MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ProllyInfamous | 2025-12-15 17:29:47+00:00
This is my favorite geeky non-fiction book.

[•] <https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer...>

In addition to all the technical detail, you learn so much about corporate hubris in their massive quest for non-innovation (resting on their laurels).

C-level staff ignored the brilliance of their Alto computer, invited Steve Jobs over in exchange for a few shares of AAPL IPO [which they almost-immediately sold], and left all their computer researchers scratching their heads as to why staff were being ignored.
by mikkupikku | 2025-12-15 17:29:49+00:00
> Yes, it was far bigger than all its allies taken separately, but those allies could more than double its power.

This breaks down as soon as you stop looking at abstract rankings and dive into the specific logistic realities of force projection. France and to a lesser extent the UK are reasonably capable, but there's no math that adds up to anything approaching America's capabilities.
by latexr | 2025-12-15 17:30:12+00:00
I disagree with the use of “literally” by the person above you, since Sam didn’t literally say those words (unless you subscribe to the new meaning of “literally” in the dictionary, of course).

At the same time, their interpretation doesn’t seem that far off. As per your comment, Sam said he “cannot imagine figuring out how” which is pretty close to admitting he’s clueless how anyone does it, which is what your parent comment said.

It’s the difference between “I don’t know how to paint” and “I cannot imagine figuring out how to paint”. Or “I don’t know how to plant a garden” and “I cannot imagine figuring out how to plant a garden”. Or “I don’t know how to program” and “I cannot imagine figuring out how to program”.

In the former cases, one may not know specifically how to do them but can imagine figuring those out. They could read a book, try things out, ask someone who has achieved the results they seek… If you can imagine how other people might’ve done it, you can imagine figuring it out. In the latter cases, it means you have zero idea where to start, you can’t even imagine how other people do it, hence you don’t know how anyone does do it.

The interpretation in your parent comment may be a bit loose (again, I disagree with the use of “literally”, though that’s a lost battle), but it is hardly unfair.
by businessmate | 2025-12-15 17:30:22+00:00
This repository contains two governance artifacts produced under the AIVO (AI Visibility Oversight) initiative:

The AIVO Independence Doctrine, which defines structural, semantic, and governance constraints required to preserve the independence of an AI governance standard from commercial influence. The AIVO Methodology & Limitations Note, which defines the scope, boundaries, and non-reliance conditions governing use of the AIVO Control Definition for AI-mediated representation and visibility risk.
by wonder_er | 2025-12-15 17:30:24+00:00
working on bringing some basic, banal bits of infrastructure management to real-world traffic issues.

I'm literally trying to fix broken junctions around me.

It's at the same time laughably easy, and wildly complicated.

I'm calling the alternative, correct junction a 'traffic bean':

https://josh.works/traffic-bean

It's relevant to software, sorta. I've got rather a lot of GIS/mobility-related data available here. It's just a rails app that renders a bunch of my strava activity data all at once: https://josh.works/mobility-data

The fixes are entirely accomplishable with nothing more high-tech than traffic cones. They can be upgraded to more permanent and pretty physical objects, but the key bit of the traffic bean finds traffic cones fully sufficient. No half-million USD traffic signals, no red/green/yellow light cycles. continuous flow. safety. peace.

Some stuff that's obvious in some domains, like "at high-throughput times, don't allow key bits of infrastructure be completely unusable".

Bringing this to american municipalities is like trying to speak a language with someone that doesn't speak your language, but demands that you treat them as if they do.

it's been a big, long-running project. Most tradition in the USA is really a fig leaf for supremacy, and people can smell that I'm coming for their supremacy a mile away, and they immediately begin deploying emotional defenses.

Or so it seems.
by embedding-shape | 2025-12-15 17:30:28+00:00
You do realize that there are stable countries that still exist today, that haven't been run by tyrants for very long time, and also are older than US been a country? Or even created before the US was a little British colony looking for purpose in the world?

