MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vee-kay | 2025-12-29 01:57:17+00:00
For last 2 years, I've noticed a worrying trend: the typical budget PCs (especially Laptops) are being sold at higher prices with lower RAM (just 8GB) and lower-end CPUs (and no dedicated GPUs).

Industry mandate should have become 16GB RAM for PCs and 8GB for mobile, since years ago, but instead it is as if computing/IT industry is regressing.

New budget mobiles are being launched with lower-end specs as well (e.g., new phones with Snapdragon Gen 6, UFS2.2). Meanwhile, features that were being offered in budget phones, e.g., wireless charging, NFC, UFS3.1 have silently been moved to the premium mobile segment.

Meanwhile the OSes and software are becoming more and more complex, bloated and more unstable (bugs) and insecure (security loopholes ready for exploits).

It is as if the industry has decided to focus on AI and nothing else.

And this will be a huge setback for humanity, especially the students and scientific communities.
by tiberriver256 | 2025-12-29 01:57:24+00:00
16 "autistic brains" were scanned and they are thinking this applies generally to all people with autism?

Shows how shockingly unaware even researchers are on how broad and nonspecific the diagnosis of autism is...

Were these 16 people hypo or hyper sensitive? Which of their five senses were involved? All? Some? Were some senses hyper and others hypo?

Need to start with categorization and specificity before we can make meaningful progress in research
by ybceo | 2025-12-29 01:57:46+00:00
If I understand correctly, this is the flow you are describing :

1. You show your ID to a "trusted third party"

2. They cryptographically attest "yep, this person has valid government ID"

3. The service (Discord, Coinbase, etc.) only gets the yes/no assertion, never sees your actual docs

The third party would still have your documents. You've just moved the honeypot, not eliminated it. Discord's breach was through a third party. Signzy (a KYC provider) got breached. The whole article is about how third parties can't be trusted either.
by coryrc | 2025-12-29 01:58:09+00:00
Were individual Germans responsible for the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime? If they weren't there because they were resisting, then I say yes. And if we go on living our lives without resisting the current government -- especially if you work at Google, with your leader bowing down to Trump and doing his bidding -- then, yes, you are morally culpable. Most people are shitty, so it's not surprising so many are still going along with it. The engines of commerce are still going. The ports are not blockaded and the government buildings are not being burned. We aren't marching on Washington and liberating the buildings. We are culpable.

Democratic voters are culpable; their politicians are all about keeping the system going but tweaking it. No, the system is bad. A system that results in trump being elected a second time is prima facie evil and must be torn down. If you have power and aren't working to treat down this system, you are culpable.
by alphazard | 2025-12-29 01:58:40+00:00
I don't know who this kind of cynic vs. idealist vs. optimist thinking works on/for.
Instead of trying to frame things in terms of a mood or a feeling, it's better to try to understand things in terms of what is likely and unlikely to happen.

Large corporations are just groups of people with conflicting incentives, and that means they are basically incapable of performing certain kinds of tasks.
It also means that when the incentives do align, some tasks are very likely to be completed, even with other corporations or governments working in opposition.

Some of those tasks might be things you care about, like making a product of a certain quality, or furthering some other goal you have.
In all those cases, it is best to to first think about what is most likely to happen and what is unlikely to happen.
You have to think of the organization as just another phenomenon that you could exploit if you properly understood it.
Unfortunately, how to manipulate complex systems of humans is an open problem, and if anyone had effective, repeatable solutions, then investors would demand that they be implemented.

As it is, most corporations don't act in the interest of the investors a significant amount of the time, even though they are supposed to.
The only thing we can reliably bet on is: all organizations tend towards dysfunctional bureaucracies, the longer they live, and the bigger they get.
by llmslave2 | 2025-12-29 01:58:56+00:00
> A human writing twelve polemic questions, many of which only make sense within their ideological worldview or contain factual errors, because they wanted to vent their anger on the internet has been considered substandard slop since before LLMs were a thing.

Maybe by people who don't share the same ideological worldview.

