MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by godelski | 2025-12-15 23:49:56+00:00
> 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating.

This is a feature not a bug.

For people missing the abstract, here it is and I'm giving emphesis to an important part.

Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating. Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and quantum science but overall have been stable for decades. ***Contrary to common perceptions, US technology benefits from these graduates' work even if they leave: though the US share of global patent citations to graduates' science drops from 70% to 50% after migrating, it remains five times larger than the destination country share, and as large as all other countries combined. These results highlight the value that the US derives from training foreign scientists - not only when they stay, but even when they leave.***

Not only that but there's the whole cultural export too. Come live in America for 4-10 years and you're going to be acclimated to some of the cultures and customs. You don't think you're going to go home and take some of that with you? Conversely, America isn't a "melting-pot" because of a monoculture, but because it brings many different cultures together. The whole education system is as much a part of "cultural warfare" as is the movie industry, music industry, or even Korea's K-Pop scene (which has been incredibly successful, just like Thailand's program for restaurants in foreign countries).

While personally I'd staple Green Cards to every Ph.D. given to a foreign national, I simultaneously want them to go back to their home countries and make their countries better. To take the good from America, leave the bad, and to build lasting relationships between the countries. That's a win-win situation. Both countries benefit from this! As well as the people. (I'd staple Green Cards so the person can make that choice.)

I haven't read the whole paper (nor will I), but I get the impression that much of this will not be addressed in it. Perfectly okay, they're focused on the easier to measure parts. But let's also not forget that there is a whole lot more to the bigger picture here. A whole lot more than my comment even implies.
by joelklabo | 2025-12-15 23:50:01+00:00
I built this tool to mostly help AI agents get to the right invocation for CLI tools quicker.

Now there are similar tools out there, but none were exactly like what I wanted.

Try it out. If you're interested, my main use is for `xcodebuild`.

It has it's own site here: https://ackchyually.sh
by kragen | 2025-12-15 23:50:11+00:00
All of the dozens of US STEM PhDs I know from recent decades had to pay their tuition by working as TAs, RAs, or usually both. They didn't walk in the door with a trust fund, work through the coursework, and then write up a dissertation. I'm not sure that's even a possibility in most STEM fields: you need access to millions of dollars of ultra-specialized equipment which you can realistically only get by working in an existing lab, which means being an RA.
by notahacker | 2025-12-15 23:50:11+00:00
The FCC regulates satellites launched from or communicating with the US, including stuff which extends beyond spectrum licensing like mandatory 5 year deorbiting capability for newly launched LEO satellites. Europe, China and India are not regulation-free utopias either.

You've actually got more option to jurisdiction-shop with underwater data, but I'm not convinced that's the major issue with building datacentres anyway.

Ultimately there are latency and minimise data-transfer arguments for doing certain types of data processing on local machines in space, but the generalised compute and model-training argument only works if the unit economics stack up as sufficiently good to cover the risk and R&D, and they're not obviously favourable compared with cold place on earth with clear skies and access to cold water even assuming launch costs become minimal. (It's slightly amusing to see how much some advocates of that other controversial futurist vision of spaced-based solar power - whose chances of success equally depend on low launch costs - viscerally hate the latest wave of datacentres-in-space hype...)
by mschuster91 | 2025-12-15 23:50:25+00:00
Personally, I run a Yinker 4x4 matrix (in: nintendo switch 1, chromecast, mac pro 4.1 I use as a gaming rig, raspberry pi 5, out: projector, TV, pi 5) and am quite happy with it - no outages so far in half a year of uptime.

I desperately need to work with CEC though lol, never had the time to actually test that.

[1] https://www.amazon.de/Yinker-hintergrundbeleuchteter-Unterst...
by imgabe | 2025-12-15 23:50:29+00:00
Why is it necessary to have a flood of foreign money to operate the university? Universities in the past operated without an influx of wealthy foreign students paying outrageous tuition.

Today they are bloated with administration that is nothing but a cost center, meanwhile they eliminate tenured professorships and have classes taught by tenuous adjunct faculty who are paid poverty wages. Universities could easily right the ship by cutting the administration and focusing on teaching and research, but the people who need to make the decision to do that are the ones who would be cut.
by quitit | 2025-12-15 23:50:35+00:00
The deals for this type of product positioning occur quite high up in the chain.

To give an example Yum! brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, etc) was formed as a subsidiary of PepsiCo. Although PepsiCo has divested from Yum, their pre-existing relationship is why these restaurants only serve Pepsi's soft drinks.

