MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dusted | 2025-12-26 21:11:42+00:00
Some (the worst) clocks do that.. It's convenient that the hour hand is moving continuously because it means that unless you need to be able to say "it's five seconds past two minutes past four _in the morning_", you simply look at the hour hand, if it's in the middle of two hours, well it's half past the smaller.. if it's one forth past the smaller, it's.. yes, quarter past.. if it's one forth from the larger then it's quarter to.. and well, honestly, if you need to read the time more precisely than that and chose to use an analogue clock for it, you've chosen the wrong type of clock, a digital clock with seconds and 24 hour display is a superior tool for telling the time anyway.
by rayiner | 2025-12-26 21:13:17+00:00
What do you know about “racism?” “Racism” is how I’ve been treated by (some) Saudis, who see a Bangladeshi and assume negative things about me as an individual. That has nothing to do with immigration, which involves cultural transplantation caused by the mass movement of people. You can gaslight and browbeat sheltered Americans into thinking that Bangladeshi moms raise their kids the same way American moms do, but that won’t work on me lol.

Immigration policy is about culture, not “race.” I suspect the Danes would be just as upset if hundreds of thousands of West Virginians were immigrating to their cities and making the culture of Denmark more like that of West Virginia.
by ekjhgkejhgk | 2025-12-26 21:13:58+00:00
Uncertain if this is OT, but given that the CCC is politically inspired organization, I hope not:

One thing that still seems absent is awareness of the complete takeover of "gadgets" in schools. Schools these days, as early as primary school, shove screens in front of children. They're expected to look at them, and "use" them for various activities, including practicing handwriting. I wish I was joking [1].

I see two problems with this.

First is that these devices are engineered to be addictive by way of constant notifications/distractions, and learning is something that requires long sustained focus. There's a lot of data showing that under certain common circumstances, you do worse learning from a screen than from paper.

Second is implicitly it trains children to expect that anything has to be done through a screen connected to a closed point-and-click platform. (Uninformed) people will say "people who work with computers make money, so I want my child to have an ipad". But interacting with a closed platform like an ipad is removing the possibilities and putting the interaction "on rails". You don't learn to think, explore and learn from mistakes, instead you learn to use the app that's put in front of you. This in turn reinforces the "computer says no" [2] approach to understanding the world.

I think this is a matter of civil rights and freedom, but sadly I don't often see "civil rights" organizations talk about this. I think I heard Stallman say something along these lines once, but other than that I don't see campaigns anywhere.

[1] https://www.letterjoin.co.uk/

[2] https://youtu.be/eE9vO-DTNZc
by CerryuDu | 2025-12-26 21:15:55+00:00
> non-profits

I think those are pretty problematic. They can't pay well (no profits...), and/or they may be politically motivated such that working for them would mean a worse compromise.

> open source foundations

Those dreams end. (Speaking from experience.)

> education, healthcare tech

Not self-sustaining. These sectors are not self-sustaining anywhere, and therefore are highly tied to politics.

> small companies solving real problems

I've tried small companies. Not for me. In my experience, they lack internal cohesion and resources for one associate to effectively support another.

> The "we all have to" framing is a convenient way to avoid examining your own choices.

This is a great point to make in general (I take it very seriously), but it does not apply to me specifically. I've examined all the way to Mars and back.

> And it's telling that this framing always seems to appear when someone is defending their own employer.

(I may be misunderstanding you, but in any case: I've never worked for Google, and I don't have great feelings for them.)

> You've drawn a clear moral line between Google ("mixed bag") and AI companies ("unquestionably cancer")

I did!

> so you clearly believe these distinctions matter even though Google itself is an AI company

Yes, I do believe that.

Google has created Docs, Drive, Mail, Search, Maps, Project Zero. It's not all terribly bad from them, there is some "only moderately bad", and even morsels of "borderline good".
by whartung | 2025-12-26 21:15:58+00:00
I don't read much any more. Mostly magazine articles.

I did re-read "The Long Run" from Daniel Keys Moran (one of the very short list of books I've re-read, and this was #4 or #5).

