MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by perching_aix | 2025-12-07 13:45:10+00:00
> I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.

This may not help much, but it's really a (self-)governance thing. That's why they start their article like so:

> I donated to Gary Johnson as a starry-eyed libertarian. On top of being a staunch Randian, I was into computer programming, so crypto was a natural fit for me. The cypherpunk ethos attracted me. (...) Being able to walk across the border with a billion dollars in your head is and always will be a powerful idea to me.

It is also why you keep hearing about crypto transactions being primarily used for illegal stuff. Just like with the uber-free-speech p2p platforms, it primaily benefits those who'd be otherwise hampered. Who, contrary to the usual talking points, are usually not actually so innocent or respectable.

But then we do keep sliding back, so maybe it's only a matter of time the proportions shift, and the claims of these technologies' justness stop being so false and hollow. And maybe these events and processes are further not actually uncorrelated. Trust is at an all time low and dwindling, after all.
by serial_dev | 2025-12-07 13:46:22+00:00
Blockchain is a very inconvenient database, for sure, but there is a good reason Bitcoin uses it. It had to solve to double spend problem and create a trustless p2p digital cash, while being censorship resistant and having no central authority.

Some people around a decade ago started using blockchain for everything where a SQLite db would have been better, because blockchain was the buzzword around that time, and they were charlatans who wanted funding and hype, or signal how cutting edge they are (kind of how the last two years everybody became an AI company).

It doesn’t mean that Bitcoin using blockchain is stupid.
by Delk | 2025-12-07 13:46:49+00:00
There are lots of ways of "just not working" but IME the problem with corporate Windows laptops is often the enterprise software crap on them rather than the hardware, necessarily.

My work laptop with a high(ish)-end AMD laptop CPU and reasonable hardware quality drains the battery in a couple of hours. It also doesn't feel any faster than my personal three-year-old more lightweight (also AMD, same brand) laptop. In some cases the private device is faster despite its lower specs. Its battery would also easily last 5 times longer than the work one, probably, if I used it on the road.

(Incidentally, the poor battery life isn't much of a practical concern with the work device either because I need to use it at the desk 98% of the time anyway. But I can certainly see how crappy software and configurations can make using those devices a pain.)

> Give me something solid that will last 5 -6 years with a serviceable (I don’t care if it’s glued or torx’ed or whatever in, just as long as it’s replaceable) battery, and I don’t care if the RAM and SSD is soldered to the chipset.

I'm okay with that, even if I'd personally prefer the serviceability. But I'm honestly not okay with the idea that it's fine to just toss a laptop after two years. I want people who do that to get their own planet.

Also, an 8 GB RAM upgrade makes little sense nowadays but a 16 -> 48 GB or 32 -> 64 GB or 32 -> 96 GB upgrade can actually make an otherwise reasonable device better if the amount of RAM becomes a bottleneck.
by daoboy | 2025-12-07 13:47:19+00:00
Trust has been plummeting for a while now. It seems likely AI video will exacerbate the problem, but I don't see it as a driver nearly as much as the increasing cultural divide in the west.

It has always been the case that you can trust an event occurred, but the story being fed around it was the point of failure with regard to trust. AI video just pushes that initial point of failure forward a step.
by Ekaros | 2025-12-07 13:47:43+00:00
I never got the whole larger "crypto" economy. The number of meaningless alt coins. That come and go most of the time, build on zero any type but speculative value. Worse than any fiat.

And then stable coins. Fancy IOUs of fiat. Which might or might not have actual assets backing them. Which you might or might not be able to redeem. Say if Russian government had a billion in whatever stable coin. Could they redeem them and get real dollars transferred to some account they own?
by Nextgrid | 2025-12-07 13:47:44+00:00
> Tokenizing all assets (equities, commodities, real estate, etc.)

How does that work?

The blockchain can only enforce its desired state on the blockchain itself. It cannot affect the real world unless you delegate said effects to a trusted party... which defeats the whole point of a decentralized, trust-less blockchain, and you could let that trusted party just run a centralized database.

How do you reconcile the ability to lose a private key with real-world assets? In the "fiat" system we rely on courts to be the ultimate arbiters in such cases and it works well enough. In this system, what should happen if someone owning a tokenized real estate asset loses the corresponding private key?

> The act of trading the tokenized asset also settles the trade

This again only works on the blockchain. When the tokens represent real-world assets the two are not in sync, and there's a risk they may not be reconcilable (you "buy" some real-estate on the blockchain, but the government having jurisdiction over the real-world location contests your ownership claim and people in uniform with guns prevent you from entering into said real estate).
by embedding-shape | 2025-12-07 13:48:15+00:00
> bitcoin is great for criminals

Never understood this soundbite, and I used to be a criminal. Bitcoin is horrible because literally everything is tracked, with minor benefits compared to just dealing with cash or still the best, using the banks you know who look to the side when you need to clean your cash.

