MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tripletao | 2025-12-05 19:39:22+00:00
It's obviously almost all confounders, since COVID mortality is low now and choosing to obtain the vaccine correlates strongly with other medical and non-medical factors affecting all-cause mortality. The point is that no adverse effect from the vaccine offsets that confounding beneficial effect. More covariates would shrink the confounding effect, but they did the best they could with their dataset.

That confounding effect turned out to be massive, which is bad news for anyone hoping to tightly bound the vaccine risk. It's good personal news for anyone in the vaccinated group, just more as to their general life choices than as to COVID.
by danans | 2025-12-05 19:39:24+00:00
> It is really still quite a mess at the moment.

Integration, testing, and support are all expensive. Right or wrong, that's a reason why if a laptop "just works" (like a Mac, Windows Thinkpad, or a Chromebook), it probably has proprietary binaries.

Also, if you aren't paying for the OS (via the hardware it's coupled with), you can't expect the OS to have the benefits of tight hardware integration.

Even Framework laptops use proprietary boot firmware, and they've been pretty clear that they only provide support for Ubuntu and Fedora, not the alphabet soup of other Linux desktop distros.
by gorjusborg | 2025-12-05 19:39:57+00:00
Years ago, when I initially picked up Rust, I loved it. It does a lot of things right. At the same time, though, I knew there was a possibility of it going wrong in two opposite directions:

1. Developers balked at being required to take on the cognitive load required to allow GC-less memory management

2. Developers wore their ability to take on that cognitive load as a badge of honor, despite it not being in their best interest

I eventually came to the decision to stop developing in Rust, despite its popularity. It is really cool that its creators pulled it off. It was quite an achievement, given how different it was when it came out. I think that if I had to implement a critical library I would consider using Rust for it, but as a general programming language I want something that allows me to focus my mental facilities on the complexities of the actual problem domain, and I felt that it was too often too difficult to do that with Rust.
by 9x39 | 2025-12-05 19:40:24+00:00
Upmarket electrical trade, engineering offices, MSPs commonly, smallish healthcare, an equine event center, a bank.

I see tons of small businesses (mom & pop, restaurants) with a UI AP or two, of course, but that's not what you meant, I don't think.

The places that COULD use UI often just don't care, and want the cheap toilet paper (netgear, ebay whatever) since cost discipline can be critical. I think there's a niche of biz with enough margin that networking/cameras get sold together and they don't insist on lowest price. My guess would also be the MSP that is quoting the job also heavily influences whether UI is used, plenty of dinosaurs out there.

Bigger places want routing, network virtualization, etc from the big players you mentioned. UI doesn't want to mess with BGP, spine-leaf, sd access/wan, etc. There's also like the 24/7 support options they want, and access to the partner/VAR/contractor networks so you have tons of options. The sales deals and dinners unfortunately factor into this too...
by emschwartz | 2025-12-05 19:41:48+00:00
Give Scour a try!

It ranks articles by how closely related they are to your interests. You can import a set of RSS feeds or scour all 15,000+ sources.

I built it because I wanted to find the good articles among noisy feeds like HN Newest. I've also avoided RSS readers in the past because of that feeling of having thousands of unread emails.

https://scour.ing
by alexashka | 2025-12-05 19:41:52+00:00
> There's a lot of nonsense that comes out on both sides of the aisle. I wish there was a solid single source of truth to figure out what's really going on in China and what's really going on behind the scenes in the U.S.

Isn't this simply the answer?

That what's going on is gaslighting of the public and that there are people behind the scenes and they don't want hoi polloi to know what they're up to?

This geo-politics (or politics) talk is 'intellectual' men's astrology.

When a woman asks me my astrological sign, I know she's a deeply unserious person. When a man says 'do they have a reliable supply of food and energy'...
by CamperBob2 | 2025-12-05 19:41:53+00:00
There's a lot of nonsense that comes out on both sides of the aisle. I wish there was a solid single source of truth to figure out what's really going on in China and what's really going on behind the scenes in the U.S.

