MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by op00to | 2025-11-12 22:56:00+00:00
Allowing “potentially illegal votes” is a hypothetical. Actual disenfranchisement is not hypothetical, it is measurable.

To date, every audit, recount, signature review, and court case has found illegal voting rates so low they have no statistical impact. Meanwhile, multiple Republican-backed laws have been struck down by federal courts for intentionally or disproportionately disenfranchising specific groups of eligible voters.

So one side is dealing with documented, court-verified disenfranchisement. The other is raising a theoretical scenario that has no evidence behind it. Hypotheticals do not outweigh the real, observed effects of restrictive voting laws on lawful voters.
by wat10000 | 2025-11-12 22:56:22+00:00
The battery isn't an issue if you're stationary, you can plug it in.

The resolution is a major problem. Old-school monitors used old-school OSes that did rendering suitable for the displays of the time. For example, anti-aliased text was not typically used for a long time. This meant that text on screen was blocky, but sharp. Very readable. You can't do this on a VR headset, because the pixels on your virtual screen don't precisely correspond with the pixels in the headset's displays. It's inevitably scaled and shifted, making it blurry.

There's also the issue that these things have to compete with what's available now. I use my Vision Pro as a monitor replacement sometimes. But it'll never be a full-time replacement, because the modern 4k displays I have are substantially clearer. And that's a headset with ~2x the resolution of this one.
by bsder | 2025-11-12 22:56:30+00:00
> It was wrong, but it was controversial among experts at the time.

Only for those who fail to study history--which means quite a few people.

Fox example, when Intel announced Itanium, the DEC architects (and IBM, I heard later) cheered. They knew Intel was about to dump a ton of money chasing a White Elephant.

Alas, they underestimated the business side and the fact that Itanium, while being a technical disaster, was basically a business success and scared everybody out of the microprocessor business except for IBM.
by reactordev | 2025-11-12 22:56:52+00:00
>Modern C++ codebases — from browsers to GPU frameworks — rely heavily on templates, and that often means massive abstract syntax trees.

Symptom of a symptom. Templates are abhorrent abominations. However, there’s no way to do generics without them. It just becomes a hairball mess at compile time… kudos for alleviating some of the pain in waiting.
by thelastgallon | 2025-11-12 22:57:00+00:00
> The increase in bay area prices is from the fact that it's a nicer place to live due to the infrastructure

Is it because the high speed trains for public transit? Or is it the mobile home parks + landfills + sewage processing plants? https://www.reddit.com/r/SanJose/comments/orsaky/why_does_mi...

This claim is understandable for NYC, NYC has a subway. The money you don't spend on car payment + insurance + gas, plus the convenience helps justify the higher rent/mortgage.
by seabombs | 2025-11-12 22:57:02+00:00
Brilliant, I'm anxiously awaiting Australian pricing details (and release dates...) but could definitely seeing myself getting one of these as my first VR device, and the controller looks great too.

Being able to run games on device (and on ARM) is very cool, but I wonder if there is a cheaper/lighter/longer-battery-life version of this that is stream only? That's probably a better fit for me personally, I can't imagine not having a streaming device nearby when I would be using it.

Also hate to be picky, but looks like the frame controllers pair directly to the headset so maybe can't be used on their own? Would be nice to use them standalone too.
by PeaceTed | 2025-11-12 22:57:16+00:00
Yes, but how much do people want to pay to use this stuff? That is the real question.

It might be that more than $30 a month is too much and people stop using it. However, I suspect it would end up a fair bit higher than many would think. If you are a 'whale' (to use the gambling term) then there is a good chance that they could charge in the hundreds of dollars.

Maybe it become a wealth divide between those that can afford it and those who cannot. In equality yet again. Then the echos of Dune, the 'Butlerian jihad' and ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind' will start to come up.
by AnimalMuppet | 2025-11-12 22:57:16+00:00
Turns out the station charges you a round number of cents per gallon. Then there are federal taxes, which are, IIRC, 24.5 cents per gallon. And then there's state tax, which varies from state to state but seems to always be x.4 cents per gallon.

