MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hollerith | 2025-12-09 02:44:43+00:00
>large corporations whose main goal is to make you addicted to their product and extract the maximal amount of money.

I wasted thousands of hours in the 1990s reading Usenet. The part of Usenet I used (i.e., not the binary newsgroups) never made anyone any money and was never intended to make money by the people who built and administered it.

The software I used to read Usenet, namely Wayne Davison's trn, was likewise never intended to make any money: since its license had a clause prohibiting commercial use, it technically did not qualify as open-source software, but it was freely redistributable, i.e., basically given away (along with its source code).

But trn was designed for addiction. Hitting the space key always brought up a new screenful of text. Whenever I got bored with a post, the n key would skip the rest of the post and show me the first screenful of the next post. Once I'd been shown all the posts in one group, trn would automatically start showing me the next group with unread messages. In summary, the path of least resistance (namely, repeatedly hitting the space key till bored, then hitting the n key) caused a continuous "waterfall" or firehose of text to scroll by on the screen.

Moreover, it was difficult to use trn reflectively: e.g., if I found myself returning in my thoughts to a screenful of text I saw a minute ago, there was a good chance that there was no practical way for me put that earlier screenful back on the screen unless I was still reading the post in which the desired screenful occurred, in which cause I could scroll backward using the b key. (The early web, when the back button still reliably returned the user to the previous page, was a big improvement over trn in its support for reflective use.)

Point is that we should put the blame for the addictiveness of modern life on the right cause: not large corporations, not even the profit motive, but rather the technological progress that has accumulated over the centuries, which enables the creation and the delivery at an affordable price to the average person of experiences that are much more potent or pleasurable than anything available to an average person in the environment in which we evolved.

Yes, sex and eating good food with interesting people were always potent experiences for people, but in past centuries, it took a lot of effort, expense or risk to obtain those experiences in contrast to the ease, cost-efficiency and safety with which potent experiences can be arranged on the internet. And if a person carries around a smartphone, these cheap easy-to-arrange safe potent experiences are available at almost every waking moment.

For me the Usenet of the 1990s was a potent experience because I was strongly motivated by curiosity and learning. (1990s Usenet was full of conversations between very smart people.) Comedian and talk-show host Arsenio Hall joked in the 1990s that the internet was cocaine for smart people. This was true even before the US government lifted (in 1993 IIRC) the ban on using the US internet backbone for any commercial purpose.
by defrost | 2025-12-09 02:45:55+00:00
Unsuprisingly less experienced coders benefit from exposure to more experienced coders.

Interesting questions raised by this, for myself at least,

* how do hybrid schemes work out: some home, some office, less commute overall?

A HN submission yesterday on Australian studies showed remote work being mostly loved in AU, having little productivity impact either way for many, having significant benefits for for people with spectrum / social issues.

* has any tried junior coder meetups with experienced coders "out of office"?

Co working at one home or another, at public libraries, etc.
by tillcarlos | 2025-12-09 02:46:29+00:00
Yeah, 100%. Just having something to move around catches the eye. Cheap trick but works - that's why most short videos have subtitles.

I love this idea. Problem is: it competes with "Hey Claude, take this diagram and animate it". The results are different (worse / better in different regards), but you can modify it more to your liking.

Maybe I'm not seeing the exact use case. I was very close to buying the plan (3 usd / m is a steal), but with Claude I can be more specific what I want.
by snailmailman | 2025-12-09 02:46:48+00:00
Nope. When a new iOS update comes out, all supported devices may immediately install the update if they seek it out. Or it will usually auto update on its own, or at least nag the user to update.

It’s gotten slightly more confusing with the major updates now being optional. You get a choice between getting a feature update or just security patches. Unless I missed it, my phone never really asked me to update to the latest iOS 26. But I can, it’s there. I’m instead on the latest version of iOS 18. (They changed number schemes. 18 is last years major update)

Apple also does security updates for quite a long time. iOS 15, from 2021, got a security patch in September of this year, and works on the iPhone 6s from 2015.
by mike_h | 2025-12-09 02:47:16+00:00
It's more about how the buyers intend to use the media themselves.