I've always assumed that there is such a source of truth, but that I had never heard of it, wouldn't have access to it, and couldn't afford it if I did.

Reading a few tweets from Musk was all it took to correct that misapprehension. It's increasingly clear that nobody at any level of play knows jack shit about anything.
by m4rtink | 2025-12-05 19:41:59+00:00
This is really nice to finally see this happen! It has been super awkward that often small bugs and messing features persisted for years for the sole reason of the given app being closed source, so the permanently busy Jolla engineers just could not get to fixing it & the community couldn't help withou source & license enabling them to contribute.

It never made sense not opening everything up from the start - did they really thing someone would just clone it and made bank if they themselves usually struggled to make the whole thing work financially.

In my opinion it was most likely the combination of the combination of three things:

1) The race to release the Jolla 1 ASAP back in 2013, resulting in a messy codebase and systems not setup for community to contribute.

2) Then clueless investors got involved, especially when they needed emergency funding after the Jolla Tablet debacle in IIRC ~2015, blocking Jolla from opening the full source.

3) Constant firefighting preventing engineers on actually opening things up and setting things up for people to contribute & actually review the contributions in timely manner.

So good to see things finally improving. :)
by tptacek | 2025-12-05 19:42:02+00:00
Did you read the paper? I just did. There's no data in it. It's a broad statement about research directions in glyphosate accompanied by concerns that all chemical agricultural supplements are objects of concern, epidemiologically, with Parkinsonism.

I think the point about the microbiome is well taken, for what it's worth. It's a good response to "humans lack a shikemic acid pathway, which is where glyphosate is active".
by throwup238 | 2025-12-05 19:42:50+00:00
> I wish there was a solid single source of truth to figure out what's really going on in China

What kind of sources are you looking for? The Five Year Plans are the best source of truth for what they are planning on doing nationwide. The annual Statistical Communiqué on National Economic and Social Development and China Statistical Yearbook from the NBS contain statistics on how that implementation is going. Then every year the NDRC delivers the Report on the Implementation of the Plan for National Economic and Social Development and on the Draft Plan to the National People’s Congress which packages up the statistics on how the plan is progressing.
by mickdarling | 2025-12-05 19:43:07+00:00
The age gating of needing to be 50 years old to get the shingles vaccine is really obnoxious. I had shingles outbreaks twice in my life, one in my early 30's and once at 48. Obviously, both before 50 years old.

I had to argue with my doctor to prescribe the Shingles vaccine at 49. And when I had it in my 30s, nobody even bothered to give me any antivirals, which did exist at the time, or nerve pain relief.

After I had the shingles vaccine, nerve pain that I'd been suffering with every time I got the slightest little allergy or cold suddenly disappeared, and I haven't had it since more than a year later.

If you are under 50 years old, and had chickenpox, and especially if you've had one outbreak of shingles, force your doctors to prescribe the vaccine. It costs $100-$200 without insurance coverage, and it is worth it.
by palmotea | 2025-12-05 19:43:22+00:00
> On the plus side, I guess we can thank AI for bringing back the humble em-dash.

It was always there, and used. It was just typically restricted to pretty formal, polished writing (I should know, I have coworkers who fuss over em and en spaces). I bet if you looked, you'd find regular use of em-dashes in Newsweek articles, going back decades.

The things LLMs did was inject it into unsophisticated writing. It's really only an LLM tell if it's overused or used in an unexpected context (e.g. an 8th-grader's essay, an email message).
by hinkley | 2025-12-05 19:43:27+00:00
They also did a lot of pioneering work in DSG transmissions. I bought a Jetta when they finally moved it to VW from Audi. Great transmission and saved me a lot on brake jobs. Their DSG tune automatically engine brakes when you feather the brake pedal.

> But have you ever tried to make something you built to easy to maintain?

At work, all the time. The people who get it love working on or with my code. The ones who don’t look at me like I have a horn growing out of my head.
by csb6 | 2025-12-05 19:43:39+00:00
> One day you have kente cloths and taking the knee everywhere, and before you know it, right-winger bloggers are running the law enforcement.

