MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Karliss | 2025-12-04 18:19:31+00:00
One of the reasons you mostly saw point operations and very few rectangle operations is because quadtrees aren't great for range operations.

Quadtrees might look like natural generalization of binary trees, but some things that work very efficiently in binary trees don't work for naive generalization of binary trees into quadtrees. For a full binary tree with W leaves any segment can be described using log(W) nodes. Almost every use of binary tree more interesting than maintaining sorted list of numbers depends on this property. What happens in 2d with Quadtree, how many of quadtree nodes are necessary to exactly describe arbitrary rectangular area? Turn's out you get O(W+H) nodes, not log(N), not log(W)*log(H).

If you stored a rectangle in smallest node that completely contains that avoids the W+H problem during insertion operations, but during read operations you may end up with situation where all the information is stored at the root. This is no better having no quadtree at all and storing everything in plain list that has no special order. Such worse case scenario can be created very easily if every rectangle contains centre of area described by quadtree, then all rectangles will be placed at root.

Dynamically subdividing and or allocating tree nodes on demand isn't anything particularity novel. If anything the cases where you can use fixed sized static trees outside textbook examples is somewhat a minority. Not saying there are no such cases there are enough of them, but large fraction of practical systems need to be capable of scaling for arbitrary amount of data which get's added and removed over the time and total size is not known ahead of time and the systems need to be able to deal arbitrary user data that has maliciously crafted worst case distribution. Every B-tree will split leaves into smaller nodes when necessary. Almost every self balancing binary tree can be considered of doing automatic division just with threshold of no more than 1 item per node. For 2d many uses cases of k-d tree will also subdivide on demand.
Ask HN: Can a startup idea succeed solely based on execution?
by slashtmpslashme | 2025-12-04 18:19:40+00:00
Let's say I have an idea which someone has already built.

But I execute it much better in some way. (Eg: cost efficiency / user experience / whatever). So there might be something else which is approximately same as my application, can I win based on refinement or efficiency of execution?

Or is it more likely the competitor will figure out the way to realize the same efficiency gains?

What are some examples of this succeeding and failing?

Any personal anecdotes will be appreciated too.
by jfindper | 2025-12-04 18:19:48+00:00
sweet! according to austintexas.gov, that's only $2.63 below the 2024 living wage. $5.55 below, if you use the MIT numbers for 2025.

As long as you don't run into anything unforseen like medical expenses, car breakdowns, etc., you can almost afford a bare-bones, mediocre life with no retirement savings.
by addaon | 2025-12-04 18:19:51+00:00
One of my favorite circuits from Korn & Korn [0] is an implementation of an arbitrary function of a single variable. Take an oscilloscope-style display tube. Put your input on the X axis as a deflection voltage. Close a feedback loop on the Y axis with a photodiode, and use the Y axis deflection voltage as your output. Cut your function of one variable out of cardboard and tape to the front of the tube.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Analog-Computers-D-c/dp/B0...
Ask HN: Gemini 3 Pro is Rickrolling users?
by hereme888 | 2025-12-04 18:19:51+00:00
No joke. I'm trying to paste around 90k tokens of a codebase into `https://aistudio.google.com/prompts/new_chat` like I usually do, and it paste's Rick Astley's song in youtube link instead.

I keep checking the paste contents in other apps, and it's intact. I also checked the calendar and it's not April 1.

This happening to anyone else?
by Youden | 2025-12-04 18:20:09+00:00
Not necessarily, I have quite a few that work.

It's crowdsourced and therefore incomplete but https://plexus.techlore.tech/ has reports of compatability with the complete absence of Google Services or a replacement like MicroG.

Here in Switzerland my experience is that the big banks like UBS and the cantonal banks tend to work, while the smaller things like McDonald's and my credit card providers tend to break because they have nonsense Play Integrity requirements.
by ibejoeb | 2025-12-04 18:20:17+00:00
For recipes, I prefer to use approximate round figures when talking in terms of metric and American customary. So, 1 fl oz is 30 ml, a pound of flour is 450 g, etc.

These are much easier to measure, scale, and remember. There are very few contexts where minute differences matter, and I don't think you're going to find a material crossover figure between those that want recipe help and those that are working on the kind of stuff where it matters.
by venturecruelty | 2025-12-04 18:20:39+00:00
Personally, I don't care. Pay me and leave me the hell alone. We get 80 short years on this beautiful blue marble, if we're exceedingly lucky, and I refuse to spend one red second of that playing stupid games to excel in a sclerotic economic system that didn't even exist until very recently.