The tricky part remains to wash the money, and bitcoin doesn't make that easier, it makes that part harder. But "Bitcoin is great for criminals" is a nice little signal that the person echoing that soundbite probably don't actually know what they're talking about.
by globular-toast | 2025-12-07 13:48:23+00:00
To understand Bitcoin you need to forget the technology and first understand the problem. You need to understand what caused the 2008 financial crisis and how it resulted in us collectively funnelling more value into the hands of useless bankers. You need to understand that there are people who are literally spending their days playing games with each other, trading bits of paper and making silly deals and bets. If you don't understand the word "literally" or don't believe it, read more, study harder. If you don't understand a zero sum game or how this nonsense fucks up the lives of regular people, read more.

Read The Big Short by Michael Lewis. You could even start with the film by Adam McKay who also gets it. Then read Other People's Money by John Kay.

Only once you understand the problem can you begin to understand why a trustless digital cash would be good for us. Bitcoin is simply the first viable solution to the problem. If you can come up with a better one you'll change the world.
by GnarfGnarf | 2025-12-07 13:48:31+00:00
I'm a Windows/macOS developer, but I strongly feel that all national governments need to convert to Linux, for strategic sovereignty. I'm sure Microsoft, under orders from the U.S. government, could disable all computers in any country or organization, at the flick of a switch.

Imagine how Open Source Software could improve if a consortium of nations put their money and resources into commissioning bug fixes and enhancements, which would be of collective benefit.

Apart from a few niche cases, the needs of most government bureaucracies would be well served by currently available OSS word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics software.
by saurik | 2025-12-07 13:50:11+00:00
1) I mean, also great for anyone who sells stuff on places like Craigslist, where the recommendation is to take cash? Taking the standpoint "the consumer is always always correct and refunds should be trivial" sort of works for larger companies that can amortize scams, but you enable a different form of crime (fraud) by adding that feature to small-scale transactions. Hell: many of the modern payment rails you now have to use to buy stuff from vendors at fairs don't have user-accessible refund mechanisms, including Zelle.

2) To the extent to which you really want those features, they are no different than any other in their ability to be built on top of a decentralized database, but now can be done in a way where the rules can be open and anyone can experiment: as an example, you could put your funds into a smart contract that only can transfer money to other people through an escrow mechanism which holds onto the funds for a net-30 period and pays a small fee to the protocol; you then could have the people who own the protocol governance token (and would receive the fees) vote on members to sit on a refund arbitration council (which needs to be somewhat fair or people will stop using the network, crashing the fees they are paid, aligning the incentives in a similar manner to a centralized business doing the same).
by taneq | 2025-12-07 13:50:28+00:00
Exactly. It reminds me of all of the maundering about being "forced to work" (ie. having to earn some income in order to purchase some of the bounty with which we're surrounded) which usually comes along with the "hunter-gathering was a life of luxury" mindset. Literally nothing is stopping anyone from walking off into the forest and living off berries and grubs, except that (a) they don't have the required knowledge to live off the land, and (b) they're not willing to do so, because (c) it's a miserable existence compared with living in a house with hot and cold running potable water, strong walls and a lockable door, electric amenities, and a comfy bed and sofas. Nobody's forced to work, we choose to because all of the above are nice things that are worth some effort to maintain.
by jacquesm | 2025-12-07 13:50:37+00:00
Yes, new technology enables other new technology. The e-brake potential of drive pods was recognized before they were put to practice, and the jury is still out on whether or not it is the way of the future. But it is something that simply wasn't possible before at all unless you wanted to risk a snapped drive shaft, you can't just throw that much rotating mass into reverse without consequences and the driveshafts of a liner are most impressive, I've stood on a lathe that could cut them, and that thing required it's own building and power hookup just to spin the shaft up in a reasonable amount of time for machining.

> The vessel suffering from a blackout caused by a transformer being tripped by a single loose wire.

Transformers don't 'trip'. Circuit breakers do.

Yes, it was a loose wire. But that vessel had regular diesel propulsion so that is not going to make any difference, loose wires can - and do - happen, usually with less far reaching consequences.

The point of the pods is that there are many of them, and they are somewhat redundant reducing the chance of such complete outages. It may well have prevented that particular accident but it may have caused another. This tech is just too new to draw any conclusions.

As far as I understand it every pod has its own dedicated power infrastructure section (batteries, drivers), with the ability to maintain symmetrical drive even in light of multiple failures. So these are right now not for normal propulsion on ocean going vessels (though in a diesel-electric setting they could already be used like that and there are a couple of vessels that use them but I'm not sure if that is for main propulsion as well), but these 'captive torpedos' definitely have a lot of potential.
by 8organicbits | 2025-12-07 13:51:26+00:00
Hey, author for Blog Quest here, thanks for the kind words! I give a huge thanks to tvler for StreetPass for Mastodon, which did the heavy lifting and inspired me.