"Were you taught to hate Peaceforcers?" "Taught? No."

The only new book that I read was "Heat 2" by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner.

It was "ok". It honestly felt like a mashup of "Heat", "Miami Vice", and "Blackhat". So, not as fresh as I would have liked. (Mind, I really like all of those movies.)

I'll see the movie when it comes out, but the book was just "ok".
by bartread | 2025-12-26 21:16:21+00:00
> unhinged rant

Seems pretty hinged to me. Grounded firmly in reality even.

The data centres used to run AI consume huge amounts of power and water to run, not to mention massive quantities of toxic raw materials in their manufacture and construction. The hardware itself has a shelf life measured in single digit years and many of its constituent components can’t be recycled.

Tell me what I’m missing. What exactly is unhinged? Are you offended that he used the word “fuck” or something?
by brokegrammer | 2025-12-26 21:16:28+00:00
Demian by Hermann Hesse. I wanted to scream "Stop overthinking!" to the protagonist. Something I can relate to.

Siddharta by Hermann Hesse. Helped me understand that a perfect life is a collection of ups and downs and that one must accept it all.

Amerika by Franz Kafka. Could relate to the protagonist because people take advantage of his naivety.

Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Made me see the world in a less pessimistic way.
by gizmo686 | 2025-12-26 21:18:08+00:00
The power thing is a red herring. "Analog" clocks are almost always electric and digital under the hood. And battery technology has been good enough for them to stay powered for longer than actual analog clocks for decades. If you really wanted to, you can create an entirely mechanical digital clock.

The main benefit of the analog style output is in the ability to quickly read the output. You can get an approximate sense of the time with a much quicker glance, even if determining the time to the minute takes longer than with a digital display.
by yomismoaqui | 2025-12-26 21:18:09+00:00
As a Go fan (and ocassional angry old man) I love what he has done and spamming people using AI is shitty behavior, but maybe the reaction has too much of an "angry old man energy".

Personally when I want to have this kind of reaction I try to first think it's really warranted or maybe there is something wrong with how I feel in that moment (not enough sleep, some personal problem, something else lurking on my mind...)

Anger is a feeling best reserved for important things, else it loses its meaning.
by tirant | 2025-12-26 21:18:09+00:00
That’s also my thought. The seem to be inside some type of evolutionary gray area or dead-end, where mutations in the edibility axis do not seem to matter much for the survival of the specifies. So we end up getting species of all extremes: extremely poisonous, highly valuable for coursing, trippy, non-trippy, mildly poisonous, etc.
by TheOtherHobbes | 2025-12-26 21:18:32+00:00
This isn't about individuals, it's about policy.

The default narrative is "hard work and talent should be rewarded", but the reality is "hard work and talent are only rewarded in very unusual and strictly rationed circumstances, and most potential is wasted."

The waste is caused by unexamined political friction. There has to be a hierarchy of opportunity, because some kinds of people have to an easier time of it than other kinds of people.

American capitalism makes a lot of noise about social mobility but does almost everything it can to prevent it in practice.

Occasionally people still make it against the odds, but the point is the odds are there for most of the population. People who beat them rarely get the kind of media support this story offers.
by fleebee | 2025-12-26 21:18:36+00:00
You're probably right about the latter point, but I do wonder how hard it'd be to mask the default "marketing copywriter" tone of the LLM by asking it to assume some other tone in your prompt.

As you said, reading this stuff is taxing. What's more, this is a daily occurrence by now. If there's a silver lining, it's that the LLM smells are so obvious at the moment; I can close the tab as soon as I notice one.
by lynndotpy | 2025-12-26 21:18:44+00:00
I disagree with this. I read analogue clocks without having to do any conscious mental effort, but the minute hand is definitely a part of it.

