MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by bullen | 2025-12-21 21:48:04+00:00
My old 6600 from 2016 is still running fine, I replaced the SSD (Intel 400GB to X25-E 64GB that will last 20 years minimum), the RAM (Micron to Samsung from aliexpress before the price hike... got 8 sticks of 16GB for $40 a pop for backup) and even the old trusty monitor (Both Eizo 5:4 matte VA; mercury tube to led, with f.lux/redshift the blue light is ok).

But with a 3050 upgrade from the 1050 and later 1030 (best GPU for eternity if you discount VR) I had in it it's good for another decade. If a game comes out that does not run on it I wont play it... simple as that... 150W is enough. So far only PUBG stutters, what a joke of bloat and poor engineering that game has become...

Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7. Win 11 improves NOTHING over 10.

YMMV but recommendation is still: do not buy new X86 hardware; do not use new OS/languages.

Build something good with what you have right now.

Make it so good it's still in use after 100 years.
by tripletao | 2025-12-21 21:48:26+00:00
I agree that his contributions to proto-computer-science were real and significant, though I think they're also overstated. Note the link to the Wikipedia page for BNF elsewhere in these comments. There's no evidence that Backus or Naur were aware of Chomsky's ideas vs. simply reinventing them, and Knuth argues that an ancient Indian Sanskrit grammarian deserves priority anyways.

I think Chomsky's political views were pretty terrible, especially before 1990. He spoke favorably of the Khmer Rouge. He dismissed "Murder of a Gentle Land", one of the first Western reports of their mass killing, as a "third rate propaganda tract". As the killing became impossible to completely deny, he downplayed its scale. Concern for human rights in distant lands tends to be a left-leaning concept in the West, but Chomsky's influence neutralized that here. This contributed significantly to the West's indifference, and the killing continued. (The Vietnamese communists ultimately stopped it.)

Anyone who thinks Chomsky had good political ideas should read the opinions of Westerners in Cambodia during that time. I'm not saying he didn't have other good ideas; but how many good ideas does it take to offset 1.5-2M deaths?
by nheer | 2025-12-21 21:49:07+00:00
Thanks for the links - the benchmarks game is a great resource and has been around for a long time.

That said, I'm not sure what "do better" means here. This is an open source project I maintain in my spare time. If you see room for improvement, PRs are always welcome. That's how open source works - if something is useful to you and you want it improved, contribute.

The project exists because some people find it useful. If it's not for you, that's fine too.
by MBCook | 2025-12-21 21:49:39+00:00
GP’s point is that’s a false dichotomy.

Yes that’s the correct decision when those are the only options, like if a car has stalled or the driver just got out and ran away.

In this case there’s a third option: the computer that’s still perfectly functional should have been able to get out of the way on its own. And legally all drivers are required to.

I assume that applies to robots as well, if it doesn’t it absolutely should.
by calmbonsai | 2025-12-21 21:49:52+00:00
It does provide some context to the article.

For some additional context:

Mr. Ferris was a trust-fund kid (East Hampton, St. Paul's prep) and inherited multi-generational wealth (Ferris family real estate companies) before becoming a "writer".

His "career advice" was only ever applicable to those who could afford NOT to work.
by simonw | 2025-12-21 21:49:59+00:00
I hope registering an entire domain name for a blog post doesn't become a trend. I like linking to things that are likely to last a long time - a personal blog is one thing, but expecting people to keep paying the renewal fee every year for a single article feels less likely to me.

A good alternative here is subdomains, since those don't have an additional annual fee. https://logging-sucks.boristane.com/ could work well here.
by analogpixel | 2025-12-21 21:50:03+00:00
> The American Association of Retired People (AARP, an advocacy non-profit for older adults) has paid for ads on podcasts I listen to. The ad made a claim which felt raspberry-worthy (in service of an important public service announcement), which they repeat in writing: Asking to be paid by gift card is always a scam.

>Of course it isn’t. Gift cards are a payments rail, and an enormous business independently of being a payments rail. Hundreds of firms will indeed ask you to pay them on gift cards!