Please send along any feature requests, I know there are rough edges and more eyes will help find them. I'm also trying to decide if the RSS feature should be pushed upstream to StreetPass, or if the extensions are best staying separate. Thanks all :)
by sevensor | 2025-12-07 13:51:44+00:00
> never copy paste code from stack overflow

I have the same policy. I do the same thing for example code in the official documentation. I also put in a comment linking to the source if I end up using it. For me, it’s like the RFD says, it’s about taking responsibility for your output. Whether you originated it or not, you’re the reason it’s in the codebase now.
by SideburnsOfDoom | 2025-12-07 13:52:16+00:00
> the CDC deciding to redefine vaccine

A ridiculous conspiratorial talking point.

> rates of significant myocarditis after vaccination

Absolute straw man, deceptive and one-sided.

> Young people’s risk of developing myocarditis is higher and longer lasting after covid-19 infection than after vaccination against it, the largest study of its kind suggests.

https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2330
by ksoshsb | 2025-12-07 13:52:19+00:00
> most of the past really was terrible

I used to think this way, but if you actually start reading first hand accounts, stories from long ago, etc you start to question this narrative. And then I contrast that with my current situation:

I wake up, spend 30 minutes with my child before sending him off to daycare so I can work, and then I get about an hour with him in the evening before he goes to bed. I’d give up a lot if it meant more time with my family. Especially if we were working together to provide for our family directly, as opposed to making some billionaire richer.

Modern society is deeply inhuman compared to the past, and I think the whole “the past is terrible” narrative - that I grew up believing - is pushed by the wealthy today to continue the absurd wealth inequality. If they can point to the past and say “that was awful, you should appreciate what you have today” people are much less likely to get angry about the wealth gap and general parasitism of elites today.
by ndsipa_pomu | 2025-12-07 13:52:53+00:00
I'm perfectly happy for Network Rail to prioritise customer safety. They get an unsubstantiated report from social media, so they stop services over the affected area until they can get someone to go and check. Picking up the phone wouldn't be much use as there's not teams of safety inspectors just waiting by rail bridges.

To my mind, Network Rail is blameless for this.
by soulofmischief | 2025-12-07 13:53:18+00:00
> let's make this simple: people who murder and steal.

So many Western governments and their elected officials? The US? Israel?

What about the people in international waters Trump keeps bombing and calling drug criminals? I'm so confused about how you're able to make the delineation of those who "murder and steal" to mean criminals, given that such a distinction puts the government square in the spotlight, and many of the people whom they spend relatively insane amount of resources to target target: drug users/pushers, political activists, immigrants, etc.

Distributed ledgers are good for... targeted activists, people who don't want the government to have the power to arbitrarily weaken their buying power, people seeking safe drugs and medicines, just about anyone needing to be anonymous, and regular people who don't need to justify their economic transactions or risk their wealth being diluted. This "criminals" angle is just farcical, ignorant, and also very tired... you're not the first to suggest it.
by geremiiah | 2025-12-07 13:55:13+00:00
OK, suppose the whole world used a trustless digital cash. Now you cannot do monetary policy. Now booms are booms and busts are busts and we are back to the early 1900s. Great.

Actually what would likely happen is that people would be incentivized to opt-in a digital currency with a monetary policy knob, and this would again become the de facto currency that everyone uses.

The problem with 2008 was corruption not monetary policy.
by TrackerFF | 2025-12-07 13:55:26+00:00
I got into crypto back in 2011/2012. I used PayPal and bank wire transfer extensively back then, as I bought and sold a lot of stuff internationally - so to me bitcoin seemed like the natural next step, and a godsend to people like me. At my height, I had 100 BTC.

Eventually big events in my life happened, and I sold my coins out of necessity. I found myself unemployed, separated, and broke - so I sold everything I owned. I cashed in around $40k or so from the coins, which helped me pay off my debts and get a down payment for my house. To be honest, I personally don't know anyone from way back then that became filthy rich off crypto, most sold off their stuff when every boom cycle started again, afraid that it would be the last one...the people I know that became rich, were those that went all-in on crypto around 2017/2018. They dumped everything they had, and managed to 10x-100x their investments.

Of course, had I held onto those, I'd be set for life now. But hindsight is 20/20

But with that said, I remember around 2017/2018 when the first "real" boom occurred - that's when everyone pretty much abandoned ideals, and went into it for the money. Lots of people made life-changing money back then, and the idealistic dream was pretty much dead. "Store of value" won the war, and soon after "moon lambo".