It seems like Americans forget how young their country is, it's barely a blimp in history so far, although recent written history makes it seem a lot older than it is.
by thenanyu | 2025-12-15 17:30:43+00:00
When I was in my early 20s I used to think I was very clever for pointing out apparent hypocrisies. Now I realize how easily that devolves into “you are imperfect therefore you may never criticize anything”

Americans can never call out human rights abuses because of slavery. The British can never because of colonialism. Period. Forever.

If you find this line of argumentation compelling there’s no discussing anything with you.
by philistine | 2025-12-15 17:30:43+00:00
It's because they don't want to be wrong, while at the same time having to rush to publish because if they want clicks they need to be first. So they publish only what the cops initially tell them, even before they had time to inquire that the couple killed were indeed the residents.

That's a telltale sign of a news organization that doesn't have access to backroom sources.
by throwaw12 | 2025-12-15 17:30:50+00:00
"Is it possible to get a fair and just trial in China?"

What makes you ask a such question? Here are some bad ideas which comes to my mind:

* you think China is inferior?

* or maybe Chinese are inferior?

* maybe you think they always lie?

* or maybe they don't have laws?

* maybe plain old racism?

Forgive me, but your question sounds so bad. Counter question, did any of war criminals get a fair trial in the USA? (I am not listing countries they did war crimes, because there are too many)
by nijave | 2025-12-15 17:32:02+00:00
It's a proxy for amount. More data = more risk

Data tends to be valued based on volume/amount; enterprises have more data and with it comes more risk. As a result, they vet vendors more rigorously to control the risk.

Vetting vendors has a fixed cost. On the small end, it becomes challenging to bootstrap a business when you have a high amount of fixed costs so it's often forgone until a size threshold is reached. This same sentiment is frequently reflected in government regulation as well
by bell-cot | 2025-12-15 17:32:22+00:00
Maybe re-read the Atlantic article?

At least that article's subtitle, where it says "Perhaps the public has good reason to think that the media’s self-aggrandizement gets in the way of solving the country’s real problems."

A click-here-and-get-angry story, about the secrets the "other side's" media is keeping from you, sure sounds like it fits the rap sheet.
by Ajedi32 | 2025-12-15 17:32:32+00:00
I hadn't heard of Agnos before, interesting alternative to ACME-DNS.

Looking at the README, is the idea that the certificates get generated on the DNS server itself? Not by the ACME client on each machine that needs a certificate? That seems like a confusing design choice to me. How do you get the certificate back to the web server that actually needs it? Or is the idea that you'd have a single server which acts as both the DNS server and the web server?
by justin66 | 2025-12-15 17:33:11+00:00
What companies are participating in Tech Force?

The initial roster of private sector partners includes Adobe, Amazon Web Services, AMD, Anduril, Apple, Box, C3.ai, Coinbase, Databricks, Dell Technologies, Docusign, Google Public Sector, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Palantir, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Robinhood, Uber, Workday, xAI, and Zoom. This list will expand over time.

Are there any companies on that list who haven't made gross public displays of servitude towards the current administration?
by welshwelsh | 2025-12-15 17:33:15+00:00
How about instead of taxes, we have a $10,000 per year subscription fee to live in society.

Maybe different depending on area, like $20,000 a year to live in NYC but only $2,000 per year to live in a rural village.

If you can't afford the fee that's OK, it just means you have to live outside of the developed areas and don't benefit from any services provided by the government. But you are free to set up a tent in the woods and live off the land.
by nhoven | 2025-12-15 17:33:41+00:00
Hi - Mentava founder here (we make gamified early literacy software). Obviously I believe in the value of gamification, though I think it's difficult to do correctly.

There's certainly a market for "calm" learning, though you've already identified the main challenge: there's a smaller larger market for people who want to be educated than entertained, and the market for "calm education" is going to be an even smaller subset of that education market.

