MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by subroutine | 2025-12-16 19:54:17+00:00
I was a grad student at UCSD when Ed Vul published Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience [1], which stoked a severe backlash from the fMRI syndicate resulting in a title change to Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition [2]. There is a lot of interesting commentary around this article (e.g., “Voodoo” Science in Neuroimaging: How a Controversy Transformed into a Crisis [3]). To me it was fascinating to watch Vul (an incredibly rare talent, perhaps a genius), take on an entire field during his 1st year as assistant professor.

1. http://prefrontal.org/blog/2009/01/voodoo-correlations-in-so...

2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2009.01...

3. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/1/15
by kortex | 2025-12-16 19:54:36+00:00
So we have stats, that's the closest we have to objective, but I guess we can't trust those. You say your anecdote contradicts "the stats", and I genuinely believe you. Sincerely, what's the alternative? Vibes? We gotta steer this ship (society) based on something.

How else do you condense down myriad and often conflicting datapoints of this complex human existence in order to get trends you can make decisions on?
by dosinga | 2025-12-16 19:54:54+00:00
I don't know. The World Happiness Report relies on one simple question, which is easy to criticise but at least it applies a clear and consistent method. The paper referred to does not. It uses a special US dataset for states and a much smaller global dataset for every other country, then treats the results as if they measure the same thing. This setup almost guarantees that US states look unusually good. The authors present this as evidence, but it mostly reflects differences in survey design rather than real differences in wellbeing. In that sense the methodological problems here are more serious than the ones they point to in the World Happiness Report.
by jillesvangurp | 2025-12-16 19:54:57+00:00
A few years ago, I had a build that was a bit slow on Github actions. I didn't want to switch to the paid plan just to spin up a worker. Basically we are a bootstrapped company with, at the time, no budget to pay ourselves or for extra stuff like fancy build servers. If you are that kind of company, Github is amazing value.

To solve the problem, I created a simple vm in Google Cloud with a lot of CPU and memory that runs Ubuntu. I installed enough stuff on it to be able to check out code and run our build script (a jvm and gradle basically). And then I modified the Github action to 1) start the vm, 2) trigger the build script via ssh 3) pause the vm so we don't get billed for it. That vm runs for maybe an hour per month or so. It would probably cost us hundreds of euros per month if we ran it 24/7. But 1/3600th of that barely registers on our bills. And it's nice and fast.

This has been working flawlessly for a few years now. The Github action takes about 3 minutes. That includes starting the vm, running the script, and shutting the vm down again.

Wonky in a way. But also simple and robust enough. People over engineer/over think this stuff for the wrong reasons. For example, I could of course automate the provisioning of that vm. But I haven't. Because I only ever touch it once a year or so to run a quick apt-get update. I rebuilt it a few weeks ago in a different region. That was like a 20 minute job. Terraform or Ansible for vms you only create once every few years is redundant and might take more time than you would save. I can always do that when that stops being true.

I've been running this startup on the freemium layer in Github for five years now. It's great as a free service. I would actually pay for it if I needed to. I did actually pay for it before MS acquired Github in a previous startup when business usage wasn't free. But so far, there's no need for me to do that. I also run some monitoring scripts as Github actions. Simple curl jobs against our servers that trigger alerts when they fail. That has to run somewhere. It might as well be Github actions. But if/when that becomes inconvenient, I can improvise other solutions.
by ajkjk | 2025-12-16 19:55:01+00:00
In the interim America got obsessed with fitness and being out of shape much less obese became dramatically less popular in the middle / upper class.

Like now it's possible to go days in some cities without seeing a single obese person. It's still a big problem. Outside of the cities and in lower class areas, but... I think the changes are trickling down / propagating? That's been my impression at least.

Surprised by your take on fast food, by the way. When I complain about fast food like was ubiquitous in the 90s I think of McDonald's and other highly processed things. The type that are covered in salt and cheap oil and artifical smells and where the meat is like reconstituted garbage, where lunch is 1500 calories, where everyone gets a giant soda, where kids are enticed with cheap plastic crap.

But a corner kebab or taco place seems like an unequivocal positive for society, I have no complaints about their existence at all. I feel like most people eating at corner shops for half of their meals is pretty much ideal--if it's affordable to do so then it is a very sensible and economically positive division of labor. On the condition that the food be of decent quality, of course. Which sometimes it is. Perhaps not as much as it should be though, but people do have standards and will pick the better places.
Show HN: I built a fast RSS reader in Zig
by superstarryeyes | 2025-12-16 19:55:56+00:00
Well, I certainly tried. I had to, because it has a certain quirk inspired by "digital minimalism."

The quirk is that it only allows you to fetch new articles once per day (or X days).

Why? Let me explain...