So I'm going to continue to try to grind it out as best as I can, while spending time on the things that actually matter: music, art, making delicious food for me and my friends, my hobbies, my family, my local community. Corporate America is bereft of joy and meaning anyway. Maybe it makes me some sort of sucker, but I don't care. I'd rather live.
by jmward01 | 2025-12-04 18:20:56+00:00
I hope this is a signal that a third cloud option, BYOC (build your own cloud), is finally becoming practical. Yes, the physical management of racks is a massive part of managing a cloud but the software stack is honestly why AWS and the like are winning much of the time, at least for the small use cases I have been a part of. I priced out some medium servers and the cost of buying enough for load plus extras for fail over, and host them, was -way- under AWS and other cloud vendors (these were GPU loads) but the management of them was the issue. 'just spin up an instance...' is such a massive enabler for ideas. Something that gives me a viable software stack to build my own cloud on easily is a huge win for abandoning the major cloud vendors. Keep it coming!
by dylan604 | 2025-12-04 18:21:09+00:00
Should the measurements be included in the instructions or just left out to avoid that? Instead of "add 1/2 teaspoon of ingredient", just say "add ingredient".

growing up, we had the old red/white gingham Betty Crocker cookbook where the scaled measurements were written in the book. the instructions never had any of the measurements in them. based on that, it just feels natural to the point of adding the scaling into the instructions seems overly complicated. just took a look at couple of other recipe examples, and they all leave out the measurements in the instructions.
by holmesworcester | 2025-12-04 18:22:06+00:00
Same, so much so!

My feelings of freedom in that era, as a teen in a small 90s US city, were what fueled me to co-found one of the organizations (Fight for the Future) cited in the article!

(No longer in the trenches, just on the board, deserve zero direct credit for any of this work--it's all them!)
by YetAnotherNick | 2025-12-04 18:22:28+00:00
Depends. Look at the graph of month year of professional hockey player[1]. Player born in first quarter is twice as more likely to be in pro leagues than last quarter. Month of birth's only effect is that it gives 0.5 year extra during junior year to be in spotlight. It shouldn't affect player's performance in any other way. And the effect persists for decades.

If you get supported initially when you aren't the best, the effect of the small support can make you much better player.

[1]: https://www.lockhartjosh.ca/2017/11/hockey-birth-month-why-i...
by bmitc | 2025-12-04 18:22:28+00:00
Does anyone have a suggestion for a minimal but functional Ghostty configuration for tab completion?

I'm using it on macOS, and I encounter a lot of issues with Ghostty with Oh My Zsh. It's often very slow, the shell crashes, and there's often a lot of display issues. I don't know if this is Ghostty or Oh My Zsh or what, so I'm just looking for a good setup that is as close to the stock Ghostty as possible.
by piva00 | 2025-12-04 18:23:39+00:00
> But I do wonder how Altman retains the momentum through to next year. What’s the next big thing? A rocket company?

Hmm, there were news about Sam Altman wanting to buy/invest on a rocket company. [0]

[0] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-has-explored-deal-to-...
by zelphirkalt | 2025-12-04 18:23:58+00:00
The problem is rather, that most data structure tutorials and books don't even get the idea, to introduce a purely functional version, but merely state the imperative versions. Coming up with the functional versions of data structures can be difficult. Papers about it can be hard to understand and often require one to already know some niche language, that a researcher used for the paper. Even if you can find a functional implementation of a data structure, there is often not a good explanation and you need to, sort of, reverse engineer it and translate it to the language you are using.

In short, it seems relatively few people have the skills to implement them and even fewer have the skills to come up with functional versions of ordinary data structures. They are almost completely absent from university lectures as well, as far as I am aware. For example for AVL trees I could only find a document from ETH from a lecture, that no longer exists or is taught. The language is Isabel and I need to understand its syntax first, before being able to translate it to Scheme.

If anyone has an obscure source for implementations one can learn from and implement oneself in another language, please share.
by jghn | 2025-12-04 18:24:16+00:00
This is what removed any lingering thoughts I had about moving up the corporate ladder. If in order to succeed I either need to do certain things or at least get other groups to do those things, and if I'm not allowed to do those things, and if no other group is willing to do those things, and if no one above me is going to change the circumstances, why on earth would anyone think this could be successful?
by alwa | 2025-12-04 18:24:30+00:00
I’d be curious what you identified as the shortcomings of e.g. MSF or Mondragon. I might throw semi-decentralized social ventures like the IFRC in the mix there too: that emblem alone sure carries an almost-talismanic degree of social weight, seemingly worldwide, I think in large part because they’re foresworn from swinging around their influence outside of their lane.

And I mean… “don’t want to live like a monk” seems like a telling qualifier: the whole monastic lifestyle seems pretty widespread and enduring across cultures and through time… is the humbler mode of religious devotion an example of what you’re looking for?