So I don't think it's just "evil retailer tricks".
by shagie | 2025-11-12 22:57:25+00:00
Some roads are attempting to take waste plastic and use it in place of other parts in the aggregate for asphalt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_road

> It is currently unknown how these aggregates will perform in the mid- to long-term, or what effect their degradation might have on surrounding ecosystems.

This... doesn't entirely sound like the best idea since wear on it as an aggregate part could contribute to microplastics.

https://www.orbia.com/this-is-orbia/news-and-stories/plastic...

> What does infrastructure look like in the future? How can we build more sustainable roads? How do we solve climate challenges, such as stormwater drainage? Two men from the Netherlands, Anne Koudstaal and Simon Jorritsma, suggested using plastic, and in 2013 they drew the first concept for a road made of recycled plastic.

https://www.asphaltpavement.org/expertise/engineering/plasti... (this is from an asphalt paving trade group... so take what it says with appropriate skepticism)

https://stateline.org/2022/12/12/plastic-roads-are-paved-wit... appears to reference the National Asphalt Pavement Association material also.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-11-12 22:57:37+00:00
> Hmm. Given such a triangle, let m be the largest number in the triangle. For each x in the triangle, replace it with m - x.

By the time you've actually done these two steps, you could have already finished the problem with a dynamic programming approach.

(Starting from the bottom row and working upward, replace each cell in the row with the length of the longest path from itself to the bottom, which you can know by checking which of its two children has the longer path associated.)
by mrguyorama | 2025-11-12 22:57:52+00:00
>The legal structure of sales taxes in the US present some unique challenges

Nothing about sales tax in the US is unique at all. It is not special. It is not hard. It is not a complex problem. It is basically a lookup, and computerized POS systems have managed it just fine since the dawn of computerized POS systems.

In fact, when those sales taxes were first implemented, there was problems relating to how to manage sales that resulted in fractions of a cent worth of sales tax to account for. Several states created sales tax tokens worth fractions of a cent and had to insist that it didn't technically count as money because states can't mint money legally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_tax_token

Nobody went to jail. It was a minor nuisance for consumers and was quickly replaced with law changes to just have explicit rules for the edge case, which is the entire reason we have legislatures. If you don't want retailers to respond to this change in a certain way, have your legislatures say that.

>This is very much a case of the Mencken quote that for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong.

Just stop already. The US is not special. The US regularly insists it cannot do the same things everyone else does and it is just wrong. We literally have textbooks full of examples from our own country. We've already phased out coinage before.

The UK went from it's absurd money system to reasonable and decimalized money within living memory! 15 February 1971. Sweden had a day where they switched from left hand roads to right hand roads! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H Most of Europe switched to Euros in living memory as well!

Stop insisting reasonable societal problems are too hard to solve, because that's the only actual reason they are hard to solve

>These problems can't be legislated away because the authority to do so is highly decentralized.

It isn't at all. It's in the Federal government, and it's in your local state government, and it's in your local-er governments, and that is just like a lot of other countries. A couple layers isn't "very decentralized".

It is only in the past 50 or so years that a singular political party has insisted that the same political party that did all sorts of speedy and useful lawmaking for a hundred years suddenly cannot adapt quickly. Meanwhile, 48 state governments continue to function mostly fine, with few problems adapting to local specific problems in a timely manner. If your state cannot adapt to this quickly and easily and without serious issues, consider electing different people.
by jerhewet | 2025-11-12 22:57:56+00:00
> C# has way to many features, it feels bloated

Could not agree more. Too many -- WAY too many -- "features" from Javascript and functional languages have been jammed into C#, and the language has suffered for it. Every time I see "var blah" in C# code I cringe at how lazy you must be to not use strong typing when declaring a variable.