I want my internet content to be like a boring newspaper. You get it in the morning, and you read the whole thing while sipping your morning coffee, and then you're done! No more new information for today. No pings, no alerts, peace, quiet, zen, etc.

But with that, I needed it to be able to fetch all articles from my hundreds of feeds in one sitting. This is where Zig and curl optimisations come in. I tried to do all the tricks in the book. If I missed something, let me know!

First off, I'm using curl multi for the network layer. The cool thing is it automatically does HTTP/2 multiplexing, which means if your feeds are hosted on the same CDN it reuses the same connection. I've got it configured to handle 50 connections total with up to 6 per host, which seems to be the sweet spot before servers start getting suspicious. Also, conditional GETs. If a feed hasn't changed since last time, the server just says "Not Modified" and we bail immediately.

While curl is downloading feeds, I wouldn't want CPU just being idle so the moment curl finishes downloading a single feed, it fires a callback that immediately throws the XML into a worker thread pool for parsing. The main thread keeps managing all the network stuff while worker threads are chewing through XML in parallel. Zig's memory model is perfect for this. Each feed gets its own ArenaAllocator, which is basically a playground where you can allocate strings during parsing, then when we're done, we just nuke the entire arena in one go.

For parsing itself, I'm using libexpat because it doesn't load the entire XML into memory like a DOM parser would. This matters because some podcast feeds especially are like 10MB+ of XML. So with smart truncation we download the first few X mb's (configurable), scan backwards to find the last complete item tag, cut it there, and parse just that. Keeps memory usage sane even when feed sizes get massive.

And for the UI I just pipe everything to the system's "less" command. You get vim navigation, searching, and paging for free. Plus I'm using OSC 8 hyperlinks, so you can actually click links to open them on your browser. Zero TUI framework needed. I've also included OPML import/export and feed groups as additional features.

The result: content from hundreds of RSS feeds retrieved in matter of seconds, and peace of mind for the rest of the day.

The code is open source and MIT licensed. If you have ideas on how to make it even faster or better, comment below. Feature requests and other suggestions are also welcome, here or GitHub.
Show HN: AI-powered SEO automation tool distilled from production agency systems
by ralphqkly | 2025-12-16 19:56:18+00:00
Hi HN,

I’m Ralph. I have a degree in software development, and for the past 15+ years, I’ve been doing website development and SEO, with the last 6 running an agency.

A couple of years ago, it became clear that AI could be useful in automating a lot of our agency's junior SEO tasks and manual work. I laid out our processes in detail, mapped the areas where AI could be useful, and started integrating it all.

This created an AI-powered SEO platform that automates keyword research, meta titles/descriptions, image alt text, and page-level content, with approval workflows and token-based usage. I'm also exploring automation for link building, full technical audits, and AI-generated recommended fixes.

One of the biggest struggles has been managing contextual relevance, giving the system enough information to understand a site holistically without overwhelming the model or diluting relevance.

The platform is live in beta, but I'm torn between continuing to engineer toward "perfect" versus focusing energy on sharing it earlier and letting real users guide what actually matters, so I’m here to ask for that feedback.

I’d really appreciate any insights, especially around where this would or wouldn’t fit into workflows, feedback on the quality of the responses returned, and anything that might create friction towards adoption.

To keep costs predictable during beta, users can test with a token-seeded workspace for sites of 100 pages or fewer.
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-12-16 19:56:25+00:00
There are two extremes that rash people tend to fall into.

The first is the person who has no concern for surveillance. He believes that if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. You see more of these people in older generations, when institutional trust was irrationally high.

The second is the person who responds rabidly to any form or application of surveillance. This is the sort of person who believes that all surveillance is abused, public or private, and if it isn't, that it inevitably will be. Slippery slope fallacy is his motto.

A reasonable range of opinion can exist on the subject between those two extremes.

Personally, I have no problem with traffic cameras per se. First, we are in a public space where recordings are generally permitted. Second, no one is being stalked or harassed by a fixed camera. Third, there are problems that only surveillance can reasonably solve (loud cars, dangerous speeding).

My concerns would have to do with the following.

1) Unauthorized access to accumulated data. You should have to have some kind of legal permission to access the data and to do so in very specific ways. For example, if you neighborhood is being disrupted by loud cars, you can use complaints to get permission to query for footage and license plates of cars identified as loud. Each access is logged for audit purposes.

2) Data fusion. You should not be able to combine datasets without permission either. And when such combination occurs, it should also be scoped appropriately. Queries should then be subject to (1).

3) Indefinite hold. Data should have an expiration date. That is, we should not be able to sequester and store data for indefinite periods of time.

4) Private ownership. The collection of certain kinds of surveillance data should belong only to the public and fall under the strict controls above.

