MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by anonym29 | 2025-12-23 16:55:30+00:00
Was dropping two atomic bombs on civilian populations good?
Was the US's role in the Korean war good?
Was the US's intervention in the Chinese civil war good?
Was the US's massacre of Puerto Rican freedom fighters, nationalists, and independence-seeking rebels during the Jayuya uprising good?
Was the US's invasion of Vietnam good?
Was the US's covert military operations in Laos using the paramilitary arm of the CIA good?
Was the US's overthrow of the legitimately elected leader of Iran to install a US puppet good?
Was the US's actions to destabilize a laundry list of Latin American countries to seize control of raw materials and commodity production and place it under American corporations good?
Was the US's invasion of the Dominican Republic to quell mass democratic uprisings against a military coup that seized control from a democratically elected leader good?
Were the US secret bombing campaigns against Laos and Cambodia good?
Was the US invasion of Grenada good?
Were the US's attacks against Iranian-owned offshore oil drilling platforms good?
Was the US occupation of Panama good?
Was the US invasion of Iraq good?
Was the US bombing of Serbia good?
Was the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan good?
How about the drone strikes against civilian weddings - good?
How about illegal humans-rights-violating extrajudicial rendition, detention, and torture programs, good?

Is this all "peace"? Is intentional mass murder of civilians "good" when we do it? Is Trump the first president to abuse US military capabilities in the last 80 years, or are you being selective and partisan in your recollection of one of the world's most prolific purveyors of incomprehensible violence against civilians, interference in the democratic processes of other nations, and violators of human rights in the last century?

We're getting far off track from the important point here though, which is that the US should not invade Venezuela, just as Russia should not have invaded Ukraine (the latter being a point of comparison for the former, not the subject of the conversation).
by sheepscreek | 2025-12-23 16:55:34+00:00
I set this up for my employer many years ago when they migrated to RDS. We kept bumping into issues on production migrations that would wreck things. I decided to do something about it.

The steps were basically:

1. Clone the AWS RDS db - or spin up a new instance from a fresh backup.

2. Get the arn and from that the cname or public IP.

3. Plug that into the DB connection in your app

4. Run the migration on pseudo prod.

This helped up catch many bugs that were specific to production db or data quirks and would never haven been caught locally or even in CI.

Then I created a simple ruby script to automate the above and threw it into our integrity checks before any deployment. Last I heard they were still using that script I wrote in 2016!
by EGreg | 2025-12-23 16:56:00+00:00
Another bootstrapper here. For 14 years. Here is our latest 2025 year in review, for anyone who's interested: https://community.intercoin.app/t/2025-year-in-review/2947

PS: This is not for lack of trying to raise VC, but the trying was not nearly on the level needed to actually raise it. Jeff Bezos and Reid Hoffman tried much harder to raise, with far, far less built. Part of me wishes I had done that. I'm open to advice as to how to raise properly, should it be a Seed round or Series A at this point, and how to get meetings with the VCs and herd the cats in a way that will actually be successful. For reference, I'm based in NYC.

PPS: I've had a lot more success and fun raising from angels (who make their own decisions about their own money) and remain open to it. Especially people who are aligned with what we're doing. I've found much of the VC signaling to be disingenuous (e.g. "we love funding startups who do X" actually means "we want dealflow and orbiters to get into rounds with large well-known VCs"). But maybe that's just my bias because I didn't pursue fundraising diligently enough.
by tracker1 | 2025-12-23 16:56:30+00:00
Similarly, I was talking with my then wife, who is a Star Trek fan about the Star Trek Experience in LV, she wasn't aware of it... we looked it up and discovered it was literally going to be the last day of it the next day... so we got up at 4:30am and drove from Prescott, AZ to LV, spent the day there and drove back that night... I don't recommend doing this in a single day... Was definitely fun.

I'm not sure that a Disney experience needs to be much more/different than this... and even maybe having smaller experiences that are similar... 1-2 rides and a restaurant, exhibit and shop as a single instance... spreading the destinations around instead of all in a single large park. This would mean much lower operational costs per location, being able to negotiate deals at a smaller level with more cities, and testing locations/themes beyond a large theme park expense.

Just a thought. Of course, I did also go to a "Marvel Experience" that seemed to be a mobile experience closer to a carnival that setup and moved to different locations. That was kind of an over-priced garbage experience that I wouldn't have done had I known ahead what it was like.
by TheAceOfHearts | 2025-12-23 16:57:01+00:00
It cannot be understated how much of a boon AI-assisted programming has been for getting stuff up and running. Once you get past the initial hurdle of setting up an environment along with any boilerplate, you can actually start running code and iterating in order to figure out how something works.