The Ellisons are personal friends of Trump and Netanyahu. Netanyahu has spoken repeatedly about media as a weapon, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3tdrO8bA7rs. Ellison is the largest individual donor to the IDF. Trump handed Tiktok to Ellison.

The bid is backed by Kushner (i.e. Trump) and their Saudi allies.
by kikimora | 2025-12-09 02:47:16+00:00
>credit card chargebacks, escrow, and fraud departments exist and work every day without requiring a perfect government

Nope, chargebacks in Russia do not work the way they do in US, not even close. The reason - government does not represent consumers, it represent bank owners. Also primary reason why scams in Russia are so widespread (and why internet is so cheap) is telecoms freely selling personal data (again, government representing telecoms).

Majority of world population live under a shitty government. Primary method a government uses to control population is monetary. First thing happening to a blogger opposing war in Russia is foreign agent status primarily limiting their ability to make money advertising. Government prints money to fund stupid war slowly extracting from population via inflation. Think of China or Iran where the only asset one can invest is real estate. In Iran leaders seriously discussing moving capital to a new city because they ruined local ecology. In China property prices aren’t doing well primary because of government mismanagement. This puts life savings of millions at risk without reasonable hedge. Coming back to Russia - devaluation in 1991, then again in 1998, then again in 2008, then in 2014, then expropriating private pension funds, then the war with western countries making it very hard to move assets out of the country while also freezing assets of tens of thousands Russians in EuroClear. How am I supposed to save for retirement?

Having alternative monetary system is the hedge from a shitty government. If stock market tokenization ever happens I expect a huge influx of funds into US/EU markets from people of China, India and Russia in an attempt to save their life savings from government greed and stupidity.

In this context your point about irreversibility is a desirable property making system independent from a shitty government. Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware of all crypto shortcomings and would love to have something in between current chaos and more orderly system.

A smart contract is a shitty alternative to a good government but a decent alternative to a shitty government. At the end of the day I don’t need sorry, I need a solution.
by tehjoker | 2025-12-09 02:47:29+00:00
This is the kind of piece that becomes popular around the top of the hype cycle when people are trying to keep it going but can sense that perhaps Wiley E coyote has run off the cliff and is suspended in the air. Obviously, by any possible objective indicator, the cost of software development has barely budged and "AGI" is nowhere in the offing while luminary scientists appear to be drawn to whatever the next big thing is, having seen the limits of their (admittedly impressive) creation.

I'm sure that AI tools will be here to stay and will become more integrated and better. I wonder what the final result will be, -20% productivity as in the METR study? +20%? Anything like 90% is the kind of sensationalism reserved for r/WallStreetBets
by charcircuit | 2025-12-09 02:48:25+00:00
I think you are being downvoted because Ethereum requires you to stake 32 Eth (about $100k), and the entry queue right now is about 9 days and the exit queue is about 20 days. So only people with enough capital can join the network and it takes quite some time to join or leave as opposed to being able to do it at any time you want.
by tomhow | 2025-12-09 02:49:03+00:00
To be clear, we will redact personally identifying information and do other things to prevent someone's past HN activity from causing them any trouble in the future. We certainly don't want to cause anyone any trouble and will do whatever we can to prevent that. Our concern is only to avoid gutting past threads and ruining them for the others who participated in in them and for future readers who may find the content of the discussions interesting.
by raptor99 | 2025-12-09 02:50:07+00:00
So you are saying that Dollar Generals tend to open in areas where there isn't already a store that sells anything like food or otherwise? So would people in that "food desert" be better off without Dollar General opening a store? Because the only way I see that is feasible is if you only compare the reality of this situation to the fantasy ideal that isn't reality at all.
by nntwozz | 2025-12-09 02:50:30+00:00
First we lost the pinstripes, then brushed aluminium; then we lost colors in the sidebar icons. Then they made everything flat.