I'll almost always take human slop over AI slop, even when the AI slop is better along some categorical axis. Of course there are exceptions, but as I grow older I find myself appreciating the humanity more and more.
by satvikpendem | 2025-12-29 01:59:13+00:00
It did, and it needed a direction to be pushed towards. Are you familiar with the great man theory of history [0]? It is no different here (well, historians these days use a blend of great man theory and historical materialism as you're stating in your example, as no one theory explains the majority of historical changes).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
by anukin | 2025-12-29 01:59:16+00:00
The problem with this argument is that there are players who are incentivized to play on the opposite side of the PE memory hoarders or cloud everything people.
One of the most valuable company namely Apple have been playing around with local everything for a while now.
Housing is a regulation(mostly) problem and govt has 0 incentives against the lobbyists and nimby crowd who support reelection bid vs largely marginalized or non voter crowd of immigrants.
It’s false equivalence in its full glory.
by dahart | 2025-12-29 01:59:17+00:00
> does applying the same transfer function to each pixel (of a given colour anyway) count as “processing”?

This is interesting to think about, at least for us photo nerds. ;) I honestly think there are multiple right answers, but I have a specific one that I prefer. Applying the same transfer function to all pixels corresponds pretty tightly to film & paper exposure in analog photography. So one reasonable followup question is: did we count manually over- or under-exposing an analog photo to be manipulation or “processing”? Like you can’t see an image without exposing it, so even though there are timing & brightness recommendations for any given film or paper, generally speaking it’s not considered manipulation to expose it until it’s visible. Sometimes if we pushed or pulled to change the way something looks such that you see things that weren’t visible to the naked eye, then we call it manipulation, but generally people aren’t accused of “photoshopping” something just by raising or lowering the brightness a little, right?

When I started reading the article, my first thought was, ‘there’s no such thing as an unprocessed photo that you can see’. Sensor readings can’t be looked at without making choices about how to expose them, without choosing a mapping or transfer function. That’s not to mention that they come with physical response curves that the author went out of his way to sort-of remove. The first few dark images in there are a sort of unnatural way to view images, but in fact they are just as processed as the final image, they’re simply processed differently. You can’t avoid “processing” a digital image if you want to see it, right? Measuring light with sensors involves response curves, transcoding to an image format involves response curves, and displaying on monitor or paper involves response curves, so any image has been processed a bunch by the time we see it, right? Does that count as “processing”? Technically, I think exposure processing is always built-in, but that kinda means exposing an image is natural and not some type of manipulation that changes the image. Ultimately it depends on what we mean by “processing”.
by pdpi | 2025-12-29 01:59:52+00:00
I'm Portuguese and have lived in the UK for over a decade.

UK keyboard layouts suck for writing Portuguese, because they lack convenient ways to type all the diacritics. Portuguese layouts (especially on macOS) suck horrendously for programming (curly braces and square brackets are inordinately annoying to type).

These days, all my physical keyboards are US (ANSI) layouts, and I use the US International (with dead keys) layout exclusively. It's the only relatively sane option that allows me to write both code and all the natural languages I'm liable to write on any given day (read: English, Portuguese, and some random French or German loanwords here and there).
by rgoulter | 2025-12-29 02:01:02+00:00
> like Agile and OOP

Ha.

I think there's room to argue "Agile" is a popular bastardisation of what's meant by "agile software development", and with "OOP" we got the lame Java interpretation rather than the sophisticated Smalltalk interpretation. -- Or I might think that these ideas aren't that good if their poor imitations win out over the "proper" ideas.

With mocking.. I'm willing to be curious that there's some good/effective way of doing it. But the idea of "you're just testing that the compiler works" comes to mind.
by freehorse | 2025-12-29 02:01:09+00:00
I do not really get the point of layouts such as altgr-intl tbh (even without dead keys). It is fine if you want to write here and there the name of a person that includes non-english characters, but I cannot write actual text in that. Whenever I encounter this layout somewhere I just find it annoying even in english, though I guess dead keys is what actually makes it annoying.

