MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by zelphirkalt | 2025-12-13 18:46:22+00:00
I get what you are saying, but the examples are not great:

I've rarely seen (if ever?) a website so stupid and user hostile, to claim that there are no other "real" e-mail service providers out there, other than gmail, outlook, or a maybe a few others. There are services, which reject things like tempmail, that much I have seen, definitely.

Jitsi Meet runs in the browser. Does it not on a mobile phone? Perhaps there is something to this one, if it is the case, that customers in some areas don't even own any working machines any longer and only have phones.

Train tickets, at least where I am from and living, one can always buy, by going to a service center, or online via browser. I never had to use an app to buy train tickets. Even when traveling in China, which is arguably much further in terms of digitization than Germany, I was able to buy train tickets via a website comfortably, upon which the ticket was registered to my passport.

But I get it, there can be such examples.

Though I don't think this really matches the "depend on the cloud" thing. It's more like depending on services, that make use of "the cloud", and not directly using cloud services oneself.
by Kim_Bruning | 2025-12-13 18:46:52+00:00
AI output often 'looks like something' on first try, which makes it easy to assume no effort went in.

But there's a big difference between prompting and accepting the first output versus someone using search, multiple LLMs, actually READING the underlying papers, and iterating until it's done.

Sometimes that still means getting to 'done' faster than by more traditional means. Sometimes it means more depth than you'd manage otherwise. Sometimes somewhere in between.

Of course, by that point, either way, it doesn't really look like lazy AI output anymore.

Maybe it's not so much about the tools/agents as it is about the intent-to-engage behind them?
by tibra | 2025-12-13 18:47:18+00:00
I was backpacking in Australia in 2008. I talked to a girl when I was driving up the east coast und she gave me her brother’s numbers and said to call him when I was visiting Perth (west coast). I did, he invited me to live at his house for six weeks for free. After that, I was invited by a German to live at her house in Melbourne for another two month. I was so short with my money and that both were incredibly kind to me.
by metadope | 2025-12-13 18:47:30+00:00
> No one is likely to be looking up my license plate and looking at my movements, because I don't do anything that would warrant that kind of attention.

Want to spend an hour on the side of the highway while the police search your vehicle?

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article... + https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46196209

> the kinds of people who oppose this kind of tracking _on principal alone_, I'm immediately suspicious of all of them.

The principle is Don't Tread On Me.
by ttul | 2025-12-13 18:48:25+00:00
If they were going for maximum confusion, why not write, “Solar battery costs plummet analysis findings back anytime electricity availability”?

Subject (((((Solar battery) costs) plummet) analysis) findings)

Verb [back]

Object (anytime (electricity availability))

Garden path sentence structure trap creation relies on initial word parse error encouragement. Brain pattern recognition system default subject-verb-object order preference exploitation causes early stop interpretation failure.

Solar battery costs plummet phrase acting as complex noun modifier group creates false sentence finish illusion. Real subject findings arrival delay forces mental backtrack restart necessity.

Noun adjunct modifier stack length excess impacts processing speed negatively. Back word function switch from direction noun to support verb finalizes reader confusion state.

We write to be understood. Short sentences and simple words make the truth easy to see.
by lukeschlather | 2025-12-13 18:49:35+00:00
There's a difference between malicious compliance and noncompliance. The EU has generally ruled that the lack of specificity you allude to does not exist; Apple has misinterpreted things that provide specific requirements to mean something other than what they legally mean. Fines have been levied and it seems that the situation has not yet been resolved; the fines will likely grow if Apple doesn't comply.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
by kbolino | 2025-12-13 18:50:00+00:00
This is a sharp-edged tool guarded behind an experimental flag. You are not meant to use it unless you want to participate in the experiment. Objections like this and the other one ("check if it's enabled" -- you can't, that's not what secret.Enabled() means) illustrate that this API may still need further evolution, which it won't get if it's never available to experiment with.
by shagie | 2025-12-13 18:50:33+00:00
> I’m also a sucker for 35mm in medium format so you can see photo content around the glorious sprocket holes.