Finally we lost the background and legibility.

Pepe prayge now than Alan is out that things will improve.

We need to get back to Dieter Rams 10 principles for good design.
by BeefySwain | 2025-12-09 02:50:41+00:00
The equivalency here is not 9 billion versus 90 billion, it's 9 billion versus 90 million, and the question is how does the decline look? Does it look like the standard of living for everyone increasing so high that the replacement rate is in the single digit percentage range, or does it look like some version of Elysium where millions have immense wealth and billions have nothing and die off?
by overfeed | 2025-12-09 02:51:07+00:00
> I dont think I've even had the idea of having multiple worktrees going at once.

I have a recent annoyance that's solved by work trees: running multiple AI agent instances locally in parallel, without containers or VMs. Jujutsu isn't even needed for this, 'git worktree' is adequate. Granted, self-hosted agents is a niche use case, but IMO, worktrees are the simplest and most elegant way to scale up GPU utilization once the model is loaded. Other alternatives are multiple checkout locations, containers or VMs each requiring a 1:1 ratio to agent instances.
by schoen | 2025-12-09 02:51:22+00:00
> No human regards it as a tragedy that there are only 9 billion of us instead of 90 billion.

I have met some transhumanists and longtermists who would really like to see some orders of magnitude increase in the human population. Maybe they wouldn't say "tragedy", but they might say "burning imperative".

I also don't think it's clearly better for more beings to exist rather than fewer, but I just want to assure you that the full range of takes on population ethics definitely exists, and it's not simply a matter of straightforward common sense how many people (or horses) there ought to be.
by lucyjojo | 2025-12-09 02:51:23+00:00
it strikes me as reasonable for 1-10 people teams (well, small businesses).

the real problems/risks only creep up for mid to big size businesses, which i don't think the tool is concerned with.

from my understanding the big problems would be:

- auditing/leaking risks that come with bigger headcount/turnover - bad uncontrolled use & problems with policy - operational inertia when problems happen

these are not real for most (healthy) small teams.

the really touchy problem is decryption key management and running state management.
by arjie | 2025-12-09 02:51:56+00:00
The point of infrastructure is to have a common substrate where members of society can provide services to each other. Sure, in some sense there are subsidies but we have to account for the positive externalities. After all, a tennis court has very low utilization of space so that's a "subsidy for rich guys to talk about crypto". And golf courses likewise.

It's just not a meaningful way to think of infrastructure. The point of infrastructure is that it benefits society, and it will benefit some people more than others. Nice sidewalks benefit the rich people who live there more than they do the poor people who have to drive from the suburbs to work there.

And this business about "have to move out of the way" is really a bit much. If they're impeding the disabled then that's of some significance, and ensuring that those who need wheelchair access can still get places is worth it, but any able-bodied person can easily step aside.

I find the online reaction to so much of this stuff hard to fathom. Occasionally, I'll walk by a Lime / Bird scooter that's fallen over and I just pick it up and place it on the side. The net gain to society of having easy-to-access last-mile transportation is probably much greater than this happening occasionally. I really think these things are far overblown. But if you go online, you'd think that sidewalks are completely unwalkable. I principally walk and bike (now e-bike) places and this has never been a problem either in San Francisco or London - both cities where a large contingent has constantly insisted that it is.
by poorblish | 2025-12-09 02:52:13+00:00
I work for a publishing company that sells elearning access to the proprietary “framework”. Anyways our company is now going full bore on AI related content. Everyone is just milling about having meetings about our AI product line but the company is sinking.

We don’t focus any effort on our core services and product, just chase the next fad.

If other publishing companies are anything like the one I work for then they’re clawing at the wall looking for the next big thing. Since AI is a big question mark, they are publishing absolute drivel.
by teknopaul | 2025-12-09 02:52:26+00:00
Bit harsh.

