MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by _flux | 2025-11-17 07:30:43+00:00
Unison could be one of the more popular programs written in OCaml.

This sort of lead into trouble at one time, as the author chose to use the OCaml serialization of data as the protocol, so synchronization between 32- and 64-bit platforms or even binaries compiled with different versions of OCaml was not possible. Eventually this was fixed, though, with custom serialization.
by dzhiurgis | 2025-11-17 07:30:47+00:00
It does, but it costs is complex, requires power and time.

It's noticeable even in climates like NZ.

There are coldgating stories about LFP. Some even reduce output and very low SOC and temperature, so you drive 60km/h in highway.

Sodium is vastly superior here and CATL is not going to be giving it away for free.
by miki123211 | 2025-11-17 07:31:03+00:00
The problem with helper functions is that they're often very easy to write, but very hard to figure out the types for.

Take a generic function that recursively converts snake_case object keys to pascalCase. That's about 10 lines of Javascript, you can write that in 2 mins if you're a competent dev. Figuring out the types for it can be done, but you really need a lot of ts expertise to pull it off.
by dalemhurley | 2025-11-17 07:31:32+00:00
The concern discussed is that some language models have reportedly claimed that misgendering is the worst thing anyone could do, even worse than something as catastrophic as thermonuclear war.

I haven’t seen solid evidence of a model making that exact claim, but the idea is understandable if you consider how LLMs are trained and recall examples like the “seahorse emoji” issue. When a topic is new or not widely discussed in the training data, the model has limited context to form balanced associations. If the only substantial discourse it does see is disproportionately intense—such as highly vocal social media posts or exaggerated, sarcastic replies on platforms like Reddit—then the model may overindex on those extreme statements. As a result, it might generate responses that mirror the most dramatic claims it encountered, such as portraying misgendering as “the worst thing ever.”

For clarity, I’m not suggesting that deliberate misgendering is acceptable, it isn’t. The point is simply that skewed or limited training data can cause language models to adopt exaggerated positions when the available examples are themselves extreme.
by sph | 2025-11-17 07:32:40+00:00
I love the thread about Barry Lyndon. I’ve seen it for the first time recently and it is clear there is no talent, or rather no money, to create something so earnest and opinionated. The problem isn’t film, isn’t digital, isn’t the ironic dialogue of modern blockbuster, isn’t lack of art sense, it’s all of the above. It is clear that film, and any other creation today, is soulless, aims at the common denominator, there is no strong opinion, no auteurship. You see that in blockbuster film, blockbuster game design, blockbuster art even. In software.

Call me old and grumpy but there is a real sense that this data- and money-driven approach is the lowest, most sterile point for artistry and creativity. ‘Art for art’s sake’ is the antithesis of the relentless pursuit of revenue and efficiency. You do not have art when you need not to offend anyone but sell the most units. When art is just another product out of the industrial line.
by dzhiurgis | 2025-11-17 07:35:47+00:00
I've tried to express SUV's as in American SUVs - full sized 7 seat monstrosity. Most EV SUVs right now are crossovers, i.e. Model Y. Cybertruck is closest approximation and it uses nearly 2x more power than Model Y. Even with ~most advanced batteries people still think Cybertruck's range is way too little whereas I'm pretty certain majority of Model Y's sold are LFPs.
by 3rodents | 2025-11-17 07:36:34+00:00
> [...] I can do all the above in less than 30mins, where it could take a full day to do it manually [...]

Generating thousands of words because it's easy is exactly the problem with AI generated content. The people generating AI content think about quantity not quality. If you have to type out the words yourself, if you have to invest the time and energy into writing the post, then you're showing respect for your readers by making the same investment you're asking them to make... and you are creating a natural constraint on the verbosity because you are spending your valuable time.

Just because you can generate 20 hours of output in 30 minutes, doesn't mean you should. I don't really care about whether or not you use AI on principle, if you can generate great content with AI, go for it, but your post is classic AI slop, it's a verbose nightmare, it's words for the sake of words, it's from the quantity over quality school of slop.