That’s where I stopped reading. The author seems more interested in being contrarian for clicks than in giving practical advice. AARP is right here: being asked to pay by gift card is a major red flag, and unless you know the company personally, it’s time to walk away.
by wakawaka28 | 2025-12-21 21:50:12+00:00
>You're stating your opinions as fact.

So what? I have an opinion, backed up by years of being in bars and talking to people who actually like to drink. If you need a disclaimer in a comment, maybe you need to go have a drink to take the edge off.

>I think drinking for the buzz demonstrates an immaturity with alcohol consumption. One many have, but an immaturity nonetheless.

People of all ages enjoy the effects of alcohol. I don't think many would consume it if not for those effects. The people you are calling immature, would call you a goober.
by t0mas88 | 2025-12-21 21:50:21+00:00
The cockpit side is very passenger friendly, it assumes zero aviation knowledge. It's a single button and once pressed the system will show on the screens that it's active, what to expect and where it is going. The passengers just sit and watch, while it tells you via voice and on the screens what's happening. No action required apart from the single button.

It uses the navigation database (onboard) and weather data via datalink (ADS-B in the US, satellite in other places) to select an airport/runway. It looks for a long enough runway with a full LPV (GPS) approach available and favorable wind.
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-12-21 21:50:31+00:00
On 25 February 2022, at around 15:00, five divers became trapped in a Paria Fuel Trading Company oil pipeline near Pointe-à-Pierre while making repairs to the pipe.

Unbeknownst to the divers, differential pressure had been created when the pipe was cleared of oil nearly a month earlier. While the divers were removing an inflatable plug, they got sucked into a vortex that pulled them into the oil pipe.

Christopher Boodram [the only survivor] was able to escape by crawling down the pipe for around three hours.

Paria [company] admitted they had no rescue plan, citing that they had 'no legal responsibility to rescue the men' Further external attempts to save the men were reportedly blocked by Paria with arguments being made that the divers could not be rescued safely. In November 2023, the Commission of Enquiry found that "Paria's negligence could be characterised as gross negligence and consequently criminal". They recommended that the Director of Public Prosecutions "consider charging Paria with what is commonly known as Corporate manslaughter." In September 2024, charges were filed against the managers of Paria, and Land and Marine Contracting Services Ltd., a company contracted by Paria to repair the pipeline.

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Paria_Diving_Disaster
by andrewaylett | 2025-12-21 21:50:53+00:00
One thing I didn't think Patrick quite explored enough: there's a big difference between someone asking you to pay using a gift card and you asking to pay using a gift card.

The examples he gives are predominantly around giving people the option, while the scams are very much pushing a requirement.

If someone wants you to get a gift card to pay them, and won't take cash or credit? Scam. If you have a gift card already and someone's willing to accept it in lieu of cash? Probably no more likely to be a scam than any other vendor?
by MBCook | 2025-12-21 21:51:32+00:00
It’s not gonna be good. But you want it to be a gridlock because the cars can’t get out fast enough because there’s too many cars on the road.

Not because a bunch of cars that are perfectly capable of moving are just sitting there blocking things purposefully waiting for the driver in the sky to take over.

And what if, due to $BIG_DISASTER they won’t be able to for a week?
by zamadatix | 2025-12-21 21:52:02+00:00
Most people are just using the ISP provided router as their gateway today anyways. E.g. ATT fiber is proud to advertise to you that it knows about each of your devices on the ONT+Router combo - that's even the only way to set up a port forward (you can't just type in an IP, you have to pick a discovered device).

"But people can NAT the v4 with another router to hide it!" -> sure, and the same crappy solution works with v6.

"But at least prosumers can replace the ONT via cloning the identifiers and certain hardware" -> also no change with v6.

Randomized addresses do have valid use cases though, particularly when connecting to Wi-Fi networks other than your own when set to randomize the MAC per connection (not just the scanning MAC) as well, but I'm just not really convinced this is a realistic example as framed.
Show HN: I built a 1‑dollar feedback tool as a Sunday side project
by jeremy0405 | 2025-12-21 21:52:03+00:00
I’ve always found it funny how simple feedback widgets end up as $20–$30/month products. The tech is dead simple, infra is cheap, and most of us here could rebuild one in a weekend.

