MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ben_w | 2025-12-03 12:54:07+00:00
While the slowness of learning of all ML is absolutely something I recognise, what you describe here:

> You can reasonably expect from a human that they will learn from their mistake, and be genuinely sorry about it which will motivate them to not repeat the same mistake in the future.

Wildly varies depending on the human.

Me? I wish I could learn German from a handful of examples. My embarrassment at my mistakes isn't enough to make it click faster, and it's not simply a matter of motivation here: back when I was commuting 80 minutes each way each day, I would fill the commute with German (app) lessons and (double-speed) podcasts. As the Germans themselves will sometimes say: Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache.

There's been a few programmers I've worked with who were absolutely certain they knew better than me, when they provably didn't.

One, they insisted a start-up process in a mobile app couldn't be improved, I turned it from a 20 minute task to a 200ms task by the next day's standup, but they never at any point showed any interest in improving or learning. (Other problems they demonstrated included not knowing or caring how to use automated reference counting, why copy-pasting class files instead of subclassing cannot be excused by the presence of "private" that could just have been replaced with "public", and casually saying that he had been fired from his previous job and blaming this on personalities without any awareness that even if true he was still displaying personality conflicts with everyone around him).

Another, complaining about too many views on screen, wouldn't even let me speak, threatened to end the call when I tried to say anything, even though I had already demonstrated before the call that even several thousand (20k?) widgets on-screen at the same time would still run at 60fps and they were complaining about order-of 100 widgets.
by embedding-shape | 2025-12-03 12:55:07+00:00
> As I have said, the oxygen comes only from water, which is missing on Mars

The title nor the article itself doesn't claim otherwise, unless I'm missing something?

It's also not claiming that the microbe somehow solve the problem of obtaining water, or anything else.

The only thing they claim is that this specific microbe, under the right circumstances, can produce oxygen while it grows in Martian-like soil. That's what the article claims, and the titles.
by ekjhgkejhgk | 2025-12-03 12:56:03+00:00
> I moved here to get away from American kindercrushers (among other reasons) and I am profoundly concerned that Europe is being invaded by these machines.

I'm European and I'll go one step further: I'm profoundly concerned that the majority of people in Europe seem happy to imitate all the bad things that the US has, but fiercly reject all the good things that the US has.
by andersmurphy | 2025-12-03 12:57:00+00:00
SQLite, for me at least, is an embedded database it should be relatively tightly coupled to your application if you want to get the most out of it in the context of web servers. After all it's part of your application.

Again, maybe it's because I'm using Clojure on the JVM (with both real and virtual threads as well as bunch of great concurrent data-structure). But, setting up a "process" (thread) to do that batching is not hard, it's also easy for the individual functions to return results to their call sites via the Java promise API (after the batch completes).

All of this runs in a single process. With a single deployable uberjar/artefact.
by trollbridge | 2025-12-03 12:57:00+00:00
The roads where I live are paid for with a plate fee of $10 a year for cars and a higher one for trucks.

The state also sends a certain amount of fuel taxes to local governments in accordance with how many miles are travelled in an area.

New construction must privately pay to build the roads and then transfer ownership to the government. So the cost really is private. By far the most expensive part of maintaining roads is replacing bridges. Hence why so many bridges have rules about weight limits for trucks.

I suppose if you really wanted a user fee on roads you could have a system of tolls on bridges, intersections and interchanges, but that would be really unpopular.
by safety1st | 2025-12-03 12:57:31+00:00
The whole US economy is so deep into La-La Land at this point that they don't really need to be a good business. There are already murmurings that they may pull off a trillion dollar IPO, I don't see why they wouldn't, Amazon was making it cool to lose money hand over fist during your IPO as far back as 1997. They have the President willing to pump up their joint ventures with executive orders, we may just see tech become more like the financial industry, where a handful of companies are dubbed "too big to fail" based on political connections, and get bailed out at the taxpayer's expense when things get too rough. None of these guys function according to the real rules of the economy or even the legal system at this point, they just make stuff up as they go along and if they're big enough or know someone big enough they often get away with it.
by adrian_b | 2025-12-03 12:58:27+00:00
That would work only for a base located at the North pole.

