MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lenkite | 2025-12-27 18:10:55+00:00
We have already gone through this cycle in India. People feel very strange dealing with cash after using UPI for many years. In-fact, many will outright refuse.

Good thing is we do not depend on the US of A - The Unified Payments Interface is an Indian instant payment system and protocol completely independent of US behemoths. There are special, simplified UPI apps developed for senior citizens and lots of training material to ensure differently abled folk are are able to use it.

In the few years, UPI will also be linked with other BRICS national payment systems such as MirPay (Russia), UnionPay (China) and Pix (Brazil). A lot of other nations have expressed interest in joining. Once that is through, we will have an international peer-to-peer, payment networks completely separated from the West and not subject to big-nanny Western interference. Yay! The US can go cry in a corner when its bullying sanctions are just ignored.
by ur-whale | 2025-12-27 18:11:36+00:00
Highly unpopular opinion here and I'm going to get downvoted into the ground (who cares), but ... this has been a very long time coming and has very much been a self-inflicted change.

My bet is that it will end up being a very good thing for the world at large.

China has recently started to buy Arabian oil and paying with yuan.

Major countries (India, China) are starting to buy Russian raw materials and paying directly using rubles.

In both cases, trade is happening and completely bypassing the once unavoidable USD.

The US choosing to weaponize the USD for geopolitical purposes has finally made the world realize the immense loss of sovereignty they had allowed themselves to be subjected to by making the USD the global trading currency.

This change will also force the US to finally get fiscally responsible and get the bloody USD printing machine under control, something they never had to do because of the USD reserve currency status.

The golden triangle of Russia (raw materials), India (highly educated workforce, strong demography), China (industrial powerhouse, stole the bulk of Western IP, is now producing more cutting-edge research than the west) finally free of the shackles of the USD and establishing direct overland trade routes that 100% avoid the seas (thereby 100% avoiding potential US embargoes, both financially and militarily enforced) ... the world is going to change in a rather profound way, finally relegating the US to being a simple country instead of the has-been empire it currently is.
by coderintherye | 2025-12-27 18:12:29+00:00
Power Apps is just absolutely terrible for forms. Which is sad, because the platform itself is decent and most governmental entities that I've worked with seem to have access to it. If the UI/UX was better and Forms weren't cursed then non-technical teams could maintain their own apps and workflows. Combo'ing it with Power Automate can get a lot of things done. But Power Apps Forms need a complete re-haul and without such a change it will absolutely be the right decision to create something outside of it.
by moffkalast | 2025-12-27 18:12:40+00:00
No it's definitely a problem with the ARM architecture, specifically that it's standard to make black box SoCs that nobody can write drivers for and the manufacturer gives you one binary version and then fucks off forever. It's a problem with the ARM ecosystem as a whole for literally every board (except Raspberry Pi), likely stemming from the bulk of ARM being throwaway smartphones with proprietary designs.

If ARM cannot outdo x86 on power draw anymore then it really is entirely pointless to use it because you're trading off a lot, and it's basically guaranteed that the board will be a useless brick a few years down the line.
by woodruffw | 2025-12-27 18:13:33+00:00
This feels pretty unsatisfying: something that’s been “considered harmful” for three decades should be deprecated and then removed in a responsible ecosystem.

(PGP/GPG are of course hamstrung by their own decision to be a Swiss Army knife/only loosely coupled to the secure operation itself. So the even more responsible thing to do is to discard them for purposes that they can’t offer security properties for, which is the vast majority of things they get used for.)
by UncleMeat | 2025-12-27 18:13:38+00:00
I am doing a few things that I recommend.

Donate to mutual aid organizations that provide legal advice and support. The Trump admin is breaking a ton of laws but they aren't breaking all of them. The legal system is more important now than ever. Making sure that people know what they can do to interfere with ICE is important. Funding legal teams for people detained by ICE is important.

Donate to mutual aid organizations that provide financial support. Somebody who is afraid to go to work because ICE might be there still needs to pay rent. An organization that funnels money to these people protects people.

Agitate for dems that give a shit. The way this ends is if dems win in 2026 and 2028 and actually take steps to punish the people who have committed these crimes and to dismantle the systems that enabled this in the first place. If instead we get the dems doing what Labor is doing and trying to be a just-slightly-less-evil nativist organization then we are fucking doomed. Documentation of these crimes will be important for making the libs unable to just say "well let's all move on" like they did in 2021.
by wredcoll | 2025-12-27 18:14:40+00:00
I mean, the article has paragraphs like:

> With the system online, there were still many improvements to be made. Like taxes, applying for retirement was still an incredibly confusing process. Working closely with talented designers and the Retirement Services team at OPM, we set out to reinvent the user experience from end-to-end.

