MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by yourapostasy | 2026-01-20 23:17:18+00:00
Inference leans heavily on GPU RAM and RAM bandwidth for the decode phase where an increasingly greater amount of time is being spent as people find better ways to leverage inference. So NVIDIA users are currently arguably going to demand a different product mix when the market shifts away from the current training-friendly products. I suspect there will be more than enough demand for inference that whatever power we release from a relative slackening of training demand will be more than made up and then some by power demand to drive a large inference market.

It isn’t the panacea some make it out to be, but there is obvious utility here to sell. The real argument is shifting towards the pricing.
by MaxGabriel | 2026-01-20 23:17:29+00:00
This might stem from the domain I work in (banking), but I have the opposite take. Soft delete pros to me:

* It's obvious from the schema: If there's a `deleted_at` column, I know how to query the table correctly (vs thinking rows aren't DELETEd, or knowing where to look in another table)

* One way to do things: Analytics queries, admin pages, it all can look at the same set of data, vs having separate handling for historical data.

* DELETEs are likely fairly rare by volume for many use cases

* I haven't found soft-deleted rows to be a big performance issue. Intuitively this should be true, since queries should be O log(N)

* Undoing is really easy, because all the relationships stay in place, vs data already being moved elsewhere (In practice, I haven't found much need for this kind of undo).

In most cases, I've really enjoyed going even further and making rows fully immutable, using a new row to handle updates. This makes it really easy to reference historical data.

If I was doing the logging approach described in the article, I'd use database triggers that keep a copy of every INSERT/UPDATE/DELETEd row in a duplicate table. This way it all stays in the same database—easy to query and replicate elsewhere.
by Sohcahtoa82 | 2026-01-20 23:17:38+00:00
Discord can be great when people treat it properly. That is, treat it as IRC for the modern age, rather than a replacement for forums.

Just like in IRC, you probably don't care about most messages. You don't need to be in every conversation. But it can be a great way to just jump into a live conversation or start a new one.
by csar | 2026-01-20 23:18:14+00:00
The Chili Peppers long ago settled the ethics of coyote culling, but your attitude is cavalier and thoughtless.

For those of us living in suburbs, young children running just a few steps ahead (e.g. from the house to the other end of the driveway) can be in significant danger from coyotes.

Your hyperbole and cursing are not a great match for this forum and you should reconsider them or leave.
by Spunkie | 2026-01-20 23:18:20+00:00
> You could also DM an offline friend a tracking pixel to reconstruct their activity, a lot of this endpoint security is entirely up to the user.

Only for as long as they have the steam chat window open and your tracking pixel/message is a recent enough message to be actually loaded. I don't use steam chat enough to remember if they do any of these, but your plan also ignores any possible automatic security/scanning/proxy shenanigans on steams part that will muddy your pixels tracking data or just break it.

> That logic is acceptable.

I completely disagree. I use invisible status all the time on steam. I very much have an expectation that when set to invisible my friends would not be able to track my online status.
by jeffbee | 2026-01-20 23:18:41+00:00
If you look into the actual design capacity of our municipal water systems, many of them were designed for far larger populations. The EBMUD, for example, intentionally secured 325 million gallons per day in upstream capacity because that was 10x the needs of the service area in 1929. Implicitly they assumed that the service area would grow to 4 million people, but it never did, primarily because of zoning. Today EBMUD delivers only about 120 MGD. We could more than double the service area population without water issues.
by baranmelik | 2026-01-20 23:18:49+00:00
Hi, I have a background in strategy and finance and used to work at an agriculture firm. I joined a very technical AI startup as a COO last year and I still have a ton to learn about the industry. And it's different from a PM role but a few things that have been helpful for me:

-Learning the jargon: Youtube videos from developer/creators in the field help a lot.
-Forums (you're already here; so, great!)
-Asking our developers to explain me thing like a child+getting their opinion on almost everything
-LLMs help a ton (you can even send screenshots of code and ask what it means/does)
by derrida | 2026-01-20 23:19:06+00:00
> I think the real gap in computer languages wrt LLMs is a replacement for python as a "notebook" language that the LLM uses to solve ad hoc problems during a chat.

hey I found this project december 23 and you just commented on another thing I posted "amazing one shot that" I will give you an invite if you want (because it also does that) check bio will add contact dets now...

it was posted to this site earlier about 20 days ago and front paged and hilariously about half the comments were shooting it down the top voted comment was even "this is the worst website ever" lol xD and they since invite only to manage abuse (its a very capable service and currently free)

It's capable of what you just mentioned, and it made the other site that one-shot you said was amazing for the one shot (literally cut and paste the comment into the prompt, then 2nd was "Good, now do it better")
by zozbot234 | 2026-01-20 23:19:21+00:00
Sure, but I don't think most people here are objecting to the obvious "3 years is enough for enterprise GPUs to become totally obsolete for cutting-edge workloads" point. They're just objecting to the rather bizarre notion that the hardware itself might physically break in that timeframe. Now, it would be one thing if that notion was supported by actual reliability studies drawn from that same environment - like we see for the Backblaze HDD lifecycle analyses. But instead we're just getting these weird rumors.
by advisedwang | 2026-01-20 23:19:31+00:00
What I meant in that last sentence is that the powerful don't really think that. It's a line they trot out when they want to justify why some company must do the thing that they want it to. The same powerful people are happy to ignore shareholder supremacy when it conflicts with their desires. Then suddenly it's "the CEO has to have the leeway to make long term decisions" or "The company is committed to supporting the national security mission" or whatever is convenient.
by areoform | 2026-01-20 23:19:41+00:00
A lot of folks are latching on to the "hiding place" theory, and that could very well might have been one of the use cases. But as the article points out, the lack of a second exit makes that unlikely.

I would like to offer a competing theory. These are thermally stable storage places for perishables.

As heat transfer is directly proportional to surface area, the ideal vessel that maximizes the volume / surface area ratio would be a sphere (like some cryogenic tanks for rockets). But if you don't have the technology to make that or a cylinder, then the best you can do is observe that lowering surface area helps and make smaller, long rounded passages to try and optimize a ratio that you don't understand by feel.

I think it's more likely that these are are ancient fridges / hot boxes than a way to spiritually experience rebirth. I think a thousand places to store hay for horses and cheese for your family is far more likely.

Could these be boltholes? Yes, but how frequently were places getting invaded? War was mostly siege based and was fairly infrequent for a given city / place (i.e. even if the polity next door was under siege at the time. You weren't) Winter and summer - on the other hand - were and are yearly guarantees.
by tartoran | 2026-01-20 23:19:47+00:00
This is interesting but I wonder if you're misinterpreting something because I find it hard to believe that this isn't twisted in some way, I've seen a lot of wrong and downright fake news lately and honestly I have a hard time trusting anything without seeing the sources myself. Can you please post your sources? If you're right I agree that it is the wrong law to pass. However, when it comes to ICE, it seems that they're exactly targeting the innocent and attempt to create more fear and panic than go after illegal violent criminals. I'd rather see ICE reduced in size and have law enforcement go after criminals.
by muppetman | 2026-01-20 23:21:27+00:00
I wish websites like this had a "cut the bullshit" option so I could just read. I mean yes, it's pretty and lovely but I don't always want to feel like I'm on a "choose your own adventure" when reading something.

I mean it's beautifully presented, but why does it need to be so graphical?

(Thankfully in Firefox I can click the Reader view and it provides that)
by jeffbee | 2026-01-20 23:21:28+00:00
Sites Reservoir isn't going to do a damned thing for municipal water systems in most of the state. You have to remember that there is not such a thing as a statewide municipal water policy. Every city or region has its own thing going on. The Sites capacity is dedicated to its investors, so depending on where you live it could be a helpful resource, or it could be irrelevant.
by qmarchi | 2026-01-20 23:21:35+00:00
JP Resident, and LGBT.