Essentially you're looking for the people who are saying "I want to be educated, but I'm not looking for the most efficient way to do it. I would prefer to move at a slower pace being driven purely by intrinsic motivation, rather than using extrinsic motivators in order to encourage me to move more quickly"

That market certainly exists, but it's a small enough niche that you'll likely have to be compete at a high price point to be viable. As point of comparison, Mentava costs $500/month, so if I were building a calm learning app (for an even smaller market), I would try to figure out a way justify an even higher price point than Mentava's.
by anarazel | 2025-12-15 17:33:47+00:00
I'm certainly very biased (having worked on postgres for way too long), so it's entirely plausible that I've over-observed and over-analyzed the criticism, leading to my description.

> I (we?) think Postgres is incredibly important, and I think we have properly contextualized our use of it. Moreover, I think it is unfair to simply deny us our significant experience with Postgres because it was not unequivocally positive -- or to dismiss us recounting some really difficult times with the system as "bashing" it. Part of being a consequential system is that people will have experience with it; if one views recounting that experience as showing insufficient "respect" to its developers, it will have the effect of discouraging transparency rather than learning from it.

I agree that criticism is important and worthwhile! It's helpful though if it's at least somewhat actionable. We can't travel back in time to fix the problems you had in the early 2010s... My experience of the criticism of the last years from the "oxide corner" was that it sometimes felt somewhat unrelated to the context and to today's postgres.

> if one views recounting that experience as showing insufficient "respect" to its developers

I should really have come up with a better word, but I'm still blanking on choosing a really apt word, even though I know it exists. I could try to blame ESL for it, but I can't come up with a good German word for it either... Maybe "goodwill". Basically believing that the other party is trying to do the right thing.
by CoastalCoder | 2025-12-15 17:34:01+00:00
Are you sure that a lot of individuals hold those contradictory positions?

Or do the contradictions only exist across multiple persons?

(Tangent: anyone know if there's a term for this fallacy? I.e., claiming that an attribute exists for some/all of a group's members, when in fact that attribute only applies to the collective itself?)
by jvrc | 2025-12-15 17:34:37+00:00
Yes, here are some of the differences of a forum vs reddit:

* Clear structure with discussions organized by categories and tags.

* Keep discussions on-topic and reduce noise with strictly linear conversations.

* Find what you're looking for with a comprehensive, powerful advanced search.

* Conversations are broken up into individual topics, making them browsable, searchable, and readable. Built-in trust system to defend you against trolls, bad actors, and spammers.

* Forums are built for large communities, and hundreds of people can simultaneously participate.

Additionally, the forum is not intending to replace but rather complement existing platforms and community spaces. A couple of highlights on how we are planning to run it:

* Collaborating with existing communities to complement each other.

* Maintaining a long-term vision to strengthen the Ruby ecosystem.
by palmotea | 2025-12-15 17:34:39+00:00
> Why not? Unless you are a Chinese citizen, it arguably makes more sense to grant access to the Chinese government rather than the US government.

You're making zero sense:

1. I predict there will be no change in the US government's access as a result of this.

2. I don't think Americans are so indifferent to their own country that they'd prefer a situation where an adversary country gets handed an intelligence asset. I mean, hypothetically, would an American prefer US trade policy be set that in a way that disadvantages American workers, because some politician got blackmailed because of something his Roomba recorded?

> The PRC generally shows little interest in non-citizens while the US government frequently goes after people beyond its borders

3. The Chinese government has been going after people in the US. They've long been engaged in industrial espionage, but there's also their "overseas police stations" (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415). It's worth noting that US citizens can have a Chinese origin, and I doubt the Chinese government would suddenly become uninterested in a dissident once he got naturalized.
by robszumski | 2025-12-15 17:35:11+00:00
Same author talked about adversarial license plates that trick these cameras with a sequence of black blocks, discussed here in original form [1]. He is interested in breaking both the plate detection (ideal) and character recognition (good). The examples are pretty cool looking.

[1]: https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ?&t=1428
by runjake | 2025-12-15 17:35:24+00:00
1. This news site is analogous to a tabloid. They're just rehashing info from K's appearance in a LADBible video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXtDH2IXKY8

2. While I don't even dislike the guy, let alone hate him, Kiriakou tends to make grandiose and controversial claims that get discredited.