The non-specific and general fear of abuse is not a good counterargument.
by chickensong | 2025-12-16 19:56:34+00:00
It feels heavier than that, so I looked it up and my memory was wrong, it's ~1400 lbs per scoop.

Anyway, my point is that it's been a surprisingly good vehicle that just keeps going. Throw some lumber on the rack after loading gravel, it doesn't care until the suspension starts bottoming out. It's not my first truck, and I'm not tied to any brand, but the overall experience has been so solid at high mileage, that it sets a bar for any future trucks.

I'm just a single data point, and I'm sure there are folks who've had poor experiences, but having owned many vehicles over the years, the F-150 feels particularly robust to me. Honda engines give me a similar feeling. As one commenter described "using in anger", there are some things that will take repeated abuse and just love it. Maybe I've been lucky, but in my limited experience, the F-150 has a well-deserved reputation.
by dpark | 2025-12-16 19:56:49+00:00
Because a 7 bedroom McMansion is unlikely to drive over my child in a parking lot or kill my wife in a collision. The dangers of these giant trucks are not hypothetical. It’s documented that they kill drivers of cars at 2.5x the rate of cars.

In terms of pure annoyance, the McMansion is also not using 3 parking spots at the grocery store.
by hirvi74 | 2025-12-16 19:57:02+00:00
> fMRI's are being used in TBI/Concussion recovery

Interesting. Do you happen to have any more information on this topic? I ask because I was under the impression that concussions are a functional/metabolic injury and not a structural injury, therefore, concussions are not visible on any type of fMRI, CT Scan, etc.. Though, I haven't looked into this topic for almost half a decade, so I imagine things have likely progressed.
by tonymet | 2025-12-16 19:57:08+00:00
don't you see how this perspective is the same tribalism (all my leaders are benevolent, all of theirs are tyrants / grifters)?

For every example of Maga group think, I can think of an example of Obamaphile group think.

And if the contrarian / doubtful end of the spectrum ( all elites are nefarious) is bad, doesn't that imply that the gullible / trusting end of the spectrum (all elites & academics are benevolent) is also bad?

The roles are just a mirror of each other. You're just picking sides -- which is how things usually operate.
by ericmay | 2025-12-16 19:57:12+00:00
Are you suggesting that Canada, Europe (I take it you mean the EU and UK), and perhaps Japan are forming a separate alliance without the United States because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

Can you link to anything specific? Have there been alliance talks? What are the new alliances being formed called? I know there have been some arms purchases and agreements but that wouldn't have anything to do with forming an alliance separate from what already exists today.
by grep_name | 2025-12-16 19:57:19+00:00
That sounds neat! I have an old kobo clara HD. I run koreader through nickelmenu, and I have to let it load its native software before selecting and switching into koreader. I'm also under the impression that if I connect it to the internet I'm at risk of losing my setup via wireless update. I think I had to delete a config file by mounting the device to linux to be able to even use it without a walmart / ratuken / whatever idp account in the first place.

Everyone here is lauding kobo for being so 'open' and 'hackable', but when I set mine up in 2022 it kind of just felt like they just weren't as good at fucking me over and subverting my intentions as Amazon. Kind of like being an intruder in your own home. Have things changed? Should I update my setup?
by km144 | 2025-12-16 19:57:53+00:00
Have you seen the prices of pre-owned Honda/Toyota sedans that are less than 5 years old? There are absolutely cars out there where trading in your new car after 3-4 years can make sense depending on the cost of the car, the depreciation curve, and whether you want to always be driving a relatively new car. Of course it's almost always going to be a better value proposition to drive the car for 10 years if you can, but that can still depend on depreciation.
by falsedan | 2025-12-16 19:58:06+00:00
it's not the runners, it's the orchestration service that's the problem

been working to move all our workflows to self hosted, on demand ephemeral runners. was severely delayed to find out how slipshod the Actions Runner Service was, and had to redesign to handle out-of-order or plain missing webhook events. jobs would start running before a workflow_job event would be delivered

we've got it now that we can detect a GitHub Actions outage and let them know by opening a support ticket, before the status page updates
by louthy | 2025-12-16 19:58:10+00:00
> It sounds like you've never worked a job where you aren't just supporting 1 product that you built yourslef

In my 40 years of writing code, I’ve worked on many different code bases and in many different organisations. And I never changed a line of code, deleted code, or added more code unless I could run it in my head and ‘know’ (to the extent that it’s possible) what it will do and how it will interact with the rest of the project. That’s the job.

I’m not against using AI. I use it myself, but if you don’t understand the scope fully, then you can’t possibly validate what the AI is spitting out, you can only hope that it has not fucked up.