So as a “principle experiment” I built my own today as a side project and priced it at 1 dollar. Just because if something is cheap to run and easy to replicate, it should be priced accordingly, and it’s also fun marketing.

1$ feedback tool.

Shipped today, got the first users/moneys today, writing this post today. Side Sunday project, then back to the main product tomorrow.
by moregrist | 2025-12-21 21:52:30+00:00
> Fail-safe means "in a situation where the function fails, fail in a way that doesn't cause injury"

In a very local sense, this is true. In terms of the traffic system, this can create a systemic problem if the stoppage causes a traffic jam that creates problems for emergency vehicles.

Thus it is a _different_ failure mode.

If someone stops in the middle of traffic because they’re lost, their GPS went out, or they realized that they’re unsafe to drive, we don’t celebrate that as the driver entering a fail-safe mode. We call that “bad judgment” and give them a ticket.

If it precipitates a larger problem where lives are lost, they may be in considerable legal or financial trouble.

I don’t see why we should treat Waymo any differently.
by CubsFan1060 | 2025-12-21 21:52:51+00:00
I'm no lawyer, but this part

"You are hereby granted a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license under Broadcom’s copyrights to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software in source code or binary form for use in connection with Broadcom products."

Feels like it's saying you're only allowed to use it in the future if you use it in relation to some Broadcom product.
by Aurornis | 2025-12-21 21:53:14+00:00
> she has been preaching this for a decade, branded the term "wide events" and "observability",

With all due respect to her other work, she most certainly did not coin the term “observability”. Observability has been a topic in multiple fields for a very long time and has had widespread usage in computing for decades.

I’m sure you meant well by your comment, but I doubt this is a claim she even makes for herself.

She has been an influential writer on the topic and founded a company in this space, but she didn’t actually create the concept or terminology of observability.
by neom | 2025-12-21 21:53:25+00:00
Excuse the ramble: it maybe sucks more for people with eating addictions than alcohol in some sense. I am an alcoholic and I've been sober for, I dunno, years and years now. I did actually go to pubs and cocktail bars when I first got sober, I didn't drink I just sat and felt awful and wanted to drink badly. I felt I needed to learn how the feeling of the craving was going to work so I can plan for it etc, especially when stress creeps in. So, as another comment said, I got sober by stopping the first drink. For me it's very logical, if I have a drink, I will drink, I will not stop, I cannot stop, so if I take the first drink it doesn't matter that is is, it's done, so I don't drink the first drink since I decided that, hence sober.

...I suppose it's hard for someone who struggles with eating to stop food all together. That said, after I got off booze, I started on sugar, never been into sugar in my life, didn't like cake, ice cream any of that stuff, but getting off booze that started, I craved ice cream and stuff all the time, and gave in not realizing what was happening, once I told my dr and he explained the body was substituting the alcohol... so I stopped sweet stuff (mostly all of it, honey and fruit juice seem fine, I don't crave them). I don't have very many cravings any more, I know that "you're going to crave this if you have it more than a few times" feeling as soon as I consume something now, and, I just, don't. Is it hard? Every time, but I prefer the control more tbh.

Maybe I live a kinda boring life now, oh well, at least I feel great.
by lokar | 2025-12-21 21:53:36+00:00
What makes you think it was either?

AIUI, it was the irregularity of the uncontrolled intersections combining with the “novel” (from the POV of the software) driving style of the humans. In dense areas during outages signaled intersections don’t actually degrade to 4 way stops, drivers act pretty poorly.

The normal order and flow of traffic broke down. The software determined it was now outside its safe parameters and halted.

Certainly not ideal, and the should be a very strong regulatory response (the gov should have shut them down), and meaningful financial penalties (at least for repeat incidents).
by defrost | 2025-12-21 21:53:47+00:00
I agree ..

It was a throw to now removed usage by the person I replied to in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46342642

That and a few other choice phrases were well over the line.

They significantly edited their comments after I started using their own words in my replies.

