MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: Agentic AIs – Virtual Power Plant Simulation
by CaptP | 2025-11-12 18:38:58+00:00
I built 6,000+ agentic AIs that show how our power grid can take a much-needed massive leap forward.

I created a Virtual Power Plant simulation based on Austin's grid. VPPs are networks of controllable energy devices, such as batteries, EVs, and smart thermostats, that work together. The website takes you through a tutorial explaining all the pieces that come together in a VPP.

The bottleneck of our grid isn't generation, but transmission. In Texas, almost half of the cost of energy is transmission. Generation is getting cheaper and cheaper, and transmission is getting more and more expensive as the grid ages and we don’t do anything about it.

The solution? To hyperlocalize energy generation and storage. Virtual power plants will be critical to that future.

Zoom into different zones across Austin. Trigger price spikes, frequency dips, and demand response events—then watch how thousands of agents coordinate in real-time.

Click on any device to see its AI's decision-making process. Pan around the 3D map, inspect individual batteries and EVs, and see how aggregators manage entire neighborhoods. Each device has its own AI agent making real-time decisions. Watch 6,000+ agents respond to grid events in seconds—faster than any centralized system.

This is what the future of energy looks like: distributed, intelligent, and resilient. Try it out and let me know what you think. Hopefully, you'll learn about VPPs and get an intuitive sense of the world's most complex machine.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-11-12 18:39:24+00:00
"Support for YouTube without a JavaScript runtime is now considered "deprecated." It does still work somewhat; however, format availability will be limited, and severely so in some cases (e.g. for logged-in users). "

The devil is in the details

There are some formats, perhaps the one(s) the user wants, that do not require a JS runtime

Interesting that "signing up" for a website publishing public infomation and "logging in" may not always work in the user's favor. For example, here they claim it limits format availability

"Format availability without a JS runtime is expected to worsen as time goes on, and this will not be considered a "bug" but rather an inevitability for which there is no solution. It's also expected that, eventually, support for YouTube will not be possible at all without a JS runtime."

It is speculated that this format availability might change in the future
by redwall_hp | 2025-11-12 18:39:28+00:00
That sounds close to the Sears system to me, but they used the tens place. 8x was used for returned big ticket items, like appliances and treadmills. It would start at 88 and the rightmost digit would decrement to indicate how many weeks it had been sitting there.

It was 00 for full, 99 for sale (the majority of items, except for the one week every year they established the full price for that product), 8x for clearance.
by pinkgolem | 2025-11-12 18:39:54+00:00
Sure, but that border is for a lot more then 90% of users mostly reached with 16gb and an m1/and equivalent...

From a certain point a faster SSD was more important for program startup and the m1 did blow a normal windows laptop out of the water there

And nowadays is mostly how well does the os it's thing, a word doc will not compute faster because you have more cores
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-11-12 18:40:19+00:00
I'm ashamed to say it but I cannot for the life of me understand how kustomize works. I could not ever figure out how to do things outside the "hello world" tutorials they walk you through. I'm not a stupid person (citation needed lol), but trying to understand the kustomize docs made me feel incredibly stupid. That's why we didn't go with that instead of Helm.
by wvenable | 2025-11-12 18:40:21+00:00
I will pile on that I don't use any commercial libraries in .NET at all. Ironically, I do purchase a commercial library for front-end JavaScript.

I agree that the commercial library offerings seem much more "in your face" with .NET but I don't find the actual breadth and depth of the free and open source library situation to be that troubling. It certainly continues to get better every year.

.NET is very "batteries included" as well so you don't need a huge base-line of competing open source packages just to do "hello world".
by banashark | 2025-11-12 18:40:32+00:00
I think saying that Spring is the representative of Java metrics is somewhat equivalent to saying that full aspnet mvc is the representative of dotnet metrics.

On the dotnet side, both Oxpecker and Giraffe (Giraffe being written by the author of that post) perform very well with simple code and from what I see, no "tricks". It's all standard "how the docs say to write it" code (muuuuch different than those platform benchmarks that were rightfully scrutinized in the referenced blog post).