Without dead keys it is def better, but even then I cannot write in said non-english language with that, instead of using one actual layout for that language, and I do not see why not just change layout. Granted, there are some small annoyances because punctuation marks may change place, but I find that easier to learn than using altgr to write letters.
by lilwobbly | 2025-12-29 02:01:38+00:00
I feel like everyone online is becoming some anti-capitalist socialist and losing all critical thinking and it's making me crazy.

Firstly, institutional investors own ~3% of single-family homes in the US , even in hot markets, they rarely exceed 10%. The lack of supply is outweighs the private equity problem.

GPUs are manufactured goods where production scales with demand. When AI investment inevitably contracts, that fab capacity will redirect to consumer products. I don't know where this idea comes from that NVIDIA is conspiring with these companies to never sell consumers GPUs. It only takes so many GPUs to build out a streaming service, would they just stop making GPUs entirely? It doesn't make any sense if you think about it for more than 2 seconds.
by ceejayoz | 2025-12-29 02:01:38+00:00
Sounds like you're guessing.

I'm not; this sort of thing is quite well documented.

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-people-underestimate-income.ht...

> Barnabas Szaszi and colleagues conducted four studies to explore how well people understand the wealth held by others. In one study, 990 US residents recruited online were asked to estimate the minimum annual household income thresholds of various percentiles of American earners.
by bbor | 2025-12-29 02:01:43+00:00
Aside, why not link the original video instead of a reddit post?

It's a compilation, but regardless, Reddit seems about as "original" as any other platform. I'd certainly rather see Reddit links here than YouTube links, all else being equal!

the vast majority of equity of companies are held privately

That's an good intuition, but it turns out to be false globally (TIL!): "There are nearly 25x more PE- and VC-backed companies than public markets [globally], but the total capitalization of private equity and venture capital is just 12% of public equity markets." per https://www.harbourvest.com/insights-news/insights/cpm-how-d...

vulture PE firms do exist but are not as prevalent as people make it seem online. It's a meme that many people seem to have latched on when the vast majority of PE firms and companies work perfectly fine

...source? It's certainly possible that I'm suffering from confirmation bias, but "company goes through PE acquisition" headlines seem to be followed by "brand dissolved" headlines in way too many cases. Even if it's not a literal majority, the problem seems A) widespread, and B) behind many of the most harmful symptoms of the rot beneath the American(/global?) economy!
by qnleigh | 2025-12-29 02:01:55+00:00
I think a more charitable reading of this post doesn't defend the moral aspects you're referring to, but is about much more pedestrian things like office politics.

It kinda makes me sad to see the top comment on a thoughtful piece like this expressing outrage on something the other didn't even take a stance on. I come to Hacker News to avoid this kind of rhetoric.
by mapontosevenths | 2025-12-29 02:02:40+00:00
This was studied because it sounds reasonable on paper and several small studies showed a small link.

However, they did a very large cohort study with hundreds of thousands of subjects. The link completely disappears when genetics are accounted for via sibling pairs.[0]

It took almost two whole minutes of Googling for me to disprove this nonsense. Which shows that RFK did less than 2 minutes worth of research before panicking the world.

[0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2817406
by dipeshsukhani | 2025-12-29 02:02:42+00:00
For non‑coding work we still treat a repo as the source of truth, but it’s mostly Markdown, checklists and assets rather than code.

Think of it as a structured project brain that AI can read, update and score.

For example, for social media management our repo's outline structure that are getting to be is as follows (still WIP):

social-media/
README.md # How this repo works, scoring rules
/config
platforms.yaml # Accounts
content_guidelines.md # Brand voice, do/don’t list
/planning
2025-12-calendar.md # Calendar
2025-12-campaign-x402.md # Campaign brief, goals, KPIs
/drafts
2025-12-05-x-new-feature.md
2025-12-16-x-new-feature.md
/assets
images/
video/
copy-snippets.md
/published
2025-12-05-x-new-feature.md # Final copy + URLs + timestamp
2025-12-16-x-new-feature.md
/reports
2025-01-05-metrics.md # CTR, saves, comments, etc.