Cleaning up after I quote the guidelines citing their usage leaves me looking the worse .. but so it goes.

I have a genuine interest in human history across the globe, they had a visceral reaction to the mere suggestion of prior occupation and use of land in Texas .. let's just mark that down to them having a bad day.
by delusional | 2025-12-21 21:54:20+00:00
> It makes sense to see if things can be improved, but any action proposed must be weighed against its downsides.

This is that. What you are seeing, repeated attempts to discuss a proposal, is the process by which the EU bureaucracy weighs the downsides. When you see it being pushed, that's evidence that some member states do not find "the correct answer" to be "no further change". That will eventually necessitate a compromise, as all things do.

> (Ab)using child sex abuse to push through surveillance overreach is particularly egregious

You are editorializing to a degree that makes it impossible to have a rational discussion with you. You HAVE to assume the best in your political adversaries, otherwise you will fail to understand them. They are not abusing anything, and they don't think it's "surveillance overreach". They believe it to be just and fair, otherwise they wouldn't propose it.
by matiasmolinas | 2025-12-21 21:54:44+00:00
Built a browser-based AI OS where a master agent creates/evolves specialized sub-agents defined in markdown, executes Python via WebAssembly, and learns from past executions via persistent memory.

Key features: - Agent reuse & evolution (80% match rule) - Python runtime in browser (Pyodide: numpy, scipy, matplotlib) - Memory system that improves over time - Virtual file system (localStorage) - Completely client-side

Example: Ask for "FFT signal analysis" → system checks memory → finds/evolves SignalProcessorAgent → generates Python → executes in browser → saves results → records experience → next time runs in seconds.

Try it: https://github.com/EvolvingAgentsLabs/llmos

Started as a weekend project exploring self-improving AI systems. Core features working, some rough edges.

Feedback welcome, especially on the agent evolution approach and memory structure.
by ethin | 2025-12-21 21:55:28+00:00
I would happily switch to Linux, problem is it doesn't support the audio hardware I have. And although I've tried to figure out how the drivers get it working on Windows, I can't separate the wheat from the chaff in the 500+ USB packet dump Wireshark gives me :-( Otherwise I'd dump Windows and throw NixOS on this thing and stripe my two NVMes.
by andrewaylett | 2025-12-21 21:55:36+00:00
It's interesting (to me, at least) to see the kinds of discounts that folk apply to gift card transactions. It's not unheard of for a colleague to end up with a gift card they can't use, and while there's a real sense in which the card is worth its face value, there's also a sense in which its restricted use makes it worth less than face value. Plus, if you want to spend £x in a shop then you don't normally need to buy a colleague's gift card.
by some-guy | 2025-12-21 21:55:43+00:00
> Win 10 improved NOTHING over 7. Win 11 improves NOTHING over 10.

You had me up to this point. The problem is that there are actually quite a few improvements under the hood over those upgrade paths, but they are unfortunately hidden under all of the bullshit. I was an early adopter of Windows 11 specifically because of their efficiency core support over Windows 10 when I upgraded my CPU.
by simonw | 2025-12-21 21:55:46+00:00
A few of my favourites:

- Software Sprawl, The Golden Path, and Scaling Teams With Agency: https://charity.wtf/2018/12/02/software-sprawl-the-golden-pa... - introduces the idea of the "golden path", where you tell engineers at your company that if they use the approved stack of e.g. PostgreSQL + Django + Redis then the ops team will support that for them, but if they want to go off path and use something like MongoDB they can do that but they'll be on the hook for ops themselves.

- Generative AI is not going to build your engineering team for you: https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/12/31/generative-ai-is-not-g... - why generative AI doesn't mean you should stop hiring junior programmers.

- I test in prod: https://increment.com/testing/i-test-in-production/ - on how modern distributed systems WILL have errors that only show up in production, hence why you need to have great instrumentation in place. "No pull request should ever be accepted unless the engineer can answer the question, “How will I know if this breaks?”"

- Advice for Engineering Managers Who Want to Climb the Ladder: https://charity.wtf/2022/06/13/advice-for-engineering-manage...