The vast majority of the "rules" apply only in extreme business situations, generally in the oldest Japanese companies.

Outside of that, the Japanese are extremely forgiving of those that are visiting not following _every single custom_. There's an understanding that so long as you're not disrupting the peace (being super loud, making a mess, etc) then a level of tolerance is applied.

LGBT is much of the same way where, your personal feelings and decisions don't impact everyone else, and thus it's not their business to decide what you can/can't do.

Once you're living here, there's some expectation that you start learning and participating in customs and traditions, but even that's extremely flexible.
by snozolli | 2026-01-20 23:21:39+00:00
As someone who has experienced a similar burnout, I would recommend that you seek new experiences, expose yourself to different kinds of people, and reflect deeply on what you find rewarding in life.

Personally, I grew to hate tech, especially in SV and the Bay Area. I never minded the work itself, but what killed me was the sheer douchebaggery. It was a magnet for awful people, drawn in by the earning potential. I'm not speaking, generally, of other developers, but mostly of management, project management, etc. I even worked for a CEO who, I believe, was a literal psychopath, who felt entitled to free labor.

If I were doing it over again, with the savings I had from working on tech, I would immediately pursue whatever struck my interest. I'd get a CDL and drive trucks for a while. I would get a teaching degree and try that for a few years. If I were able-bodied, I would get a nursing degree and see how I felt about that.

I've recently started dating a nurse practitioner, and she's really opened my eyes to what's out there. Nursing is in extreme demand, similar to what I saw in tech back in the late 90s. It's taxing work (physically, mentally, and emotionally), but deeply gratifying if you're the right kind of person. It also allows for a lot of options, like working four tens or three twelves, giving a lot of flexibility for adventure on your days off. Again, if that's your thing. You can pursue a (very difficult) graduate degree and become a nurse practitioner, earning 150k - 180k in areas with far lower housing costs than the Bay Area. As it turns out, I really like being around empathetic people, and I would have been far happier in this kind of role than I ever have been slinging code for projects that will most likely disappear into the void in a few years.

The biggest problem, in my opinion, is finding out what matters to you. I don't know how to fast-track that, which is why I say to just pursue whatever strikes your interest. The worst thing you can do is be indecisive and sink into aimless depression.

Speaking of depression, consider therapy. Chances are good that you're depressed. IMO, most people would be after a decade of soulless tech work.
by steve_adams_86 | 2026-01-20 23:21:41+00:00
Sean Carroll interviews Stewart about this book on his latest podcast episode:

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/01/19/341-...

I really enjoyed it. I'll probably get a copy of this. I loved the thermodynamics analogy in the start of the podcast, likening maintenance to the prevention of entropy, with all the energetic exchanges that entails. Though maintenance does take work, it's worth it. Stewart makes a compelling case for it.
by NalNezumi | 2026-01-20 23:22:41+00:00
My British friend that lived in Kyoto had his favorite snac bar. He was accepted as a local and even had a whiskey bottle saved for him (privilege for the regulars!)

Another snac bar that he brought me to had an interesting story. The snac bar was in an apartment complex (due to Japan's funny zoning laws) at the nightlife district, could maybe fit 5-6 max. The place was filled with blues and jazz LPs! When we went there, there was only one man sitting, eating omelets and a talking to the owner.

Turns out the owner used to be a salary man in Tokyo, but got sick of the corporate banking life, took his savings, moved back to Kyoto to open his small bar. He loved music, particularly blues and jazz, so just bought an apartment and rebuilt it on his own as this jazz n blues bar. He barely made any money, lower than minimum wage. but he said to him it was a life style, and he enjoyed it and wouldn't have it any other way.