If you want to explore other regions, or to set there a base, for instance for extracting some useful minerals, all the water will have to be transported from the poles, unless some quantities of ice will be discovered underground elsewhere (or of hydrated rocks, which can produce water when heated enough).

Unless enough ice or hydrated rocks are discovered underground elsewhere, the amount of ice from the poles will sustain only a small human population.
by alexpotato | 2025-12-03 12:58:31+00:00
A side story on the techniques for restoration:

I'm guessing about 10-15 years ago I was watching a documentary on the re-release of Ken Burns Civil War.

They were highlighting the digital tools they were using to restore and enhance the original film capture for new streaming services etc.

They showed one of the restorers using a fascinating tool where one window was a video feed of the original film's "first pass" to digital. One of the landscape scenes had a small smudge in the upper right hand corner so the restorer pauses the feed, goes back frame by frame and then was able to drag and drop the frame into another window where he used Photoshop like tools to fix everything and then drag and drop it back into the "feed". Seemed VERY efficient and shows how good tools can really accelerate a workflow.

I'm not sure if the above scene is in the below quick documentary but there are a lot of other cool "behind the scenes of restoration" moments: https://www.pbs.org/video/civil-war-restoring-civil-war/
by benchly | 2025-12-03 12:59:00+00:00
Good point. That kind of thinking is an absurdity. Saying IBM dropped the ball 70 years ago without acknowledging that lessons were learned, leadership has changed hands a lot since then, and most importantly, the tech landscape back then was very different from today unless you grossly oversimplify everything amounts to nothing more than a fallacious opinion.

Not even much of an IBM fan, myself, but I respect their considerable contribution to the industry. Sure, they missed a shot back then, but I think this latest statement is reliably accurate based on the information we currently have.
by cyco130 | 2025-12-03 12:59:10+00:00
It would but it's harder to trigger. Here, it's not safe because they're public functions and the standard would require `add_v1 != add_v2` (I think).

If you declare them as static, it eliminates the functions and the calls completely: https://aoco.compiler-explorer.com/z/soPqe7eYx

I'm sure it could also perform definition merging like you suggest but I can't think of a way of triggering it at the moment without also triggering their complete elision.
by actionfromafar | 2025-12-03 12:59:11+00:00
We are there in the small already. My old TV had a receiver and a pair of external speakers connected to it. I could decrease and increase the receiver volume with its extra remote. Two buttons, up and down. This was with an additional remote that came with the receiver.

Nowadays, a more capable 5.1 speaker receiver is connected to the TV.

There is only one remote, for both. To increase or decreae the volume after starting the TV now, I have to:

1. wait a few seconds while the internal speakers in the TV starts playing sound

2. the receiver and TV connect to each other, audio switches over to receiver

3. wait a few seconds

4. the TV channel (or Netflix or whatever) switches over to the receiver welcome screen. Audio stops playing, but audio is now switched over to the receiver, but there is no indication of what volume the receiver is set to. It's set to whatever it was last time it was used. It could be level 0, it could be level 100 or anything in between.

5. switch back to TV channel or Netflix. That's at a minimum 3 presses on the remote. (MENU, DOWN, ENTER) or (MENU, DOWN, LEFT, LEFT, ENTER) for instance. Don't press too fast, you have to wait ever so slightly between presses or they won't register.

6. Sorry, you were too impatient and fast when you switched back to TV, the receiver wants to show you its welcome screen again.

7. switch back to TV channel or Netflix. That's at a minimum 3 presses on the remote. (MENU, DOWN, ENTER) or (MENU, DOWN, LEFT, LEFT, ENTER) for instance. Don't press too fast, you have to wait ever so slightly between presses or they won't register.

8. Now you can change volume up and down. Very, very slowly. Hope it's not at night and you don't want to wake anyone up.
by keymasta | 2025-12-03 12:59:14+00:00
As per my knowledge, and as per Britannica, a chord actually uses three or more notes. A two note structure is called a diad, which implies a bit of confusion in the term "power chord" (written as 5, as in G5, which == G D == 1 5).. as it is not by definition a chord but a diad.