Deal-making is also why you see patterns like this emerge in other places such as convenience stores that only sell beverages from the Coca-cola company (i.e. higher volume sales from just one supplier yields a better discount than splitting sales across multiple suppliers). It's relatively rarer to see more than one beverage supplier at a restaurant, club or convenience outlet.
Show HN: A visual reminder for ADHD brains
by borisandcrispin | 2025-12-15 23:50:46+00:00
Mozart Says is a floating reminder built specifically for ADHD brains that need to see things to remember them.

If you're like me, notifications disappear into the void and todo apps get buried under 47 browser tabs. I used to plaster my monitor with post-its because out of sight = out of mind.

So I built Mozart Says, a reminder that literally floats on top of everything until you deal with it.

It's a free Mac app where you can write any message, customize how it looks (typography, colors), and drag it anywhere on screen.
by cafebeen | 2025-12-15 23:51:27+00:00
To a large extent, I think this could be solved by labs having more long-term permanent research staff (technicians, data analysts, scientists) and reducing the number of PhD students. Many students would gladly stay on in that position instead of leaving, so it increases job opportunities. It would also improve the quality of the science because the permanent staff would have more historical knowledge, in contrast to the current situation where students constantly rotate in and out with somewhat messy hand-offs. The students could also then focus more on scholarly work, planning and overseeing research execution with the team. The problem is that the incentives are aligned to allocate students to doing all lab tasks, not long term staff. I think we could change this through changes to the requirements and structure of science funding mechanisms however, since ultimately that's the source of the incentives.
by MostlyStable | 2025-12-15 23:51:30+00:00
While I'm more skeptical than you are of the value of a string of new students coming through as opposed to just keeping the very best students, I'm also not suggesting we mandate this change or force it. I'm suggesting that we give people more information to make better informed decisions. If students decide that they are comfortable with a sub 20% job placement rate, then great, nothing needs to change. If they aren't satisfied with that, and we decide that actually they were performing a valuable service, then it behoovs society to pay them enough that they becoming willing to make that gamble again.

The current information assymetry is exploitative. One of two things would happen under my proposed system: either nothing would change because students think they are getting a good deal as is or students don't think the deal is worth it which means that the current system only works because students are having the reality of the job market hidden from them.
by ToucanLoucan | 2025-12-15 23:51:38+00:00
And it's not like there aren't dozens of equally brain-rot apps made my US and EU based companies that people would love to see banned. The only one, out of SHEER COINCIDENCE I'M SUUUURE, actually on the chopping block is the one that promotes a lot of pro-Gaza content.

Like I'm sorry, there is just no debate to be had here. Israel is committing a genocide, confirmed by the UN, recognized by anyone who looks at what's going on there with an even remotely objective eye, and the only social platform on which that message is getting out is facing legal scrutiny in the entire West is TikTok. This doesn't even require a conspiracy board, it's literally three red strings between TikTok, Israel, and the US. Despite worldwide propaganda efforts on the part of every corporate media in existence all screaming that the genocide isn't a genocide, a full 25% of people according to a poll I saw are fully convinced the genocide Israel is committing is in fact a genocide.

This would be fucking pathetic if not for the fact that every organized world entity involved in this utter sham was so incredibly powerful and their influence wasn't borderline inescapable.
by itishappy | 2025-12-15 23:51:53+00:00
I would argue that imperative programming is the only one with a concept of linear time.

Here's a functional example:

map (*3) [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]

Are those multiplications run in sequence or parallel?

Here's a fancier functional one:

getUser = User <$> getName <*> getEmail <*> getStartDate

What order are the fields fetched?

If you answered "unspecified" then you're right! A compiler could parallelize either of these expressions!
by ggm | 2025-12-15 23:52:02+00:00
Let me ask you this: when trained scientists from {other economy} arrive in the US, do you ask yourself why? Is it of necessity because {other economy} is "worse" and US is "better" or can it be personal, unrelated, case-by-case?

What is a natural, good flow for people between economies in this instance? is it zero or 100% where along this arc does it lie, and why?
by djfobbz | 2025-12-15 23:52:10+00:00
Based on industry data and first-hand experience, most small to mid-sized fabrication shops spend 25–40% of their total time on quoting-related activities: reviewing customer drawings, clarifying requirements, preparing cost breakdowns, and going back and forth over email or phone. In some job shops with limited staff, quoting can even eat up half a workweek for the owner or lead estimator.

Our goal is to bring that number down to under 5% by automating geometry analysis, material costing, and lead-time estimation. Essentially turning what used to take days (or weeks) into an instant, self-service process for customers. That frees up the shop to spend the remaining 95%+ of their time doing what actually makes money: fabricating parts.

For reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/n1yryi/mfg_qu...
by phantasmish | 2025-12-15 23:52:24+00:00
Enormous amounts of money and 30ish years (about 1980 or a bit after, to 2016) were spent building the largest web of propaganda distribution probably ever, to make this happen. Plus pioneering PR and crisis management strategies and testing the limits of voters’ tolerance for bullshit (very important post-Nixon—an early major experiment was the Iran-Contra scandal, and it went great for them)

After 30 years it was so good it could make Republicans who’d been making fun of Trump as a notorious failed businessman, clownish self-parody, conman, and philanderer five minutes earlier (and I mean common voters, not politicians) do a 180 on a dime and send the dude money.

None of this was built for Trump, but in priming their base to never consider voting for a democrat, they made them both way too right-wing and also made them wonder why Republican politicians weren’t going after democrats way harder (they’re so terrible, after all!) which teed up a coup within the party just perfectly.
by robaato | 2025-12-15 23:52:37+00:00
This is certainly relevant to aikido, and in particular the somewhat nebulous concept of "aiki". Unnecessary tension in a technique creates a reaction in your partner which tends to block things. Skilled practitioners make things look effortless, and use much less tension - they are more relaxed. It's a fascinating study - and lots of fun. Very different sport - but check Shane Benzies and his books and videos on running and technique - how technique makes a huge difference, with less effort.
by ghm2199 | 2025-12-15 23:52:50+00:00
An analogous audio binding issue used to happen with my Jabra Bt headphones. It was generally connected to my phone and my computer. After finishing a phone call — if previously the computer was playing some music — the music would turn back on but it would be a very poor quality, I suspect the audio "mode" was stuck at "transmitting" phone call audio quality even though the BT software on the headset detected devices being switched from phone -> computer. Toggling the BT sound output on the mac to and fro between Computer and Headphones, fixed it.

I suspect it was probably a vendor — jabra — software issue when sending a signal to apple's BT stack when switching between types of devices? But probably not worth fixing on my own.
by zamadatix | 2025-12-15 23:53:01+00:00
Had I noticed the Article's sole source was Moore's Law Is Dead I would have been more skeptical from the start. Not that I consider Wccftech a pinnacle of accuracy, but they claim to have contacted Samsung and received a reply refuting this story:

> The rumor regarding the phasing out of Samsung SATA or other SSDs is false. - Samsung Electronics spokesperson

https://wccftech.com/no-samsung-isnt-phasing-out-of-the-cons...
by AnonymousPlanet | 2025-12-15 23:53:11+00:00
Even if construction would be zero it wouldn't make more than a dent in the overall trend because the investments are done into land not houses. This is also why zoning doesn't matter. Look at the big picture. Pretty much every argument you made can be easily refuted by looking at any other jurisdiction that has completely different zoning laws and completely different construction prices and yet prices for real estate are skyrocketing the same, regardless of use. What those areas do have in common: general availability of real estate to international investors.

Properties aren't bought up anymore to develop them or have any returns from use. They are being bought as a non-depreciating asset. Want to effortlessly park money and not have the money rot? Buy land. Never mind what happens to stand on top of it. You can see more and more of those rotting real estate plots all over the western world. And there's always someone who wants to park money.

Your thinking isn't wrong on a smaller scale. All those aspects matter for a local housing market. But the overall trend is governed by something else.
by beepbooptheory | 2025-12-15 23:53:36+00:00
Thats interesting, I don't know if I have ever seen this kind of labor market logic applied to science before. Is this an agreed upon idea? In my mind, science and the kind of focused research it entails is kind of definitionally distinct from something like "innovation." Like, frankly, yes, I want a stream of widgets; if that means consistent units of research done to contribute to an important area/problem, which are reviewed and judged by peers.

Like what's even the alternative? We want a Steve Jobs of science? That's really what we are going for?
by devilbunny | 2025-12-15 23:53:49+00:00
I'd say that even the idea that you could VPN into your own network and forward all traffic through it is pretty far from the mainstream. Let alone how to actually do it. Most people think of VPN as a way to avoid porn blocks or getting tagged for piracy. But, as you and I both noted, the technical know-how for setting up Tailscale is not that high, and for using it is almost nil. Turn it on, pick an exit node, go. Combine that with a device that's intended as a consumer appliance that makes maintenance a non-issue, and you have a very good solution for the family geek.

You're very welcome.
by toddgardner | 2025-12-15 23:53:52+00:00
For all the folks worried about how hard automation is going to be, this is what my team and I have been working on for the past year:

https://www.certkit.io/certificate-management

You CNAME the acme challenge DNS to us, we manage all your certificates for you. We expose an API and agents to push certificates everywhere you need them, and then do real-time monitoring that the correct certificate is running on the webserver. End-to-end auditability.
by jessetemp | 2025-12-15 23:54:05+00:00
Sorry to ruin your ruining, but if you read past the abstract and look at the data, you'll see it tends to correlate with whether a democrat or republican is in office. Immigration policy is also mentioned in the discussion.