> I had a blog 20 years ago but since then I never had time to write content again (too time consuming and no ROI) - so the alternative would be nothing.

Posting nothing is better than posting slop, but you're presenting a false dichotomy. You could have spent the 30 minutes writing the post yourself and posted 30 minutes of output. Or, if you absolutely must use ChatGPT to generate blog posts, ask it to produce something that is a few hundred words at most. Remember the famous quote...

"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."

If ChatGPT can do hundreds of hours of work for you then it should be able to produce the shortest possible blog post, it should be able to produce 100 words that say what you could in 3,000. Not the other way around!
by sally_glance | 2025-11-17 07:37:03+00:00
I enjoy following academic discourse, review and collaboration give me the feeling that actual progress is being made.

So I love that you linked the rebuttal paper. In the last paragraph the authors mention that some ideas could lead to "fruitful analytic or empirical starting points" - did anyone follow up on these? From your perspective, what are the most interesting directions in this area of research today?
by tarsinge | 2025-11-17 07:37:04+00:00
I don’t know, the biggest difference I see is Thiel and Elon are all about government/tax payer money (through contracts like Palantir or SpaceX, subsidies like Tesla, lobbying, influencing elections, or worst). In that way they align with China, as an autocracy directly financing their companies is their ideal business model. Altman and Zuck OTOH are more typical SV entrepreneurs.
by emil-lp | 2025-11-17 07:37:06+00:00
> Consider some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from children aged 8-12: 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an adult

This is really not representative for other Western countries. Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to school alone, and 100% of older kids do.

> In physical space, Western children are almost comically sheltered.

I think the author should stick with "kids in the USA" when he means that.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-11-17 07:37:41+00:00
Hypotheticals like that are uninteresting because there are only two ways it can go. The first is that you can find a way out of it, and then you say, do we need the magic spell for anything? Is knowing about it useful to preventing it from being used? Then people need to know.

The second is that you're stipulating the information being available is going to destroy the world with high probability and no possible means of mitigating it. Then anything else gets drowned out by the end of the world, but only because you're stipulating the outcome.

Which you can't do in real life, not just because the real probability of the hypothetical is so low but because there isn't anyone who can be trusted not to fudge the numbers when they want to censor something. Should it be censored if there is an absolute certainty it will destroy the world? There isn't much room to move in that one. Should it be censored because somebody claims it's really bad? Nope, because it's way more likely that they're full of crap than that it's actually going to destroy the world.
by dalemhurley | 2025-11-17 07:37:54+00:00
Worse. It is trained to the most extreme and loudest views. The average punter isn’t posting “yeah…nah…look I don’t like it but sure I see the nuances and fair is fair”.

To make it worse, those who do focus on nuance and complexity, get little attention and engagement, so the LLM ignores them.
by impossiblefork | 2025-11-17 07:38:34+00:00
No, I mean the whole thing. I mean that the revolution was necessary.

I don't think reforms of orthography were what mattered. What mattered was actually forcing people people to learn to read and also sending people out to teach them.

I don't see pre-1918 Cryllic as much more complicated that post 1918 Cryllic, but then I am of course literate and a Swede, so the only thing I find unusual is the symbol of softness, which is probably much less of a problem if you actually speak Russian.
by udev4096 | 2025-11-17 07:42:43+00:00
systemd scales. I love small init systems but systemd is just so convenient. It handles daemon process, encryption with cryptsetup, boot process (systemd-boot), hardening options you can define on unit files, good support for nested containerization etc. It's deeply entrenched in every major distro that it's impossible to administer a linux system without it
by strogonoff | 2025-11-17 07:43:13+00:00
Chances are, even if you deliberately and strategically pick to work on an OSS project that you are positively sure an LLM can’t just spit out on command, it will be capable of doing so by the time you are close to completion. In that sense, one has to either be not inclined to question “what’s the point” or have a bit of gambling mentality in order to work on anything substantial.