How are these at all comparable? One is a photo op at the Capitol, and one is leading a massive immigration raid campaign full of civil rights violations. Even if you believe these raids are lawful, they are not performative like the photo op stunt was - they are massive operations that greatly affect millions of lives.

If you are making a “both sides are bad” argument then that is a pretty poor comparison.
by ssl-3 | 2025-12-05 19:43:44+00:00
I remember Sony.

Sony Rootkit, Sony BetaMax, Sony MiniDisc, Sony ATRAC, Sony Memory Stick [Select / PRO / Duo / PRO Duo / PRO-HG Duo / M2 / XC / PRO-HG Duo HX / WTF], Sony UMD, Sony Elcaset, Sony SDDS, Sony VAIO, Sony Walkman, Sony Discman, [...]

At least they had some lasting success with their Umatic video tape cartridge, and with the CD that they co-developed with Philips. Their Trinitron tubes were unique and generally quite good -- and they lasted as long in the market as any other CRT did, I suppose. And their various iterations of PlayStation console have all been popular despite being Sony products.
by Capricorn2481 | 2025-12-05 19:43:45+00:00
Disagree. The people meaningfully controlling the direction of AI are the foundational problem. They are funding the politicians that control the system leaving society vulnerable. And we are well past the point of getting them out of power.

Our ability to affect change on them is about numbers. The backlash to how AI is forced on us is an easy rallying point because it's a widely experienced negative. If you own a computer or phone, chances are good AI has annoyed you at some point.

People hated Clippy. I don't think it would've been helpful to say "It's not Clippy you're mad at, but the societal foundation that enabled Clippy." That's not a good slogan.
by cookiengineer | 2025-12-05 19:44:54+00:00
Tomorrow: Grokipedia entry about how Linus Torvalds is a rapist and baby child eater and also used the word pizza a lot of times in his email.

You're doubting this now, but deep down you know I'll be right. Elon Musk wants to win the race not because he believes in AI, but because he wants to be in control of the perpetual present.
by LudwigNagasena | 2025-12-05 19:45:25+00:00
> these two words aren't interchangeable

Exactly. That's why you can't jump from "people don't feel like they own their labor" and "people bemoan their boss" to Marx's theory of alienation.

> literally only one of the names you mentioned were writing post industrial revolution - the rest had literally no notion of "cog in the machine"

But the very framing that this is an ill that is unique to industrial society is Marxist. Slavery, corveé labor, taxes, poor laborers, marginalisation existed for thousands years in one form or another.

> you're trying so hard to disprove basically an established fact: Marx's critique of exploitation of labor post industrial revolution is certainly original and significant in his own work and those that followed.

I don't dispute that Marx's critique of exploitation of labor post industrial revolution is original or significant. I dispute your claim that people who share similar sentiment have to agree with Marx's theory of alienation.
by drzaiusx11 | 2025-12-05 19:45:33+00:00
I could "deal with it", until I couldn't. When a seemingly fully functional person with no warning signs suddenly breaks down (often catastrophically), providers scramble and tend to misdiagnose since they're missing key criteria. Without a formal diagnosis, it can look like severe depression or psychosis or a number of other similar conditions that have very different treatment plans. Autistic burnout treatment is something entirely different, although it can present the same. A prior diagnosis would at least point them in the correct direction for treatment.
by kagakuninja | 2025-12-05 19:45:50+00:00
My 40 years of alienation was not about equity, I was pointing out that the optimistic "We are all going to be rich" vibe of the 90s was wishful thinking due to the massive inequality in the tech world.

Few teams other than green-field start-ups have flexibility regarding tools or technology. My first job was COBOL, 'nuff said about that. Even at start-ups the leads / architects choose most of the technology, and many of my ideas were shot down, such as using C++ in the late 90s, and using Scala in 2010.