The guy eating the omelet, turned out to be a pretty famous professor at Kyoto University. He had this deal with the owner that he would make him lunch boxes and dinner for the professor (omelet wasn't on the bars menu), and he hanged around there every night. They've had that setting going for 8 years and the owner laughed that he was essentially the professors wife, and a bad influence for his workaholics habit!

There's a charm to those places, but they're best observed from the distance. The group of exchange student I was part of made a local bar close to the uni our hang out, because they had cheap beer and amazing food. But one day the owner politely told us they didn't want us to come back. That 10+ tall loud white people was ruining the third place this bar represented to the locals.

Funny thing many of the students protested "I don't understand. We're customers. We're paying and bringing many customers!" they tried to convince the students "to you it's consumption but to us it's a community place". Few of the students would accept that answer, but obliged. Oddly only the French did understand the sentiment. (and the Swiss were the most entitled)
by wolvoleo | 2026-01-20 23:22:57+00:00
Even $200 will already buy a 4K 27" (LG). Which aren't even bad. I swear by HiDPI as well but my work is the same. 1080p displays and really bad contrast screens too. Definitely not TN (they're not that bad) and not VA (they tend to have way better contrast than IPS). Probably just bottom barrel IPS.
by godelski | 2026-01-20 23:23:01+00:00
It amazes me how much we've embraced dependency hell. Surely we need some dependencies but certainly we're going overboard.

On a side note, I wonder how much of this is due to the avoidance of abstraction. I hear so many say that the biggest use they get from LLMs is avoiding repetition. But I don't quite understand this, as repetition implies poor coding. I also don't understand why there's such a strong reaction against abstraction. Of course, there is such a thing as too much abstraction and this should be avoided, but code, by its very nature, is abstraction. It feels much like how people turned Knuth's "premature optimization is the root of all evil" from "grab a profiler before you optimize you idiot" to "optimization is to be avoided at all costs".

Part of my questioning here is that as the barriers to entry are lowered do these kinds of gross mischaracterizations become more prevalent? Seems like there is a real dark side to lowering the barrier to entry. Just as we see in any social setting (like any subreddit or even HN) that as the population grows the culture changes significantly, and almost always to be towards the novice. For example, it seems that on HN we can't even make the assumption that a given user is a programmer. I'm glad we're opening up (as I'm glad we make barriers to entry lower), but "why are you here if you don't want to learn the details?" How do we lower barriers and increase openness without killing the wizards and letting the novices rule?
by krisoft | 2026-01-20 23:23:08+00:00
To calculate the orbital positions i used the skyfield python library. https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/

They have a very handy example right on the landing page how one can calculate the positions and angles of a planet from a date.

The inverse was a bit trickier. But I also implemented a script which could “solve” a given picture backwards and give us a date. I believe i used binary search to narrow the date down first for the planet with the slowest period, and then refined the date around that timestamp using the position of the planet one faster. That way the estimate got more and more accurate and i didn’t need to brute force search a large time interval. (I applied the assumption that the date to be found is within half a saturn year from our current date, but if that assumption were incorrect it would have resulted in a solver failure during the refinement and thus detected.)
by cies | 2026-01-20 23:23:19+00:00
You don't.

As a vegan I want to deter people from working in slaughter houses etc. I feel it's urgent. But they make their living.

As an intactivist I want people to stop genital mutilation of minors: both male and female. I feel it's urgent. But those baby cutting doctors and "priests" make their living.

That's why it is so easy to make a war when people are hungry. You need little money to convince them to turn to the dark side.
by adrian_b | 2026-01-20 23:23:50+00:00
Indeed.

There are many texts written in the Greek or Roman antiquity that compare the religions of various nations known to them, i.e. which compare their beliefs about their "gods" and their methods for worshiping or for praying.

There are entire books written about such subjects, e.g. "De natura deorum" ("The nature of gods") by Cicero.

The ancient people usually did not have a precise word with the definite meaning that "religion" has today, mainly because religious practices were intermingled with most of their daily activities, so there was not a very clear separation between religion and other things.