Daily tasks are then deterministic checklists inside the repo, e.g. “Create 3 drafts for next Tuesday with images in /assets/images and entries added to 2025-12-calendar.md under campaign X”.
by motoboi | 2025-12-29 02:03:03+00:00
Vapor chamber only helps with bursts of usage. It’s just that the heat gets transferred faster. Transferred where is the correct question to ask. To the aluminium body is the answer. Now, how much time it takes to heat that body completely (ie: to reach equilibrium with the environment) and once in equilibrium, how much joules (or watts) can the body dissipate into the environment without burning the person’s lap is the point they are optimizing for here.

If you have fans, then the heat transfer is solved, hence no vapor chamber needed, just a large copper plate to be that buffer and then wind takes heat away.

So, no magic here. Energy in must be equal to energy out.
by satvikpendem | 2025-12-29 02:03:18+00:00
You focus on others talking to you, why don't you talk to them? I don't mean just one conversation but making plans for hanging out next time too, or joining hobbies you'd like to do.

One thing I've learned is that you yourself must make an effort first, even if you think it's unfair or if it's a lot of work, otherwise you'll be lonely forever.

Do you know if you have any sort of neurodivergence? That may be a part of it too. You say small talk tends to bore you yet that is how people start mingling at first. Maybe people are put off by you being put off on small talk.
by roywiggins | 2025-12-29 02:03:20+00:00
"many neurodivergent people aren’t hindered by autism"

This is more or less not true. If it doesn't hinder a person in any aspect of their life, they don't fit the DSM-V criteria for a diagnosis.

(Many neurodivergent people aren't hindered by autism because they have some other neurodivergence, but that's a different issue with this sentence)
by elliotto | 2025-12-29 02:03:27+00:00
I don't think he's morally bankrupt. I am disagreeing with his attempt to handwave away a moral analysis of these organizations as 'cynicism'. I think these analyses are really important.

I don't live in the US. But if I did, and I was capable enough to be a successful software engineer, I would try to work for an organisation that was not implicated in abhorrent behaviour. If I was to work for one, I would not attempt to dismiss criticisms of it as cynicism.
by cglan | 2025-12-29 02:04:19+00:00
At this current pace, if "the electorate" doesn't see real benefits to any of this. 2028 is going to be referendum on AI unfortunately.

Whether you like it or not, AI right now is mostly

- high electricity prices
- crazy computer part prices
- phasing out of a lot of formerly high paying jobs

and the benefits are mostly
- slop and chatgpt

Unless OpenAI and co produce the machine god, which genuinely is possible. If most people's interactions with AI are the negative externalities they'll quickly be wondering if ChatGPT is worth this cost.
by dipeshsukhani | 2025-12-29 02:05:11+00:00
I love this! I mean, (a) I feel I am 20x faster / better. I have not yet reached the stage where I can scientifically put a "x" on how much better I have become.

Am I getting more money>> I think I am currently putting the correct amount of seeds which hopefully will flourish in 2026 with results. But now, it is easier and faster.

But yes, I am sorry for claiming a more "felt like" number.
by osiris970 | 2025-12-29 02:05:12+00:00
I dislike these sensationalist headlines, but the housing one irks me the most.
PE didn't make housing expensive, your neighbors, grandma and grandpa did by restricting new construction. In cities dumb policy like the rent control did.
Stop blaming Boogeymen and actually look into issues.
The ram thing is unfortunate, but i don't really see a solution to it, for now.

46k up votes for this shit, Jesus Christ everyone's insane these days man
by andrekandre | 2025-12-29 02:05:48+00:00
> Swift UI is primarily made for iPhone. It's secondarily made for iPad. I'm willing to bet that almost all the effort that goes into it is focused on making iPhone and iPad apps better.

i think there is also another issue at play; i think with swiftui being "data based" for lack of a better term, you can easily end up with ui that matches underlying data models but doesn't match the users model/expectation... you can see this really clearly with the settings app vs the old preferences; its pretty obvious (imo) they are looping over underlying data and just spitting out endless lists and dialogs etc instead of mapping it to a presentation in a user-first way...
by leros | 2025-12-29 02:05:53+00:00
Making friends is a lot of work, can be uncomfortable, and it takes time.