That’s not automatically a problem, however. The problem is that even if you do come up with a really cool idea that LLM is not capable of autocompleting, and you release it under a copyleft license (to ensure the project survives and volunteer contributor’s work is not adopted and extinguished by some commercial interest), it will get incorporated into its dataset regardless of the licensing, and thereafter the LLM will be capable of spitting it out and its large corporate operator will be able to monetise your code (allowing anyone with money wishing to build a commercial product based on it).
by rvz | 2025-11-17 07:43:17+00:00
...and the $1TN+ in transactions and laundered money by criminals that went unchecked by the banks [0] or enabled ponzi schemes from banks like HSBC. [1]

[0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/fincen-files

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54225572
Show HN: Common Sense License (CSL) – civic license for a techno-feudal world
by shmaplex | 2025-11-17 07:43:31+00:00
The CSL is an attempt to rethink software licensing in a way that balances freedom, sustainability, and fairness. It’s inspired by the idea that our digital infrastructure increasingly mirrors feudal systems: concentrated power, obligations flowing upward, and everyday users left vulnerable. The license is designed to give creators a practical alternative to proprietary or exploitative models, while encouraging transparency, collaboration, and equitable distribution. I’d love to hear thoughts from developers, legal experts, and anyone experimenting with bootstrapped projects.
by SapporoChris | 2025-11-17 07:43:34+00:00
If a person has good basic arithmetic skills and it is a priority for them, then yes they can use coins easily. However, a lot of people either can't do the math or are unwilling to use change correctly.

For myself, it's such a priority that I'll get upset with myself if I have more than 4 pennies.

Japan has more coins (in regular use) than USA, so giving the correct amount is even more important or you'll end up carrying a lot of coins. 1000 yen is the smallest bill so... Example: 999 yen. 500,4x100,50,4x10,5,4x1 yen coins, 19 coins total.
by quuxplusone | 2025-11-17 07:44:21+00:00
I don't know that one, but here's a superficially similar joke from somewhere among http://miresperanto.com/humuro.htm :

When the British government invited commercial proposals for the digging of the Channel Tunnel between England and France, one man submitted a bid for only £10,000. “How can you possibly dig under the English Channel for only £10,000?” asked the project manager.

“It’s simple,” replied the low bidder. “My partner takes a spade, goes to France and starts digging. I take another spade and start digging from England. We’ll both keep digging until we meet in the middle.”

“Hm, I see. But what happens if, through a miscalculation, you two do not meet?”

“That’s even better for you!” replied the bidder enthusiastically. “In that case you will have two tunnels!”
by jillesvangurp | 2025-11-17 07:44:21+00:00
It's not just Vietnam. It's almost any country anywhere in the world that is seeing healthy growth in EVs. Especially the ones that barely have a road network or a petrol distribution network.

This is an effect that is still underappreciated in western markets but developing markets embracing renewables and EVs means they are enabling some serious economic growth. They are eliminating chunks of fossil fuel imports from their balance sheet while enabling economic activity in areas that have poor grid coverage and limited access to fuel.

Pakistan is a good example. They have a very under developed grid. Solar and battery storage are enabling the locals to work around that and they have installed a lot of that in recent years. This is enabling local businesses that previously had very poor access to reliably power to now have reliable power and grow. The Pakistan government is also putting in place incentives to stimulate EV imports.

Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets.
by Qwertious | 2025-11-17 07:45:46+00:00
A lot of people prefer living in financially affordable environments, and in a functioning market, dense towns/cities will always be more affordable unless you literally work on a farm.

Everyone prefers to live in a giant sprawling mansion (with personal private forest) in the middle of the CBD. But preference is useless data unless it includes their pricetag preference too.
by miki123211 | 2025-11-17 07:45:54+00:00
In practice, none of the free OSes are ready for 21st century, battery-powered, energy-saving devices, especially of the kind Apple makes.

I'm pretty sure battery performance would drop significantly if root was too easy to achieve. The temptation to run "that one more background service" would be far too much for most apps, both free and otherwise.

