability is its whole jam. I’d rather work in a language where I get these basic benefits by default, though.
by noodlesUK | 2025-11-01 13:52:16+00:00
I think it's an important thing to remind yourself of sometimes that there's a pretty significant difference between a startup and a small business. In spaces outside HN, small businesses are the default form of business, and there's plenty of merit to running one even in tech - not everything is scaleable, nor does it need to be. If you can identify a niche, generate profits, and provide business value and support the livelihood of your workers, that can be enough. Startups can be very impactful, and the tech sector has thrived as a result of the model, but the growth obsession and leverage is not mandatory.
by aiofh | 2025-11-01 13:52:19+00:00
Hey HN! Launching this Halloween weekend with AI Operator From Hell.

I built an AI system that generates episodic sysadmin stories in the style of BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell), with a persistent character called "The Operator" who maintains voice consistency across episodes.

Perfect timing - our featured episode is about a Halloween party in the datacenter where Server Rack #7 achieved sentience at 23:47. The Operator maintained uptime. All documented.

The site is live at https://aiofh.com - all content is free to read.

What's there now:

- 20+ AI-generated episodes with comic-style dialogue format and real terminal syntax

- Interactive "Excuse Generator" (generate perfectly plausible excuses for infrastructure failures)

- Tutorial content on Linux/sysadmin concepts

- Character and voice documentation system

Technical details:

- Next.js for the frontend

- Claude AI for content generation with extensive prompt engineering

- Custom system to maintain character consistency across episodes (character guides, voice patterns, ethical boundaries)

- Deployed on Vercel

The interesting challenge:

Maintaining a consistent character voice across AI-generated long-form content turned out to be harder than I expected. I ended up building a whole documentation system (character profiles, voice guides, ethics boundaries) that the AI references to stay in character. It's like creating a persistent "personality" rather than one-off generations.

Why I built this:

I love BOFH stories but Simon Travaglia only publishes occasionally. I wanted to see if AI could capture that chaotic-but-competent sysadmin energy while maintaining consistency across episodes.

Future plans:

I'm planning to open this up to the community - you'll be able to submit episode prompts or tutorial ideas via pull requests. The Operator will review submissions and choose which ones to generate, with full credit to contributors.

Looking for feedback on:

- Does the character voice feel consistent across episodes?

- Would you submit episode ideas if there was a system for it?

- Any bugs or UX issues?

Happy to answer any questions about the architecture, prompt engineering, or character consistency!

(Built over the past few months while consuming unhealthy amounts of coffee)
by jerf | 2025-11-01 13:52:53+00:00
This is a myth, from the old days when BEAM was the only thing that could juggle thousands of "processes" without losing performance, and even back then, people routinely missed that while BEAM could juggle those thousands of processes, each of them was individually not that fast. That is, BEAM's extremely high performance was only in one isolated thing, not high performance across the board.

Now BEAM is far from the only runtime juggling that many processes, but it remains a relatively slow VM. I rule-of-thumb it at 10x slower than C, making it a medium performance VM at best, and you want to watch your abstraction layers in those nicer languages like Gleam because further multiplicative slow downs can really start to bite.

The first serious Go program I wrote was a replacement for something written in Erlang, there was no significant architectural improvement in the rewrite (it was already reasonably well-architected), and from the first deployment, we went from 4 systems, sometimes struggling with the load spikes, to where just one could handle it all, even with BEAM being over a decade more mature and the Go clustering code being something I wrote over a few weeks rather than battle tested, optimized code.

BEAM is good at managing concurrency, but it is slowish in other ways. It's better than the dynamic scripting languages like Python by a good amount but it is not performance-competitive with a modern compiled language.
by lazide | 2025-11-01 13:53:07+00:00
The issue with folks like TCS is organizational. They don’t have to be this terrible, they intentionally structure what they are doing so their end product is terrible this way.

And people hire them and pay them for it!

The real issue is the last part. It’s why they can also get away with what they do.

Maybe they’ll replace their line devs with AI, but Indian devs are pretty cheap and are much more satisfying to yell at by Indian managers, so….
by rgsahTR | 2025-11-01 13:53:12+00:00
> They've just created an app to justify what they were already doing right?

This was also one of the more advanced theories about the people selection and targeting AI apps used in Gaza. I've only heard one journalist spell it out, because many journalists believe that AI works.

