MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by proletarian | 2026-01-05 03:21:53+00:00
You're right - it will serve more as a learning tool. The production of knowledge by the individual (currently just me!) is not a project that will happen until at least year 4, so I'm basically punting that and assuming I'll figure out the best approach by then. I am absolutely open to the realization that is should not be called a PhD, but I will say that I do have some topics in mind that I want to pursue that I think are novel. I suspect I'll bring on some form of non-AI by then if I continue down this path. Great feedback thank you.
by christophilus | 2026-01-05 03:22:33+00:00
1946. He could have been writing about today.

A TLDR:

He argues that political language is banal, often couched in pretentious, sophisticated-sounding phrases which amount to nothing, but sound profound to the inattentive listener. Instead, we should communicate clearly and directly. If politicians did this, “…when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

And here are his rules to follow:

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
by k310 | 2026-01-05 03:22:42+00:00
Why a computer, when AI can (reputedly) replace all the things for which people use computers, and bitch that the apps are too hard to use and maintain? [0]

Countdown to the non-computer. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46494866
by beoberha | 2026-01-05 03:22:45+00:00
I have a feeling most of these folks are talking about personal projects or work on relatively small products. I have a good amount of personal projects that I haven’t written a line of code for. After bootstrapping an MVP, I can almost entirely drive by having Claude pick up GitHub issues. They’re small codebases though.

My day job is mostly a gigantic codebases that seem to still choke the best models. Also there’s zero way I’d be allowed to tailscale to my work computer from my phone.
by zuhayeer | 2026-01-05 03:22:48+00:00
It does seem off but it's directly from the Department of Labor data. The DOL LCA filings often have these misreportings where the hourly rate field is entered incorrectly, or an extra digit is added. Data cleanliness is still a huge issue, I'm realizing after working on this project.

Thinking about adding an outlier removal or flagging feature to get the obvious ones out.
by qnleigh | 2026-01-05 03:23:29+00:00
Least squares is guaranteed to be convex [0]. At least for linear fit functions there is only one minimum and gradient descent is guaranteed to take you there (and you can solve it with a simple matrix inversion, which doesn't even require iteration).

Intuitively this is because a multidimensional parabola looks like a bowl, so it's easy to find the bottom. For higher powers the shape can be more complicated and have multiple minima.

But I guess these arguments are more about making the problem easy to solve. There could be applications where higher powers are worth the extra difficulty. You have to think about what you're trying to optimize.

[0] https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/483339/proof-of-con...
by elmomle | 2026-01-05 03:24:09+00:00
That's a highly idealized view that I hope we can agree doesn't completely jive with what we see in society today. If a small number of shareholders reap all the profits, the vast majority of the benefit from automation flows to them, and it's even possible for the lives of average people to get worse as automation increases, as average people then have less leverage over those who own the companies.
by ThatPlayer | 2026-01-05 03:24:30+00:00
I don't think it's quite the same. Rollback netcode is like lockstep netcode, where the entire game is simulated locally and only inputs are networked. Since it's still only input being networked, network drops (or slow computers) affect everyone, requiring the simulation to slow down. Not just fighting games, but RTS games would do this. If you've ever played Starcraft/Warcraft 3 where it would freeze when a player disconnected.

With rollback/lockstep, there's no need for a server simulation at all. Most games are not doing that: the client's local simulations are less important than the server's simulation, even missing information (good to prevent wallhacks). Any dropped packets are handled with the server telling the client the exact positions of everything, leading to warping. Dropped packets and latency also only affect the problem player, rather than pausing everyone's simulations.
by sfilmeyer | 2026-01-05 03:25:04+00:00
Wikipedia has some notes on why least squares, and how you might get there from other assumptions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_squares#Statistical_test... .

Also, quadratics are just much easier to work with in a lot of ways than higher powers. Like you said, even powers have the advantage over odd powers of not needing any sort of absolute value, but quartic equations of any kind are much harder to work with than quadratics. A local optimum on a quartic isn't necessarily a global optimum, you lose the solvability advantages of having linear derivatives, et cetera.
by carlosjobim | 2026-01-05 03:25:38+00:00
> Every petty tyrant or so called leader in Africa, Middle east, Asia and who knows where else now know that going to another country, snatching the leader and kidnapping them can be done without much consequences at any time so long as they go in guns blazing.

You can be 100% sure that the only thing they are thinking about is that it can happen to them, and this is what they will be thinking about during many nights ahead.
by cadamsdotcom | 2026-01-05 03:26:03+00:00
During a crisis this author faced a constraint (crappy internet) and wishes people had always pretended that constraint exists when actually it only exists during a crisis.