On the jvm side, I started looking for a reference near the top without any targeted non-default optimizations (which is really what I personally look for in these). The inverno implementation has a few things that I'd call non-standard (any time I see a byte buffer I imagine that's not how most people are utilizing the framework), but otherwise looks normal. I recall an earlier quarkus implementation that I read through a couple years ago (same repo) that wasn't as optimized with small things like that and performed very well, but it seems they've since added some of those types of optimizations as well.

All to say: If you venture outside the standard of either platform (full fatty aspnet/ef or spring/hibernate) you can make the tradeoff of framework convenience for performance. However when it comes to the cost/benefit ratio, you're either going to be joining a company using the former, or writing your own thing using the latter (most likely).
by HarHarVeryFunny | 2025-11-12 18:40:35+00:00
So how would you propose paying for something that cost $0.40, or would you just like to see all prices be multiples of 25c?

BTW, the reason for wanting to get rid of the penny isn't so much the low purchasing value, but more that they cost more to make (~4c) than their face value, so the government loses money making them. The same is true of nickels.
by willio58 | 2025-11-12 18:40:39+00:00
> don't even give you a fair technical chance if you lack a degree, and the devs are considered to be a cost center.

I've never considered how lucky I am to live in the U.S. and to work at a company that absolutely sees the dev team to be a huge asset rather than another cost. The amount of time, money, stress we've saved by not allowing bad code to enter the code base.. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Also, I've had such great success hiring people without degrees. Truly some of our best contributors came from entirely different career paths. Same applies for some designers I work with.
by Tabular-Iceberg | 2025-11-12 18:40:46+00:00
What if furthering the human species through the use of stable two-parent households happens to be my kink? You wouldn't kink shame, would you?

It will always be funny to me how little it takes for the mask of limitless tolerance to slip and reveal what you people think of those of us who dare even dream of deviating from the prevailing social norms.
by crazygringo | 2025-11-12 18:40:48+00:00
...no? Maybe re-read the first half.

I've come from abroad with two large checked bags, a carry-on, and a backpack. You think I'm trying to take all that through the subway?

Obviously, yeah if you're traveling solo with a carry-on, most people take public transportation.

Or not, if it's 1 am and you don't want to be waiting 20 minutes for each connection.

Also, if you're a tourist new to the city after a long flight, the last thing you want to do is figure out the massively complicated transit system. Just having someone take you straight to your hotel where you can shower and sleep and deal with jet lag can be an important priority.
by TheCoreh | 2025-11-12 18:40:52+00:00
Very weird USB-C port placement choices...

- 2 USB3-A on the front

- 2 USB2-A on the back

- 1 USB-C on the back

If you want to plug an external USB hard drive or SSD at full speed, you'll need to plug it at the front? Or use up the only USB-C port...

I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable, so if you want to charge your controller you either need to plug on the back, use an adapter, or get a USB-A to USB-C cable?

Also the single USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt/USB4, and they're only including gigabit ethernet, which is disappointing but perhaps understandable if they're trying to keep it at a low price.
by erxam | 2025-11-12 18:40:58+00:00
Maybe they've cracked the code with the dongle? Usually, you either have to invest both time and money into setting up the perfect streaming network, deal with annoying cables or resign yourself to inferior on-device game versions. The ergonomics matter more than you'd think.

But if it's a very easy plug-n-play type deal to run SteamVR games (and on Linux!), that's a huge ergonomic improvement. Don't have to think too much about whether everything is running correctly or what-have-you.
by ssl-3 | 2025-11-12 18:41:26+00:00
I see where you're headed with that now.

It is my intention that when I move, I move my smart home shit with me.

I keep this in mind as I add smartness. All of it can be reversed to normal-house-status in a few hours, at most -- including a trip or two to the hardware store.

It can go back to what it once was almost as soon as "We're showing the house on Thursday" is uttered by anyone.