Even using AI to write tests will fall short if you can’t tell if the tests are good enough.

For now we still need to be experts. The day we don’t need experts the LLMs should start writing in machine code, not human readable languages

> I do not need to understand the full stack.

Nobody said that. It’s important to understand the scope of the change. Knowing more may well improve decision making, but pragmatism is of course important.

Not understanding the thing you’re changing isn’t pragmatism.
by bccdee | 2025-12-16 19:58:39+00:00
If you're making a proposal, I feel like an RFC carries a lot more weight than a slideshow or an email. If you really don't need feedback or approval from anyone, sure, go it alone. But if you do need or want to run it past someone, let the document you send them reflect the amount of thought you've put into it, and then maybe they'll hesitate before going off half-cocked & suggesting some idea you already considered.
by stevekemp | 2025-12-16 19:58:58+00:00
I used it until I switched to GNOME2 at some point, and I also have fond memories. Just seeing the title of this post recalled the desktops I had had over the years.

My linux days started around 95/96, and I was always using low-resource environments due to necessity. Other than FVWM95 the other system I recall using for a long long time was IceWM which was something I switched to around 1999/2000.
by rkagerer | 2025-12-16 19:58:58+00:00
I'm no expert in medicine, but I watched that entire video and your analogy about performance and rope doesn't fit well with how it came across to me.

I actually thought the interviewer was a little disingenuous. He said things like "We're on the same team" and "I'm not trying to trap you", then proceeded to lob his guest with criticisms from the other team and questions aimed to maneuver him into a contradiction. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but if you're going to do it, be forthright you're engaging in a debate.

Earlier in the interview he could have put his cards on the table and plainly stated "Myself and others in the medical community are skeptical of the efficacy of imaging on outcomes, and a rigorous, double-blind study would lend dramatic support for us to adopt what you're touting."

Then they could have had the conversation he was clearly after, focused on that issue.

Instead it felt like I was watching for ages as he took a winding route to get there, then the interview cut off abruptly when they finally really did.

The overlays applied in editing while helpful and fair in some cases, at other times came across as one-sided. It's a shame we can't see a follow-up where the interviewee has an opportunity to respond (or squirm) in light of them.

For the record I would very much love to see additional research and gold-standard, double-blind studies. In the meantime I'll treat this as "Hey, we've got this interesting thing we can measure, we're seeing some good results in our practice" without over-emphasizing the confidence in this one diagnostic.

I did find the bit interesting about how having a gauge you can viscerally see impacted patients' engagement in care. Both agreed on the potential usefulness of that aspect, and conceded the difference in profiles between patients coming to Dr. Amen vs. ordinary front-line family physicians.
by unshavedyak | 2025-12-16 19:59:07+00:00
I agree, i'm saying any code it produces. Eg if you ignore 95% of the LLM's PR, are you vibe coding? Some would say no, because you read 5% of the PR. I would say yes, you are vibe coding.

Ie you could say you vibe'd 95% of the PR, and i'd agree with that - but are you vibe coding then? You looked at 5% of the code, so you're not ignoring all of the code.

Yet in the spirit of the phrase, it seems silly to say someone is not vibe coding despite ignoring almost all of the code generated.
by zzo38computer | 2025-12-16 19:59:07+00:00
I had partially written a program (in C) to parse X.509 certificates, but the part that is missing is the cryptographic stuff (to validate signatures, and also should be able to extract the public key for use by a separate TLS implementation). (I intended also to make it to be able to make X.509 certificates; the cryptographic stuff will be needed for that too, to make private and public key pairs and signatures. A separate library for cryptographic functions should probably be used for this purpose, if I would have a suitable one. A separate library should also be used for TLS (OpenSSL is rather confusing, and I want to use my own handling of the certificates but OpenSSL makes it too confusing to do that).)
by tenthirtyam | 2025-12-16 19:59:13+00:00
I bought a kobo for myself about 18months ago and I'm hooked. I have since bought two more for gifts and 3 friends have bought them on my recommendation. I have never before been such a vocal (if unintentional) ambassador for a tech gadget.

Why so passionate, I hear you ask? Pretty much exactly the reasons you specify - unlike other hardware, I actually can do what I want with it.

And now I'm wondering what this Quill OS is about. Thanks Kobo!
by kergonath | 2025-12-16 20:00:07+00:00
On a Mac Studio it’s kind of the same thing. It’s the GPU core that was in all M1 chips. I could not reproduce it with AMD GPUs, but I also did not try very hard. I remember being annoyed because I always needed to remember to look away when we were doing these instances otherwise we’d fail it because of the time it took to get out of it.

The core issue is that something slipped through the cracks. I don’t blame them, it’s a huge game and testing takes quite a lot of time. But testing does matter.