Have you seen Ted Orland's holga photos? https://www.anseladams.com/products/tree-in-snowstorm-yosemi... and https://www.anseladams.com/products/dawn-at-mono-lake-in-win...

---

I personally like 4x6 (a 5x7 is a bit more awkward and 8x10 is right out). One of my favorite things was when Polaroid peel apart film was available - I'd do a transfer to a watercolor post card in the field and put a stamp on it and send it. One of a kind photograph - while you could take another photograph there, you could never make the same print of it since it was a destructive process.

(Also neat being in the field and letting a young child do it from being under the hood to pulling out the film and transferring it to a post card or having the print as it is properly developed)
by lelanthran | 2025-12-13 18:50:48+00:00
I feel you should avoid this.

Too many people, myself included, often skip LLM content.

After I am done rubberducking with the LLM I write my own code. I can you should do that too. Leave a few days after your session to let the discussion percolate in your mind, then write the post and only then check the discussion again to see if any details can be added.

In all fairness, I dont actually write blog posts like this, I just bang 'em out whenever I feel like, so not sure of it will work as well as I think it would.
by cmckn | 2025-12-13 18:51:39+00:00
A few years ago, I was in the drive through of a Starbucks on the east side of Seattle. A very shiny Porsche 911 was in front of me, and I was kind of rolling my eyes. Who needs to drive a Porsche to Starbucks? Douchebag.

Whoever it was paid for my order. Kind of a record-scratch moment, just completely changed my mood and was a good reminder to not be negative for no reason.
by estimator7292 | 2025-12-13 18:52:00+00:00
We don't put all our coal and gas plants out in the desert, they're next to and within our cities.

Physically transporting electricity across distance is very expensive and a not-insignificant amount of power is simply lost on the way. These problems only get worse as the amount of power goes up, and the danger grows very quickly as power goes up. Plus the strategic and logistical benefits of distributed generation.

Simply put you can't centralize generation for the entire country. There's no practical way to actually transport that much power. Not with the technology we have today. If we had high-temperature superconductors then it would make more sense. But with standard metal wires, it's not happening.
by bananaflag | 2025-12-13 18:52:11+00:00
> I'm hoping someone would make a new sci-fi movie with a vintage aesthetic that would intentionally emphasize and magnify this old-school analog awesomeness of galactic empires that seem to entirely lack integrated circuits.

This is what I hoped for Foundation, to replicate the 1940s now-retrofuturism I imagine while reading the books. Alas, it wasn't to be.
by eigenspace | 2025-12-13 18:52:43+00:00
Those numbers are pretty much irrelevant. Canadians arent evenly distributed throughout the country (nor throughout Ontario. That province is empty other than a tiny corner of it), the overwhelming majority of them live in a few areas that are quite population dense (i.e. metro-Vancouver area, Edmonton/Calgary axis, and the corridor from Toronto to Montreal.

Besides, Canada used to have a much more extensive train network back in early 1900s when the population was a tenth of what it is now.

Canada could have functioning train networks if we wanted them.
by kbolino | 2025-12-13 18:53:36+00:00
This is not what secret.Enabled() means. But it probably illustrates that the function needs to be renamed already. Here's what the doc comment says:

// Enabled reports whether Do appears anywhere on the call stack.

In other words, it is just a way of checking that you are indeed running inside the context of some secret.Do call; it doesn't guarantee that secret.Do is actually offering the protection you may desire.
by MichaelZuo | 2025-12-13 18:53:55+00:00
Honestly it seems like nobody under this entire post has actually fully read the TOS for any Apple service.

I have once for iCloud... and the impression I got was that they must think close to 100% of the population on Earth are potential scoundrels for them to put in so many clauses and escape hatches.

I don’t think it’s possible to fully read any modern TOS from a bigco and not get an inkling of that.