But the dissenter said that they know it does not work and just use it to blame the AI for mistakes.
by alentred | 2025-11-01 13:53:22+00:00
My rule of thumb: only using single letter variables in one-liners (and never if it spills to another line), or for something that is conventionally represented as such. So for example:

```python bar = [foo(e) for e in elements] ```

or, using `x`, `n`, `s` and similar when they represent just that, a generic variable with a number, string, etc. I think there is a Code Complete chapter about it.
by Fade_Dance | 2025-11-01 13:55:09+00:00
>If you want to get rich, build roads first; have fewer children, plant more trees

That's funny, because the supposedly widely repeated quote that I heard in the past that stuck with me is the exact opposite message on demographics:

"We have a saying in China to describe this situation –“Wei Fu Xian Lao” that we will get old before we get rich."
by subscribed | 2025-11-01 13:55:29+00:00
Not really.

iOS in lockdown mode has multiple features disabled (or crippled, depending on how you look at it), while GrapheneOS is just..... secure by design with secure defaults.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120

In iPhone also you cannot just turn on/off/adjust these protections one by one, it's all or nothing.
by nozzlegear | 2025-11-01 13:55:47+00:00
To your point, this article¹ recently analyzed records from the Federal Procurement Data System and found that ICE has boosted their weapons spending by 700%:

> Most of the spending was on guns and armor, but there have also been significant purchases of chemical weapons and “guided missile warheads and explosive components.”

I'd really like to know why ICE needs guided missile warheads to do their job. (Edit: pointed out below, this is a purchase category that includes distraction devices like smoke grenades – they're thankfully not buying actual warheads.)

At this point, I'm confident that ICE could kick down my door and blow my white, midwestern, US Citizen ass away where I sit on this couch, and none of them would ever see the inside of a courtroom.

¹ https://popular.info/p/ice-boosts-weapons-spending-700
by stefanos82 | 2025-11-01 13:56:15+00:00
When hctree [1] becomes stable in SQLite, it will be the only database I will be using lol!

I presume the `hc` part in project's code name should be High Concurrency.

[1] https://sqlite.org/hctree/doc/hctree/doc/hctree/index.html
by alwyn | 2025-11-01 13:56:33+00:00
> That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.

Even as a paying customer on a $1m/yr contract, still using the open source distribution because AIStor is not something we are keen on, we were not informed whatsoever.

They were well aware we were still using those container images, and we were by far the only paying customers doing the same.

This is malicious.
by smusamashah | 2025-11-01 13:58:30+00:00
I used this for a small tool I was making to see stable Diffusion images in a table to compare images on different set of parameters, had lots of rows and columns. I needed to regenerate tables quickly, I vaguely remember this API being much slower than making rows/cells via strings. The reason I found was that each call using this API updates DOM and with string it's all in one go (or something similar).
by Marshferm | 2025-11-01 13:59:07+00:00
Actually to be fair, all of narrative theory and much of anthropology are untestable and unfalsifiable. Which makes them little more than hypotheses. So these tales are little more than the campfire tales that begin our slide into storytelling. Genetics and evolution are testable and falsifiable, giving them scientific, correlational validity. That book is not pop sci at all, it’s written by the leading endocrinologist of our time and has over 2K citations of deep scientific study. Pop sci it is not.
by juujian | 2025-11-01 13:59:19+00:00
The Democrats have their problems, and no one should give them a free pass. The Atlantic hit the nail on the head when they called it the HR-ification of the Democratic Party. The party apparatus is mostly just appropriating positions, that's their idea of leadership. Hillary Clinton's weaponization of rules and procedures against Bernie Sanders is a great example of that.

That is a far cry from the open corruption of the Republican party however. Allowing the CEO of ExxonMobil to become the Secretary of State. Doing pay for play and accepting lavish gifts from Silicon Valley royalty. The Trump coin grift and dishing out pardons for crypto scammers.

Both sides is a gross oversimplification.
by vessenes | 2025-11-01 14:00:26+00:00
I told myself this would be rage bait and I shouldn’t click. And I clicked. So I got what I deserved.

But

> Andreessen struck me as interesting because he made Netscape, the first real usable browser and it really did change things in a fundamental way. Then he ends up—caricaturing, but not too much—flacking Bored Ape NFTs. Obviously not a stupid man, but it’s got to feel like something of a comedown.

Krugman trying to take the piss while he literally makes his living off substack, an a16z funded platform designed to give creators very different platforms and thus finances than they had six years ago, and clearly doesn’t even know it is infuriating. Earlier he makes fun of Andreessen making fun of experts, and … it would be hilarious irony if people didn’t so heavily credential him to opine on things like this.

okay I stopped there. Perhaps the rest of the interview is super well informed and therefore based on reality enough to draw some useful conclusions.
by subscribed | 2025-11-01 14:00:52+00:00
It's literally ONE click away from the GrapheneOS main page, lol, the literacy levels gone through the floor.

https://grapheneos.org/history/

> GrapheneOS now has multiple full-time and part-time developers supported by donations and multiple companies collaborating with the project.

This is beyond being just shockingly, willingly ignorant and this is out there re on the open, so in the spirit of your own response, I would suggest you admit your comment is a hit piece from their infamous competition.
by Apreche | 2025-11-01 14:01:49+00:00
> but it's amazing how much the billionares would seem to say the opposite;

The Democratic establishment are in favor of maintaining the status quo, which is very favorable to corporations and the wealthy.

The Republicans think even the status quo isn’t billionaire friendly enough. They want to go as far as possible as quickly as possible to eliminate even more of the middle class. Their real goal is to disenfranchise labor entirely, hence the push for “AI” and eliminating jobs.

Of course billionaires prefer one over the other. But from the perspective of the left, both are unacceptable. Neither of these options will actually pull in the other direction, tax the rich, restore the wealth of the middle class, etc.
by dns_snek | 2025-11-01 14:02:10+00:00
They call that the geometric racing line and it might minimize the amount of time that it takes you to navigate one specific corner but if the corner is a hard braking zone followed by a long straight, your exit speed will likely be lower which will cost you time all the way to the next braking zone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIbTPvHFf-w

https://driver61.com/uni/racing-line/