MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by perching_aix | 2025-11-19 15:14:28+00:00
I personally prefer to just memorize the data and recite it really quickly on-demand.

Only half-joking. When something grossly underperforms, I do often legitimately just pull up calc.exe and compare the throughput to the number of employees we have × 8 kbit/sec [0], see who would win. It is uniquely depressing yet entertaining to see this outperform some applications.

[0] spherical cow type back of the envelope estimate, don't take it too seriously; assumes a very fast 200 wpm speech, 5 bytes per word, and everyone being able to independently progress
by frumplestlatz | 2025-11-19 15:14:34+00:00
We don't know what the surrounding code looks like, but I'd expect it handles the error case that's expressed in the type signature (unless they `.unwrap()` there too).

The problem is that they didn't surface a failure case, which means they couldn't handle rollouts of invalid configurations correctly.

The use of `.unwrap()` isn't superficial at all -- it hid an invariant that should have been handled above this code. The failure to correctly account for and handle those true invariants is exactly what caused this failure mode.
by jmclnx | 2025-11-19 15:15:06+00:00
I do not understand this statement.

Many US State Colleges were supported by tax dollars and in the 90s, tax cuts started happening and funding for public colleges declined and fees started being added.

When I went to College, it was extremely cheep, books cost more than my tuition and fees. The state where I was had huge discounts for residents and since the college was in the City I was born and grew up in, I got even more discounts.

Now, kids need to take out big loans for higher education.

I will not go into cuts to public schools, these days, if parents can afford it, they send their kids to private school. When I was in school, the public schools were great, but they started to go down hill not long after I graduated High School.
by kevincox | 2025-11-19 15:15:09+00:00
But it's still tied to your carrier. I'd really prefer to keep my communication disconnected from my connectivity provider. These should be two completely separate services that I can manage independently. I just want my mobile provider to provide internet. Full stop. Nothing else. But of course they want to inject themselves into as much of my life as possible to make themselves stickier with a nice side of siphoning up more data.
by dfawcus | 2025-11-19 15:15:11+00:00
I did notice one oddity with RCS on Apple, namely that initially it could not be enabled if the device was in Lockdown Mode. In one of the recent updates, 18.x for some lowish value of x, that was fixed, and so my iPhone now has RCS enabled.

However, I found that Apple have screwed another part of Lockdown Mode as of 18.7.2.

If a website makes use of Javascript, and is viewed in Safari then the page reloads a couple of times then crashes with no content but an error message. That can generally be fixed by turning off Javascript in Settings, or by turning off Lockdown mode for that specific web page - rather defeating its purpose.
by HumanOstrich | 2025-11-19 15:15:20+00:00
I learned and used Perl professionally from around 2005-2015 and experienced first-hand the ossification, fear of change, and lack of innovation in Perl 5 development. It seems all the talent and effort started being wasted on making Perl 6 the bestest, most elegant, most useful programming language in the world. Just seeing the neglect of Perl 5 kept me from ever considering Perl 6 and motivated me to move to other languages.
by 52-6F-62 | 2025-11-19 15:15:21+00:00
My friend, that is just not reality. And it's not just e-commerce t shirt slingers I am talking about here.

You have to realize when software companies tell the world they should rely on their works, they world will do so. And once that occurs, the responsibility is all on the software companies to meet the expectations they built in people!

It's mad that this industry works so hard to claim the trust of millions of people, then shirks it as soon as it's convenient.

It's shameful.
by Spivak | 2025-11-19 15:15:25+00:00
The reason to not include the endpoint by default is because VPCs should be secure by default. Everything is denied and unless you explicitly configure access to the Internet, it's unreachable. An attacker who manages to compromise a system in that VPC now has a means of data exfiltration in an otherwise air gapped set up.