People seem to think agile has increased alienation, when in fact the pre-agile world was also terrible. What matters is the quality of the team, not the methodology.
by sdo72 | 2025-12-05 19:46:31+00:00
I don't consider myself an anti-vaxxer. But I do have doubt in vaccines especially mRNA vaccines nowadays, and I wish these studies do more than just this.

I have 4 kids, and 3 of them got vaccinated for the covid (1 is a baby 2 years old) for the very first time with Delta. They struggle for weeks to recover, they get tired, they seem to have heart related symptoms. Eventually, those went away after months. The baby has never had covid (no vaccine). I then have never covid vaccinated them, and they have never been sick with covid even though my wife and I caught covid after our 3rd vaccine shots. We didn't do any isolation, we share things and direct contacts with them. They might have had Covid but very mild, the quick tests never showed positive.

My wife got blood clot issue that I saw blood coming out from her skin.

I struggled many months with the vaccines with weird fatigues (I'm normally very healthy in my late 30s). My gut biome seemed to change and I became quite sensitive to some food (milk proteins mostly, not just lactose intolerance)

My mom who lived in a different country got 3 shots and she struggled with heart condition for more than a year, Drs couldn't find the reason why. It was difficult for her to do anything with strength. She finally recovered after 1+ year.

There're many real and true stories like mine, I really have no idea what these studies saying anymore.
by doublerabbit | 2025-12-05 19:46:42+00:00
> Hosting a website is not so easy for the average person, even the tech savvy person, specially if you try to learn it now using the way large websites are developed.

It's easier then ever. Shared hosting with cPanel has enabled anyone including my mother to host a website, blog or whatever.

A blog doesn't need to be an abstraction of JavaScript libraries and frameworks tucked behind Cloudflare. Just make a CRUD application and you have a blog. It yes requires knowledge but it's not hard. With LLMs now running the internet it's even easier than before.
by jasode | 2025-12-05 19:46:45+00:00
>write like a late night kitchen gizmo ad?

I naturally wrote "it's not just X, it's Y" long before November 2022 ChatGPT. Probably because I picked up on it from many people.

It's a common rhetorical template of a parallel form where the "X" is re-stating the obvious surface-level thing and then adding the "Y" that's not as obvious.

E.g. examples of regular people writing that rhetorical device on HN for 15+ years that wasn't in the context of advertising gadgets:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

So AI-slop writes like that because a lot of us humans wrote like that and it copies the style. Today is the first time I've learned that the "It's not X, it's Y" really irritates many readers. Personally, I've always found it helpful when it reveals a "Y" that's non-obvious.
by vpShane | 2025-12-05 19:46:53+00:00
He did buy an entire island in Hawaii and makes it a decent place for the natives (from what I hear) but otherwise...

Billionaire Drools That “Citizens Will Be on Their Best Behavior” Under Constant AI Surveillance

https://futurism.com/the-byte/billionaire-constant-ai-survei...

Is the kind of mindset behind this guy.
by PaulHoule | 2025-12-05 19:47:13+00:00
Well...

Personally I can't stand TikTok or Youtube Shorts or the videos on Instagram. I just can't stand the meaningless motion to get attention, it makes my skin crawl, it makes the bottom drop out of my stomach, etc. One time YT Shorts showed me an AI generation video of a pretty girl transforming into a fox on America's got talent, which is a good choice for me but then I got saturation videos of Chinese girls transforming into just about everything on AGT with the same music and reaction shots and it was more than I could use and not looking cool anymore but rather like AI slop. That said, I enjoy classic YouTube with relish.

My RSS reader gives recommendations based on explicit up/down and it has an AUC of maybe 0.78 or so, I saw a paper where TikTok is getting 0.83 so I feel like I'm doing OK.

I haven't done anything to change it in the last year except increase the number of random articles it inserts a little because making the recs worse actually can make them better, see [1] TikTok is famous for doing this. I think I could tune it up so for a given batch it could have a target "thumbs up" percentage or something more systematic but really I am very happy with the recs so it is not clear to me what "better" really is.

