MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ktallett | 2025-12-21 22:37:18+00:00
So in my view, the issues I think about now are:

- Too few researchers, as in my area of quantum computing. I would state there is one other group that has any academic rigour, and is actually making significant and important progress. The two other groups are using non reproducible results for credit and funding for private companies. You have FAANG style companies also doing research, and the research that comes out still is clearly for funding. It doesn't stand up under scrutiny of method (there usually isn't one although that will soon change as I am in the process of producing a recipe to get to the point we are currently at which is as far as anyone is at) and repeatability.

- Too little progress. Now this is due to the research focus being spread too thin. We have currently the classic digital (qubit) vs analogue (photonic) quantum computing fight, and even within each we have such broad variations of where to focus. Therefore each category is still really just at the start as we are going in so many different directions. We aren't pooling our resources and trying to make progress together. This is also where a lack of openness regarding results and methods harms us. Likewise a lack of automation. Most significant research is done by human hand, which means building on it at a different research facility often requires learning off the person who developed the method in person if possible or at worse, just developing a method again which is a waste of time. If we don't see the results, the funding won't be there. Obviously classical computing eventually found a use case and then it became useful for the public but I fear we may not get to that stage as we may take too long.

As an aside, we may also get to the stage whereby, it is useful but only in a military/security setting. I have worked on a security project (I was not bound by any NDA surprisingly but I'm still wary) featuring a quantum setup, that could of sorts be comparable to a single board computer (say of an ESP32), although much larger. There is some value to it, and that particular project could be implemented into security right now (I do not believe it has or will, I believe it was viability) and isn't that far off. But that particular project has no other uses, outside of the military/security.
by mrb | 2025-12-21 22:38:13+00:00
"On the subway, I'm missing a lot of my normal setup [...] I don't even have an internet connection"

There is no cellular data in the NYC subway? I had to look it up online and apparently there is but coverage is quite patchy. That's very surprising to learn, NYC being one of the most developped and richest cities in the world. By comparison, and from my experience, the Parisian metro has excellent coverage.
by jokoon | 2025-12-21 22:38:28+00:00
I suspect there are cybersecurity stakes regarding win11 and win10, but I am not entirely sure.

I think that the spectre mitigation are not a problem in win11 because win11 is not supported on CPU that are vulnerable, which might be a reason they encourage people to get win11 and get a new PC, but that's an unverified guess, I am just trying to get them the benefit of the doubt.

SteamOS looks like it might take a lot of the windows cake, but it remains to be seen if they will be able to.

So far it doesn't look like SteamOS supports most of PC hardware out there, but it could be a next step for Valve.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-12-21 22:38:28+00:00
I have started new jobs twice once in 2023 and once last year and before my first day on the job I got a text from the CEO of the company asking me to buy gift cards for them and they couldn’t do it themselves because they were in a meeting.

They said the CEO by name and texted my number. Of course it was a scam that had nothing to do with my CEO. I wonder how they got my number?
by tombert | 2025-12-21 22:38:44+00:00
I think in your situation I'd use a Mac just because they don't show you a bunch of advertising bullshit all the time, but I do understand the overall point: a lot of software simply doesn't exist on Linux.

Wine is getting better and better, but it's still not perfect yet. I am so wishing that they figure out a way to get modern MS Office working, and then I feel like a lot of people's only reasons for staying on Windows would suddenly disappear.
by 0x3f | 2025-12-21 22:38:50+00:00
I don't think I was rude. You're overcomplicating the architecture here for no good reason. It might be common to do so, but that doesn't make it good practice. And ultimately I think it's your job as a professional to question it, which makes not doing so a form of 'failure'. Sorry if that seems harsh; I'm sharing what I believe to be genuine and valuable wisdom.

Happy to discuss why you think this is all necessary. Open to questioning assumptions of my own too, if you have specifics.