Cognitive bandwidth is limited, and if you need to fully understand and get through 10 different errors before anything works, that's a massive barrier to entry. If you're going to be using those tools professionally then eventually you'll want to learn more about how they work, but frontloading a bunch of adjacent tooling knowledge is the quickest way to kill someone's interest.

The standard choice isn't usually between a high-quality project and slopware, it's between slopware or nothing at all.
Why are we accepting silent data corruption in Vector Search? (x86 vs. ARM)
by varshith17 | 2025-12-23 16:57:05+00:00
I spent the last week chasing a "ghost" in a RAG pipeline and I think I’ve found something that the industry is collectively ignoring.

We assume that if we generate an embedding and store it, the "memory" is stable. But I found that f32 distance calculations (the backbone of FAISS, Chroma, etc.) act as a "Forking Path."

If you run the exact same insertion sequence on an x86 server (AVX-512) and an ARM MacBook (NEON), the memory states diverge at the bit level. It’s not just "floating point noise" it’s a deterministic drift caused by FMA (Fused Multiply-Add) instruction differences.

I wrote a script to inspect the raw bits of a sentence-transformers vector across my M3 Max and a Xeon instance. Semantic similarity was 0.9999, but the raw storage was different

For a regulated AI agent (Finance/Healthcare), this is a nightmare. It means your audit trail is technically hallucinating depending on which server processed the query. You cannot have "Write Once, Run Anywhere" index portability.

The Fix (Going no_std) I got so frustrated that I bypassed the standard libraries and wrote a custom kernel (Valori) in Rust using Q16.16 Fixed-Point Arithmetic. By strictly enforcing integer associativity, I got 100% bit-identical snapshots across x86, ARM, and WASM.

Recall Loss: Negligible (99.8% Recall@10 vs standard f32).

Performance: < 500µs latency (comparable to unoptimized f32).

The Ask / Paper I’ve written a formal preprint analyzing this "Forking Path" problem and the Q16.16 proofs. I am currently trying to submit it to arXiv (Distributed Computing / cs.DC) but I'm stuck in the endorsement queue.

If you want to tear apart my Rust code: https://github.com/varshith-Git/Valori-Kernel

If you are an arXiv endorser for cs.DC (or cs.DB) and want to see the draft, I’d love to send it to you.

Am I the only one worried about building "reliable" agents on such shaky numerical foundations?
by uyzstvqs | 2025-12-23 16:57:15+00:00
Yes, found the malware in json-mappings. /lib/const.js contains DEV_API_KEY, which is a base64 encoded URL to the actual malware, hosted on an external service. This variable gets used by /lib/caller.js to download and run it. The rest of the project is just copied from pinojs/pino.
by simonw | 2025-12-23 16:57:47+00:00
Right, but this is a TA that gives a wrong answer more like 10% of the time (or less).

I think it's possible that for learning a 90% accuracy rate is MORE helpful than 100%. If it gets things wrong 1/10th of the time it means you have to think critically about everything it tells you. That's a much better way to approach any source of information than blindly trusting it.

The key to learning is building your own robust mental model, from multiple sources of information. Treat the LLM as one of those sources, not the exclusive source, and you should be fine.
by nartho | 2025-12-23 16:57:52+00:00
It is a great learning tool for people who are willing to learn and put in the time and effort. Ask good questions, double check everything, read documentation and make sure they understand everything before they move on. It's a tremendous tool if used correctly. People who just hit tab or past everything Claude generates will get worse. The benefits of "the old way" is that even the people who didn't want to put in the effort where making some improvement if only by friction and time spent.
by exceptione | 2025-12-23 16:58:02+00:00
Resetting is free if you discard the overlayfs writes, no? I am not sure if one can discard at runtime, or if the next test should be run in a new container. But that should still be fast.

If your db is small enough to fit in tmpfs, than sure, that is hard to beat. But then xfs and zfs are overkill too.

EDIT: I see you mentioning that starting the db is slow due to wiping and filling at runtime. But the idea of a snapshot is that you don't have to do that, unless I misunderstand you.
by fauigerzigerk | 2025-12-23 16:58:03+00:00
I'm not opposed to AI generated code in principle.

I'm just saying that we don't know how much effort was put into making this and we don't know whether it works.

The existence of a repository containing hundereds of files, thousands of SLOCs and a folder full of tests tells us less today than it used to.

There's one thing in particular that I find quite astonishing sometimes. I don't know about this particular project, but some people use LLMs to generate both the implementation and the test cases.

What does that mean? The test cases are supposed to be the formal specification of our requirements. If we do not specify formally what we expect a tool to do, how do we know whether the tool has done what we expected, including in edge cases?
by ToucanLoucan | 2025-12-23 16:59:09+00:00
If AI tools produced good code that was well-designed, nobody would fucking care. Maintainers of repos want good submissions that solve issues, they don't care if you wrote it on a notepad first or generated it in 5 minutes, if it fixes the thing, and is of good quality, it would be accepted.