Complaining that the writer took all the credit seems a bit petty.
by RevEng | 2025-12-27 18:14:46+00:00
While I agree entirely about what Grok teaches us about alignment, I think the argument that "alignment was never a technical problem" is false. Everything I have ever read about AI safety and alignment have started by pointing out the fundamental problem of deciding what values to align to because humanity doesn't have a consistent set of values. Nonetheless, there is a technical challenge because whatever values we choose, we need a way to get the models to follow those values. We need both. The engineers are solving the technical problem; they need others to solve the social problem.
by nkmnz | 2025-12-27 18:14:52+00:00
I'm contradicting your interpretation of the Wikipedia article. It does not support your initial statement that a) Github's (or any other company's) free tier constitutes a commons and/or b) the "overuse" of said free tiers by free riders could be the base of a tragedy of the commons (ToC). The idea is absurd, since there is no commons and also no tragedy. To the contrary. Commons have an external or natural limit to how much they can provide in a given time without incurring cost in the form of depreciation. But there is no external or natural limit to the free tier. The free tier is the result of the incentives under which the Github management operates and it is fully at their discretion, so the limits are purely internal. Other than in the case of commons, more usage can actually increase the amount of resources provided by the company for the users of the free tier, because a) network effects and b) economies of scale (more users bring more other users; more users cost less per user).

If Github realizes that the free tier is too generous, they can cut it anytime without it being in any way a "tragedy" for anybody involved - having to pay for stuff or service you want to consume is not the "T" in ToC! The T is that there are no incentives to pay (or use less) without increasing the incentives for everyone else to just increase their relative use! You not using the github free tier doesn't increase the usage of Github for anybody else - if it has any effect at all, it might actually decrease the usage of Github because you might not publish something that might in turn attract other users to interact.
by moralestapia | 2025-12-27 18:15:00+00:00
Most people are not doers but losers. When someone does anything, they like to throw s*t at it.

Doers are perpetually disliked by losers simply because they can do stuff while them can't.

It's natural that the losers' actions are aligned towards making doers disappear, but it's usually a very low level and pathetic threat to doers.

I enjoyed reading your article and hope you have more stuff coming :). Keep it going!
by uplifter | 2025-12-27 18:15:09+00:00
What part of it don’t you agree with? That an algorithm implementation must encode the goal that it pursues? How can something pursue a goal it has no access to a definition of? If you have an alternative way it could work, please propose it.

I’m not asking rhetorically, I’m truly interested in learning the flaws in my argument for why natural selection cannot be modelled as an optimization process. So if you have the time to reply with a more detailed rebuttal, I’d much appreciate it.

edit: Addendum: I recognize my claim that computer scientists might have an advantage in understanding this is contentious, and I was not implying that they (we) as a group have a better record of understanding evolution’s subtlety than biologists (which I studied in uni) or the average lay person. I just think they could have an advantage in understanding the version of the argument that I gave above, and I am interested in improving it for that purpose.
by derangedHorse | 2025-12-27 18:15:28+00:00
The average US salary isn't $75k btw. That figure is usually quoted from the reported median household income in 2022[1]. The median personal income, which is the figure that should* be quoted, was around $45k for 2024[2].

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N
by igneo676 | 2025-12-27 18:15:51+00:00
Nah, this is just the No True Scotsman fallacy. San Francisco is FAR more left in their politics than most of the nation. For example, the new mayor described himself as:

> As a lifelong Democrat and San Franciscan, I am running for mayor to turn around the city I love

London Breed, the mayor before, was endorsed by explicitly Democrat or nonpartisan individuals (including Kamala Harris)

We could go on. What's ironic here is that this comment just reveals how disconnected this form of left wing politics is from the larger nation. They call even examples of the politics of their own "right wing" because they're so radically left
by somenameforme | 2025-12-27 18:15:54+00:00
This is more of a go out with a whimper rather than a bang type thing. Being the world reserve currency (as well as the largest consumer market in the world) previously enabled the US to do things like relatively easily export inflation in spite of relatively reckless monetary policy. Now that inflation is sticking around far more persistently, even long term bonds have gone from 1-2% to 4%+, and so on. Stagflation is a conceivable longer term outcome.

The replacement will probably be a multinational currency with strictly controlled quantity tied to some sort of physical asset(s). Basically Bretton Woods 2.0, except with the learned experience of not just granting a single country immense power and having them pinky swear not to default on their obligations and then abuse that granted power. China's probably betting that that asset will be gold.
by scoofy | 2025-12-27 18:16:12+00:00
I run a little wiki and, holy shit, the bots have gotten advanced. Like, it used to be no big deal, then like a year and a half ago, it exploded. It's basically quadrupled the costs for me to run the site. It's not even worth it to ban IPs anymore, because they are routing their traffic through different IPs -- in different countries -- just to scan my site, repeatedly, every damn day. It's an obscure golf course wiki, but no... better check every other day to see if anything has changed!