As it is, you're just quoting microservices dogma. Your auth service doesn't need a different programming language from your invoicing system. Nor does it need to be scaled independently. Why would it?
by nostrademons | 2025-12-21 22:39:20+00:00
Google solved most of these problems around 2005, with tools like LOG_EVERY_N (now part of absl [1]), Dapper [2], and several other tools that aren't public yet. You can trace an individual request through every internal system, view the request/response protobufs, every log that the server emitted, timing details, etc. More to the point, you can share this trace, which means that it's possible for one person to discover the bug, reproduce it, and then have another person in a completely different office/timezone/country debug it, even if the latter cannot reproduce the bug themselves. This has proved hugely useful; just last week I was tasked with reproducing a bug on sparsely-available prerelease hardware so that a distant team could diagnose what went wrong.

The key insight that this article hints at but doesn't quite get too: you should treat your logs as a product whose customers are the rest of the devs in your company. The way you log things is intimately connected with what you want to do with them, and you need to build systems to generate useful insights from the log statements. In some cases it literally is part of the product: many of the machine learning systems that generate recommendations, search results, spam filtering, abuse detection, traffic direction, etc. are all based on the logs for the product, and you need to consider them as first-class citizens that you absolutely cannot break while adding new features. Logs are not just for debugging.

[1] https://absl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/absl.logging.html

[2] https://research.google/pubs/dapper-a-large-scale-distribute...
by jvanderbot | 2025-12-21 22:39:25+00:00
From my limited understanding, that's actually the opposite of the truth.

In QC systems, the engineering "difficulty" scales very badly with the number of gates or steps of the algorithm.

Its not like addition where you can repeat a process in parallel and bam-ALU. From what I understand as a layperson, the size of the inputs is absolutely part of the scaling.
by randerson | 2025-12-21 22:39:45+00:00
> The crime under discussion is not driving while intoxicated but driving without a license.

How did these people lose their license in the first place? The most common reason is DUIs. Followed by multiple instances of reckless driving. People are less likely to lose their license to begin with if they know there will be real consequences.

And there's a large enough population for whom driving without a license is not a crime of desperation. In many places there _is_ a public transport alternative (even if its slow and crappy). I used to give a lift every day to a colleague who had lost his license. I enjoyed the company and he paid for my gas. Many people can make an arrangement like this.

> But if you're going to bring that up anyway, how are people supposed to get their car home from the bar in a place where the government hates public transport?

Having been in this position many times: take an Uber, then Uber back to get your car the next day and plan better (or don't drink) next time.
by AdrianB1 | 2025-12-21 22:40:23+00:00
Until recently (<10 years ago) Windows and native Windows apps (like Office) were the norm in most companies. Almost all employees knew how to use Windows. Re-training all was difficult. Now, with mostly web-apps for most non-IT employees it is a realistic change, but I am still not sure corporations will want to run without Active Directory and Crowdstrike.
by ktallett | 2025-12-21 22:41:05+00:00
There is private sector adoption and planning now of specific single purpose focused quantum devices in military and security settings. They work and exist although I do not believe they are installed. I may be wrong on the exact date, as my classical computer knowledge isn't spot on. The point I was trying to make was that we have all the bits we need. We have the ability to make the photonic quantum version (which spoiler alert is where the focus needs to move to over the qubit method of quantum computing) of a transistor, so we have hit the 50's at least. The fundamentals at this point won't change. What will change is how they are put together and how they are made durable.
by Terr_ | 2025-12-21 22:41:49+00:00
> The overwhelming majority of users never had any kind of control

Uninterested is vastly different than unable, especially when that majority is still latently "able" to use some software that a knowledgeable-minority creates to Help Do The Thing.

The corporate goal is to block anyone else from providing users that control if/when the situation becomes intolerable enough for the majority to desire it.

