MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: Codesprint – A typing game for practicing coding interview syntax
by cwkcwk | 2025-12-05 18:37:18+00:00
I built Codesprint because I realized my raw WPM on standard typing tests didn't translate to coding. My muscle memory for prose was fine, but I was slow with brackets, semicolons, and indentation; the stuff that actually matters in a technical interview.

Codesprint is a typing tool specifically for code syntax. Instead of random words, it uses real LeetCode snippets (Two Sum, LRU Cache, etc.) so you're practicing realistic patterns.

The Tech: It’s built with Next.js, TypeScript, Chakra UI, and Framer Motion.

One interesting challenge was the scoring logic (lib/scoring.ts). Standard WPM assumes a word is 5 characters, but code is dense with symbols. I had to tweak the engine to handle indentation and "perfect word" streaks correctly to give a metric that actually feels fair for code.

I currently support Python, Java, C++, and JS. I’m looking to add Rust and Go next.

I’d love feedback on the typing "feel", specifically how the engine handles auto-indentation vs manual tabbing.

Thanks!
by enragedcacti | 2025-12-05 18:37:36+00:00
He is unsettling but definitely not simply grotesque and disfigured:

> His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
by hencq | 2025-12-05 18:37:40+00:00
From the description, it doesn't really seem to be full Tail Call Optimization, but only optimizes tail recursion. At least all the examples are about tail recursion, where the function calls itself in tail position, which can indeed easily be changed to a loop. Tail Call Optimization would mean it optimizes any function call in tail position. Typically you'd implement that with a trampoline, but it doesn't seem like this does that.

Edit: It's actually called out under limitations "No mutual recursion: Only direct self-recursion is optimized"
by LorenPechtel | 2025-12-05 18:37:45+00:00
The problem with broad definitions is that it causes false negatives in potential treatments. If you have a treatment that's effective on 10% of your group and useless on the rest you need a sample ten times as large to find an effect.

Or, consider TPA. It is an extremely dangerous drug (used correctly it still has greater than a 1% chance of killing the patient), if you administer it to "stroke" patients you almost certainly do more harm than good. The reality is that if you use it on a bleed type stroke it can (and likely will) only make things worse. Use it on a clot type stroke and you might save them. We of course know this and only use it when a CAT has confirmed it's a clot--but what would happen if we didn't distinguish the two cases?
by velcrovan | 2025-12-05 18:38:08+00:00
mRNA can't cause wolbachia. Wolbachia is a bacterium that actually lives inside cells and gets transmitted through eggs to offspring. it's a persistent organism that reproduces. There's not a way for mRNA to grow bacteria.

mRNA is just a molecule that breaks down, and the mRNA in these vaccines is extremely fragile and temporary. Once injected it enters whatever cells are nearby (muscle cells)and ribosomes read it to produce the inert spike protein. The mRNA itself is gone within hours. Your cells have enzymes specifically designed to break down RNA because cells naturally produce and dispose of mRNA constantly as part of normal function.

The mRNA in vaccines never enters the cell nucleus where DNA is stored, so it can't integrate into your genome or affect reproductive cells in that way. And it doesn't replicate itself either.

And millions of babies have been born to vaccinated parents by now. If the effects you are talking about were even possible they would definitely have shown up by now.
by BeetleB | 2025-12-05 18:38:16+00:00
The number of people you want to follow is much smaller than that 0.1%.

Granted, not everyone I want to follow is on Mastodon, but many, many people I do want to follow are. More than I have time to follow. Indeed, many of the people I followed via blogs in the RSS days now are on Mastodon. It's essentially become my RSS reader, and the content is the same.

Ultimately, the constraint is my time - not the percentage of folks using Mastodon.

(And there's also the bridge with BlueSky, but it requires the BlueSky account to actively consent to the bridge).

Reminds me of the time I canceled my Netflix DVD subscription because I could get them for free at my library. Did the library have a collection as large as Netflix? Not even close! But did they have movies on my To Watch list? Yes!

I figured I'd resume the DVD subscription once I ran out of DVDs at the library.

More than a decade later, I still haven't run out. Every year they get more movies I want to watch than I have time for. Who cares that they're only 0.01% the size of Netflix?
by btilly | 2025-12-05 18:38:27+00:00
Yes, many things can cause dementia. Repeated traumatic brain injuries can cause dementia.

But the leading form of dementia is Alzheimer's. Somewhere in the order of 40% of us are expected to get Alzheimer's before we die. The list of things that have been demonstrated to cause Alzheimer's is much, much shorter.

For the last 40 years, the leading theory about Alzheimer's is that it is caused by the beta-amyloid plaques that are found in the brain after death. This theory has produced exactly zero treatments that meaningfully affect clinical symptoms, despite many drug trial and literally billions in research per year. Seriously, between various sources, we've spent something like a quarter of what it cost to put man on the Moon. (It is hard to make a precise comparison, because a lot of that funding was private.)