There is the problem with it that the system has a lot of latency which does not really matter for articles on most subjects because news about software or science or political science or engineering is usually OK if it is delayed a few days or a few weeks but it is a problem with sports where you really look like a dumbass if you post about something that happened on week 2 during week 4. It's a toughie though because I'd have to rework the thing to take out latency in 5+ stages of the system and then think systematically how to balance "urgent" vs "interesting" so I don't face the problem that urgent but interesting sports articles don't crowd other things out. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit

[2] personally I don't mind the old articles for myself because I'm a weird kind of sports fan. Two years ago I used to follow the NFL but since I started doing sports photography I might go to 5 games on one weekend and if I am doing that the NFL is a lot less interesting than, say, Arknights so I am a little embarrassed to say I have no idea how the Bills are doing this year. But if I'm going to post sports articles to Bluesky or something it's a problem.
by locknitpicker | 2025-12-05 19:47:23+00:00
> When you tell people their problem isn't real, (...)

Their problems might be real, but they sure are not caused by immigration. The Trump administration boasts about having deported 1M immigrants, and yet everything turned to shit, there are less jobs, pay hasn't increased, and things haven't became more affordable.

The first step to fix a problem is to identify it. Failing to do so risks aggravating the actual problems.
by xp84 | 2025-12-05 19:47:53+00:00
This seems like a stretch. If your position is that the REAL experts are using Cisco gear instead, I guess fine. But the "HN Crowd" loves using Ubiquiti at home because it is light years better than any consumer brand, (1) in terms of giving people who know what they're doing sufficient control to do so, (2) in terms of performance, and (3) in terms of not being a buggy piece of crap.

Contrast with:

(1) eero has no web UI (ONLY mobile phone!) and almost zero network configurability. You can't set a hostname for instance for DHCP. You can have exactly one main and one guest network. You don't get to configure anything about it though. Etc.

(3) I bought a Linksys replacement for my Eeros to get 6E -- I returned it to the store due to how horrifyingly bad the Web UI was and how bad the "app" was too. AND it also had flaws like inability to have reservation IPs outside the DHCP pool range.

Apple is actually the opposite of Ubiquiti -- they don't want you to be able to configure anything or have any visibility into anything. It either 'just works' or just silently fails or fails with "An error occurred."
by 2muchcoffeeman | 2025-12-05 19:48:21+00:00
Are you saying I wouldn’t steal a car, or a handbag, or a television, or a dvd? So piracy is a crime?

Are you really making that argument in 2025? You must be very young.

Bittorrent didn’t become popular because no one wanted to pay for things. In fact people stopped when Netflix was good. I stopped, all my friends stopped. It was no longer a mainstream thing. We even put up with a few price hikes. Then 1 service became whatever and people started torrenting and streaming sites started popping up.

Everyone was willing to pay for convenience. No ones wants to pay even more for in convenience.

You’ll note music piracy is not really a thing anymore. Thanks Spotify.
by jamesog | 2025-12-05 19:48:30+00:00
Disclosure: Former Cloudflare SRE.

The short answer is "yes" due to the way the configuration management works. Other infrastructure changes or service upgrades might get undone, but it's possible. Or otherwise revert the commit that introduced the package bump with the new code and force that to rollout everywhere rather than waiting for progressive rollout.

There shouldn't be much chance of bringing the system to a novel state because configuration management will largely put things into the correct state. (Where that doesn't work is if CM previously created files, it won't delete them unless explicitly told to do so.)
by karmakaze | 2025-12-05 19:48:53+00:00
Yes. I don't think Linux would have succeeded if written in a language other than C. Today is a different story.

Yes it matters to me as an end user if my web browser is more or less likely to have vulnerabilities in it. Choice of programming language has an impact on that. It doesn't have to be Rust, I'd use a browser written in Pony.

If I were making something that had to be low-level and not have security bugs, my statement would be:

> I’m not smart enough to build a big multi-threaded project in a manual memory-managed language that doesn't have vulnerabilities. I want help from the language & compiler.

The size and longevity of the team matters a lot too. The larger it gets the more problematic it is to keep the bugs out.