AI submissions are getting hate because the code isn't good and isn't designed well and the person submitting it would also know that, if they understood what the LLM wrote. Hell, maybe they could even re-architect it into something worth submitting in the first place.

I use AI tools semi-frequently, to get answers, to riddle problems, all kinds of stuff. However if you just punch directions into ChatGPT and copy/paste the answer, you are not growing as a dev, you are not learning, and yeah your code is probably shit. Not sorry.

Edit: And I feel it's an under-observed point that AI-dependent devs constantly try and hide the fact that they are doing exactly that: copying from ChatGPT, because they also know it's shit and they will be judged. So just... STOP DOING IT.
by WaitWaitWha | 2025-12-23 16:59:52+00:00
In my experience, most digital forensics is outsourced. The tools are too expensive, and expertise is not available, and few can handle the material for extended period without some mental concerns.

One thing that I have never seen at least in Gov space (of several nations) for employees or contractors is mental health support for those working in digital forensics with cases that are beyond disturbing. I have asked for such support for teams, for nearly 30 years. I hope this survey will shed some light to improve this.
by johncolanduoni | 2025-12-23 17:00:16+00:00
The victim firm would definitely notice, they’d tell the FCC, and their investigators will show up with a device that literally points them to wherever the jammer is. If you do this for stupid, silly reasons you will get fined[1], if you do it in commission of another crime you will probably get made an example of. It doesn’t matter how evil you are, it’s hilariously easy to get caught doing this.

[1]: https://www.nj.com/news/2013/08/man_fined_32000_for_blocking...
by crazygringo | 2025-12-23 17:00:33+00:00
> Converting the idiomatic math into non-idiomatic words would not be an improvement in clarity in this case.

You seem to be missing my point. It's not about improving "clarity" about the math each line is doing -- that's precisely the kind of misconception so many people have about comments.

It's about, how long does it take me to understand the purpose of a block of code? If there was a simple comment at the top that said [1]:

# Calculate top-left point of the bounding box

then it would actually be helpful. You'd understand the purpose, and understand it immediately. You wouldn't have to decode the code -- you'd just read the brief remark and move on. That's what literate programming is about, in spirit -- writing code to be easily read at levels of the hierarchy. And very specifically not having to read every single line to figure out what it's doing.

The original assertion that "This code is so literate, so easy to read" is demonstrably false. Naming something "pt" is the antithesis of literature programming. And if you insist on no comments, you'd at least need to name is something like "bbox_top_left". A generic variable name like "pt", that isn't even introduced in the context of a loop or anything, is a cardinal sin here.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46366341
by anonym29 | 2025-12-23 17:01:30+00:00
Are we only accepting the public declarations of Russian leadership as credible when we like and agree with them, or are we being selective and ignoring the things they say that don't match the boogeyman in our head?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/lavrov-offers-...

Notice how they offer to put it in writing, to reduce the room for ambiguity and misunderstanding that the west disingenuously exploited when doing diplomacy with Gorbachev?

We're getting far off track from the important point here though, which is that the US should not invade Venezuela, just as Russia should not have invaded Ukraine (the latter being a point of comparison for the former, not the subject of the conversation).
by api | 2025-12-23 17:01:32+00:00
What's free market about total state regulatory capture, calling the President when your bids get rejected, or setting up wars and domestic police actions to enrich yourself with contracts using taxpayer funds?

There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market.

The Trump administration is absolutely not pro free market. They're putting fingers on the scale all over the place, taking Federal positions in private companies, taking literal bribes for regulatory favors, influencing the selection of executives and board members, and using the power of the state to attack privately owned companies for platforming speech they don't like (like this 60 Minutes segment, made by a private company). Trump/MAGA looks a lot more like the CCP than anything else.

Of course if you pay attention to the discourse, MAGA and national conservatism are an explicit repudiation of Reagan/Clinton "neoliberalism" and "libertarian conservatism." They explicitly support a large administrative state that centrally plans the economy and culture, just one they run and use to push right wing and nationalist agendas.

I remember saying back during the Bush years: if the right is forced to choose between liberty and cultural conservatism, they will throw out liberty. The right only supports the freedom to do what they think people should be doing. (Yes, there are similar attitudes in some parts of the left too. There are not many principled defenders of individual liberty.)

Edit: I'm really just arguing that we should call things what they are. Calling MAGA's CCP-like state capitalism a free market is like calling Bernie Sanders or Mamdani communism (they're socialists, not communists, these are not the same) or calling old school conservative republicans fascists. Words mean things.
by bullen | 2025-12-23 17:01:56+00:00
TcpAckFrequency and net.ipv4.tcp_delack_min but they don't do exactly what we need:

We need to be able to set it to -1 to tell the OS that no acks should be used at all, effectively turning that socket into UDP but with a TCP API!