If I have to think about how I parse them, I think the minute hand is more important than the hour hand. I'm usually roughly aware of what hour it is, and if I'm looking at a clock, it's to know what minute it is.
by amitav1 | 2025-12-26 21:19:22+00:00
Not a student in any of those countries, but speaking as a Canadian: I was taught how to read a clock in early grade school (grade 1, I believe?), and retain this ability now. I can see myself losing this ability in the next few years given that I tend to keep my phone on me much more often than before. I believe that most Canadian kids were probably taught to read a clock, but by high school when everybody has phones there's not much reason to.
by choilive | 2025-12-26 21:19:23+00:00
Its the same evolutionary patterns that plants went through.

Most mushrooms are edible because their spores can pass through the digestive system of most animals, thus allowing them to spread.

Other mushrooms developed toxins to protect their fruiting bodies - often the biggest threat isn't larger animals, but insects. Toxins that are neurotoxic to insect nervous systems, happen to cause mostly "harmless" psychedelic trips to our brains. Other toxin mechanisms happen to be deadly to both insects and humans.

As proof of this evolutionary arms race, there are fruit flies that have developed resistance to amatoxins.
by netsharc | 2025-12-26 21:19:36+00:00
Your arguments are verging on the obtuse.

Read the article again. Rob Pike got a letter from a machine saying it is "deeply grateful". There's no human there expressing anything, worse, it's a machine gaslighting the recipient.

If a family member used LLM to write a letter to another, then at least the recipient can believe the sender feels the gratefulness in his/her human soul. If they used LLM to write a message in their own language, they would've proofread it to see if they agree with the sentiment, and "take ownership" of the message. If they used LLM to write a message in a foreign language, there's a sender there with a feeling, and a trust of the technology to translate the message to a language they don't know in the hopes that the technology does it correctly.

If it turns out the sender just told a machine to send their friends each a copy-pasted message, the sender is a lazy shallow asshole, but there's still in their heart an attempt of brightening someone's day, however lazily executed...
by CerryuDu | 2025-12-26 21:19:38+00:00
> didn't spare a thought for Google's other (in their opinion, bigger) misgivings, for well over a decade

That's the main disagreement, I believe. I'm definitely not an indiscriminate fan of Google. I think Google has done some good, too, and the net output is "mostly bad, but with mitigating factors". I can't say the same about purely AI companies.
by jimrandomh | 2025-12-26 21:20:27+00:00
If the only GPLed component used is the Linux kernel, you probably aren't entitled to any noteworthy source code. It's well established that using the kernel doesn't create a GPL requirement userspace software running on the same device, and the most likely arrangement here is a completely-uncustomized kernel paired with an open-source userspace program that does all the interesting bits.
by pxc | 2025-12-26 21:21:13+00:00
> It’s possible to imagine some kind of cached-deltas scheme to get faster/smaller updates

I think the snix¹ folks are working on something like this for the binary caches— the greater granularity of the content-addressing offers morally the same kind of optimization as delta RPMs: you can download less of what you don't need to re-download.

But I'm not aware of any current efforts to let people download the Nixpkgs tree itself more efficiently. Somehow caching Git deltas would be cool. But I'd expect that kind of optimization to come from a company that runs a Git forge, if it's generally viable, and to benefit many projects other than Nix and Nixpkgs.

--

1: https://snix.dev/
by kelnos | 2025-12-26 21:21:19+00:00
That's bullshit. The FFmpeg devs were well within their rights to even send a DMCA takedown notice, immediately, without asking nicely first.

This is what big corporations do to the little guys, so we owe big corporations absolutely nothing more.

They gave Rockchip a year and a half to fix it. It is the responsibility of Rockchip to take care of it once they were originally notified, and the FFmpeg dvelopers have no responsibility to babysit the Rockchip folks while they fulfill their legal obligations.
by DetectDefect | 2025-12-26 21:21:40+00:00
I don't think so. Anarchy is defined as the absence or non-recognition of authority, whereas I do not reject authority, but reason about controls a free market can meaningfully apply on it, namely through decentralization of technology - the means of its power.

I do believe a productive hierarchy of power could naturally emerge if everyone were equally equipped with technology. For example, if all State financial transactions were auditable by anyone (say, via immutable ledger) - would this not lead to favorable outcomes without the necessitating the chaos of anarchy?
by ColinWright | 2025-12-26 21:22:06+00:00
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are ...