Same goes for "astink / await". If you need asynchronous multi-threaded code, use the damned Thread Parallel Libraries that Microsoft provided over a decade ago. Being forced to have every damned thing you write in C# wrapped with astink is just one giant code smell.

Yes, I'm old. Thank ghod I'll be retiring very soon, because as far as I'm concerned the tooling and languages I've used over the past 50 years have taken one step forward and at least three steps back in the past five years...
by ChrisArchitect | 2025-11-12 22:58:01+00:00
Related:

Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44931763

Big Tech's A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44905595

The U.S. grid is so weak, the AI race may be over

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44910562

We Found the Hidden Cost of Data Centers. It's in Your Electric Bill [video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45126531
by inkysigma | 2025-11-12 22:58:07+00:00
If the standard for "going on the highway" is whatever Tesla is doing, then Waymo was able to go on highways in 2010 under the Chaffeur project. It turns out though that the reliability of actually being driverless is a pretty big gap and so no Tesla is not able to go the highway yet, at least not in the same sense.
by hrvstr | 2025-11-12 22:58:13+00:00
I was planning to keep using my Intel Mac for a few more years, so this is a bit disappointing. The note about “macOS Intel x86_64 will move to Tier 3, dropping CI support, and no additional bottles will be built” sounds like Homebrew is basically ending active support soon. Does anyone know what the timescale is for deprecating macOS Intel entirely? It feels like devs are moving on from Intel Macs even faster than Apple itself. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what “Tier 3” actually means here, but if no bottles are built anymore, that’s going to make installs a lot less convenient.

Found a link, and tier 3 sounds brutal. Time to look for alternatives... :(

https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers
by Atlasweb | 2025-11-12 22:58:21+00:00
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by theoldgreybeard | 2025-11-12 22:58:24+00:00
"the look doesn't matter"

I think Sony would disagree:

We wanted to do something that was bold and daring almost. We wanted something forward facing and future facing, something for the 2020s [...] The PS5's design is meant to demonstrate Sony's belief that the technology inside and the games that run on it are as eye-catching as the outside you see [...] that the form factor of [...] the PS5 is meant to "grace" your living room.

The PlayStation sits in the living area of most homes, and we kind of felt it would be nice to provide a design that would really grace most living areas. That's what we've tried to do. And, you know, we think we've been successful in that.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-boss-explains-why-the...
by makeitdouble | 2025-11-12 22:58:56+00:00
USB-C is still not widely adopted for many specific uses, in particular peripherals (keyboard/mouse dongles)

Logitech finally got their USB-C dongle out last year I think ? Keychron only offers USB-A as far as I know. And many other keyboard and mouse brands are in the same boat. Depending on your setup that's already 2 USB-A ports needed. You can put an adapter, but you're then dongling a dongle.

PS: just realized Valve's own VR to PC adapter is also USB-A.
by wat10000 | 2025-11-12 22:59:16+00:00
Sure, who cares? This could already be happening today with rounding fractional pennies. I have no clue if stores round up, or down, or split at .5, or what. But obviously they're doing something, since there aren't physical fractional pennies and my card statements never show more than two decimal digits, so it's not a new problem. This would make the problem five times worse, but five times insignificant is still not something I'm going to worry about.
by wiredpancake | 2025-11-12 22:59:21+00:00
You clearly are very misinformed on how Valve operates and runs the competitive CS2 environment.

Valve does not require a Kernel Level Anti-Cheat for "first party" tournaments. It is not stipulated anywhere in the Major Rulebook: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/counter-strike_rules_and_re...

The reason third-party anti-cheats are commonplace at these events is because most tournaments opt to use Faceit or similar for game scheduling. This was the case before VRS (with RMRs) and the TO could choose an anti-cheat of their choosing. This always ended up being Faceit AC or whatever platform the matches are scheduled via (For example, PGL used Challenger Mode, which used Akros Anti-Cheat). ESL of course uses Faceit because (ESL Faceit Group).