For example, a treatise on agriculture, besides explaining how to prepare the soil and how to select the seeds for sowing, would also give the text of a prayer that should address a certain god before or after the sowing, so that it will be successful. Similarly for any other activities where divine help was believed to be necessary.

Nevertheless, they had the concept of religion and they were able to distinguish things that were related to gods from unrelated things.
by rtpg | 2026-01-20 23:24:23+00:00
> Notably, the lack of legalised marriage is not because the population is too conservative. Rather, it is because the US forced a constitution on Japan which enshrines heterosexual marriage as constitutional law, and changing the constitution is significantly more difficult than changing a normal law.

Beyond the fact that they could easily get around this with civil unions, this feels like a massive misrepresentation of the status quo inside the LDP politicians that ultimately get to decide whether progress is made on this.

The current prime minister, in her previous attempt to campaign to be the head of the party (back in ... 2022 I think?), declared her opposition to married couples opting out of sharing a last name[0]. In the 21st century, strong opposition to the idea that somebody might want to keep their own family name after marriage. Something so small and unimportant. Still very far away from civil unions for non-hetero couples.

The Japanese ruling class is so far away from acceptance of anything beyond a very specific notion of married couples, even if the general population thinks differently. These things can change quickly but just in terms of policy delta between Japan and most other members of the OECD the gap is quit huge. Legal rights for one's spouse starts is important, and right now there's really nothing.

(There are some logistical things around the family register that mean that such a change would require some changes to that format. This is not a good enough reason to prevent this!)

[0]: In Japan if two Japanese people get married then they have to unify on their last name. In practice this usually means the woman throwing away their last name. In a funny twist of fate you actually have more flexibiltiy in an international marriage. If a Japanese person marries a foreigner they _don't_ have to do this (and can even go with a hyphenated last name!).
by whartung | 2026-01-20 23:24:35+00:00
I remember during one drought, the day the LA Department of Water and Power was going to declare water rationing, we got, some crazy number, 7-8" of rain in the basin.

We got so much, we got "Lake San Fernando Valley" as the Sepulveda Dam did the job it was put up to do all those years ago and flooded. People had to move so fast (behind the dam is the a large park and recreation area, no homes were directly impacted) they abandoned their cars, and, later, divers with scuba gear were being arrested for looting them.
by snowmobile | 2026-01-20 23:25:06+00:00
I consider myself a fairly good developer, and I think that's in large part due to knowing, "doing this should be possible, and the reason it's not working right now is just due to stupidity (my own or the developer of whatever I'm using's)". But yes, in a few (thankfully rare) cases it just plain isn't practically possible. Even then, I've given up on problems just to have it nagging in the back of my mind and then randomly coming up with a beautifully simple solution weeks later. That's sort of the essence of what I like about programming (and math too).
by anonymous908213 | 2026-01-20 23:25:15+00:00
The first thing I have to point out is that this entire article is clearly LLM-generated from start to finish.

The second thing I have to point out is that bug bounty programs are inundated with garbage from people who don't know anything about programming and just blindly trust whatever the LLM says. We even have the 'author' reproducing this blind reinforcement in the article: "Tested Jan 2026. Confirmed working."

The third thing I have to point out is that the response from Valve is not actually shown. We, the reader, are treated to an LLM-generated paraphrasal of something they may or may not have actually said.

Is it possible this issue is real and that Valve responded the way they did? Perhaps, but the article alone leaves me extremely skeptical based on past experiences with LLM-generated bug bounty reports.
by rvnx | 2026-01-20 23:26:27+00:00
> Steam "Offline" status leaks exact login timestamps (Valve: Won't Fix)

On the profile of a friend you can see the last time they signed-in to their account:

https://preview.redd.it/can-anyone-beat-my-last-online-frien...

Before it was public, and now restricted (for a couple of years already) to friends only.

I guess this is why they won't change it, since it's a feature.