To get good battery perf out of a device, you need to be extremely good at saying "no", even if that "no" comes at the expense of user freedom and features. Free software is usually extremely bad at this by design, although there are exceptions (Graphene OS comes to mind).

On Apple devices, core system services are written by Apple itself. That puts pressure on the software development side to care about battery perf, as that is what users want (and what increases sales). If software is written by 3rd parties with their own business goals unrelated to device sales, I'm afraid "featuritis" and lower development costs would win out over efficiency, as it usually does in such circumstances.
by bilegeek | 2025-11-17 07:46:25+00:00
Are there any studies on people who grew up with similar isolated childhoods in the 20th century (as in modern-day levels, even comparing with the late 20th declining average)? It would be interesting to see the similarities/differences between them and modern cohorts, and if surrounding culture made adult integration harder or easier (though I'm rather pessimistic on that). Any HNer willing to share a personal anecdote on this?
by Nursie | 2025-11-17 07:46:46+00:00
> M1 macbook is a locked down

Sure, iOS is certainly restrictive, fully locked-down, app store only etc etc, and I'd love a full-fat firefox with its plugin system available on my phone. But what are you doing on a non-Mac laptop that you can't do on an M1 mac?

I'm a big fan of linux and have used it as a main machine for many years, but use an M4 macbook as my daily driver at the moment (everyone else I work with does too, it's just easier). I haven't felt limited at all. I can build and install whatever I like, I have brew for my tooling needs...

Yeah I don't see it with Mac. Unless you're actually needing linux and dockerisation won't cut the mustard I guess.
by kimovski | 2025-11-17 07:47:20+00:00
Well, I think it's fine, building jumbo planes Or taking a ride on a cosmic train Switch on summer from a slot machine Yes, get what you want to if you want 'Cause you can get anything

I know we've come a long way We're changing day to day But tell me, where do the children play?

Well, you roll on roads over fresh green grass For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas And you make them long, and you make them tough But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off

Oh, I know we've come a long way We're changing day to day But tell me, where do the children play?
Show HN: WyseOS – An AgentOS for Web Automation
by wilsonjin | 2025-11-17 07:47:58+00:00
Hi everyone, we're building WyseOS — an AgentOS designed for autonomous web automation. This article provides a deeper look at how it works, why we built it, and what's next.

We’d love feedback from the community. The beta is now live: if you’re interested in trying it, DM us on X at @WyseOS_com.
by Earw0rm | 2025-11-17 07:48:42+00:00
A lot of this depends on the scale - and cost (two way relationship) of domestic battery rollout.

An individual uses (broad rule of thumb average) somewhere in the 300-500W range to participate in society at a modern level. A warm and well-lit home, cooking a couple of meals, hot water, an EV with enough charge to get to work, TV, laptop and so on. This is before we consider industry and infrastructure.

It's possible to bring those numbers down a bit, but not a lot. Even with fairly aggressive optimisations (Passivhaus, ebike, low-energy cooking), below 100W it gets tough.

But on the flip side, this means a 50kWh home battery can keep a family home running for a day, and 100-200kWh longer than that. 100kWh is affordable today as a home upgrade, and if people adopted a little more of a flexibility ethic with respect to availability, 200kWh will comfortably run a four-person home for a week.

Granted 200kWh domestic instals aren't affordable yet, but by the time these NPPs are online - five years? - they likely will be.
by blurayfin | 2025-11-17 07:49:36+00:00
I fired up a 5$ Hetzner server, and then scanned 10k+ wordpress plugins for security issues, errors, warnings etc using .. it took around 5 days to complete..

and this is the result:

https://www.pluginscore.com/

Under the hood, it uses the official Plugin Check (via wp plugin check) and PHP_CodeSniffer with the WordPress standards, plus some extra checks for plugin repo requirements and performance. So its basically the plugin check but with a web interface. There are some false positives in the scan results but it gives an overall picture about a plugin.
by diffeomorphism | 2025-11-17 07:51:24+00:00
> Because an FFT (short for "Fast Fourier Transform") is nothing more than a curve-fit of sines and cosines to some given data

That is not even wrong. A Fourier transform is a basis expansion. In particular, the full expansion is exact (not just an approximation). Of course, truncated expansions are approximations.