(The new owners won't want any of it, anyway. Buying someone else's bespoke smart home is like buying someone else's bespoke race car: It may have been a serious investment in time and money as well as a source of tremendous joy for one person at one point, but for the next guy it's just kind of a nuisance.)
by toast0 | 2025-11-12 18:41:30+00:00
> Isn’t the situation you’re describing where speeds vary due to queues going to be in heavy traffic where cars aren’t getting close to the speed limit anyway?

Not necessarily. I've seen things like the left two lanes at free flow (speed limit or above) and the right two lanes at full congestion (~ 10 mph), and the middle lane(s) somewhere in between. But then you also have sometimes where the left lane is only doing 60 for some reason, but the next two lanes are at or above the speed limits. It's a complex system.

Wrong side exits for interchanges between highways are common, depending on site details and relative flows. When there's congestion on a left exit, you then get situations where the right lanes are flowing faster than the left lanes (sometimes much faster). I don't think interchanges as left exits are necessarily awful.

Wrong side exits to surface streets have been discouraged for new construction for quite some time, but there's a fair number of "legacy exits" in some areas. They're not so bad when there's only two lanes in your direction; but when there's been highway expansion, it can get pretty hard to use. And inevitably rebuilding to current standards would causes a lot of confusion and delay, it's postponed. My exemplar of the worst left exits, the Milwaukee Zoo Interchange, was rebuilt in 2012-2022 and I can't find pictures of what it was before, but you had a sizable interchange with right and left exits to other highways, combined with several surface street exits and entrances on both sides, and I think two through lanes. It was a mess.
by greenavocado | 2025-11-12 18:42:12+00:00
You're right to feel like you're seeing something different. You are. But you're mistaking the symptom for the disease.

That's because you're trying to make sense of it as a technology market. It's not. It's a resource extraction market, and the VCs are the ones running the logging operation. Their sole mission is to find a dependable way to strip a forest bare, and they've been using the same playbook for decades.

Those "science experiments" you're talking about? They aren't the product. They're the story, the sizzle. They are the disposable lighter used to start the fire; the VCs have no intention of keeping it lit forever. The real tool is the chainsaw, and the "science experiment" is the brand name printed on the side.

Think of it as clear-cutting. The dot-com bubble was one forest. The story then was that a company losing millions selling pet food online was a "new economy" giant because it had "eyeballs." That was the sales pitch for the chainsaw. VCs funded hundreds of these operations, created a frenzy, and took the most plausible-sounding ones public. The IPO wasn't a milestone; it was the moment they sold the timber and exited the forest, leaving the stumps and worthless pulp for the pension funds and retail investors.

The "long-term" part of their strategy isn't about the health of any single tree or company. It's about finding the next forest to clear-cut. After dot-coms, it was social media. Now, it's the AI forest. They aren't betting on AI; they're betting on their ability to sell the world on the idea that this particular forest is magical and will grow forever.

So you're right, what you're seeing is weird. But it's not a new kind of weirdness. It's the oldest story in finance. A bubble being inflated so the smart money can cash out, leaving everyone else to marvel at the fancy new chainsaw after the forest is already gone.
by Kye | 2025-11-12 18:42:27+00:00
Ripoff is a strong accusation. You can't own ideas. I do think devlids has better execution, but it has more time (revisions) behind it. Personally, I think "devlids" limits the concept too much. I want to see lids from writers, artists, musicians, etc. Categorized so I can see how different kinds of creatives flair their laptops.
by hebejebelus | 2025-11-12 18:42:27+00:00
Very interesting! The one killer issue that jumps to mind is anti-cheat. I switched away from gaming on Linux via Proton to gaming on Windows because Battlefield 6's anti-cheat won't work under Proton. Many games are like this, particularly some of the most popular (Rainbow 6 Siege for instance). And BF6 made this decision only recently despite the growing number of Steam Deck players (and other players on linux - in fairness I don't think there would have been that many BF6 players on a handheld).