3. Kiriakou hasn't been privvy to CIA tech since roughly 2004. Yes, before the era of modern smartphones, all devices were pwned. He's been doing the rounds on any podcast that will take him where he elaborates on these claims further and it's pretty clear that he doesn't have decent subject matter knowledge.

Can a lot of phones and TVs and cars be exploited? Yes. Keep your devices patched. And, don't do things that attract the CIA's attention enough that they're putting in the significant effort it takes to pwn your TV or car.

tl;dr: If you're in a position where the CIA is targeting you, worry.
by sethhochberg | 2025-12-15 17:35:39+00:00
"Internal" is a blurry boundary, though - you pick integer sequence numbers and then years on an API gets bolted on to your purely internal database and now your system is vulnerable to enumeration attacks. Does a vendor system where you reference some of your internal data count as "internal"? Is UID 1 the system user that was originally used to provision the system? Better try and attack that one specifically... the list goes on.

UUIDs or other similarly randomized IDs are useful because they don't include any ordering information or imply anything about significance, which is a very safe default despite the performance hits.

There certainly are reasons to avoid them and the article we're commenting on names some good ones, at scale. But I'd argue that if you have those problems you likely have the resources and experience to mitigate the risks, and that true randomly-derived IDs are a safer default for most new systems if you don't have one of the very specific reasons to avoid them.
by roadside_picnic | 2025-12-15 17:35:41+00:00
In addition to all this, I also feel we have been getting so much progress so fast down the NN path that we haven't really had time to take a breath and understand what's going on.

When you work closely with transformers for while you do start to see things reminiscent of old school NLP pop up: decoder only LLMs are really just fancy Markov Chains with a very powerful/sophisticated state representation, "Attention" looks a lot like learning kernels for various tweaks on kernel smoothing etc.

Oddly, I almost think another AI winter (or hopefully just an AI cool down) would give researchers and practitioners alike a chance to start exploring these models more closely. I'm a bit surprised how few people really spend their time messing with the internals of these things, and every time they do something interesting seems to come out of it. But currently nobody I know in this space, from researchers to product folks, seems to have time to catch their breath, let along really reflect on the state of the field.
by carlm42 | 2025-12-15 17:35:44+00:00
Yeah per your edit that'd be for 256GB RAM which puts that into serious dollar category. For comparison I checked what AWS asks for for the same spec and that'd be $4616/month (for a db.m8gd.16xlarge), and that doesn't even yield you an actual NVMe. You can of course build the same for cheaper on Hetzner but again then you're on the hook also for the operations of the thing, which at that size is possibly non-trivial.
by Jeremy1026 | 2025-12-15 17:35:46+00:00
% cat test.js

const { init } = require ( "@holler2660/console-text") ;

init({ apiKey: "ct_live_<key removed>", debug: true });

console.text("Error detected!");

% node test.js

[console.text] SDK initialized successfully

[console.text] Alert sent: { id: 'zzmfq6eltuqica32krircrql', delivered: true, rateLimited: false }
by FancyFane | 2025-12-15 17:35:47+00:00
Even MySQL benefits from these changes as well. What we're really discussing is random primary key inserts (UUIDv4) vs incrementing primary key inserts (UUIDv6 or v7).

PlanetScale wrote up a really good article on why incrementing primary keys are better for performance when compared to randomly inserted primary keys; when it comes to b-tree performance. https://planetscale.com/blog/btrees-and-database-indexes
by 1718627440 | 2025-12-15 17:35:49+00:00
In addition to my other comment as you wrote you are not familiar with Git yet, some comparison to these commands. You can be in a commit in JJ, while in Git, you are always outside.