That was probably a node / npm thing, because they had no stdlib it was quite common to have many small libraries.

I consider it an absolute golden rule for coding to not write unnecessary code & don't write collections.

I still see a lot of C that ought not to have been written.

I'm a grey beard, and don't fear for my job. But not relying on AI if it's faster to write, is as silly as refusing a correct autocomplete and typing it by hand. The bytes don't come out better
by Induane | 2025-12-09 02:52:35+00:00
Location: N. Macedonia Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Maybe... Technologies: Python, Django (20 years), JavaScript (When I have to), various SQL & NoSQL data stores, ETL pipelines (custom usually), UI/UX (occasionally), Rust (just learning),HTMX, _HyperScript, jQuery, git, SVN, etc... Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/induane/ Email: oldspiceap@gmail.com
by eru | 2025-12-09 02:54:21+00:00
Going on a tangent:

I wish in the US more areas of policy would be decided at the state level, and I wish more state government would flip coins to decide on their policy. (Even better, if we can push it down to county level.)

The first part is about subsidiarity, which is a good idea anyway. But together this is just a tongue-in-cheek plea for doing more randomised, controlled experiments. (Alas, we can't blind them.)
by nothrowaways | 2025-12-09 02:55:10+00:00
> Principal component analysis of 200 GPT2, 500 Vision Transformers, 50 LLaMA- 8B, and 8 Flan-T5 models reveals consistent sharp spectral decay - strong evidence that a small number of weight directions capture dominant variance despite vast differences in training data, objectives, and initialization.

Isn't it obvious?
by alephnerd | 2025-12-09 02:55:16+00:00
> I wish in the US more areas of policy would be decided at the state level, and I wish more state government would flip coins to decide on their policy. (Even better, if we can push it down to county level.)

The overwhelming majority of policy is decided at the state and local level in the US so long as it's not foreign policy or monetary policy related.

Whatever is decided on the Hill has no bearing once administration and implementation comes to play - which is overwhelmingly done by state and local government.

This is why the US has become increasingly dysfunctional over the past few years - state and local elections which were previously staid affairs became polarized partisan affairs because turnout is low and the overwhelming majority of decision making roles are elected.
by westoncb | 2025-12-09 02:55:19+00:00
> So, they found an underlying commonality among the post-training structures in 50 LLaMA3-8B models, 177 GPT-2 models, and 8 Flan-T5 models; and, they demonstrated that the commonality could in every case be substituted for those in the original models with no loss of function; and noted that they seem to be the first to discover this.

Could someone clarify what this means in practice? If there is a 'commonality' why would substituting it do anything? Like if there's some subset of weights X found in all these models, how would substituting X with X be useful?

I see how this could be useful in principle (and obviously it's very interesting), but not clear on how it works in practice. Could you e.g. train new models with that weight subset initialized to this universal set? And how 'universal' is it? Just for like like models of certain sizes and architectures, or in some way more durable than that?
by ternus | 2025-12-09 02:55:21+00:00
Regarding horses vs. engines, what changed the game was not engine efficiency, but the widespread availability of fuel (gas stations) and the broad diffusion of reliable, cheap cars. Analogies can be made to technologies like cell phones, MP3 players, or electric cars: beyond just the quality of the core technology, what matters is a) the existence of supporting infrastructure and b) a watershed level of "good/cheap enough" where it displaces the previous best option.
by onetom | 2025-12-09 02:57:06+00:00
In earlier versions of Apple OSes, you could edit the menus yourself, with the officially supplied resource file editor app and there was nothing really special about it.

There are `ibtool` and `plutil` CLI commands built-in to macOS these days too, but to get some graphical editor, u would need to download 3GB of Xcode and u would invalidate the code signatures, etc...

Plus there is a huge churn in the application versions, so any customizations would need to be applied repeatedly to newer app versions.