> Given these findings, a corollary question is what attracts foreign graduate students to the US and leads them to stay. Prior research points to immigration policy—a subject of perennial public interest—having a large effect on stay rates
by kevindamm | 2025-12-15 23:54:51+00:00
It's not a yes/no per contestent, it's per edge between contestants. There are n(n-1)/2 of these.

A true answer for a potential match is actually a state update for all of the (n-1) edges connecting either contestant, that's 2(n-2) edges that can be updated to be false. Some of these may already be known from previous rounds' matchups but that's still more than a single binary.
by keeda | 2025-12-15 23:55:18+00:00
Heheh a bit tangential, but a long time ago, I had a similar thought: how much performance could we gain if we just compared hash values (typically integers) and avoided comparing actual keys -- and the pointer-chasing that entails -- as far as possible?

The problem is that for a regular hash table, eventually keys must be compared because two keys could have the same hash value. So maybe we relegate key comparisons only in cases when we encounter a collision.

The only case where this can work is when the set of keys that could ever be looked up is static. Otherwise we could always get a lookup for a new, non-existent key that creates a new collision and return the wrong value. Still, there are cases where this could be useful, e.g. looking up enum values, or a frozendict implementation. Something like minimal perfect hashing, but simpler.

So I came up with this silly project and benchmarked it in Java, C# and a hacky CPython "extension": https://github.com/kunalkandekar/Picadillo

A very micro optimization, but turned out there was a 5% - 30% speedup on a PC of that era.
by jsheard | 2025-12-15 23:55:59+00:00
The ethical side is up to you, but in a strictly technical sense I don't think there's much that Google could do to intrude on your users privacy as a result of them issuing your SSL certificate, even if they wanted to. AIUI the ACME protocol never lets the CA see the private key, only the public key, which is public by definition anyway.

A more realistic concern with using Googles public CA is they may eventually get bored and shut it down, as they tend to do. It would be prudent to have a backup CA lined up.
by tkgally | 2025-12-15 23:56:17+00:00
It doesn't sound like a lot to me, either. I have known many people who moved to another country for graduate study. Some of them ended up settling in that country, but others pursued further study or employment in yet other countries. And perhaps the largest group among my acquaintances are those who eventually moved back to their home countries. They feel more comfortable there, they have family there, or, in many cases, returning home is what they intended to do all along.
by turtletontine | 2025-12-15 23:57:36+00:00
What you’re describing sounds a lot like the Department of Energy national labs. They have (or had) many permanent-track research roles without teaching obligations, where scientists can have long stable research careers.

The problem, as always, is funding. In the US, the federal govt is essentially the only “customer” of basic research. There’s some private funding, often from kooky millionaires who want someone to invent a time machine, but it’s the exception that proves the rule. Universities sometimes have pure research roles, but they’re generally dependent on the employee paying themselves with a constant stream of grants. It’s a stressful and precarious position.
by AshamedCaptain | 2025-12-15 23:57:44+00:00
"None of binder is in Java" is too strong a statement: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/...

This libbinder is still way too Java-centric. It can be used from outside, and even slightly reminds me of openbinder (e.g. sp<> https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/main/+/... ) but it doesn't really change the picture much. You have something which smells Java from a mile, and has a lot of other Android-isms to boot, so still likely requires to reinvent a lot of the wheel to actually use it for most desktop programs.

Even the use of C++ is likely to frown many people. (Not me).
Show HN: I made a Minecraft torch out of a vape I found on the ground
by valenceidra | 2025-12-15 23:58:48+00:00
It's crazy how useful the batteries still are, and some of these have usbc charging circuitry while still being disposable. Next time I plan to sus out if I can bypass only the cutoff timer so it doesn't turn itself off after 15 seconds or so. Has anyone done this?
by Ieghaehia9 | 2025-12-15 23:59:04+00:00
> There are people who believe that proof-of-work isn't very effective, but none of them have succeeded in spamming the Bitcoin network with blocks they've mined, driving the other miners out of business, nor (for the last several years) with spamming the Bitcoin network with dust transactions they've signed, so I don't think we should take their opinions very seriously.

Different system. The parent and GP are talking about proof-of-work being used directly for account creation. If a chat service required mining-levels of PoW (and hence any prospective new users to have an ASIC), it would not be very popular. Nor would it be very popular if it used a relative difficulty system and the spammers used dedicated servers while the legitimate users had to compete using only their phones.