Most people don't move away from their state of residence either, but we should be very concerned if someone floats a law stating that you are not permitted to leave without prior approval.
by 93n | 2025-12-21 22:43:20+00:00
I decided to cut an hour out of my in-the-office time recently, figuring that I'm sitting on the bus for any hour anyway, so I might as well use that time to knock some work out instead. Tethering is pretty good other than a predictable problem spot or two.

Much better experience than working on a plane. I've done a handful of cross-US flights this year on Alaska Airlines, and trying to do anything network-related on those flights was torture. Super spotty, high latencies, constant timeouts; very frustrating.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-12-21 22:43:32+00:00
It matters to me as a senior+.

When I talk to a senior: “hey we got this initiative, I know only little about it. Can you talk to $stake_holder figure out what they need and come back to me and let me know your design ideas, how long you think it will take, etc”.

I can do that with a few seniors and put Epics together and they can take ownership of it.

For a junior I have to do a lot more handholding and make sure the requirements are well spelled out
by bluescrn | 2025-12-21 22:43:51+00:00
A decade in computing used to mean revolutionary improvements:

- from the C64 to the Pentium

- from the Playstation 1 to the Xbox360

- from the Nokia 3310 to the iPhone 4.

Each of these in roughly a decade.

But 2015-2025 in terms of desktop PCs? Some decent (but not revolutionary) steps forward with GPUs, and much more affordable+speedy SSDs. But everything else has been pretty small and incremental.

And when enthusiasts upgrade, the old parts usually find new homes. My old 6th-gen i7 from a decade ago still has more than enough power for my Dad to use as a home PC for basic photo editing, web browsing, and spreadsheets. But Win10 end-of-life wants to turn that machine into e-waste.
by satvikpendem | 2025-12-21 22:44:13+00:00
> If that's you, know that you can get a LONG way on the $20/month plans from OpenAI and Anthropic.

> The time to cough up $100 or $200/month is when you've exhausted your $20/month quota and you are frustrated at getting cut off. At that point you should be able to make a responsible decision by yourself.

These are the same people, by and large. What I have seen is users who purely vibe code everything and run into the limits of the $20/m models and pay up for the more expensive ones. Essentially they're trading learning coding (and time, in some cases, it's not always faster to vibe code than do it yourself) for money.
by SiempreViernes | 2025-12-21 22:44:46+00:00
And I find it exceedingly annoying how all this heated discussion about the dangers of chat control is held oh so far from the actual text of the proposals.

For example: there is no actual proposed text for "ProtectEU", the name references a project to provide updates to legislation with a focus on security. All this talk about criminals circumventing the proposed law using VPN is just dreams you have.
by ktallett | 2025-12-21 22:44:49+00:00
I'm not going to pretend that I am that knowledgeable on classic computing history from that time period. I was primarily going off the fact the semi conductor was built in the late 40's, and I would say we have the quantum version of that in both qubit and photonic based computing and they work and we have been developing on them for some time now. The key difference is that there are many more steps to get to the stage of making them useful. A transistor becamse useful extremely quickly and well in Quantum computing, these just haven't quite yet.
by kkfx | 2025-12-21 22:44:51+00:00
Well... Until people will react protecting their own interests we will only go in a death spiral.

Only recently have we witnessed, particularly in the EU but also in the US and Canada, the blocking of personal bank accounts of individuals who were simply "inconvenient" to the ruling class, from Wikileaks to OnlyFans creators, Francesca Albanese, Frédéric Baldan, Jacques Baud, and various players in the crypto world, all without trial, without any crime committed, just unwelcome.

This makes it clear that for Democracy to exist, a balance of power is needed, including internal balance, which requires that the population remains outside the potential control of the State to preserve a significant degree of freedom. Privacy is one of these fundamental freedoms, like freedom of speech, because the ideas circulating can be dangerous, but it is far more dangerous to have someone with the power to prevent ideas and news from circulating.
by TheAceOfHearts | 2025-12-21 22:44:53+00:00
Most people will barely read through a couple basics, so it can be a bit of a though sell to start recommending more niche stories. And part of the reason that some of these books are so successful is that they tend to have pretty widespread appeal, while more niche books will be more divisive and less likely to get recommended broadly.