This single study represents more progress on effective treatments of Alzheimer's than all of that work combined. The importance of the result should not be dismissed.
by wslh | 2025-12-05 18:38:45+00:00
Science and law (in snail motion) are clearly broken. The paper “Association between Cancer and Environmental Exposure to Glyphosate” [1] shows population groups with significantly higher cancer incidence linked to glyphosate exposure. When findings like these struggle to gain broad acknowledgment, it becomes evident how powerful companies can still "hide the sun with their hands"

[1] Association between Cancer and Environmental Exposure to Glyphosate
by tsenturk | 2025-12-05 18:38:56+00:00
When we set out to implement this within an n8n automation, we encountered some implementation challenges. The issues stemmed from the self-training process—specifically regarding the interest and stress score tree—reaching information saturation, which led to a decay in curiosity. However, keeping the threshold constant (not updating it) fundamentally resolved the issue. To be clear, the experiment has only just begun; this is merely an introductory post outlining the basic architecture.
by j2kun | 2025-12-05 18:39:45+00:00
It is worth noting that the Netflix Prize winner's solution was never meaningfully used, because Netflix pivoted from ranking content based on what you tell them you like to ranking content based on clicks and minutes watched.

To say that "we have solved ranking" because Netflix decided to measure shallow metrics and addiction is... specious at best. Instead the tech industry (in all media domains, not just streaming video) replaced improving platforms and services in meaningful ways with surveillance and revenue extraction.
by joquarky | 2025-12-05 18:40:02+00:00
Similar behavior is happening with hiring. Nobody cares about accomodations anymore because they have been abused.

Now people with actual disabilities have a huge uphill battle because even mentioning an accomodation might be requested puts you at the back of the line.

Sue you say? LOL. Hope you have five figures ready to throw away for a retainer just to gamble that anybody still cares.
by 627467 | 2025-12-05 18:40:12+00:00
Feeed[0] nailed the ux for a rss reader (and other type of feeds) by having a local algorithm that keeps the main feed diverse yet short no anxiety of unread count. Unfortunately it's iOS only and I have not seen open source RSS readers on android that take similar approach. Many support a "today" tab which does help in keeping the task of catching up more focused but if you follow high volume feeds that post a lot you end up having to scroll alot to see variety of content.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/feeeed-rss-reader-and-more/id1...
by ghaff | 2025-12-05 18:40:15+00:00
I'm talking from at least a decade ago. There was a pretty wide assumption (including from myself) that the main attraction of Napster was piracy; it certainly was mine at the time as I replaced a bunch of old vinyl. The expansion of music streaming services are certainly a pretty good indication that convenience of getting mainstream content at prices that people historically paid for vinyl/CDs works pretty well.
by inglor_cz | 2025-12-05 18:40:41+00:00
Nope, we have a lot more sprawl. Look at the old maps of cities and compare them to the current ones.

In Ostrava, where I live, worker's colonies were located right next to the factories or mines, within walking distance, precisely to facilitate easy access. It came with a lot of other problems (pollution), but "commute" wasn't really a thing. Even streetcars were fairly expensive, and most people would think twice before paying the fare twice a day.

Nowadays, there are still industrial zones around, but they tend to be located 5-10 km from the residential areas, far too far to walk.

Even leaving industry aside, how many kids you know walk to school, because it is in a walking distance from them?
by tptacek | 2025-12-05 18:40:45+00:00
Periodic reminder that Newsweek no longer exists. What you're reading is essentially an SEO play run by a religious cult that bought Newsweek's branding in a fire sale. A useful thing to do with any Newsweek story is to take a minute to look into the background of whoever the author of the story is.

Notably, this story is pitched as a "News Story", but it's not really that at all; it's an opinion piece with a couple of quotes from AI opponents. Frustratingly, not many people understand what "Newsweek" is today, so they're always going to be able to collect some quotes for whatever story they're running.
by jjtheblunt | 2025-12-05 18:40:57+00:00
Months ago when this research was showing up (not on HN) there was a disclaimer that the benefit differed for Shingrix vs Zostavax (discontinued in the United States around 2017), and that Zostavax was shown to cause these benefits (Wales study for example).

Shingrix had a potential side effect of Guillain-Barre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain–Barré_syndrome#Vaccin...

It's interesting that the linked article references, in different terms, the distinction, obliquely. Zostavax is attentuated; Shingrix recombinant.