It's annoying because this is by far the more uncommon case for a VPC, but I think it's the right way to structure, permissions and access in general. S3, the actual service, went the other way on this and has desperately been trying to reel it back for years.
by pjmlp | 2025-11-19 15:15:26+00:00
As someone that was already working during the dotcom wave, Perl is a tool I would still reach for, given the problem I might trying to sort out, if on an UNIX like platform.

> Binary package managers that chase down dependencies on their own weren’t a thing until the early 2000s, I think?

UNIX package managers started to be made available during the 1990's.
by codegeek | 2025-11-19 15:15:33+00:00
"If you're using Cursor with a company (teams, enterprise) subscription, information of all your code commits is sent to their API."

Good. As much as we are all privacy freaks, if you are using company resources to do your own side projects, it is fair that the company should have visibility to it. Otherwise, get a separate personal subscription.

Note that you should not only have a separate subscription to things like cursor for non company work, you should also have a separate laptop/machine for doing anythng non company. One of the reasons why so many companies are cracking down on remote work is due to these types of violations in addition to other things.
by notorious_pgb | 2025-11-19 15:15:46+00:00
It's certainly not the same, but this reminds me of the "NFTs in video games" lunacy of a few years back. Just add NFTs to your games! An ore mined in Minecraft will somehow be usable in every other game!

It's not clear at all to me why people who are playing Fortnite would want to launch a completely different game within it. Doesn't it just become the Epic Games Store at that point? Is this just a growth hack to try to bootstrap another Steam competitor after the unmitigated disaster of their last attempt?
by gamingmarkets | 2025-11-19 15:16:07+00:00
A fully verified analysis based solely on official public sources — including Regulation 2024/1689 as published in the Official Journal of the European Union, European Commission implementation documents, and supervisory statements from the MGA, UKGC and New Jersey DGE.

Although the EU AI Act never mentions gambling explicitly, its high-risk classification directly covers identity verification, fraud detection, behavioural-risk models and automated account decisions. By 2026, gambling operators and B2B suppliers must document datasets, explain model logic, implement human oversight with real intervention authority, and revise vendor agreements to include auditability and transparency.

The findings reflect regulatory records and financial-disclosure requirements from the EU and the US. No forecasts or assumptions — only obligations already in force or in phased implementation between 2024 and 2026.
by eru | 2025-11-19 15:16:12+00:00
Computers managed to beat the world's best humans at chess long before they managed how learn how to walk. What's easy and hard for humans isn't necessarily a good guide to what's easy or hard for a computer.

(And I'm fairly sure it would be pretty easy to build a system that uses an LLM and a few other small components to beat Pokemon Red. The experiment you are talking about is deliberately hobbled by using a stock LLM without any such tools to make the whole thing entertaining. But when you are trading, you'd want to give your LLM as much help as possible.)
by TuringNYC | 2025-11-19 15:16:26+00:00
>> In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children?

It seems impossible to do this in 2025 with white collar work because so much of it is tied to HCOL cities (except for hedge funders, FAANG workers who got lucky on timing, bankers, some lawyers.)

From what I can see amongst friends and family -- it is possible with blue collar trades jobs where you can be selective on where in the country you can live and where you have some level of ownership of your practice. There are numerous affordable locations in the country.

I can confirm -- based on how difficult it is to get an appointment -- that my tree guy, electrician, and plumber all make more than me as an executive. Some of these workers further force payments in cash, so they are probably not even paying tax on all their income.
by Shoetp | 2025-11-19 15:16:30+00:00
You are so brainwashed by app stores' talking points that you don't realize you are describing computers.

Just let users install whatever they want. Maybe add a verification process (a-la app verification for Mac) if users want to be restricted to verified apps. Show a "this is from an unverified developer" messages if the app comes from an unverified developer (is not signed).

There's no need to draw lines. Leave that to painters and architects.
by rayiner | 2025-11-19 15:16:31+00:00
Appalachian culture has many commonalities with other cultures from mountainous regions: systems of honor, strong extended family ties, and low social trust. These cultural traits are also present in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. And all these places have had trouble adapting to industrial society. That's not a coincidence. There's a lot of research into how family clan structures, for example, inhibit the development of functioning civic institutions.