The actually interesting part: Why is this basis expansion so much more useful than, e.g. expanding into some eigenfunctions, Hermite polynomials, etc.? The decomposition into (complex) exponentials converts between addition and multiplication, i. e. sin(x+y), cos(x+y) you get from multiplying sin(x), cos(x), sin(y) and cos(y). This in turn has important implications such as turning derivatives into multipliers. More generally you can consider nonlinear Fourier transforms with different groups and generators other than exponentials.

TLDR: It is a transform. What you are transforming between is what makes it so useful.
by rusk | 2025-11-17 07:51:55+00:00
There was a running theme in mythic quest about the engineers sweating over the system while monetisation just went bolted on a casino.

Also happened in GTA5 [0] there was a ridiculous loading glitch that was quite well documented on here a while ago. Also a monetisation bolt on.

So you have competing departments one of whom must justify itself by producing a heavily after my system. And another one which is licensed to generate revenue at any cost……

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339
by lnsru | 2025-11-17 07:52:53+00:00
Same phone addiction in Europe as elsewhere. No way to fight addictive stuff. Most parents don’t even try or care. Add tragic demographics and 8-12 year olds are all alone with their phones.

Let’s talk about special school system here in Bavaria (Germany). Kids from specific area go to same school for the first 4 grades. Afterwards they are divided between little geniuses going into „Gymnsasium“, average ones going to „Realschule“ and good-for-nothings going to „Mittelschule“. For the first years kids move between schools and later between classes according their preferred specialization. No way to make friendships when kids come and go. Obviously there is nobody to play with left. Only reliable phone and games there. And nice videos there. Education system actively pushes kids into phones since real connections can’t happen.

I see lots of negativity here. Folks, do you really believe, that throwing a child into new environment every other year is the way to craft friendships in the real world?
by wjnc | 2025-11-17 07:53:53+00:00
With the power of M-chips, this would cannabalize MacBooks via iPad Air / Pro. They are sitting on a golden cash flow and not willing to revolutionize computing again (as the iPhone did).

Just as a N=1, I would rather pay a recurring fee in the Disney-Netflix range to Apple to get more liberty in usage from my machines. But I think they don’t dare to go those routes, because they need the broad market base and cannot extract the current cash flow from a smaller base, while setting expectations that the Googles, Samsungs can copy.

Industry leaders dilemma. Apple currently settles on market differentiation via physical products.
by esseph | 2025-11-17 07:54:21+00:00
To get good battery life out of a device, having complete software and hardware integration is key. That's the PC blessing and curse, having to support all kinds of different CPUs, GPUs, chipsets, RAM, etc from many different places.

When you just have to focus on a handful of hardware platforms and when you own the hardware and software, this becomes much, much easier.
by maxbond | 2025-11-17 07:54:23+00:00
It's an interesting question, here's some napkin math.

There's almost 19 gigaliters of water in Crater Lake. To pump that amount of water in a year would require pumping 52 megaliters of water per day. A small city produces about 200 megaliters of sewage in a day. (LA produces about 2 gigaliters per day.)

So it should be possible but would be very expensive. Maybe on the order of running the drinking water infrastructure for a town. I suspect I'm overestimating though, I think you might only have to pump half of the water to achieve good mixing. (ETA: After a tiny bit of research I think you might be able to do it with much less than half due to entrainment.)

You would also kill a lot of animals and microorganisms in the process. Pumps driven by impellers create cavitation that cracks open microorganisms, and things like peristaltic pumps which avoid this can't handle these volumes. As this material is decomposed by bacteria, they will reproduce and increase the biological oxygen demand in the water, which might end up making the lake anoxic anyway.