At the same time, the bots are dumb as hell. I have honey pots that basically are as simple as "if you visit this obscure, hidden URL you're banned" or "if the same obscure page for a course is visited for four different courses in a row, then ban all the IPs that were part of that." But they keep coming... like, an infinite number of IPs. I genuinely don't want to use Cloudflare, but I understand why people do. It's absolutely crazy out there.
by devnonymous | 2025-12-27 18:16:15+00:00
The linked trends suggest a revival of the term though.

> The people who do the "*nix" cargo cult thing have never seen a SunOS machine and don't even know what a HPUX is.

The meaning of words evolve over time though. Text is still broken into lines by "carriage return/line feeds" and is written on "hard disk" split up in "sectors".,. Over time people using these would not have seen a typewriter or even know what a platter is but may still use it to communicate effectively.
by kevin_thibedeau | 2025-12-27 18:16:28+00:00
I have a Ford Sync 2.5 system which is a cost reduced hardware downgrade from QNX based Sync 3. I'm sure the OS is doing its best while hobbled by a poor management decision but it has lots of bugs that crop up from what appears to be severe RAM shortage coupled with some gradual memory leaks. I have to reboot it regularly when traveling with Android auto. It's always a crap shoot if my phone will connect.
by wkat4242 | 2025-12-27 18:17:53+00:00
Well there's also a c) - Whatever they get away with now they will have in pocket, and whatever penance they will have to do with a future administration will take years and years of legal back and forth to actually pan out, by which time it will be watered down so any fine will dwarf the profits made during this period.

Also, if they manage to reach "too big to fail" status by that point, whatever punishment will be nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
by data-ottawa | 2025-12-27 18:19:03+00:00
This type of branding makes it impossible to find products lately.

I was recently looking for embedded analytics platforms (and was willing to pay), but the search became incredibly frustrating as every database or analytics tool now brands itself as some AI first thing. The landing pages no longer help me figure out what they do, which I guess is good for raising investor money but I'm sure it can't be good for real sales.

I hope that soon the mania can end and we can get useful branding again.

VSCode to me is better branded as the editor with the best plugin ecosystem around. The AI features should just be plugins to an incredibly flexible editor. But I know MS wants to sell subscriptions like windsurf and cursor.
by KaiserPro | 2025-12-27 18:19:43+00:00
> Rivers of London series

Whats nice about the first book is that its a love letter to london. Its not too serious, which a lot of fantasy can be. Its fun.

Its a light fantasy, in that most of the world is "normal" london, and the "silly bollocks" is threaded through reality, rather than the other way around.

At first Kobna kinda grated, but he now is to me, DCI grant, and a whole bunch of other characters.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-12-27 18:20:07+00:00
I keep waiting for this younger generation to wake up to why we invented the GPL in the first place. Entities that are happy to use your brains for a while, and then eagerly dispose of you when they can.

They love your free labour. "Thanks for your OSS project! No, no, we're not hiring... and you'd never make it through out interview process!"

One should make free software for other free software developers and grateful end users. Not for parasites. Recognition doesn't pay the mortgage. And now you won't even get that because your work will just end distilled into weights in a large language model.
by basisword | 2025-12-27 18:20:18+00:00
I'm glad you said it. Incredible tech and the top comment is debating licensing. The demos I've seen of this are incredible and it'll be great taking old photos (that weren't shot with a 'spatial' camera) and experiencing them in VR. I think it sums up the Apple approach to this stuff (actually impacting peoples lives in a positive way) vs the typically techie attitude.
by Ysx | 2025-12-27 18:21:43+00:00
> Yes, I know which “major computer manufacturer” it is, and no, I’m not telling. This is consistent with longstanding blog policy that companies are not identified in stories, because the point of the story to teach something, not to call out companies for derision.

From the follow-up post: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220920-00/?p=10...
by gspr | 2025-12-27 18:21:55+00:00
> There's no reason to believe that weights are copyrightable.

I know this is a long, nuanced, ongoing discussion. I'm very interested in it, but haven't read up on it for years. Could you elaborate a bit on the latest?

I was always in the camp that opined that "weights" are too broad a term for any sensible discussions about conclusions like "are (not) copyrightable". Clearly a weight that's the average of its training data is not copyrightable. But also, surely, weights that are capable of verbatim reproduction of non-trivial copyrightable training data are, because they're just a strange storage medium for the copyright data.

What am I missing?
by codingclaws | 2025-12-27 18:22:00+00:00
Neuromancer - 2nd time I read it. Such a good book.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go - 2nd time I read it. Cool book. It's about a world with a big river where humans are reborn after they die on earth.

Use of Weapons - 2nd time I read it. One of the more popular Iain Banks Culture novels.

Dungeon Crawler Carl #1 - Loved it.