Zooming out, Mormons built thriving, orderly cities in a hostile desert after being chased out of Illinois by the federal government. The plight of Appalachia is not due to external factors.
by giraffe_lady | 2025-11-19 15:16:48+00:00
> The piece left me thinking that the reasons people become involved with and attached to cults might not be different at some fundamental level from a lot of other psychological problems they get themselves in — just a matter of degree or pervasiveness.

It's kind of hard to articulate but the thing with cult and cult-like movements, and also somewhat cons & scams, is the "vulnerability" they exploit is the raw material of human connection.

A person who is immune to cult recruitment is a person who never feels isolation, desire, loneliness, grief, hope, fear of loss or lack of control, a person who never wants a hug or someone to talk to, who feels nothing at a smile from a stranger or the giggle of a baby.

Is that a person worth trying to be? I don't think so. To the degree you're open to human connection you're proportionally vulnerable to malicious connection too. Everyone, no matter how resilient, will go through periods of relative need, want, and weakness and at those times they are vulnerable. There are risk factors for getting involved, just like with say addiction, but no one is completely immune. If the wrong person is around you at the wrong time in your life you're in danger.
by otterley | 2025-11-19 15:16:51+00:00
> Somehow AI companies got this right form the get go. Money up front, no money, no tokens.

That’s not a completely accurate characterization of what’s been happening. AI coding agent startups like Cursor and Windsurf started by attracting developers with free or deeply discounted tokens, then adjusted the pricing as they figure out how to be profitable. This happened with Kiro too[1] and is happening now with Google’s Antigravity. There’s been plenty of ink spilled on HN about this practice.

[1] disclaimer: I work for AWS, opinions are my own
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-11-19 15:16:52+00:00
Horrible typos and I’m out of the edit window

No you didn’t. You offered examples of states and federal law enforcement working together when there were state and federal interests. Think about it for one second. Why would the state or local government use their money and resources to help the federal law enforcement unless people were also breaking state laws?

Your example of banking laws is clearly in the federal and states’ interests.
by jmward01 | 2025-11-19 15:16:54+00:00
Watching hypervisors slowly improve over the last few years has been amazing. They aren't quite to the point that I will install them under any new hardware I buy and then put my daily driver OS on top, but they are very close. I think a strong focus on creating 'the OS under your OS' experience seamless could open up a lot more here.
by ACCount37 | 2025-11-19 15:17:24+00:00
"Reductionism" is right. If you could just always "plug the gaps with more sensors", then the car with 900 cameras and 400 LIDARs would have reached L4 autonomy back in year 2010.

It doesn't work like that. No amount of sensors can salvage piss poor driving AI. The gains from more and better sensors bottom out pretty fast. You completely saturate your ability to sink and fuse sensor data long before your driving actually gets good.
by theK | 2025-11-19 15:17:28+00:00
I also think that it sends the right signal in terms of "Hey, this really doesn't need to be an app". I don't need an app for my newspaper, I need a shortcut/bookmark to its web page.

And once you start thinking about it, the same thing goes for a surprisingly large amount of apps.

I feel like in the coming years the facade big A and big G put up in order to push everyone into their distinctive walled garden of apps will crumble in public opinion.

It never was "yeah, it needs to be an app because the web platform doesn't have an API standard for it", geez, apple even forced a single web engine. They could have easily allowed access to their APIs on the browser. It just never was in their corporate interest to do so.

Okay, this devolved into an anti corporate rant without it being my intention to... So, go web!
by philipwhiuk | 2025-11-19 15:17:59+00:00
Yeah imagine the conversation:

"I'd like to spend the next sprint on S3 endpoints by default"

"What will that cost"

"A bunch of unnecessary resources when it's not used"

"Will there be extra revenue?"