Sad, really...
by phatskat | 2025-12-09 02:57:23+00:00
My mistake for confusing hate speech directly with hate crime. Hate speech can turn a crime into a “hate crime” and that’s my mistake for conflating the two. In my original post the thought behind it was hateful speech with an incitement towards violence - either way, I can agree that speech itself shouldn’t be illegal even if hateful, and I agree with where the law is that if it calls for violence against a group it can constitute a crime.

> My point was that you complain about about speech being suppressed, but ignore the same when it comes to things like hate speech and DEI.

I think it’s very clear - the government shouldn’t be infringing on speech. Hateful or not - so long as the speech doesn’t coincide with calls to action or other things that cause said speech to become part of a crime. And even then, it’s still less about the speech - that’s not the illegal part (as you correct earlier) - it’s about the actions that may rise to the level of a crime.

Overall I still don’t know how DEI works into any of this and I’d like for you to elaborate on that part.
by mpyne | 2025-12-09 02:58:06+00:00
> How do you do either of the following without spending any time at all on estimates?

> "Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale."

This is 'just' bum-standard continuous delivery (which is where most organizations should be heading). You pull the next todo from the backlog, start working on it. If it takes more than a day to commit something, you split the task into something smaller.

You don't need to estimate ahead of time at all as long as the task is small enough, all you need is to be able to put the near-term backlog of work into a good priority order of business value.

If the high-value task was small it doesn't prevent you from doing more work, because the next unit of work to do is the same either way (the next item on the backlog).

If the high-value task was too big, it can cause you to take a pause to reflect on whether you scoped the task properly and if it is still high-value, but an estimate wouldn't have saved you from it because if you'd truly understood the work ahead of time you wouldn't be pausing to reflect. An estimate, had you performed it, would not have changed the priority.

But this Kanban-style process can be performed without estimates at all, and organizations that work to setup an appropriate context for this will find that they get faster delivery of value than trying to shoehorn delivery into prior estimates instead. But there are people who work faster with the fire of a deadline under their tail so I can't say it's unilaterally better.

> "At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly."

If it's hard to do the work as a team, you should be able to tell it was hard retrospectively, with or without having done an estimate ahead of time.

You might say that failing to hit your prior schedule estimates would be a good topic to discuss at a retrospective session, but I would tell you that this is a self-licking ice cream cone. If your customers are happy despite missing internal schedule estimates you're in a good spot, and if your customers are unhappy even though you're "hitting schedule projections" you're in a bad spot.

There's a lot more productive discussions to be done when the team reflects on how things are going, and they typically relate to identifying and addressing obstacles to the continuous flow of value from the product team to the end users.
by kryogen1c | 2025-12-09 02:58:35+00:00
> 2013, the last pre-subscription version

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-...

I found this using my secret inside IT knowledge: searched "buy office perpetual" on the internet.

I know microsoft is the evil soulless megacorp on HN, but the least you could do is attack them for true things instead of totally made up, has-never-ever-been-true things.
by jcalvinowens | 2025-12-09 02:58:43+00:00
> The ads are cross-subsidizing the food.

I don't think you were unclear, that's what I understood you to be saying.

Surely, the grocer just pockets the extra ad money? Never in my life have I seen a for-profit corporation voluntarily charge a lower price than the market will bear because they increased their margin by other means.

The ads are also inherently shitty to the producers: they all have to spend money on the grocer's ads now, because if they don't, their competitors will. If you look at it that way, the ads are almost extortion.
by tehjoker | 2025-12-09 03:01:27+00:00
If the price is sane, I wonder if there is a competitor looking to break into the action, hence the appearance of a piece "asking questions". A great method is to break up the original operation, insert a company that has no compunction about charging higher prices in the name of good process, and clean up.

I just went on Amazon and the wreaths there are like $20-$50. It makes sense that a bulk purchase should be less, so $10 does feel reasonable though I am no expert.