"Our findings suggest that live-attenuated HZ vaccination prevents or delays mild cognitive impairment and dementia and slows the disease course among those already living with dementia."
by proberts | 2025-12-05 18:41:40+00:00
Yes. F-1 students can get H-1B visas. The issue is the $100K payment which applies if the H-1B petition is filed not with a request to change status but with a request to notify a consulate. But if it's filed with and approved as a change of status, then a subsequent H-1B visa application will not trigger the $100K payment.
by encyclopedism | 2025-12-05 18:41:47+00:00
I've mentioned this elsewhere on HN yet it bears repeating:

The core issue is that AI is taking away, or will take away, or threatens to take away, experiences and activities that humans would WANT to do. Things that give them meaning and many of these are tied to earning money and producing value for doing just that thing. As someone said "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes".

Much of the meaning we humans derive from work is tied to the value it provides to society. One can do coding for fun but doing the same coding where it provides value to others/society is far more meaningful.

Presently some may say: AI is amazing I am much more productive, AI is just a tool or that AI empowers me. The irony is that this in itself shows the deficiency of AI. It demonstrates that AI is not yet powerful enough to NOT need to empower you to NOT need to make you more productive. Ultimately AI aims to remove the need for a human intermediary altogether that is the AI holy grail. Everything in between is just a stop along the way and so for those it empowers stop and think a little about the long term implications. It may be that for you right now it is comfortable position financially or socially but your future you in just a few short months may be dramatically impacted.

I can well imagine the blood draining from peoples faces, the graduate coder who can no longer get on the job ladder. The law secretary whose dream job is being automated away, a dream dreamt from a young age. The journalist whose value has been substituted by a white text box connected to an AI model.
by LorenPechtel | 2025-12-05 18:41:57+00:00
Look at the percent of those with autism who never marry. You think that's because they don't want to?!

Look at the percent of those with autism that commit suicide. (And how many slow suicides of drugs or alcohol?? I don't think we even have a ballpark for this.)

It's not just whether they can take care of themselves.
by mapt | 2025-12-05 18:42:02+00:00
Mandatory interview on the subject - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uleKvJ5Xsw8

It is quite difficult to get a lawyer visit or proof of life for a detainee, even if you have lawsuits being filed from outside and string-pulling from representatives.

There are also categories of prisoners who are being told by guards that they'll never get out, never see legal process or summary deportation, they will just rot in a cell indefinitely.
by robotresearcher | 2025-12-05 18:42:12+00:00
> it’s only about 2-3 times a year that anything comes out worth seeing.

This was probably always true, with some randomly amazing years every now and again, like 1972 (The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, What's Up Doc?,...).

IMDB listing shows 470 films released US in 1972. Google says there are ~3,900 IMDB entries for 1972 (why the 4X discrepancy?). The hit ratio was veeeery small even in killer years.
by rolandog | 2025-12-05 18:42:20+00:00
Or worse, they weren't meant to be portrayed as edgy and misunderstood to lure lonely people into cults of hate.

NB: from what I understand, some cult members joined because they felt part of a community; so, to them, it has a high cost of leaving it because they feel like the other members are friends (kind of like FB/Meta).
by DirkH | 2025-12-05 18:42:26+00:00
I feel like all the BS we were taught about architecture design principles multi-AZ, failover strategies, graceful degradation etc was gaslighting us all into thinking any of out work on it actually matters.

This isn't true, but it feels like this when the entire engineering world order seems to actually run on single-point-of-failures where one CEO just messages another when some 3rd party is down. And reputational risk here is completely safeguarded because as long as everyone is down you are fine. Use a service everyone uses and it goes down = no reputational risk. Use a more robust architecture and make some mistake = massive reputational risk and everyone asks why you don't use what everyone else uses.

Blind leading the blind and all that.
by motoxpro | 2025-12-05 18:42:32+00:00
Thats how it used to work in the movie theater/cable days. Then Netflix said "I will pay you a ton of money up front to own everything" Creatives said amazing! Then the "war" for creative talent started because of the fragmentation of services, so you got people saying I will pay you X + a royalty regardless because you are so sought after, which eventually, as you see here, priced them out of their own content.
by yannyu | 2025-12-05 18:42:37+00:00
Innovator's dilemma. Leadership won't invest in the up-and-coming product because they've got a $1 billion revenue target they need to hit this year.

Funnily, Netflix is a common case study on how to transition past the dilemma.

I don't remember where I heard the original story, but this snippet from this article sums up why and how they deliberately cut the DVD team out of the company culture.

> “In periods of radical change in any industry, the legacy players generally have a challenge, which is they’re trying to protect their legacy businesses. We entered into a business in transition when we started mailing DVDs 25 years ago. We knew that physical media was not going to be the future. When I met Reed Hastings in 1999, he described the world we live in right now, which is almost all entertainment is going to come into the home on the internet. And he told me that at a time when literally no entertainment was coming into the home on the internet. And it really helped us navigate this transition from physical to digital, because we just didn’t spend any time trying to protect our DVD business. As it started to wane, we started to invest more and more in streaming. And we did that because we knew that that’s where the puck was going. At one point, our DVD business was driving all the profit of the business and a lot of the revenue, and we made a conscious decision to stop inviting the DVD employees to the company meeting. We were that rigid about where this thing was heading.”

https://colemaninsights.com/coleman-insights-blog/netflixs-s...
by donmcronald | 2025-12-05 18:42:37+00:00
> I don’t want a hard bubble pop such that it nukes the tech ecosystem, but we’re reaching a breaking point.