This may be a pedantic clarification, but that is the definition
by 34679 | 2025-12-03 12:59:18+00:00
>which, should be noted, is entirely optional

I wouldn't say entirely. I had a client with a large company contact me on LinkedIn saying that they wanted to buy my product but no one would respond to their emails. Their system was nuking my responses until I set up DMARC reporting, and I had no indication it was happening on my end. No "failed to deliver" message and nothing in the logs, just email that vanished into the ether.
by ErroneousBosh | 2025-12-03 12:59:34+00:00
You say that, but I was able to reduce the code size of some avr8 stuff I was working on by removing a whole bunch of instructions that zero out registers and then shift a value around. I don't it to literally shift the top byte 24 bits to the right and zero out the upper 24 bits, I just need it to pass the value in the top 8 bits direct to the next operation.

I agree that most people are not writing hand-tuned avr8 assembly. Most people aren't attempting to do DSP on 8-bit AVRs either.
by dryark | 2025-12-03 12:59:38+00:00
Yes. I did see that other article. No the process we are using is not using AI. We are not using OCR either. We are using computational geometry and forensics methodology. No flatbed scanners. No sheet fed scanners.

This isn't like anything ever done before. It's entirely different and higher quality than any result you can get through AI or OCR.

I do agree that detailed work is required to do it correctly and produced high quality results. I'm not offhandedly saying "just do these simple things and bam perfection."
by impossiblefork | 2025-12-03 13:00:18+00:00
Ah. It actually looks very sensible. I knew things like that existed, but didn't know they had dummy messages.

I guess my approach is more P2P, more simplicity, shortness and clarity focused, as well as perhaps emphasizing general networking less-- I sacrifice more, I'm fine with 3-6 second delays on all messages, for example. I guess I also emphasize scale in that I intend to have 10,000+ connection open simultaneously on every peer, and because of this you don't even always need the retransmission aspect, since the person you want to talk to might be in the group of 10,000 that you send a message to every second.

So in my thing the mixing is less important and the retransmission aspect is only needed when the network grows so big that you, when you connect don't happen to randomly end up directly peering with the person you want to talk to.
by trollbridge | 2025-12-03 13:00:21+00:00
When I drive a pickup it’s typically for work purposes. I would not care one whit if it had pink flowers and neither would anyone else. If anything it would make it higher visibility.

As far as a speed limit… what governed speed are you proposing? Being in a pickup pulling a trailer already makes you a cop magnet, and I never go even 1 MPH over the limit. It’s already expensive enough fuel economy wise and they aren’t exactly vehicles with fast acceleration.

Incidentally of people I know who have died in vehicle accidents recently (last 5 years) all of them were because they got hit by a large commercial truck (typically 35 tonnes). One died when he crashed his motorcycle. That’s it.
by theshrike79 | 2025-12-03 13:00:21+00:00
Working with Agentic LLMs is exactly the same skillset as directing junior programmers or offshore consultants.

You get a feel for how much direction they need after working for a while and tooling and accessible documentation is really important for quality.

Then you give them a task and review the results. In (backend/systems) programming it's pretty binary whether a solution works or not, it's not a matter of taste but something you can just validate with hard data.

I've done so many tiny/small/medium sized utilities for myself in the last year it's crazy[0]. A good bunch of them are 95-100% vibecoded, meaning I was just the "project manager" instructing what features I want and letting the agent(s) make it work.

I think I have a pretty good feel for the main agentic systems and what they can do in the context of what I do so I know what to tell them and how - each has its own distinct way of working and using the wrong one for the wrong job is either stupid, frustrating or just a waste of time.

[0] https://indieweb.org/make_what_you_need
by mrweasel | 2025-12-03 13:00:48+00:00
95% of ChatGPT users aren't paying customers, if they won't pay $10 per month, there's zero chance of them paying $100 or $500.

That's not to say that there aren't many, like you, for whom $500 is a perfectly good deal, there's just not nearly enough for OpenAI to ever turn a profit.
by potato3732842 | 2025-12-03 13:00:56+00:00
>Drive throughs have long since stopped serving pedestrians.