Edit: I specifically use a gaming-only PC. The hardware is used for nothing else. Hence, discussions of rootkits don't really bother me personally much and on balance I'd really rather see fewer cheaters in my games. I think it would be the same with any of these machines - anything Steam-branded is likely to be a 99% gaming machine and their users will only care that their games work, not about the mechanisms of the anti-cheat software.
by gloosx | 2025-11-12 18:42:34+00:00
I wonder how the whole thing works when I open a youtube video from a preview inside a chat application on my mobile phone.

It looks like the video loads and starts playing in some kind of in-app browser, but there is just full-screen video and nothing else. I also never faced any ads in this "mode" of playing a video, yet recently some strange things started happening where the playback would start together with an audio-track from the advertisement. The video itself would start playing but the sound would be replaced with the sound from ad which seemed very odd and much like a bug, only when advertisement audio track ends it will be replaced with audio track from the video itself.

I'm genuinely curious how is the whole playback process different when I watch a video from the Telegram preview, can I somehow achieve the same "just fullscreen video" kind of playback on the desktop as well? Does anyone have any insight?
by JBiserkov | 2025-11-12 18:42:36+00:00
A bit of topic, but I was wondering how much bigger is the steam machine compared to the mac mini m4, since that's what I have and is my frame of reference. Obviously comparing apples to oranges and only talking about physical volume, not features, compatibility, price, personal preferences, etc.

Mac Mini m4: 127 x 127 x 50 mm = 0.8 L

Steam Machine: 156 x 162 x 152 = 3.8 L

That's 4.76 times more volume.
by JBiserkov | 2025-11-12 18:43:28+00:00
A bit of topic, but I was wondering how much bigger is the steam machine compared to the mac mini m4, since that's what I have and is my frame of reference. Obviously comparing apples to oranges and only talking about physical volume, not features, compatibility, price, personal preferences, etc.

Mac Mini m4: 127 x 127 x 50 mm = 0.8 L

Steam Machine: 156 x 162 x 152 = 3.8 L

That's 4.76 times more volume.
by bradford | 2025-11-12 18:43:30+00:00
I haven't kept aware of changes to Java in the last decade, but the things I didn't like about it then were:

1. The overall architecture (with the JVM) made it slower than the equivalent C# code.

2. C# really started embracing modern language features at a time when Java was kind of languishing (lambda functions, async patterns). Java seems like it's been in perpetual catch-up since then.

(Not OP, disclaimer, I work for Microsoft and this is only my opinion).
by jandrese | 2025-11-12 18:43:40+00:00
What would you suggest as a more efficient way to achieve this goal? Building thousands of advanced fighter jets for private citizens? Keeping highly skilled engineers up to date on the most modern technologies and maintaining specialized factories is inherently expensive. You can't leave the factories mothballed because you need to keep the skilled workers employed and practiced with manufacturing.

Maybe there could be something like a weekend warriors but for machinists? One weekend a month, one week a year you build fighter jets. This does mean there needs to be private sector demand for those skillsets so the reservists have relevant day jobs.
by rz2k | 2025-11-12 18:43:58+00:00
I am suspicious of any claims about relative cleanliness. As with wooden vs plastic cutting boards, our intuitions are likely misleading.

To be an effective fomite the currency has to not kill the microbe, and it has to readily give up the microbe to the next recipient. Organic materials like cotton or linen seem more likely to simply absorb a viral envelope or bacterial cell wall, thereby rendering it ineffective. Furthermore, the porous nature makes it more difficult for the note to give up any microbe that isn't immediately killed before it naturally dies over time.

A brief search of the scientific literature doesn't seem to show any conclusive results, but it does seem like the relative performance is pathogen specific.
by msabalau | 2025-11-12 18:44:14+00:00
To the extent that there is a gap in sea or air power, you fix that, you don't waste attention or money on side projects like artillery shells.

The administration claims that it isn't distracted by Ukraine and Europe, and wants to focus on threat from China, but the strategic imperative for increasing shell production is Ukraine and the threat from Russia to Europe. Let the Europeans sort that out. And, if the Israelis want lots of shells, let them sort it out, or better yet do without.