"Nah, in fact it'll reduce our revenue from people who meant to use it and forgot before"

"Let's circle back on this in a few years"
by jmclnx | 2025-11-19 15:18:45+00:00
I started learn Perl 5 right before 6 was announced. When I saw what was happening with Perl 6, I decided just to stick with sh, awk and friends.

IIRC, The Perl 6 development thing went on for a very long time and got nothing but bad press. That took the wind out of my sails.
by TrackerFF | 2025-11-19 15:19:02+00:00
Let's be clear though, there's quite a difference in doing problems related to working memory, mental computation, etc. under time constraints - usually what you get when taking standardized tests, aptitude tests, IQ tests, etc. - and solving "actual" real world math problems, like mathematical modelling, numerical methods, and what have you.

I'm sure if I walk around in the office and ask people a problem like "Car A starts driving south at time zero, with speed 30km/h. Car B is located 10 km down south and starts driving north 5 minutes later, at speed 45 km/h, at what time do they meet? You have 1 minute. Go." a bunch of them will start to sweat, and many will likely fail - even though they have graduate STEM degrees.
by HeinzStuckeIt | 2025-11-19 15:19:08+00:00
Already in the very early millennium, jokes like “Perl is an explosion in an ASCII factory” were going around the computer-nerd community, while several publishers were putting out affordable and fun and engaging books to learn Python. No surprise that Perl quickly declined in popularity for scripting. It has been amusing to watch the continual waves of reawakened interest in awk, while Perl seems to remain perennially marginalized now.
by rsynnott | 2025-11-19 15:19:58+00:00
> But exposing yourself to articulate versions of positions you oppose does something valuable: it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons.

The idea that being articulate implies intelligence and/or sanity is very common, but really a bit weird. You can find plenty of articulate defences of, say, flat earth theory.
by frumplestlatz | 2025-11-19 15:20:28+00:00
This wasn't a runtime property that could not be validated at compile time. And you don't need to fall back on "OS level security and reliability" when your type system is enforcing an application-level invariants.

In fact I'd argue that crashing is bad. It means you failed to properly enumerate and express your invariants, hit an unanticipated state, and thus had to fail in a way that requires you to give up and fall back on the OS to clean up your process state.

[edit]

Sigh, HN and its "you're posting too much". Here's my reply:

> Why? The end user result is a safe restart and the developer fixes the error.

Look at the thread your commenting on. The end result was a massive world-wide outage.

> That’s what it’s there for. Why is it bad to use its reliable error detection and recovery mechanism?

Because you don't have to crash at all.

> We don’t want to enumerate all possible paths. We want to limit them.

That's the exact same thing. Anything not "limited" is a possible path.

> If my program requires a config file to run, crash as soon as it can’t load the config file. There is nothing useful I can do (assuming that’s true).

Of course there's something useful you can do. In this particular case, the useful thing to do would have been to fall back on the previous valid configuration. And if that failed, the useful thing to do would be to log an informative, useful error so that nobody has to spend four hours during a worldwide outage to figure out what was going wrong.
by pbmonster | 2025-11-19 15:20:29+00:00
> Using web versions, not apps, is important because companies keep user device statistics and if enough people insist in using web versions, the the web will continue to be at least partially supported by big tech.

It's also frequently just better. If I'm looking for hotels, flights, apartments, restaurants, hiking trails, ect., doing so in a browser allows me to keep dozens of comparable offers open for direct comparison - just by jumping between browser tabs.

Doing the same in the app means endlessly navigating between offers, favorites, and new searches. It's often very obvious that the app was built explicitly to be less powerful.
by hansvm | 2025-11-19 15:22:07+00:00
One normal "trick" is phantom typing. You create a type representing indices and have a small, well-audited portion of unsafe code handling creation/unpacking, where the rest of the code is completely safe.

The details depend a lot on what you're doing and how you're doing it. Does the graph grow? Shrink? Do you have more than one? Do you care about programmer error types other than panic/UB?