That's a social class and location based. The average overpaid techie on HN who lives in the kind of place where all the houses are a million bucks and everyone buys their trophy wife a 4Runner because that's what you need for one kid then yeah, the drive through won't serve you as a walk up.

The Popeyes in Camden NJ don't care if you ride an elephant through the drive through.
by zahlman | 2025-12-03 13:01:20+00:00
>a well-formed CI system with many developed actions and free runners.

It feels to me like people have become way too reliant on this (in particular, forcing things into CI that could easily be done locally) and too trusting of those runners (ISTR some reports of malware).

>In addition, it is best to use code navigation simply in a web browser.

I've always found their navigation quite clunky and glitchy.
by mewpmewp2 | 2025-12-03 13:01:59+00:00
Should I not share my experiences then about something that can't be scientifically proven? I am not actually looking to prove anything, but I am sharing my experience. I don't even win anything from people believing me, but I guess I have this weird urge to "set something straight" if in my experience something is the case. I have done tons of DIY stuff that I wouldn't have been able to without AI. Tons of side projects. In my corpo work I have been able to do more with less hours and mental effort spent, although in corpo work AI has given me less gains since most of the time I have been blocked by other factors and everyone else.

It is too fast evolving to be able to be legitimately scientifically understood. It is non sense to expect that.
by bayindirh | 2025-12-03 13:02:05+00:00
> This is just FUD.

No, it's just opsec.

> Sure, scanners will keep pinging it, but nobody is ever going to burn an ssh 0day on your home server.

I wouldn't be so sure about it, considering the things I have seen.

I'd better be safe than sorry. You can expose your SSH if you prefer to do so. Just don't connect your server to my network.
by flohofwoe | 2025-12-03 13:02:15+00:00
Github became successful long before those 'social media features' were added, simply because it provided free hosting for open source projects (and free hosting services were still a rare thing back in the noughties).

The previous popular free code hoster was Sourceforge, which eventually entered its what's now called "enshittifcation phase". Github was simply in the right place at the right time to replace Sourceforge and the rest is history.
by alexpotato | 2025-12-03 13:02:17+00:00
Some other comments have posted about the laser safety being the issue but I have a more physical story:

Recently got a Waymo for the first time to take my kids and I from one hotel to another in Phoenix.

- Car pulls up

- I walk up to the trunk as I have a suitcase

- Out of habit, I go to open the trunk by pressing the button under the "handle" (didn't realize you have to unlock the car via the app first)

- My hand moves by the rear trunk laser that is spinning and "whacks" my hand.

Not a big deal but seems like an interesting design choice to place a motorized spinning device right next to where people are going to be reaching to open the trunk.
by afavour | 2025-12-03 13:02:18+00:00
Everyone is underpaid and overworked. All things considered the companies probably think it’s worth the trade off, they’ll just fix it and republish. Might even end up with more viewers in the end! How many people have learned that Mad Men is on HBO Max as a result of this?

Execs have less and less shame as the years go on. Pride in artistic endeavour? That’s not going to make the shareholders happy.
by ben_w | 2025-12-03 13:03:16+00:00
Not only, but also. The L in ML is very slow. (By example count required, not wall-clock).

On in-use learning, they act like the failure mode of "we have outsourced to a consultant that gives us a completely different fresh graduate for every ticket, of course they didn't learn what the last one you talked to learned".

Within any given task, the AI have anthropomorphised themselves because they're copying humans' outputs. That the models model the outputs with only a best-guess as to the interior system that generates those outputs, is going to make it useful, but not perfect, to also anthropomorphise the models.

The question is, how "not perfect" exactly? Is it going to be like early Diffusion image generators with the psychological equivalent of obvious Cronenberg bodies? Or the current ones where you have to hunt for clues and miss it on a quick glance?
by andersmurphy | 2025-12-03 13:03:22+00:00
You can definitely mitigate the power/amdahl's law problems with pure SQL and/or triggers/stored procedures. I mention that in the article. However, sacrificing interactive transactions is rough and not always possible.