Or acknowledge that you are doing something that is apart from your main strategic focus. It is possible to walk and chew bubblegum. Bubblegum doesn't cost all that that much.

But the pretense that artillery shells are desperately needed for deterrence in the South China Sea is rather tiresome. There are far more important munitions supply gaps. Just because a couple of conservative think tanks wanted to make hay about about sending shells to Ukraine a couple of years ago is political drama, not something actually important.
by assemblyman | 2025-11-12 18:44:32+00:00
I am a big fan of using LLMs although in my own limited way. I don't work at Meta and don't feel strongly about him leaving or staying there.

It's possible that he will turn out to be correct in the long run. From his viewpoint, the primary goal is research and any usefulness of intermediate advances is maybe (speculating) "beneath him". If this is the case, I completely understand why a corporation would want to eject him. LeCun probably sees the pretty amazing developments since ChatGPT first came out as incremental hacks. I am neutral about this aspect too. Maybe they are but the hacks have been useful to me.

Eventually this feels like the correction of a real misalignment between LeCun/FAIR and Meta. Hopefully now, they can both focus on what they are good at. I must admit that I have great sympathy for open-ended research but industry has always been fickle about it. That's where the government and universities are supposed to play a key role.
by LeifCarrotson | 2025-11-12 18:44:32+00:00
It's crazy to me that rsync.net is buying mission-critical enterprise drives on Amazon.

I don't buy drives on Amazon for my 9 year old's laptop because of the rampant fraud and counterfeiting, I'm shocked that they're trusted for any business use-cases by anyone moderately savvy. I'm even more shocked that the takeaway is to blame the individual seller, rather than the marketplace that makes it possible.
by cflewis | 2025-11-12 18:44:42+00:00
RDNA 3 is going to hold this machine back. DLSS is far and away better, but Nvidia's apathy towards Linux has made playing on something like Bazzite a worse experience. Nvidia has little reason to keep investing in Windows gaming drivers given the AI race, so seeing DLSS 4 or something on Linux is a pipe dream.

I think this machine will be decent for most people, but it's no-one with a 3080 is going to be looking at this and thinking "this is worth it", as it's probably coming in at about $750. The question is whether it'll have power parity with whatever the next Xbox is.
by astroflection | 2025-11-12 18:44:48+00:00
Nope. I will continue to have a DL card so I can choose to leave my phone at home. When we are required to have our IDs on our person at all times I can at least not be tracked everywhere I go.

Be watchful for legislation requiring: * us to have our ID on our person at all times. * IDs to be issued in digital format only.
by infamouscow | 2025-11-12 18:44:48+00:00
> The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall.

Let me rewrite this without propaganda:

Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lawyers, we couldn't persuade the judge that our malfeasance should be kept from the light of day.
by w10-1 | 2025-11-12 18:45:21+00:00
Don't let hatred of bureaucracy blind you.

Russia and China definitely love this: choosing time over features or quality is a recipe for failed products and corrupted contractors who specialize in defrauding the government.

This turned the universal hatred of bureaucracy against our greatest capability.

The US has both more features and more quality in all its armaments, which has given us enduring advantages (notwithstanding being spread too thin).

Unlike making products, time actually matters less than feature or quality in war-making because you avoid war as long as possible, and you choose to engage/deploy based on your actual capabilities.

Yes, in rare occasion when you've stumbled into an assymmetrical quagmire, you need to catch up, with armor against roadside bombs in Iraq or drone swarms now. But it's critical to be better by default, and be faster as needed.

The US military has expressly countered the sclerosis of bureaucracy by pushing decisions down to local commanders and funding a broad swath of experimental technologies. But a program like the F35 necessarily involves a ridiculous amount of integration, and it's just hard to get that right. Saying "just do it faster" is an armchair quarterback fantasy.

Never let your enemy use your weaknesses against you.