If you're so well-read why don't you grace us with some of your non-mainstream S-tier recommendations?

From this list, one of the books that I recommend to everyone is Piranesi, which is fairly mainstream, and if they want to explore Russian magical realism then Vita Nostra. Unsong is another favorite. In general I love to explore magic systems that experiment with breaking a system, or stories that explore how different rules might interact within a system.

I think people sometimes underestimate the value of lighter more fun reads, like cultivation stories. The best western adaptation of this style of novel is probably the Cradle series, by Will Wight. Even though the stories tend to be fairly light, they're quite enjoyable for exploring new modes of thinking. For example, we can analyze the interactions of energy as an abstract / symbolic form, and how it influences human behavior; which is an abstract / symbolic application of the cultivation lens over reality. To give an easier to understand example: Feng Shui isn't real but it's true, in the sense that the way in which we organize furniture within a space determines how people navigate it and how they interact. And why might this be useful? Well, sometimes we fail to see the full picture when using a single lens, and different lens might let us see things in a new light.

I've read some terribly generic web novel slop and gotten fairly unique and interesting perspectives from them, but most people aren't good enough readers to enjoy bad books, so they can only read and enjoy good books.
by anonzzzies | 2025-12-21 22:45:02+00:00
I program and did program anywhere; unlike OP, I thrive in (human) noise: if it's quiet, I cannot focus, so working at home with multi monitor setups etc works against me (music doesn't help: not random enough and I cannot talk to people when I feel the need). I prefer subways, busses, airplanes, lounges, coffeeshops, pubs etc. Offices strangely do not work as I already know those people so I get bored and creativity plummets. My setup now is the best I had ever: a rugged android tablet with week-long battery, running termux with full desktop linux (not rooted) which can run all I want. I run several llms offline on it as well to fix the workflow when I don't have my nice foldable full keyboard out (if no space). I can run everything in our framework, online and offline; when I come back online, I just sync (code AND data) and voila.
by tolerance | 2025-12-21 22:45:13+00:00
Dear Mitchell Hashicorp,

I’m sorry for not taking your terminal emulator serious.

Your comment on the red site resonated.

> I have a perpetual chip on my shoulder because I'm also in the camp of doing things primarily motivated by having fun, but people in and out of my life repeatedly not taking it seriously. You can have fun and also consider your work serious (or, have it actually be serious by various metrics).

https://lobste.rs/s/wilmno/i_m_just_having_fun#c_ziuqlv
by jdironman | 2025-12-21 22:45:23+00:00
The thing I got from reading the majority of these emails is Epstein / trump connection was not that strong later years. I feel JE humored trump to a degree and disliked him to an even larger degree. He may have initially had strong relations in the beginning but he was NOT pleased he was winning the presidency at all. He mentioned multiple times references to dirt on DT and even at one point there was the question did Trump set him up. Not to say JE did no wrong, cause the evidence is 100% there for that but it's super interesting having read the actual files to see the various media spins on all sides. If anything though it's led me to believe there are much stronger ties to Russia with DT than I thought before. (Palm Beach House, the casino, models coming from those areas etc).
by Smoosh | 2025-12-21 22:45:52+00:00
I suspect that in a large scale disaster/emergency the communications systems may be disrupted and it may not be possible to remotely control the vehicles.

Perhaps in such cases they can pull over in a safe place, or if they have an occupant ask them if they wish to continue the journey or stop.

Perhaps they already do this, I have no experience with autonomous vehicles.
by satvikpendem | 2025-12-21 22:46:11+00:00
> I'm curious what the mental calculus was that a $5k laptop would competitively benchmark against SOTA models for the next 5 years was.