- The Engineer/Manager Pendulum: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum... - I LOVE this one, it's about how it's OK to have a career where you swing back and forth between engineering management and being an "IC".
by lr4444lr | 2025-12-21 21:55:46+00:00
Question for people who have trouble losing fat (this was never my problem): have you ever tried instead of dieting to just force yourself to eat more fruits, vegetables, and protein daily while also allowing yourself free range in the remaining appetite room to have whatever? The human mind/brain/whatever doesn't do well with deprivation of a high dopamine reward, but what would happen if you started to shift your tastes by insisting that it get used to a more healthful diet as a precursor to getting what it wants?

I ask this because when I was younger, I also had tastebuds warped by hyper-palatable foods, but after incrementally getting my diet to such a clean and optimized place, I literally feel bad even while chewing and tasting something like a donut, heavily salted and oiled potato chips, or candy. It's probably like how I would have felt if I literally mixed a tablespoon of oil and sugar or salt together and swallowed it.

Is it that hard to shift the system toward better habits by incremental introduction of better ones, and crowding out the bad? Exercise helps here, because once you begin to enjoy fitness, you get a stronger feedback loop with the bad food creating bad outcomes.
by 20k | 2025-12-21 21:56:09+00:00
Yep, this exactly. Its completely unacceptable

And its not something that's just a 'you' problem - if you want the actual underlying issues in physics to be fixed, its a massive issue that the spokesperson for fixing those problem currently may be a bigot, or at the very least endorses bigots and sex pests. Beyond just being generally completely unacceptable, it allows everyone to completely dismiss whatever is being said very easily

For the other poster, ben goldacre is someone that's become very well known for making effectively the same points as sabine, but within the pharmaceutical industry. They sat down and basically wrote for decades about how the testing was absolutely broken, multiple books, a column, and producing lots of work on how broken studies were in medicine and talking to anyone that would listen - and as a result, they were actual able to enact effective change. It was a huge win for evidence based science!

Sabine is not someone who can achieve that in physics - her videos would be much more effective if they contained actionable content and concrete analyses of the issues. I'd have a tonne of respect for her if what she did was publish papers or videos showing the degree to which the literature was broken, analysing funding, conducting interviews (even if anonymous) with researchers, looking through examples of bad papers and explaining the problems to a lay audience. Producing a mixture of for-scientist and for-lay person material to break the figures down, in a way that produces a compelling argument

Instead we at best get specific examples plucked out of the air. I know she isn't massively overgeneralising the issue from my own personal experience, but she presents a terribly uncompelling argument as to why there are problems. Where's the data? Why are you writing book blurbs for sex offenders instead of writing papers?

That's why I've come around increasingly to the idea that she's a grifter, even though I used to enjoy her content (before it went out of the window) and think that she does likely genuinely care about the underlying problem to some degree. Its closer to ragebait than anything that feels productive now unfortunately. I don't think its even necessarily on purpose on her end - the right wing has a way of sucking in anyone on the fringes and giving them a home even without them knowing, but also why give her the benefit of the doubt?
by spockz | 2025-12-21 21:56:12+00:00
We put the error code behind a kind of message/dialog that invites the user to contact us if the problem persists and then report that code.

It’s my long standing wish to be able to link traces/errors automatically to callers when they call the helpdesk. We have all the required information. It’s just that the helpdesk has actually very little use for this level of detail. So they can only attach it to the ticket so that actual application teams don’t have to search for it.
by idle_zealot | 2025-12-21 21:56:14+00:00
> there needs to be some sort of rule to prevent lawmakers from trying to ram through laws with the same spirit without some sort of cool down period

This doesn't make any sense as policy. It's often the case that the first crack at a law has oversights that come to light and cause it to fail. Then a reworked version that takes those issues into consideration is brought forward and passes. That's the process functioning correctly.

What might make sense is something akin to the judicial systems "dismissal with prejudice". A way for the vote on a law to fail and arguments to be made to bar similar laws from being resubmitted, at least for a time. So one vote to dismiss the bill, and another can be called to add prejudice.

That sounds good to me. I'm not sure if it would actually yield good results in practice.