Some days I wonder if we'd be better off or worse off if we had a complete collapse of technology. I think it'd be painful with a massive drop in standard of living, but we could still recover. I wonder if the same will be true in a couple more generations.

I think it's dangerous to treat younger generations like replaceable cogs. What happens when there's no one around that knows how the cogs are supposed to fit together?
by giancarlostoro | 2025-12-05 18:43:10+00:00
I already got it, apparently there's a weird uptick in men to the point where some doctors are like, nah you don't have that, and then sure enough they realize you do upon further inspection. For context I know men who have gotten it in their mid to late 20s I got it in my early 30s. I'm not sure what the cause is, but for additional context, Shingles is way more common in women.

So there might need to be more studies into shingles and why men are getting it more frequently and younger.
by GuB-42 | 2025-12-05 18:43:30+00:00
The idea of firing people based on the number of lines of code they wrote makes sense if you think like a psychopath.

On average, more productive developers write more lines of code. Of course, writing more lines of code doesn't mean you are actually more productive, but the trend is there.

Elon Musk wanted to lay off 3/4 of a workforce of thousands because he thought 1/4 was enough, it is going to be disruptive no matter what and no matter how you chose, it is hard to predict the outcome. So, the general idea is to pick people randomly. But you want to bias that randomness towards keeping the best and laying off the rest, and so he picked up the number of lines of code as a criteria. It is semi-random and likely to be biased towards better productivity. It is thinking in terms of statistics, not individual people.

He is likely to be the kind of person who would have no problem banning black people from communities if it wasn't illegal. Indeed, there is more crime where there are more black people, so to lower crime, eliminate black people. And it will probably work if you ignore the fact that they are people and not just points on a chart.
by matthewdgreen | 2025-12-05 18:44:36+00:00
I looked into a chickenpox vaccine a while back, but it turns out the current varicella vaccine uses a live virus. So if you're fortunate enough not to have been exposed to chickenpox, taking the vaccine could put it into your body. The Shingles vaccine, on the other hand, has no live virus at all. But you can't get that til 50.

ETA: Since someone downvoted this: I'm not criticizing vaccination, and you should absolutely get your kids vaccinated! But for someone (like me) at the age where you've seen friends with Shingles (ugh), adding live chickenpox virus to your body feels like a risky idea, even before this news.
by icyfox | 2025-12-05 18:44:39+00:00
I used Serp via API many moons ago. The most interesting part of the company imo is their legal defense of different plans:

Production - $150 15,000 searches / month U.S. Legal Shield

ie. "Our U.S. Legal Shield protects your right to crawl and parse public search engine data under the First Amendment. We assume scraping and parsing liability for customers on most recurring plans unless your usage is illegal."

I imagine at least some portion of companies use them just for this liability shield.
by velcrovan | 2025-12-05 18:44:44+00:00
> It is probably reasonable to believe the mRNA vaccines were not improving mortality rates of other diseases,

By now, this is not a reasonable belief. We know that COVID can cause cardiovascular damage, kidney injury, diabetes, neurological problems, and systemic inflammation, all of which increase mortality risk from other causes. It only makes sense that preventing or reducing the severity of COVID infection prevents those downstream complications and reduces all-cause mortality.
by WorldMaker | 2025-12-05 18:44:56+00:00
In the US, ESPN somewhat built its reputation on having some of "all" sports, in part because when the channel started it was much easier/cheaper to fill 24 hours a day on cable with imports and non-traditional sports.

That still seems to mostly apply. In the US on Disney+ the US sports are often front and center, sure, but you can still scroll the list and get European football matches and some Aussie Rules Rugby and Cricket all kinds of things that people don't necessarily think US sports fans would watch. I think part of what ESPN realized, too, is that even regional sports can have global appeal with the right marketing or the fact that not much else is being played in that moment.

ESPN is also still often the home in the US of things like the Scripps National Spelling Bee and various Poker and Chess championships. This was famously mocked in the comedy movie Dodgeball with that movie's climactic Dodgeball championship happening on ESPN Ocho, the fictional 8th cable channel for US ESPN (which had 3 channels at the time). That joke has come full circle in interesting ways as ESPN has roughly 7 cable channels today and intentionally uses the "ESPN Ocho" branding for weirder/smaller audience championships even though the number of people that still remember the comedy movie Dodgeball is shrinking and people don't remember why it was a joke.