It's worth keeping in mind that the problem here is not heavyweight computation, but the network latency to the database. Your computations can be fast, but if your latency is still at best 1ms for each time you go to the database during that transaction. Every ms that high contention row is locked is kept your throughput degrades dramatically.
by embedding-shape | 2025-12-03 13:03:28+00:00
> You would have thought people in the business would know about this.

People in the business world seems to only know business, and that's the limit of what they care about. Place these people into the arts, and you quickly see how important it is to have at least a single ounce of care when you work on projects where you want some level of quality.

But I think HBO, Netflix and most TV/streaming services are run by business-people still, as they think it's a numbers game, not a arts game. Eventually someone will understand and take the world by storm, but seemingly not yet.
Show HN: Tuvix – A Modern RSS Aggregator
by TechSquidTV | 2025-12-03 13:03:50+00:00
I miss the old internet, and thank the many small creators that keep it alive with personal blogs and niche websites.

Tuvix is my attempt at a modern RSS aggregator app that I actually want to use. It looks and behaves like any modern app you expect to see on your phone. It's built as a PWA, so you can use it anywhere.

It has a lot of great extra features, like smart comment link detection, a podcast player that remembers where you left off, and the ability to create public feeds from multiple inbound feed sources.

Cloudflare has a very generous free tier, and RSS doesn't really use all that much compute anyway, so it seemed like a great option for a deployment target and will allow me to run a hosted version for free.

Hope you enjoy!
by keymasta | 2025-12-03 13:04:19+00:00
Whereas when played separately it would be an referred to as an arpeggio. But in harmony we might still refer to it as a chord, as in saying, arpeggiate the C# minor (chord) to start moonlight sonata.

This might better be described as arpeggiating C#m second inversion or even C#m/G# in the right over C# in the left...

This is getting possibly-weird but you could call it an arpeggiation of G#sus4(#5)/C#
by N-Krause | 2025-12-03 13:04:56+00:00
Yeah of course, technically that is true. Still when talking about e2ee in any context it implies to the non technical user: The company providing the service cannot read what I am writing.

That's not given in any of those examples. In the case of ChatGPT and this toilet sensor e2ee is almost equivalent to 'we use https'. But nowadays everybody uses https, so it does not sound as good in marketing.
by alexpotato | 2025-12-03 13:04:57+00:00
For those that have never seen it, Sebatian Thrun's talk at Google after winning the DARPA Grand Challenge is excellent (and he's very funny)

So many great lines:

- "We tried to find the smoothest thing in the frame but the smoothest thing turned out to be the sky"

- "We had it adapt to rough terrain by having me drive the car and it learned from my driving. Granted, it drives like a German now."

- "Nobody tells you their sensor error rate so we had to drive the car around and have the car learn the error probabilities"

- "Nobody needs to tell you this but Stanford students are amazing"

- "A lot of the people who entered are what I would call: 'car nuts' "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXQlpu8Y4fI
by moefh | 2025-12-03 13:05:00+00:00
> It probably shouldn't do that if you create a dynamic library that needs a symbol table but for an ELF binary it could, no?

It can't do that because the program might load a dynamic library that depends on the function (it's perfectly OK for a `.so` to depend on a function from the main executable, for example).

That's one of the reasons why a very cheap optimization is to always use `static` for functions when you can. You're telling the compiler that the function doesn't need to be visible outside the current compilation unit, so the compiler is free to even inline it completely and never produce an actual callable function, if appropriate.
PHP executes constant-time crypto – zero-knowledge benchmark inside
by php-next | 2025-12-03 13:05:08+00:00
I built ULTRA – a pure-PHP VM that runs encrypted code without eval, tmpfiles, or key leakage.

Highlights: - Timing-safe AES-256-CTR + HMAC-SHA-256 - Memory isolation via FFI/mprotect - Zero-knowledge: run the benchmark without source/keys - Security audit passed (page alignment, permissions, generic errors)

Run the impossible: docker run --rm phpnext/ultra-bench

GitHub: https://github.com/madebyniconl/php-next

Happy to answer technical questions!