'jj edit' seems to correspond to 'git checkout', '@-' is '@~'. '@+' is not possible in Git, because a commit can have an arbitrary amount of children, Git might not even know about, not sure how JJ does this. @~5 is the 5th ancestor, @^5 is the fifth parent, @{5} is this ref five actions ago. This is the ref-log, which you can look at with 'git reflog' or 'git log --reflog'. 'master@{37.days.ago}' also works.

'jj split': use 'git commit --amend' and unselect changes or 'git reset --soft' to an older version, recommit the first part and then take the original commit on top. A git commit consists of a state, not of a diff so putting some commit on top of another that already contains part of the changes results in splitting the former.

'jj describe': 'git commit --amend'

'whoops, insert commit in the middle': just commit

'jj squash': either 'git reset --soft @~2' then 'git commit -c/C' or 'git reset @~' then 'git commit --amend' or 'git rebase' with squash or fixup. The later is possible from some other commit by using 'git commit --fixup' or even 'git absorb' (I think also exists in JJ).

Working in a detached state is fine, but you might want to add a ref (branch or tag, or something else) when you are finished, otherwise Git will eventually garbage-collect them (defaults to 4 weeks to 90 days depending on how you access the commit). You can push just fine to a remote, just specify the branch, i.e. 'git push origin @:branch'. You can also push to local branches to update them without checking them out with 'git push . @~7:feature/something'. Don't use pull, it is stupid, merge when you want to merge, rebase when you want to rebase, but don't do it implicitly as part of fetch.

Ask, if I glossed over something and shall elaborate.
by ChrisArchitect | 2025-12-15 17:35:56+00:00
Some other WOTY selections:

Oxford 'rage bait' https://corp.oup.com/news/the-oxford-word-of-the-year-2025-i...

Collins 'vibe coding' https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/collins-w...

Cambridge 'parasocial' https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2025/11/18/cambridge-di...

Dictionary.com '67' https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year-2025/
by wonder_er | 2025-12-15 17:35:57+00:00
i saw the strava mention and I clicked through - this is a super cool project! The maps + visualizations are beautiful.

Something about strava and the data we get from it is really special to me. It's a fun step into a deeply physical thing (moving our selves around the surface of the earth) and renders it in this digital space - a website, an animation.
by mytailorisrich | 2025-12-15 17:36:31+00:00
In the "good old days" it was like that:

"The colonial government used the Control of Publications Consolidation Ordinance (1951) to regulate publications and suppress freedom of the press. One notable case resulted in the suppression of the newspaper Ta Kung Pao for six months (later reduced to 12 days) for its criticism of the colonial government's deportation of the Federation of Trade Unions-backed fire relief organisation officials and use of live fire against protestors. Deportation was also used as a method to control politics in education. Lo Tong, a principal at a pro-Beijing, patriotic middle school, had been deported in 1950 for raising the People's Republic of China (PRC) flag and singing the national anthem at his school." [1]

Now of course we'd all prefer Western-style freedoms but the narrative on HK is highly skewed and hypocritical, with HK used as a pawn in the broader anti-China narrative.

Even Singapore isn't exactly rosy but it is a friend of the West so it's fine.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Hong_Kong
by glenstein | 2025-12-15 17:37:05+00:00
I do think it's the playbook: accuse science of ignoring or underappreciating something, portray it as being in a crisis that you are rescuing it from by restating familiar facts as if they were revolutionary.

I think Stephen Jay Gould, for as much of a brilliant and gifted writer as he was, and someone who truly rose to the moment to smack down intelligent design and, separately, the bell curve, was nevertheless borderline fraudulent in characterizing punctuated equilibrium as a revolutionary upheaval of Darwinism. I think it's a familiar model. I wouldn't quite say grifter but dangerously close and with all the familiar hallmarks.
by Cornbilly | 2025-12-15 17:37:08+00:00
> Comments here are very strange, “Reading books should go the way of cursive! Education is more like childcare anyways.”

That's pretty on-brand for HN though. This place enforces a very peculiar version of anti-intellectualism centered on empty-headed contrarianism.

They want to play devil's advocate but they aren't smart enough so all you get are dumb hot takes.