Wishing for constraints “just in case they might be needed” is not how life works.

There’s no constraint and there shouldn’t be. Otherwise we’d all just whinge about web experiences instead of enjoying them.
by cxr | 2026-01-05 03:26:26+00:00
You are conflating "version control" with "the way GitHub/whatever works". (I mean, I guess. That's the only way your comments here make sense.)

If someone takes your recommended draft and then records in a ledger somewhere which draft revision(s) you were working with to prepare your draft/proposed changes, and they store copies of all these drafts, then that's version control. It doesn't have to be Git (though, as the other commenter said, there's nothing mentioned so far that's incompatible with it), nor Mercurial, SVN, Perforce, or any other other existing version control system you've heard of, and you wouldn't have to be personally operating any of the clients that actually operate on the VCS's data model.
by kentonv | 2026-01-05 03:26:49+00:00
Or put another way:

If Simon's users choose to self-host the open source version of his service, they are probably using it to run their own code, and so the sandbox security matters less, and workerd may be fine. The sandbox only matters when Simon himself offers his software as a service, which he could do using Workers for Platforms.

(But this is a self-serving argument coming from me.)
by tehwebguy | 2026-01-05 03:27:21+00:00
Other Helene stuff I took note of:

- AT&T was completely down for us but Verizon and its MVNOs were up

- I had a Verizon MVNO secondary e-sim that came free with a home internet plan, unused until the hurricane hit

- It worked pretty well!

- The day the Verizon disaster internet trucks showed up at the police station in our town my Verizon MVNO internet went down

Non-internet learnings:

- Fill up your vehicle’s fuel or battery before any big storm, we spent a lot of time siphoning and otherwise consolidating fuel to get ourselves and neighbors out of town, particularly because we didn’t know how far we’d have to go to find a gas station with electricity
by ZenoArrow | 2026-01-05 03:27:24+00:00
You don't need to apologise. I enjoyed your story. I am from the UK and have fond memories of playing SF2 in arcades in my childhood too. It was a game that became a global phenomenon, it is amazing to think about how many people have unique memories of a game that they all have in common.

Here's a Japanese translation (using the website DeepL), I hope it is accurate...

謝る必要はありません。あなたの話、楽しませていただきました。私もイギリス出身で、子供の頃にゲームセンターでSF2をプレイした懐かしい思い出があります。あのゲームは世界的な現象となりました。これほど多くの人々が、共通のゲーム体験からそれぞれ独自の思い出を持っていると思うと、本当に驚くべきことです。

こちらが日本語訳です（DeepLウェブサイトを使用）。正確であることを願っています...
by treesknees | 2026-01-05 03:27:47+00:00
I suppose I meant more of a best practice - if every news site could be found at the subdomain of lite.XYZ.com, or perhaps some way for the browser to request specifically no images or styles, it’d be easier for the end user to find.

RSS is a good point that I didn’t consider. Although it tends to be a summary and hyperlink to the main site.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-01-05 03:27:49+00:00
I’m sure that recruiters are going to scour the Internet looking for you.

I created my LinkIn account in 2012. By then I had been a developer for 15 years in Atlanta and knew all of the local recruiters and had met some in person. For the next 8 years, LinkedIn really didn’t serve a purpose. When I looked for a job in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018, I just reached out to my network and interviews and offers fell into my lap. Admittedly they were just regular old enterprise dev jobs in Atlanta.

But in 2020, things changed. AWS reached out to me about a remote position in the consulting department (ProServe full time with the standard four year package) and after that my last two jobs have been based on either targeted outreach on LinkedIn where I was an industry expert in a niche of AWS that most people don’t have (2023) or an internal recruiter reaching out to me on LinkedIn 2024.
by divbzero | 2026-01-05 03:28:13+00:00
I think GP is referring to the fact that an author’s work is copyright protected by default, and a license is needed to permit others to use freely [1]. StackOverflow posts are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 [2].

[1]: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

[2]: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

(Disclaimer: Just commenting on GP’s statement about “no license”, not on the specific disagreement or apology mentioned above which I am unfamiliar with.)
by chrisco255 | 2026-01-05 03:29:00+00:00
Not really. The deer that thrive in suburban areas learn to watch for traffic. Even where deer vs car collisions are common, deer multiply well beyond what car traffic takes out. Really, hunting is the only way to thin the numbers.

Deer eat grass, they can thrive almost anywhere in North America just fine with or without people feeding them.