You do not understand how Majors are run. It is very hands off from Valve. Only recently, with the introduction of VRS has Valve started controlling and implementing dedicated rules into the ecosystem for TOs.
by dwood_dev | 2025-11-12 23:00:46+00:00
This is my concern as well. I suspect this will struggle versus a PS5 because even though the PS5 only has 16GB total, its unified, so it can be allocated more towards VRAM if needed.

If they are selling this for $300-400, it will be a hot item and I cant fault them at all. If it sells for $500+, its hard to recommend over a PS5 for most users.

1080p is already a struggle for some games with 8GB of VRAM in 2025, and this will probably be expected to have a service life of 5+ years.
by hermitcrab | 2025-11-12 23:01:13+00:00
>By "cuff" you mean the brachial artery ones, right?

Yes, the one that goes on your bicep.

Anecodtally, it seems to be within the variance of the cuff (plus or minus 10).

Trying to measure both at the same time is tricky as you can't actually tell the Hilo device when to make a measurement. It does it on it's own scedule.

You are supposed to calibrate the bracelet against a cuff at least once a month.
by jm4 | 2025-11-12 23:01:47+00:00
I feel like I'm seeing a lot about FreeBSD lately. I know they released a new version recently, but is there anything else going on? Is it picking up some steam? Or am I trapped in the algorithm?

I've tinkered with it in the past and I once had a job where we ran in on our servers. It seems pretty nice, but it never gets the attention Linux gets and the hardware support situation is sorta sad. I always chalked it up to the license and assumed people using it just don't contribute anything back. I love Linux and the support it receives from seemingly everyone these days, but it would be nice to have other options too.
by bigiain | 2025-11-12 23:01:56+00:00
> Having something that can generate code reliabily (which these things can barely do even with an expert at the wheel) doesn't address any of the actual hard problems we deal with on a daily basis.

Not understanding that is something I've been seeing management repeatedly doing for decades.

This article reads like all the things I discovered and the mistakes the company I worked for made learning how to outsource software development back in the late 90s and early 2000s. The only difference is this is using AI to generate the code instead of lower paid developers from developing nations. And, just like software outsourcing as an industry created practices and working styles to maximise profit to outsourcing companies, anyone who builds their business relying on OpenAI/Anthropic/Google/Meta/whoever - is going to need to address the risk of their chosen AI tool vendor ramping up the costs of using the tools to extract all; the value of the apparent cost savings.

This bit matches exactly with my experience:

"The trouble comes in that most people don't know what code needs to be created to solve their problem, for any but the most trivial problems. Who does know what code would be needed to solve complex problems? Currently that's only known by software developers, development managers and product managers, three job classifications that are going to be merging rapidly."

We found that assuming the people you employ as "developers" weren't actually also doing the dev management and product management roles was wrong. At least for our business where there were 6 or 8 devs who all understood the business goals and existing codebase and technology. When we eventually;y got successful outsourced development working was after we realised that writing code from lists of tasks/requirements was way less than 50% of what our in-house development team had been doing for years. We ended up saving a lot of money on that 30 or 40% of the work, but 60 or 70% of the higher level _understanding the business and tech stack_ work still needed to be done by people who understood the whole business and had a vested interest in the business succeeding.
by btilly | 2025-11-12 23:02:15+00:00
Yes.

The first city to really hit this wall was London in 1858. When the river level dropped, the sewage in the Thames remained, resulting in "the great stink". Construction of a proper sewage system began the following year in 1859. In 1865 it was complete enough to begin operation. It wasn't considered complete until a decade later, in 1875.

The role of sewage in spreading cholera was first hypothesized in 1849 by John Snowe. He'd put together a pretty convincing case by 1854, and the actual bacteria was discovered in the same year. But the proof that finally convinced the medical establishment didn't come about until 1883.