The real issue is why are people signing up to TOS they haven’t fully read, and if they have… why are they signing up for something that directly spells out they are possible scoundrels who need to be dominated.

It’s like some kind of mass self humilitation ritual.
by manarth | 2025-12-13 18:55:02+00:00
I like the concept, but the blog post describes a USP which I can't see in the API.

> "Our approach uses AI to do what humans try to do…" > "factor in your vessel type and planned route"

The API describes a single latitude parameter and longitude parameter, rather than a route, and doesn't appear to accommodate vessel type.

Have I misread the API, or are routes and vessel-types part of a future planned capability?
by wizzwizz4 | 2025-12-13 18:56:10+00:00
I'll put it another way: long COVID has been studied quite a lot over the past 5 years, and I'm not aware of anyone being able to distinguish it from ME/CFS (except by definition). People appear to have stopped trying to draw a distinction, by and large, in favour of trying to identify better category boundaries to use instead. See https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines13112797 for a Nov 2025 literature review, which basically says "except for long COVID being caused by SARS-CoV-2, it's very difficult to tell ME/CFS-like long COVID and ME/CFS apart" in excruciating detail. Some things have been found to occur in long COVID but not found to occur in ME/CFS, and vice versa, but afaik there's nothing found to occur in ME/CFS-like long COVID that's been found to not occur in ME/CFS.

(Technically, long COVID is a broader diagnosis, encompassing some long-term conditions caused by a COVID-19 infection that are distinct from ME/CFS, but I consider that a "by definition" distinction rather than anything real. This is what you'd expect if ME/CFS had multiple causes, and COVID-19 infection could cause multiple chronic conditions, and most long COVID is actually ME/CFS.)

The ME Association came to this conclusion a couple of years ago: https://meassociation.org.uk/2023/05/updated-booklet-long-co...

> The ME Association (MEA) takes the view that Long Covid and ME/CFS are both examples of a serious and debilitating condition that can follow any type of viral infection.
by neilv | 2025-12-13 18:57:10+00:00
I could write all day about the times people helped me that I know about, and there's others I suspect, and surely others I never suspected.

One that comes to mind was when I was on my own as a teen, and fortunately had a community college co-op student internship. My coworkers looked out for me in various ways, both professionally and personally, as if it was just ordinary for them.

I also found some similar above-and-beyond goodness by people at Brown University.

So that's what I knew in adulthood, until later disillusionment.

I still try to promote the way that I know exists, and I recognize a lot of other people who live that, or are ready to switch to it.
by HumblyTossed | 2025-12-13 18:57:17+00:00
> Lot of arrogant people here who think they are safe and better than anybody and blame OP.

You see this a lot in the Apple "community". Apple can _never_ do wrong. Apple can _never_ make a mistake. Apple's choices are _always_ the best choices.

I don't understand why people put corporations on pedestals.
by riskable | 2025-12-13 18:57:20+00:00
Pub/sub via WebSockets seems like the simplest solution. You'll need to change your LLM serving architecture around a little bit to use a pub/sub system that a microservice can grab the output from (to send to the client) but it's not rocket science.

It's yet another system that needs some DRAM though. The good news is that you can auto-expire the queued up responses pretty fast :shrug:

No idea if it's worth it, though. Someone with access to the statistics surrounding dropped connections/repeated prompts at a big LLM service provider would need to do some math.
by munchler | 2025-12-13 18:58:06+00:00
Battlestar Galactica (2004) has an aesthetic like that. While they do use mainframe computers, they avoid all networking due to the risk of being hacked. Galactica is the only Battlestar to survive the first episode specifically because it’s the only one that still uses this outdated technology.