That way we only have one protocol for ALL internet traffic.

I made a RFC about this a decade ago that was ignored.
by UncleMeat | 2025-12-23 17:02:12+00:00
So, can we see him writing about how this was a bad thing?

Williams is a public intellectual. What goes on in his mind is of much less importance to public discourse than what he writes.

Let me be clear. I believe that Williams is a hypocrite and I believe that the large majority of the signatories on the harpers letter are hypocrites. I mention him specifically because he was one of the people who actually wrote a lot of its text rather than just signing it, which makes him of particular interest for this discussion.
by chasing0entropy | 2025-12-23 17:03:04+00:00
The criteria for hn content modwration is pretty clear - politics in general are avoided while interesting subject matter possibly relevant to the thacker community is allowed. I see articles which could be interpreted as leaning one political direction or another but those posts are usually of some informational value and require lottle effort to avoid/hide if you don't think it fits the content policy.
by pjdesno | 2025-12-23 17:03:08+00:00
Bryan Cantrill, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728

The specific lines about Ellison and a lawnmower start at 38:28 in the linked video; the entire Oracle rant starts at about 34:00.
by mixu | 2025-12-23 17:03:10+00:00
Good! If you are wondering what this looks like in practice, I booked 3 flights this year with Ryanair and EVERY single time my tickets (directly purchased from their site) were flagged as "made through a third-party travel agent".

The "verification" workflow is super obtrusive: either pay them to use facial recognition technology or do slower verification (which I assume would be too slow if you saw this last minute). If you missed the email, you'd end up having to pay 55 eur to fix the issue. I was able to complain to customer service but it was definitely incredibly user hostile, intrusive and just ridiculous given that I booked directly via their site.

> Dear AAA this booking, AABBCC, appears to have been made through a third-party travel agent who has no commercial relationship with Ryanair to sell our flights. Therefore, Ryanair has blocked this booking.

> As third-party travel agents often do not provide Ryanair with the correct passenger email address and payment details, we need to verify a passenger's identity before they can manage their booking and check-in online.

> Ryanair needs to carry out this verification process in order to ensure we can comply with safety and security requirements.

> Once a passenger on the bookings has completed Ryanair's verification process, we will provide full access to the booking, including to the ability to make changes to the booking, add additional services, and complete online check-in.

> Express Verification is available at a cost of EUR 0.59c per booking.

> This fee covers the cost of the verification. Ryanair does not benefit commercially from this. There is no charge for Standard Verification.

> Passengers who do not avail of online verification (Express Verification or Standard Verification) to verify their bookings can verify at the Ryanair ticket desk in the airport, however they will be charged an airport check-in fee of up to €/£55.
by INTPenis | 2025-12-23 17:03:32+00:00
I've gotten used to ss now, and I quite like it, I just wish there was an option to not show the send/recv numbers. I never use them and the width is already so wide that the output barely fits into most terminals when you have them split vertically on a laptop screen.

That said though, I'm not going to install snitch. The thing about ss is that it's already there, on every server I manage. And I definitely do not need a TUI for this.

Snitch is something you might install in your homelab, or your workstations. But ss is still the default when you provision a lot of servers.
by rubslopes | 2025-12-23 17:03:44+00:00
No no! It was just the way you wrote it; but I think I misunderstood it.

> I found myself asking Sonnet [...] after the 4th time of doing that [...] just switched models.

I thought you meant Sonnet results were laughable, so you decided to switch to GLM.

I tried GLM 4.6 last week via OpenCode but found it lacking when compared to Sonnet 4.5. I still need to test 4.7, but from the benchmarks and users opinions, it seems that it's not a huge improvement though.

Last week I got access to Claude Max 20x via work, so I've using Opus 4.5 exclusively and it's a beast. Better than GPT 5.2 codex and Gemini 3 Pro IME (I tested both via OpenCode).

I also got this cheap promo GLM subscription. I hope they get ahead of the competition, their prices are great.
by coldpie | 2025-12-23 17:03:45+00:00
Sure that's bad, but the trouble is you're not thinking about what the alternative is. If users don't have control over their own data, then someone else does.

As stated by the spec authors on KeePassXC's bug tracker, open source software may be modified by the user, so cannot be trusted. The passkey proposal is for all of your keys to be managed by proprietary software validated by your phone or your computer's TPM module. That means one of three big, US-based tech companies will control all of the world's login data. Those 3 companies are all currently involved in the largest fascist-taint-tongue-polishing in US history, and we want to hand them control over the world's logins. That's a much, much bigger risk than some users doing something stupid.

The spec needs to be written with the assumption that the user's private keystore may be hostile to the user's own interests, because in the real world, it is. It needs to be written to mitigate damage to the user from a hostile keystore. Instead, the spec places total trust in the keystore. This is a fatal error.