One cool thing about university is that there are lots of clubs you can join. I'd suggest you go find a club you're interested in and participate every week. Talk to people when you get the opportunity. I've read it takes around five times attending a group before people start taking your attendance seriously enough start investing time in getting to know you. Give it a few months and I'll bet you have some acquaintances that could become friends.
by linguae | 2025-12-29 02:06:56+00:00
I wonder what we can do to preserve personal computing, where users, not vendors, control their computers? I’m tired of the control Microsoft, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and some other big players have over the entire industry. The software has increasingly become enshittified, and now we’re about to be priced out of hardware upgrades.

The problem is coming up with a viable business model for providing hardware and software that respect users’ ability to shape their environments as they choose. I love free, open-source software, but how do developers make a living, especially if they don’t want to be funded by Big Tech?
by lijok | 2025-12-29 02:06:58+00:00
None of what you’ve mentioned is a requirement to become a “hugely expensive” CEO. If you’re born into conditions which stop you from becoming self reliant, that’s a different story but we covered that.

Those people who devote time - do they devote time to becoming a hugely expensive CEO or just some “endeavours”?

I think we’re fundamentally disagreeing on whether or not lack of luck can be adequately compensated for by exerting more effort. I have not yet heard of a compelling argument for why that’s not the case.
by RodgerTheGreat | 2025-12-29 02:07:31+00:00
Generative AI is used to defraud people, to propagandize them, to steal their intellectual property and livelihoods, to systematically deny their health insurance claims, to dangerously misinform them (e.g. illegitimate legal advice or hallucinated mushroom identification ebooks), to drive people to mental health breakdowns via "ai psychosis" and much more. The harm is real and material, and right now is causing unemployment, physical harm, imprisonment, and in some cases death.
by wizzwizz4 | 2025-12-29 02:07:42+00:00
The DSM-V criteria are not a good description of the natural category, and most people don't actually use them. They are, at best, a vague gesture in the direction of the natural category. The ICD-11 criteria (6A02) are better, but are still contradicted by, for instance, studies evidencing the double-empathy problem. Trained psychologists know which diagnostic criteria to take literally, and which to interpret according to the understanding of the authors.
by DiabloD3 | 2025-12-29 02:08:05+00:00
I'm not killing it, but there is no C API written verbatim. WebGL was fucky because it was a specific version of GLES that never changed and you couldn't actually do GL extensions; it was a hybrid of 2.0 and 3.0 and some extra non-core/ARB extensions.

WebGPU is trying to not repeat this mistake, but it isn't a 100% 1:1 translation for Vulkan, so everyone is going to need to agree to how the C API looks, and you know damned well Google is going to fuck this up for everyone and any attempt is going to die.

Chrome is the cancer killing desktop computing.
by mpyne | 2025-12-29 02:08:53+00:00
std::chrono counts the number of ticks of a given periodicity. The periodicity does have to be a known compile-time ratio expressible as a fraction of seconds, but you can use a floating-type type to count the number of ticks.

std::chrono is meant to take advantage of information about periodicity at compile time, but if you want to count in terms of a dynamic periodicity not known until runtime, you can still do things. E.g. use time_t and some wrapper functions, or just pick one (or several) std::chrono base durations such as standardizing on nanoseconds, and then just count floating-point ticks.
by ianburrell | 2025-12-29 02:09:02+00:00
The Navy also needs the Constellation class frigate. The proposed replacement based on the Legend class cutter. It is basically a corvette like LCS on a bigger hull. The Navy doesn't need more corvette, they need proper warships.

Red Sea shows that ships need more defenses now that anyone can build anti-ship missiles and drones. Maybe they should have called Constellation light destroyer and DDG(X) a cruiser.