Matter - 2nd time I read it. This is another Banks Culture novel. This book is actually very good. Most of it takes places on a megastructure planet with different levels.

Assassin's Apprentice - I don't get the hype.

Memories of Ice - 3rd Malazan book. I thought the first quarter was lit.

Cursed Cocktails - Cozy fantasy, good book.

I log all my read books here [0].

[0] https://www.commentcastles.org/r/ireadthisbook
by Mindwipe | 2025-12-27 18:22:12+00:00
He genuinely might not know. I worked on a similar incident when our video encoder caused about 30% of a pretty mainstream mobile handset to hard lock when recieving a stream, requiring the battery to be removed to reboot the device.

Neither us nor the OEM ever figured out why. They suspected that it was a weird combination of different bin combinations from different parts, but ultimately we had to change the method of delivering video to stop it happening.
by darth_avocado | 2025-12-27 18:23:40+00:00
Every time I hear people claiming India and China now not using dollar and the end of dollar’s dominance, I feel it’s coming from mostly clickbait headlines, not data. From a global payments share, dollar is still the single largest currency from a percentage standpoint, and is at historically highest share of global trade. Any changes to currency share are coming from lower volume from the Euro. On top of that, if you look at foreign reserves, yes there has been a recent selloff from the peak, but we are still at 60% of global reserves and its still kind of around the same historical average for the last 30+ years.

Edit: I also want to add, that while having the international trade entirely in dollar sounds very appealing, it can actually destroy US exports and damage the trade balance. This can have massive impact on domestic as well as global economies. What you want is a strong enough dollar.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/the-...
by KaiserPro | 2025-12-27 18:24:24+00:00
Its funny, I've tried with Catch-22 a few times. I just can't get on with it.

I think that its all just one ginormous side note, and that Yossarian is a shit, means I can't enjoy it.

I also suspect that I am not american enough to pick up on the satire references.

I suspect I feel what americans feel when they read jeeves and wooster.
by pushcx | 2025-12-27 18:24:30+00:00
It must be part of a larger marketing push; their boss(?) appeared on the Odd Lots podcast a couple days ago to talk about this work: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scott-kupors-new-plan-... He spent a lot of time promoting this new National Design Studio's attempt to attract tech works for 2-year commitments to drop into existing orgs, which is basically how the 18F PIF program worked before it was dissolved earlier this year. Perhaps abruptly terminating a program to reinvent it from scratch six months later is very efficient.

18F: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18F
Overview of the related programs: https://willslack.com/pif-18f-usds/

(A warning about Odd Lots: the hosts never question or push back on people talking their book. This especially bad with politicians and political appointees, who are often very creative during their interviews.)
by SilasX | 2025-12-27 18:24:47+00:00
Was that because of Prop 65, though? The day-to-day effect seems to be alert fatigue and people ignoring the warnings because they're everywhere.

I read the links to find the proposed mechanism (NIH link is dead btw), and it says that businesses pre-emptively reformulated to avoid having the label, but the LA Times story also says this is a mixed bag, often resulting in a switch to less-tested, possibly unsafe substitutes simply because they weren't on the list.

>>But swapping one chemical for an unlisted substitute has sometimes resulted in its own consequences.

>>For example, when bisphenol A, an ingredient in plastics, was listed in 2013, chemical concentrations in blood and urine samples subsequently fell by 15%. However, that was followed by a 20% rise in bisphenol S — a closely related chemical also linked with reproductive toxicity.
by robocat | 2025-12-27 18:25:05+00:00
My point is that if you want to understand human interactions, you need to participate in them.

Rationally analysing human interactions via writing and psychology will screw up your leaning.

Children just learn by doing and are only guided in a gross sense.

If you want to understand people, one must learn like a child does.

These my personal beliefs that I apply to myself. Trying to find you some scientific papers would be counterproductive and destroy the point I am making.
by scythe | 2025-12-27 18:25:12+00:00
The British pound was displaced by the US dollar. Currently, the US dollar just doesn't have a proper rival. The euro, yuan and rupee are considered politically suspect (each for its own unique reasons); the pound and yen have too small a base. Without further transformation of the global financial system, the only alternative is for banks to hold a basket of currencies, and in such a basket the dollar would likely still play a significant, if reduced, role. This is a slow process because it means changing the nature of currency reserves from a single safe haven to a "nest". What this means for USG spending power is not immediately clear.
by MattDaEskimo | 2025-12-27 18:26:03+00:00
I would agree with this statement before LLMs. Reading manuals can take time, be messy, and are sometimes hard to understand.

Now, I can simply ask any LLM to write the command, and understand any following issues or questions.

For example, my OS records videos as WEBM. Using the default settings for transforming to MP4 usually fails from a resolution ratio issue. I would be deadlocked using this library.

It really isn't that hard anymore.