In any case you’ve clearly thought deeply and widely about this question—I’d be interested to read your thoughts if you end up collecting them somewhere!
by plorg | 2025-12-04 18:24:32+00:00
After I got the screen replaced on my previous phone the fingerprint reader didn't show up, and I didn't bother to try fixing it. I hadn't specifically requested a new panel with fingerprint reader, but supposedly it could be enabled, if available, through tools Google provides for Pixels with their Tensor chips. Apps that would otherwise use the biometric authentication can fall back to a pin or pattern, but all of my banking or work benefit-related apps will not save credentials in that case, so I have to rely on my password manager which will use the PIN/pattern for authentication.

I replaced that phone with a new one and didn't bother setting up the fingerprints. It doesn't seem to bother me too much and maybe there's some small security benefit to not having the biometric authentication enabled.
by jerf | 2025-12-04 18:24:36+00:00
It's one of those things that's hard to get for most of us not because we don't understand what it is, but that we don't understand what not having it is like. Most languages in common use have this.

It can be similarly difficult to explain to people what structured programming is, because basically everything is structured programming now. The hard part is understanding what non-structured programming is, so that you can then understand the contrasts, because there is so little experience with it anymore.
by pseudocomposer | 2025-12-04 18:24:44+00:00
I think “neurodivergence” is a better label if the goal is gaining strength in numbers. It fully encompasses autism and autism spectrum related conditions, plus ADHD and others. A lot of people don’t want the label “autistic,” but share experiences with people who do, and would love to offer solidarity as an “inside” rather than “outside” member of the community. We now have “AuDHD spectrum” as a thing, but really, I think optimum numbers might come from including folks who identify as “broadly neurodivergent.”

It also leaves room to start distinguishing/separating out more subtle variants of what we currently umbrella as “autism,” perhaps making it better defined in the future. And I kind of suspect doing this with “less profound” neurodivergencies could help folks with “more profound” (and rarer) cases.

To look at a historical case: Gay Rights didn’t make a lot of headway. But adding lesbians, trans folks, etc. ultimately did a lot of good for that community in the US.
by Youden | 2025-12-04 18:24:55+00:00
FWIW, I use Fidesmo. Oversimplified, it allows you to copy your credit card's NFC chip into an accessory you wear. I use a ring but there are other options like bracelets or watch bands. No batteries, no devices, no wireless connectivity. It works anywhere an NFC card works, which here in Switzerland is more or less everywhere.

It requires that the card issuer support Fidesmo though. Many here do but I'm not sure what it's like elsewhere.
by everforward | 2025-12-04 18:25:03+00:00
It's not the manifests so much as the mountain of infra underlying it. k8s is an amazing abstraction over dynamic infra resources, but if your infra is fairly static then you're introducing a lot of infra complexity for not a ton of gain.

The network is complicated by the overlay network, so "normal" troubleshooting tools aren't super helpful. Storage is complicated by k8s wanting to fling pods around so you need networked storage (or to pin the pods, which removes almost all of k8s' value). Databases are annoying on k8s without networked storage, so you usually run them outside the cluster and now you have to manage bare metal and k8s resources.

The manifests are largely fine, outside of some of the more abnormal resources like setting up the nginx ingress with certs.
by parliament32 | 2025-12-04 18:25:13+00:00
"The technology is not useful", at least in enterprise contexts, is what this comes out to. Which is really where the money is, because some vibecoder paying $20/mo for Claude really doesn't matter (especially when it costs $100/mo to run inference for his queries in the first place). Enterprise is the only place this could possibly make money.

Think about it: MS has a giant advantage over every other AI vendor, that they can directly insert the product into the OS and LOB apps without the business needing to onboard a new vendor. This is best case scenario, and by far the easiest sell for these tools. Given how badly they're failing, yeah, turns out orgs just don't see the value in it.

Next year will be interesting too: I suspect a large portion of the meager sales they managed to make will not renew, it'll be a bloodbath.
by UncleEntity | 2025-12-04 18:25:14+00:00
In the couple years I've owned my (now) 10 year old wee-Fiat I think I've opened the hood once, when I first bought it, just to confirm the engine was actually there. Other than that, what engine?

Probably should pop it open (heh, Fiat Pop, no pun intended) to fix the headlight which has been out for about a year but it was a lot easier to get a (free) veteran's plate than poke around in there and you pretty much have to commit vehicular homicide in front of a cop to get pulled over with a veteran's plates so... I mean, it came with an extra headlight for a reason.

But, yeah, tiny little engine for a tiny little car which does it's job without issue, what's not to love?
by gosub100 | 2025-12-04 18:25:23+00:00
Side question: can the CEO or sole proprietor of a corporation/small business/ nonprofit litigate pro se on behalf of their company? I know you can do this when acting as an individual, but if a business is too poor to afford representation, can they "wing it" as a last ditch measure? Or is it checkmate at that point?