In suburbs they probably need to capture and slaughter some number of them to keep the numbers reasonable.
by SilverElfin | 2026-01-05 03:29:15+00:00
I don’t. But Venezuela has the right to do what it wants with its country’s resources. America has to abide by Venezuela’s laws and accept these outcomes. It can’t forcefully corrupt another nation’s politics and steal its wealth. Otherwise it is the same as Russia and China.

And this is very damaging to America itself. No country will trust us from now on.
by paulfharrison | 2026-01-05 03:29:48+00:00
For linear models, least squares leads to the BLUE estimator: Best Linear Unbiassed Estimator. This acronym is doing a lot of work with each of the words having a specific technical meaning.

Fitting the model is also "nice" mathematically. It's a convex optimization problem, and in fact fairly straightforward linear algebra. The estimated coefficients are linear in y, and this also makes it easy to give standard errors and such for the coefficients!

Also, this is what you would do if you were doing Maximum Likelihood assuming Gaussian distributed noise in y, which is a sensible assumption (but not a strict assumption in order to use least squares).

Also, in a geometric sense, it means you are finding the model that puts its predictions closest to y in terms of Euclidean distance. So if you draw a diagram of what is going on, least squares seems like a reasonable choice. The geometry also helps you understand things like "degrees of freedom".

So, may overlapping reasons.
by optionalsquid | 2026-01-05 03:31:40+00:00
But local solutions can also cause file loss, if you don’t know how to use them correctly.

For example, rsync and rclone will happily overwrite/delete your files if you mess up the argument order.

The problem with OneDrive is not that it is cloud-based, but rather that its design is somewhere between baffling and intentionally user-hostile
by netsharc | 2026-01-05 03:31:46+00:00
It's not really written there, but how about a loading experience that gives you the important information, and then loads the bells and whistles as the JavaScript gets loaded and run. First make sure the plain text information gets loaded, maybe a simple JPEG when something graphical like a map is needed, and then load the Megabytes of React or Angular to make it all pretty and the map be interactive...
by LarsAlereon | 2026-01-05 03:32:35+00:00
I'm interested in either human composting for end of life, but it tends to cost significantly more than cremation, but not as much as burial. For a cost effective alternative I've researched "water cremation", which instead of burning the body and releasing it into the air dissolves it in an alkaline solution and sends it to the sewage treatment process. Costs tend to be similar to cremation.
by getpokedagain | 2026-01-05 03:32:37+00:00
One thing that I would also suggest folks who are resonating with this piece consider...

Local copies of important information on your mobile device. Generally your laptops are not going to see much use. Mobile apps tend to fake local data and store lots of things to the cloud. We tend to ignore such things like backups and local copies nowadays. Most of the time we can get away without any worry here but consider keeping a copy of things like medications and their non commercial names for situations like this as well.
by iPaq | 2026-01-05 03:33:07+00:00
Yep just got hundreds of those emails today. They all point to 178.16.54.109 but spl.exe 404's so it looks like the abused hosting provider has already squashed this malware campaign out.

Bummer, I would've loved to analyze this spl.exe encryptor and maybe also troll the attacker

Also fyi, somehow, exiftool supports .lnk files so you can read the full command of the lnk cleanly with that.
by raw_anon_1111 | 2026-01-05 03:33:19+00:00
I have gotten plenty of value out of the platform - including BigTech companies reaching out to me. One offer I accepted and where I worked for almost four years paying way more working remotely than I could have made locally.

My last two jobs have also come from LinkedIn. Exactly how am i supposed to find remote jobs?

And I have been working for 30 years…
by manofspirit | 2026-01-05 03:33:49+00:00
Location: Dubai, UAE Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: Game Dev, Unity/C# (uGui, Ui Toolkit, App Ui), BrainCloud (successor to GameSparks Classic), Playfab with Azure Scripting, Skillz, Epic Online Services, Xsolla Backend, Adobe + Figma Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manofspirit
Portfolio: https://dribbble.com/manofspirit

Email: manofspirit@gmail

Available for Unity UI-based App/Game Development, Gaming Backends, and UI/UX Design Opportunities – One-Man Army from Concept to Launch

I’m currently available for on-site/remote roles worldwide, as well as remote opportunities in Unity UI (uGUI, UI Toolkit) based App/Game Development, including gaming backends and UI/UX design. As a one-man army, I have a proven track record of taking projects from concept to launch across desktop, mobile, and web.

Here’s a summary of what I’ve been working on over the past 5 years: www.linkedin.com/posts/manofspirit_opentowork-activity-7237722209241214977-U3ZG

As a versatile designer and developer, I’ve created UI-based 2D games and applications with multiplayer features, ranging from XR-based Metaverse app WeDream to the NASBA-accredited educational app Earmark CPE, to Scrabble-inspired UGC-based Word Game, and even Ludo and Bonza-inspired puzzle games across various platforms.