If this makes you suspect that the medical establishment had their collective heads up their collective asses, I'm not about to disagree.
by Razengan | 2025-11-12 23:02:20+00:00
I just want a "dumb" headset that I can use as a portable private display for my laptop.

That's it.

I don't need 3D, I don't need VR, I don't need weirdass controllers trying to be special. Just give me a damn simple monitor the size of my eyes.

Fuck off with your XR OSes and "vision" for XR, not even Apple could get it fully right, the people in charge everywhere are too out of touch and have no clue where the fuck to go after smartphones.
by SchemaLoad | 2025-11-12 23:03:51+00:00
Quite a lot of actual casual games, things you'd see in the indie or "cosy"/stardew valley-like genre only release on PC, or they take years to come to the Switch but nothing else. I see a lot of casual gamers getting the Steam Deck just because it's has the best selection of casual games.

For casual games even the steam deck can run most of them at 4k 60fps
by tpmoney | 2025-11-12 23:04:52+00:00
A bug is a bug, regardless of the intent of the insertion. You have no idea if this bug was or wasn't intentionally inserted. It's of course very likely that it wasn't, but you don't and can't know that, especially given that malicious bug insertion is going to be designed to look innocent and have plausible deniability. Likewise, you don't know that the use of the XZ backdoor was imminent. For all you know the intent was to let it sit for a release or two, maybe with an eye towards waiting for it to appear in a particular down stream target, or just to make it harder to identify the source. Yes, just like it is unlikely that the ffmpeg bug was intentional, it's also unlikely the xz backdoor was intended to be a sleeper vulnerability.

But ultimately that's my point. You as an individual do not know who else has access or information about the bug/vulnerability you have found, nor do you have any insight into how quickly they intend to exploit that if they do know about it. So the right thing to do when you find a vulnerability is to make it public so that people can begin mitigating it. Private disclosure periods exist because they recognize there is an inherent tradeoff and asymmetry in making the information public and having effective remediations. So the disclosure period attempts to strike a balance, taking the risk that the bug is known and being actively exploited for the benefit of closing the gap between public knowledge and remediation. But inherently it is a risk that the bug reporter and the project maintainers are forcing on other people, which is why the end goal must ALWAYS be public disclosure sooner rather than later.
by dchu17 | 2025-11-12 23:05:28+00:00
I've been thinking a bit more about better ways to build the tooling around it, I don't know much about video compression to be fully transparent but will read up on it.

I have been running into some problems with memory management here as each later frame needs to have a degree of context of the previous frames... (currently I just do something simple like pass in the previous frame and the first reference frame into context) maybe I can look into video compression and see if there is any inspiration there
by pdpi | 2025-11-12 23:06:00+00:00
Right now, the user experience with Crossover is that you have to manage the whole thing of installing Windows Steam in a Wine bottle, then installing games within that second Steam installation, then dealing with the fact that Steam doesn't seem to like having two instances running on the same computer (my native Steam loses connectivity every time I start the Crossover instance).

Wanting Proton on Mac isn't about that specific fork of Wine, it's shorthand for wanting the user experience that Valve gives you on Linux.
by Telemakhos | 2025-11-12 23:07:31+00:00
So, implement sales tax like Europe does VAT and include it in on the shelf price, and make sure all shelf prices end in 0 or 5. Then, adding up items in a cart will also end in 0 or 5, and the tax is already included, so there is no math beyond the addition that could change the total to anything ending in something that is not 0 or 5. No matter how people pay, cash or card, the price will be the same, and it will always end in 0 or 5. As an added bonus, customers don't have to wonder how much tax they'll pay, because that's already included in the price.
by dchu17 | 2025-11-12 23:07:54+00:00
Thought about this too. I think there are two broad LLM capabilities here that are kind of currently tangled up in this eval:

1. Can an LLM navigate a slide effectively (i.e find all relevant regions of interest)? 2. Given a region of interest, can an LLM make the correct assessment?

I need to come up with a better test here in general but yep I'm thinking about this