If possible, I would like to see the good guys in these cases go down fighting, and try to delay proceedings and waste as much money of their well-funded opponents as possible.
by zahlman | 2025-12-04 18:25:25+00:00
> What things are "non-political"?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/politics

Narrow sense:

> the art or science of government: as [that] concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy, ... [or] winning and holding control over a government; political actions, practices, policies, ... affairs or business

Broad sense:

> the total complex of relations between people living in society

In my experience, the question is almost always disingenuous. Topics being "political" is clearly the exception rather than the norm. The subtext of asking is something like "you are a bad person for objecting to my political statements (but I will still reserve the right to object to yours, should you decide that turnabout is fair play)".

> Saying "there are no politics" seems like the same thing as "the status quo is the only possibility" - exactly the stagnation from which I want to move away on socials.

There are all kinds of projects and activities that can be discussed without touching upon the relations between people in society, let alone matters of governmental policy or the quest for power.

There is nothing at all "stagnant" about a community focused on such things. OP is about the Free Software Foundation; focusing on discussion of the software has nothing to do with politics, and is generally improved by consciously avoiding politics.

The mere fact of existence of other political possibilities does not necessitate discussing those possibilities at every opportunity.
by tshaddox | 2025-12-04 18:25:25+00:00
> It has always bothered me that by "spectrum" they mean not the sort of continuous thing that spectra actually are, but instead some disjoint set of "colors" any one of which might describe a person.

Wasn't Newton making the point that we normally perceive and treat colors as qualitatively different, but that they're in fact caused by a single underlying mechanism that can take on any of a continuous range of quantities?

Thus using the term "spectrum disorder" would be making precisely the same point, to describe a set of apparently qualitatively different disorders that are in fact caused by some underlying mechanism with a range of quantities? (To be clear, I don't know if any so-called spectrum disorders actually meet this criterion, and it's probably more complicated than that, but it seems to be the reason the term was chosen.)
by ThrowawayR2 | 2025-12-04 18:25:25+00:00
Since using an FPGA requires designing hardware at the logic gate level, the realistic answer is to get a computer engineering degree or the equivalent self-study. The HDLs (Hardware Description Language) used to specify these circuits may superficially resemble a programming language but they really, really aren't.

You can get a rough idea of what you're getting into by going through the NAND2Tetris self-learning course ( https://www.nand2tetris.org/ ) and the associated textbook The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles. But that's just scratching the bare surface of the depth you'd need to go to to get useful acceleration.

That doesn't even go into the eyewatering cost of the development tools and professional FPGA boards. There are free versions of the tools and small FPGA boards intended for student and hobbyist use but, assuming your code is non-trivial, they're unlikely to get you any significant speed up.
by hollerith | 2025-12-04 18:25:42+00:00
>the current language of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) allows students to get expansive accommodations with little more than a doctor's note.

Stanford can make the student pay any costs of the accommodation if Stanford wants to push back on the student. E.g., if the student requests extra time on tests, Stanford can estimate the total cost of employing the proctor and bill that (amortized of course over the amount of extra time).

But yeah, it is kind of excessive how much special treatment a person can get in US society just by being rich enough to afford a doctor who will sign whatever letters the person needs (and being shameless enough to request the letters). Another example is apartment buildings with a strict policy of no dogs. With a doctor's letter, the pet dog becomes a medically-necessary emotional-support animal, which the landlord must allow per the same ADA discussed in the OP.
by holmesworcester | 2025-12-04 18:25:42+00:00
I think it's important to not throw babies out with bathwater here.

One can disagree with Mozilla and think advertising sucks, and use tools to block it or FOSS products that don't force it on us, while also seeing how e2ee encryption bans ("chat control") and age verification rules are a restriction of both the rights of service providers and the rights of users.

Another way to put it is, just because a regulation is a restriction of the rights of a service provider does not mean it isn't also a restriction of the rights of a user.

The former does not make the latter true, but in some cases both are true.

I'd also add that if we can't stop bad laws that restrict the rights of (and piss off) both service providers and users , we have no hope of stopping similarly bad laws that only restrict the rights of users.

(Service providers, even small ones if they take the time to speak with their member of Congress, can be very credible, sympathetic, and persuasive stakeholders. When we can fight on the same side--realizing that sometimes we will fight on opposite sides--it's better for user rights that we do so. One of the tragedies of the left and parts of the right in the Trump era is that they see any regulation that hurts Big Tech as a win, even if it also hurts user rights. User rights are safer if we can distinguish between regs that hurt Big Tech and users from regs that don't hurt users.)