Suppose, e.g., that your graph doesn't change sizes, you only have one, and you only care about panics/UB. Then you can get away with:

1. A dedicated index type, unique to that graph (shadow / strong-typedef / wrap / whatever), corresponding to whichever index type you're natively using to index nodes.

2. Some mechanism for generating such indices. E.g., during graph population phase you have a method which returns the next custom index or None if none exist. You generated the IR with those custom indexes, so you know (assuming that one critical function is correct) that they're able to appropriately index anywhere in your graph.

3. You have some unsafe code somewhere which blindly trusts those indices when you start actually indexing into your array(s) of node information. However, since the very existence of such an index is proof that you're allowed to access the data, that access is safe.

Techniques vary from language to language and depending on your exact goals. GhostCell [0] in Rust is one way of relegating literally all of the unsafe code to a well-vetted library, and it uses tagged types (via lifetimes), so you can also do away with the "only one graph" limitation. It's been awhile since I've looked at it, but resizes might also be safe pretty trivially (or might not be).

The general principle though is to structure your problem in such a way that a very small amount of code (so that you can more easily prove it correct) can provide promises that are enforceable purely via the type system (so that if the critical code is correct then so is everything else).

That's trivial by itself (e.g., just rely on option-returning .get operators), so the rest of the trick is to find a cheap place in your code which can provide stronger guarantees. For many problems, initialization is the perfect place (e.g., you can bounds-check on init and then not worry about it again) (e.g., if even bounds-checking on initialization is too slow then you can still use the opportunity at initialization to write out a proof of why some invariant holds and then blindly/unsafely assert it to be true, but you then immediately pack that hard-won information into a dedicated type so that the only place you ever have to think about it is on initialization).

[0] https://plv.mpi-sws.org/rustbelt/ghostcell/
by alexjplant | 2025-11-19 15:22:34+00:00
> house prices [...] need to go down heavily.

As a layperson I have a feeling that's not going to happen. The working class has too much wealth tied up in their homes because US society and the government have encouraged people to treat it as a store of wealth instead of a box that shields them from the weather. People talk constantly about "getting on the property ladder", "buying more land because they aren't making more of it", "having a landlord side hustle", etc. A house is a lot more tangible than stocks so people without knowledge of finance feel much better about investing in one (understandably so - also forget about Social Security). Combine this with associated government tax subsidies and mortgage underwriting programs and you've basically created a situation where home prices can't do anything but go up.

Look at the amortization table for the proposed 50 year mortgage: borrowers wouldn't be making a dent in the principal for a good 10 or 15 years. The underlying assumption here is that people would make money via home price appreciation, i.e. speculation, not from creating an actual store of value. We already kicked this can once when the 30-year mortgage became a thing 60 years ago.

Of course one can't draw the current trend line into infinity because of affordability but I highly doubt it'll go down appreciably. I also don't know enough to have a solution to this problem - any ideas?
by lapcat | 2025-11-19 15:23:48+00:00
> I feel that part of the problem with WordPress and Rails is that that there is no model for replacing poor governance.

But Eugen Rochko was not replaced. He voluntarily stepped down from power because he was personally dissatisfied in the leadership role. Nobody was calling for his ouster. He could have continued as leader of Mastodon for many more years with nobody batting an eyelash. So again, Mastodon is a red herring.
by groundzeros2015 | 2025-11-19 15:23:59+00:00
> I'd argue that crashing is bad.

Why? The end user result is a safe restart and the developer fixes the error.

> fall back on the OS to clean up your process state.

That’s what it’s there for. Why is it bad to use its reliable error detection and recovery mechanism?

> It means you failed to properly enumerate and express your invariants

We don’t want to enumerate all possible paths. We want to prune them.

If my program requires auth info to run, crash as soon as it can’t load it. There is nothing useful I can do (assuming that’s true).