... so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
by lacoolj | 2025-12-26 21:22:40+00:00
So can someone tell me - a non-insulin-dependent individual - why would an insulin pump need to be (controlled by?) a phone (in this case, the Nuu phone referenced)?

Surely there is a way to cheaply obtain bluetooth and a controller without saying "we'll just use this already existing hardware - that happens to be a whole-ass phone - because it's $5 from China"?

Kinda feels like that just screams data-stealing, regardless of where it was made.
by mlsu | 2025-12-26 21:23:00+00:00
I don't work for Medtronic. But it's extremely unlikely that will happen. It's not merely a matter of reverse engineering -- after the original medtronic "hack" / reverse engineer efforts (the ones that lead to the original openAPS system being developed) the FDA put out new guidance on cybersecurity protections for insulin pumps.

The communication between your phone/pump or glucose sensor/pump is encrypted now for all newer devices.

> Diabetic companies like Insulet have been very lax when it’s come to the hacking of their devices

Absolutely not true, not any more.
by SilasX | 2025-12-26 21:23:51+00:00
I mean ... there's a continuous scale of how much effort you spend to express gratitude. You could ask the same question of "well why did you say 'thanks' instead of 'thank you' [instead of 'thank you very much', instead of 'I am humbled by your generosity', instead of some small favor done in return, instead of some large favor done in return]?"

You could also make the same criticism of e.g. an automated reply like "Thank you for your interest, we will reach out soon."

Not every thank you needs to be all-out. You can, of course, think more gratitude should have been expressed in any particular case, but there's nothing contradictory about capping it in any one instance.
by windexh8er | 2025-12-26 21:24:13+00:00
Your original comment had this at the end...

> - Rockchip's code is gone
> - FFmpeg gets nothing back
> - Community loses whatever improvements existed
> - Rockchip becomes an adversary, not a partner

This is all conjecture which is probably why you deleted it.

Their code isn't gone (unless they're managing their code in all the wrong ways), FFmpeg sends a message to a for-profit violation of their code, the community gets to see the ignorance Rockchip puts into the open source partnership landscape and finally... If Rockchip becomes an adversary of one of the most popular and notable OSS that they take advantage of, again, for profit then fuck Rockchip. They're not anything here other than a violator of a license and they've had plenty of warning and time to fix.
by consumer451 | 2025-12-26 21:24:16+00:00
I use agentic LLM dev tools to work on two apps, around 14 hours per day, very happily. As a long out of practice dev who still has product ideas, these tools have created huge opportunities for me. I am also having the most fun of my professional life.

However, I would trade all that to make "AI" go away in a heart beat. It's just impossible for me to believe that that this will not be a tragedy for society at large. I cannot imagine even a single realistic world-scale scenario in which the outcome will be positive.

Anyway, back to work....
by ColinWright | 2025-12-26 21:25:24+00:00
Not sure it's entirely relevant, but I'm pretty sure that research done for instrumentation in aeroplane flight decks shows that information is transferred faster and more reliably from the instruments to the pilots when it's analogue.

That's why even the modern glass/digital instrument panels have simulated "tape".

They also include digital readouts for added accuracy, but it's the analogue versions that transfer information "at a glance".
by Animats | 2025-12-26 21:25:31+00:00
> This makes me wonder what methods of transferring information we may have lost historically that we don't even recognize?

- Gregg shorthand.

- Labanotation (like music scores, but for dance)

- Morse code

- Punched tickets (not for machines, but for train tickets and bus transfers)

- Railroad car chalk markings (where does this car go?)

- Hand signals for railroad yards, cranes, etc.
by bgbntty2 | 2025-12-26 21:26:36+00:00
We also see thousands of other things everyday. You can't be curious about everything.