At least for me, the writing on the wall was clearly that crypto would evolve into just another financial instrument that big finance would pump and dump periodically. Though I could not foresee a crypto-friendly US gov. entering the picture.
by toni | 2025-12-07 13:55:32+00:00
There are tools to make your device appear to every app as running in a non-rooted environment. Here[1] is a tutorial on how to bypass Google/Samsung Wallet detections. There are threads for different apps and it will quickly turn into a cat and mouse play when Playstore app itself updates, but as the phone is rooted, someone will continue to find a way to bypass attestations and will post a comment on Reddit or XDA explaining how to do it.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Magisk/comments/1lxbdpw/tutorial_ge...
by fsh | 2025-12-07 13:55:49+00:00
It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.
by martythemaniak | 2025-12-07 13:56:16+00:00
It's probably just the price of batteries. You can definitely do this and you'd need like 8 18650 batteries, which today you can get on amazon for $30 USD. A decade ago it might have cost $200-$300.

Given that premium kettles already sell for about $100, there's definitely room for an ultra premium kettle that boils water laughably fast for $150.
by jijijijij | 2025-12-07 13:58:02+00:00
Lol, that's not an exhaustive characterization of "this generation". Most people are in neither group.

Also, the AfD folks would be rather fighting for Russia, the leftist activists will conscientiously object, and recent immigrants are not allowed to serve. Very weird to mention "second gen immigrants", as if ethnostate-ish racial tension is a wider issue in Germany and they are not normal citizens. I see no difference to children of Turkish migrants serving in the past. Do you realize Germany had mandatory military service before?

> A mix of all will end up obviously in a disaster but selecting on any group will end up in a civil war or coup.

Obviously! Jeez...

Btw. historically, after WWII, one of the reasons to have mandatory military service for every man was specifically to get a diverse army, as a cross-section of society, instead of clusters of certain dispositions, so the Bundeswehr exactly won't become an ideological, political force. Conscientious objection is a legal right for every soldier, at any moment, because of it. The constitution also prevents any sort of "group selection". A homogenized army is much more dangerous to the democratic order, than a diverse one. People thought of this before...
by embedding-shape | 2025-12-07 13:58:03+00:00
> Also, hearding cattle was for the most part a very chilled job as well

I'm sorry but this strikes me as incredibly wrong and misleading. Herding cattle is anything but "a very chilled job" unless your frame of reference is "hunting Mammoths" and "facing Sable-tooth tigers". Sure, at moments it can be pretty straightforward, but as most jobs, the hassle comes from the situations that aren't straightforward, and they can get back-braking, hairy, dirty and outright taxing on you.
by crote | 2025-12-07 13:58:19+00:00
Sure, but over in 230V-land 3500W hot plates are completely standard, and can plug into any regular wall socket. Same with microwaves and hot-air ovens: just put it anywhere on your kitchen countertop and plug it into the nearest socket.

We do also have a "kitchen plug" for high-powered appliances. Those go up to 7.3kW in their regular dual-single-phase 16A version, 11kW when wired with three phases (quite common in households these days), or even 17kW with the (understandably) rarely-used 25A plug variant with three-phase wiring.

And that's not even commercial equipment, just what you'd pick up at your local Best Buy equivalent. The commercial stuff uses CeeForm, which is a three-phase 16A/32A/63A/125A plug. Or it's getting hard-wired.
by hasyimibhar | 2025-12-07 13:58:57+00:00
Mostly lack of sleep and having to sacrifice a lot of weekends to work on the assignments. I took OMSCS with the goal of learning as much as possible since I did not have a traditional CS degree, so I took all the hard classes in the Computing Systems track (DC, Compilers, ISL:BE, IHPC, etc).

CS7210 (DC) is the hardest class I took. We had to write a correct Paxos implementation, then use it to build a distributed sharded KV store. I remember having to spend 10+ hours on a single day during weekend. It was worth it though, learned a lot about distributed consensus, and how difficult it is to get right (there were test failures that were fixed after hours of debug, and the fix was literally changing the order of some code lol).
by botanical76 | 2025-12-07 13:59:04+00:00
This is my experience as well. If you want it to write good tests, you have to take a much more involved approach of first making it establish what needs testing in each module, writing each test one at a time, and making it prove that it can break the test by modifying the source code to introduce a bug, modify the test to be appropriate, rinse and repeat. I haven't done this much because it's very expensive in terms of time and premium tokens...right now, I just write most tests myself so at least I have faith in the verification suite.
by 9rx | 2025-12-07 14:00:09+00:00
...as part of the language. Hence it being a GC language.

Is this another case of "Rustacians" randomly renaming things? There was that whole debacle where sum types bizarrely became enums, even though enums already had an established, different meaning, with all the sad talking past everyone else that followed. This is starting to look like that again.