Plus, it’s just one of the best TV shows ever made in any genre.
by fakedang | 2025-12-13 18:58:16+00:00
I find this ranking rankling because it doesn't take into account sex-based differences in monogamous behaviour. For example, the last animal in the list with the lowest score (red-tailed fox) is present only because the female fox is indeed extremely promiscuous. Male foxes on the other hand, are almost 100% monogamous, choosing not to mate even if they are widowed. I guess the same also happens for the grey wolf, where pack leaders can access multiple female wolves, which inherently forces the latter into a monogamous relationship.
by ericd | 2025-12-13 18:58:31+00:00
Distributed. New transmission lines have big nimby issues, and many existing corridors are already getting overloaded. There are recurring attempts to reform the permitting process (in the last Congress it was called EPRA/energy permitting reform act), but… we’ll see.

Bureaucracy is the main thing holding back clean energy right now, rather than economics. You can see this in how Texas, which has lax grid regulation but isn’t biased towards clean energy has far surpassed CA, which subsidizes and got a big head start, in wind/solar generation in a few years.
by khazit | 2025-12-13 18:59:09+00:00
We dismissed using journalctl at the very start. We’ve had similar experiences with other CLI tools: the moment you start embedding them inside a program, you introduce a whole new class of problems. What if journalctl exits? What if it outputs an error? What if it hangs? On top of that, you have to manage the subprocess lifecycle yourself. It’s not as easy as it may seem.

You can also argue that sd_journal (the C API) exists for this exact reason, rather than shelling out to journalctl. These are technical trade-offs, doesn't mean we're fuckups
by nullfield | 2025-12-13 18:59:58+00:00
I don’t know. You can’t buy the kind of loyalty that treating your customer well earns you (nor buy revocation of the spite that treating them poorly does).

Particular airline like United makes your life hell, or even behaves sloppily and heavily inconvenienced you? You not only hate them, you actively go out of your way to tell your friends, family, and anyone who asks your opinion that you hate them. And why you hate them. (Lost one/only bag, for longer than an entire trip, over ten years ago.) And go out of your way, even at higher cost, to avoid them. (Have never flown United afterwards.)

Aside: We know this can be done competently; see Japan. They’ll even fail sometimes, but I suspect that nearly-always, someone from the airline would be delivering the bag personally after they obsessively located it, as opposed to the “meh” attitude US carriers take.

On the other hand, some company like Valve: for an out-of-warranty product (just time, current-model Steam Deck) that was purchased outside the country and gray-market imported (consumer level, just carried out to another country)… and which they don’t sell in your country… they demurred a bit then agreed to ship a replacement part to the original purchaser. At zero cost. Dealing with product issues isn’t fun, but we all know issues arise sometimes, and they killed the “delight the customer” goal.

Some companies still care, and I’d argue that treating your customers like crap while attempting to extract maximum “short term value” doesn’t actually work. Not in the long term, and in the short term, well… it depends on your definition of “short term”. One bad incident can go viral and wreck your quarterly earnings.
by d4rkn0d3z | 2025-12-13 19:00:03+00:00
I had an interaction with chatGPT that I thought was fun and interesting for three reasons:

1) There could be something novel about this, even if it's just the way it all hangs together.

2) If not, then it could be mundane but consistent output which is encouraging, with respect to previous interactions.

3) It could be wrong but then it is quite convincingly so, I have not yet checked the details.

Do you agree? Tell me what you think?
by mattacular | 2025-12-13 19:01:11+00:00
1. buy any model that meets your specs (i like TCL)

2. setup a one time use wifi network with randomized SSID and password (hotspot from your phone works well)

3. connect your tv to it and update to latest software

4. delete the wifi config and reset that network (roll to new SSID and password)

5. connect an apple tv set top box and never use any of the tv features ever again
by jacquesm | 2025-12-13 19:01:12+00:00
I love your skepsis of what I consider to be a fairly normal project, this is not to brag, simply to document.

And I'm way above 3 kW, more likely 5000 to 5500 with the GPUs running as high as I'll let them, or thereabouts, but I only have one power meter and it maxes out at 2500 watts or so. This is using two Xeons in a very high end but slightly older motherboard. When it runs the space that it is in becomes hot enough that even in the winter I have to use forced air from outside otherwise it will die.