Well, the hardware remains the same but local models get better and more efficient, so I don't think there is much difference between paying 5k for online models over 5 years vs getting a laptop (and well, you'll need a laptop anyway, so why not just get a good enough one to run local models in the first place?).
by bsder | 2025-12-21 22:46:55+00:00
If I were the AARP, I'd go further.

"Don't buy gift cards. Full stop."

The general scamminess around gift cards is far too high from all angles.

Anyone asking you to pay them in gift cards is a problem. The gift card processors have all manner of ways to preserve the float by flagging "fraud" in order to suspend your gift card until you waste time and give them personal information. The company behind your gift card can go bankrupt (see: Bed, Bath and Beyond and Fry's). And, finally, as we found from Apple, even redeeming a card can cause you problems.

Give cash. In spite of some hoity-toity nitwits who consider cash to be gauche for gifts, at no point in my life have I ever be disappointed to be given cash.
by periodjet | 2025-12-21 22:47:53+00:00
Social justice fundamentalism asserts that there are favored (“oppressed”) groups, and disfavored (“oppressor”) groups.

True believers have created a largely arbitrary grouping called “white people”, assigning it the “oppressor” label.

If a favored group’s nation were flooded by “white people”, that would be seen as an emergent situation requiring remedy; the opposite is what we’re seeing play out in societies like Britain, and is Not a Problem. I’m committing an act of violence by even describing it in this way.

How or when a disfavored group is restored to neutral or favored status is undefined; one would presumably have to consult a head priest of the movement for an answer (and I wouldn’t expect any coherence or clarity).
by asdff | 2025-12-21 22:48:01+00:00
That is part of it but there is also something to be said about what is going on biochemically IMO. Even if you are feeling forward progress and comfortable about the scope of your problems, if you give yourself no time to rest and get out of a subconciously anxious state, that isn't very good.

Anxiety is meant to have your senses heightened to perhaps hear the tiger stalking you and encourage you to seek out a safer environment where you can comfortably rest. You aren't built to be in an anxious state for such extended periods of time. The tiger would have gotten you by then, with the way this system was designed. You aren't built to constantly run from the tiger.
by anal_reactor | 2025-12-21 22:48:04+00:00
I'm burned out because:

1. I'm intelligent enough to raise questions about the point of life.

2. I've always been an outcast, having it extremely difficult to build meaningful relationships, which are number one predictor of quality of life.

3. I live in a dirty, noisy, overcrowded city full of people who don't share my culture and work for a company that has no morality.

There is nothing for me to look forward to, and no straightforward way to build anything. I'll never have a group of friends to do things with, I'll never feel loved, and I'll never be important in any sense of this word. I'm an autistic ant in an anthill.
by Nasrudith | 2025-12-21 22:48:53+00:00
Nor did the fixed price controls they were often saddled with. It seems that politicians are congenitally completely incapable of considering inflation indexing as a concept when they are writing laws.

Street cars are a red herring anyway. Because street cars don't maintain anywhere near the same number of routes as free-form roads. It is a routing problem still, and railed vehicles perform much, much worse at it, which is why they need to be time multiplexed with rail schedules.
by namibj | 2025-12-21 22:49:17+00:00
Huh, here in Germany we have street signs (mostly of a "you are the priority road" 45° rotated square yellow-on-white "sunny side up egg" sign and the "you are not the priority road" down-pointing white-on-red triangle; for 3-way if the priority road isn't the straight road or the concept of straight is ambiguous, there's a supplemental sign depicting the path of the priority road) permanently on traffic lights; it's also common enough for non-major roads to have the lights turned off at night so drivers tend to be familiar with falling back to the signs when the lights are off.

In absence of priority roads there is also the "right before left" rule which means that the car coming from the right if they would conflict in time is the car that has priority. It's also always illegal to enter an intersection if you can't immediately clear it; that seems to work better when there are no green traffic lights to suggest an explicit allowance to drive, though.