Analog clocks, roman numerals and Morse code are unnecessary in modern living for 99%+ people, just like it's unnecessary for them to know why the moon always faces the same way or how a car engine works or what technologies are used by their computer monitor. It's good to know these facts exist and that they can be learned, but that's about it.
by rvnx | 2025-12-26 21:27:06+00:00
To be clear: Rockchip is at fault, 100%. I would sue (and obv DMCA) any company who takes my code and refuses to attribute it.

But there's a difference between "refuses" and "apologizes and admits confusion" and then forgets because lazy / or pretends to forget, and will likely fix it if you remind them.

Escalation can be gradual: reminder, warning, final warning, then nuclear.

Or, you immediately escalate to [DMCA / court] and that's very fair, but suddenly like 2 years after silence (if, and only if that was the case, because maybe they spoke outside of Twitter/X).

That way, others know you defend your territory and that compliance is rewarded.

I think here it is a final warning stage (nuclear would be court, which could and should be an option).
by mergesort | 2025-12-26 21:27:07+00:00
No problem at all! I read it as a bit pithy, but I didn’t think it was particularly mean spirited.

If you check out my writing on build.ms and fabisevi.ch you’ll see that the majority of it is meant to be evergreen observations of a concept or a moment in time. My goal is to make people think and to think about thinking, more than it is to tell people what exactly to think.

If I had to summarize my style in one sentence, it would walking people to and around an idea, and leaving the rest as an exercise to the reader. Naturally, this means I have less control over how people interpret my writing so I do try and cover my bases with fact and experience, but that still means sometimes I won’t deliver a complete picture to everyone.

In that case, sometimes I come to a place like HN or Bluesky or Mastodon where my post is being discussed and try add some perspective and clarity through constructive conversation. :)

If I’m being honest, I think we’re too early in the state of generative AI as a coding tool to draw very strong factual conclusions for many of our experiences using AI to code that will hold up well. I’m not implying it’s all vibes, but I think it would be pretty hard to wrap up my post in a bow the way you’re suggesting. On the other hand I’m always open to well-considered feedback — and would love to know more about your experience if you’re interested in sharing!

That’s a long way of saying happy holidays to you as well!
by mlsu | 2025-12-26 21:27:17+00:00
Until recently, if you offered a pump that _could_ be controlled by another device (such as a phone) you would have to offer your own "controller" device, even if 99.9% of your customers have a phone already.

So, this companion device is kind of a thing that Insulet had to release. You'll see this with CGM's too -- there's a small companion device sold with the Dexcom G7 (the "controller"), even though everyone just uses their phone.

This is kind of a regulatory quirk; basically from the FDA's point of view you had to have a complete standalone system, that did not include the phone, in order to be able to prescribe it. I think they do not require companion devices any more, it's OK to release something that requires the user to have a phone.
by throawayonthe | 2025-12-26 21:27:18+00:00
> That's a major skill that they're not used to at all

how major is it really? seems incredibly limited in its use, and largely unnecessary in the modern world, with the existence of digital clocks (especially 24 hour ones!)

I expect it will go the way of telephone rotary dials etc - something you could learn in under an hour but have no reason to...
by kgwxd | 2025-12-26 21:27:24+00:00
I think they're just saying the GPL doesn't really cover consumer/distributor (dis)agreements, it only covers copyright. While the spirit of the GPL is user-first, it still has to be realized within the confines of copyright law. Even though many people might conflate the spiritual goal and the legal agreement, it doesn't grant "users" any extraordinary legal powers.

It's not illegal to not honor written offers, it's illegal to distribute copyrighted material in violation of it's license.
by zahlman | 2025-12-26 21:27:48+00:00
I've talked about this many times on HN this year but got beaten to the punch on blogging it seems. Curses.

... Okay, after a brief look, there's still lots of room for me to comment. In particular:

> pip’s slowness isn’t a failure of implementation. For years, Python packaging required executing code to find out what a package needed.

This is largely refuted by the fact that pip is still slow, even when installing from wheels (and getting PEP 600 metadata for them). Pip is actually still slow even when doing nothing. (And when you create a venv and allow pip to be bootstrapped in it, that bootstrap process takes in the high 90s percent of the total time used.)