As for electricity costs, I have 50 solar panels and on a good day they more than offset the electricity use, at 2 pm (solar noon here) I'd still be pushing 8 KW extra back into the grid. This obviously does not work out so favorably in the winter.

Building a system like this isn't very hard, it is just a lot of money for a private individual but I can afford it, I think this build is a bit under $10K, so a fraction of what you'd pay for a commercial solution but obviously far less polished and still less performant. But it is a lot of bang for the buck and I'd much rather have this rig at $10K than the first commercial solution available at a multiple of this.

I wrote a bit about power efficiency in the run-up to this build when I only had two GPUs to play with:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/llama-energy-efficiency/

My main issue with the system is that it is physically fragile, I can't transport it at all, you basically have to take it apart and then move the parts and re-assemble it on the other side. It's just too heavy and the power distribution is messy so you end up with a lot of loose wires and power supplies. I could make a complete enclosure for everything but this machine is not running permanently and when I need the space for other things I just take it apart, store the GPUs in their original boxes until the next home-run AI project. Putting it all together is about 2 hours of work. We call it Frankie, on account of how it looks.

edit: one more note, the noise it makes is absolutely incredible and I would not recommend running something like this in your house unless you are (1) crazy or (2) have a separate garage where you can install it.
by wrsh07 | 2025-12-13 19:01:33+00:00
Casey Handmer is a huge solar bull and his estimate is that solar becomes cheaper than any other form of electricity even when generated from northern states by 2030 (likely sooner)

Iirc solar is meaningfully more efficient (30-50%) in southern states, so it will likely make sense to place energy intensive workloads in locations with more direct sun.

However, the cost of transmitting additional power is interesting and complex. Building out the grid (which runs close to capacity by some metric^) is expensive: transmission lines, transformers or substations, and acquiring land is obvious stuff. Plus the overhead of administration which is significant.

So there's a lot of new behind-the-meter generation (ie electricity that never touches the grid)^^

With all that in mind, I expect energy intensive things will move south (if they have no other constraints. Eg cooling for data centers might be cheaper in northern climes. Some processing will make sense close to where materials are available) But a significant amount of new solar will still be used in northern states because it's going to be extremely cheap to build additional capacity. Especially capacity that is behind-the-meter.

^ but not others! Eg if you're willing to discuss tradeoffs you might find dozens of gw available most of the time https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/out-of-thin-air

^^ patio11 has a good podcast about this https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/the-ai-energy... Disclaimer: my employer apparently sponsored that episode
by riskable | 2025-12-13 19:03:16+00:00
The way the current architecture works—as far as I know—is your assumed "server caches the generated output" step doesn't exist. What you get in your output is streamed directly from the LLM to your client. Which is, in theory, the most efficient way to do it.

That's why LLM outputs that get cut off mid-stream require the end user click the "retry" button and not the, "re-send me that last output" button (which doesn't exist).

I would imagine that a simpler approach would be to simply make the last prompt idempotent... Which would require caching on their servers; something that supposedly isn't happening right now. That way, if the user re-sends the last prompt the server just responds with the same exact output it just generated. Except LLMs often make mistakes and hallucinate things... So re-sending the last prompt and hoping for a better output isn't an uncommon thing.

Soooo... Back to my suggested workaround in my other comment: Pub/sub over WebSockets :D
by karianna | 2025-12-13 19:03:29+00:00
Usual caveats of “you should run load to see if it’s truly wasted”, but we do know that Java defaults are not ideal out of the box and so we analysed a ton of workloads on Azure and came up with this: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/java/jaz - better defaults out of the box for the JVM in containers at runtime.
by rapind | 2025-12-13 19:03:52+00:00
> all the conflict with the creator

Just so no one misunderstands this. The creator (Evan) didn't get into, or start, any drama himself that I ever noticed. I'd argue he's a very chill and nice dude.

I've been on the edges of the community for probably a decade now (lurker), and all of the drama came from other people who simply didn't like the BDFL and slow releases strategy.