Starting with GameSparks (RIP) in 2014, I’ve since worked with BrainCloud, PlayFab with Azure Scripting, Epic Online Services, and most recently started exploring Xsolla Backend (AcceleratXR). I’ve built fully integrated BAAS games and apps that often include async multiplayer, user-generated content (UGC), social integration (friends, messaging, etc.), tournaments, achievements, leaderboards, and monetization strategies (in-app purchases, subscriptions, virtual currencies, sales, ad mediation, etc.). Additionally, I’ve developed Unity-based admin tools for seamless management of users, content, and reporting.

On the UI/UX side, I started with Adobe Photoshop 8 and CorelDraw 9 almost 20 years ago; today I design beautiful applications and 2D games while utilizing my development skills to automate design tools for bulk art generation, variations, and solving repetitive tasks. I also leverage AI tools like MidJourney to push beyond creative limits.

Even though my focus is on the design and development of backend-driven Unity-based apps/games, my diverse skill set and ability to wear multiple hats allow me to seamlessly contribute to every stage of a project—from initial concept and UX design to backend integration, multiplayer systems, and final launch. This versatility enables me to adapt to different roles and challenges, delivering comprehensive solutions that align with the project’s goals.

If you have any openings that align with these diverse skills, I’d love to connect and explore how I can contribute.
by Fomite | 2026-01-05 03:34:00+00:00
Great essay.

I posted my thoughts on this checks notes five years ago, but it's largely in the same place: https://variancehammer.com/2020/08/06/3d-printing-and-the-ho...

There are places where 3d printing has revolutionized the wargaming hobby. Terrain is one of them, and the biggest one I think. And there's games like Trench Crusade that got their launch via being 3d printable, allowing them the critical mass to get to plastic production.

But at the end of the day, if something is in plastic, I'm buying it in plastic. And I am disappointed by the amount of energy and talent not going into creating new things but...Legally Distinct Space Marines, often sculpted with no notion of actually ever being painted (way over-detailed, etc.)
by crote | 2026-01-05 03:34:29+00:00
And it's not uncommon for devices to be mapped multiple times in the address space! The different aliases provide slightly different ways of accessing it.

For example, 0x000-0x0ff providing linear access to memory bank A, 0x100-0x1ff linear access to bank B, but 0x200-0x3ff providing striped access across the two banks, with evenly-addressed words coming from bank A but odd ones from bank B.

Similarly, 0x000-0x0ff accessing memory through a cache, but 0x100-0x1ff accessing the same memory directly.
by sa1L | 2026-01-05 03:34:32+00:00
Taiwan has been Chinese territory for centuries—just like California has been part of the US. Calling China's reunification 'invasion' is like saying the US is 'invading' Texas if some rebels tried to break away. The real propaganda isn't about history—it's about pretending Taiwan is some separate country when it's been part of China longer than most modern nations even exist.
by narukeu | 2026-01-05 03:34:44+00:00
Thanks for the reply.

My worry isn't so much about the tech itself, but rather the governance issues—and it's definitely not about "Make Webpack Great Again."

1. I genuinely like Vite's design and UX (I actually started my frontend career with Vite + Vue). My only concern is the ecosystem getting vertically integrated under a single commercial roadmap (Oxc => Rolldown => Vite). It feels like shifting from a community-driven ecosystem to a VC-driven product suite. I am worried about vendor lock-in, especially with commercial suites like "Vite+" existing.

2. Regarding Rspack/Rsbuild, I do treat them as one of the Webpack alternatives. Although ByteDance doesn't rely directly on build tools for profit like Vercel or VoidZero, and Rspack/Rsbuild reuses community results, I feel the vendor lock-in risk isn't that high. But Rspack/Rsbuild's current volume isn't huge -it's obviously much smaller compared to Webpack/Vite. So I think I might need to wait and see.

3. I previously valued Webpack 6.x mainly because of the governance structure. Like Node.js, it belongs to the OpenJS Foundation after all. I guess I feel that for such critical infrastructure, neutrality is quite important. When choosing tech for frontend projects, I also focus heavily on community governance. The only regret is that it's a bit old and has performance issues. So, I was kind of hoping it could solve some of its downsides.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I said above. Also, I am curious about your take on the current shift in the JS ecosystem. I think in the current JS ecosystem, commercial companies are increasingly dominating core infrastructure *directly*, and using that infrastructure as a core part of their business plans. Objectively speaking, this leaves *less and less room for neutral, community-driven governance*.