MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by LeFantome | 2026-03-13 19:00:04+00:00
Interestingly, RISC-V vector extensions are variable length.

So, you can compile your RISC-V software to require the equivalent of AVX and it will run on whatever size vectors the hardwre supports.

So, on x86-64, if I write AVX2 software and run it on AVX512 capable hardware, I am leaving performance on the table. But if I write software that uses AVX512, it will not run on hardware that does not support those extensions (flags).

On RISC-V, the same binary that uses 256 bit vectors on hardware that only supports that will use 512 bit vectors on hardware that supports it, or even 1024 bit vectors on hardware like the A100 cores of the SpacemiT K3.

So, I guess X86-64 is is the RyanAir of processors.
by encom | 2026-03-13 19:00:18+00:00
I know how to drive a car. I usually set speed limiter to the posted speed +3km. Measured with GPS, this hits the desired speed accurately. The point in this absurd scenario is that perfect enforcement of the speed limits is asinine, because if you make any mistake at all, no matter how insignificant, you get fined.

>automated speed-keeping

My car displays what it thinks is the speed limit on the dashboard, and it gets it wrong all the time. If I relied on that in this hypothetical, I would be broke and homeless - possibly in prison, after it once said the limit was 110km on a narrow residential street.
by lambda | 2026-03-13 19:00:24+00:00
It discusses it, and they have data showing that they know the number of active parameters on an MoE model, but they don't seem to use that in their calculation. It gives me answers far lower than my real-world usage on my setup; its calculation lines up fairly well for if I were trying to run a dense model of that size. Or, if I increase my memory bandwidth in the calculator by a factor of 10 or so which is the ratio between active and total parameters in the model, I get results that are much closer to real world usage.
by gruez | 2026-03-13 19:00:33+00:00
>I think one of the more prominent issues folks take with mass training on OSS is that the companies doing it are now profiting for having done it.

What makes this more objectionable than profiting off open source projects by using it directly? eg. tech giants using linux as a server OS, rather than having to pay microsoft thousands per server for a windows server license? With the original GPL, they don't even have to contribute back any patches.
by pie_flavor | 2026-03-13 19:00:49+00:00
The first rocket may take off sooner than 2040. But Starlink is not just a rocket, it is a complete business process, with a launch regularity and price. A Starlink satellite's worth of space on a Falcon 9 costs 500k-750k. With about ten thousand satellites, which last about five years, this means maybe a billion and a half per year spent on the space arm of the business, not counting ground stations. If they had to spend, say, ten times this, Starlink wouldn't be profitable today.
by D-Machine | 2026-03-13 19:00:54+00:00
There is no training in the usual sense of the term, i.e. no gradient descent, no differentiable loss function. They use deceptive language early on to make it sound this way, but near the end make it clear their model as is isn't actually differentiable, and in theory might still work if made differentiable. But they don't actually know.

But IMO this is BS because I don't know how one would get or generate training data, or how one would define a continuous loss function that scores partially-correct / plausible outputs (e.g. is a "partially correct" program / algorithm / code even coherent, conceptually).
by karthink | 2026-03-13 19:00:56+00:00
As a clarification, you don't need elfeed-tube to subscribe to YouTube feeds (channels or playlists) with elfeed, or to watch the videos with mpv. elfeed-tube only adds text to the feed entries, in the form of more video metadata, transcripts and synced playback with mpv.

Also, mpv supports lua scripts for a variety of actions on YouTube (or other streaming) videos, such as showing you YouTube's recommended videos in the video player, clipping and downloading videos, sponsorblock and submitting sponsorblock segments, and so on.

I've been doing this for almost a decade, and I do recommend it. In my experience, just importing my YouTube subscriptions into a feed reader was a positive experience. I've had a daily digest of mostly interesting videos and rarely (if ever) the urge to browse YouTube.

But with YouTube's recommendation algorithm out of the picture, it does mean that you'll have to find some other way of discovering new channels.
by windowsrookie | 2026-03-13 19:01:42+00:00
The reality is most 8GB M1 Macs are still working just fine 6 years later. Power users know they need more than 8GB of RAM and will buy a MacBook Air or Pro with 16GB+.

The MacBook neo is for students, grandparents, travel, etc.

Hell, even if it dies after 6 years it was still a better experience than using a $500-600 windows PC and the cost comes out to ~$8/month spread over 6 years.
by dzonga | 2026-03-13 19:01:55+00:00
The US via its military schools i.e West Point etc trains very capable and smart people.

those people could work in private industry & make tons of money but they choose to work for the thankless work of defense

now comes some very incompetent war dodgers - they don't listen to anyone - or even read Sun Tzu's Art of War and go firing first into enemy territory where the enemy has a very real asymmetrical advantage

now the people who had nothing to do with this war are suffering through high fuel costs, higher food prices
by ahartmetz | 2026-03-13 19:01:57+00:00
I just wanted to mention at this opportunity that some British TV series from the late 70s, early 80s are absolutely brilliant and some of the best stuff I have ever watched. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley's People, Danger UXB, Sandbaggers and Sherlock Holmes are some of my favorites.
by js2 | 2026-03-13 19:01:57+00:00
This is just the divide between capital and labor though, isn't it? See also: everything is a remix; great artists steal.

I'm on both sides. I've contributed to open source. I use AI both in my personal projects now and to make money for my employer.

I'm still not sure how I feel about any of it, but to me the bigger problem is the division between capital and labor and the growing wealth inequality divide.
by stuxnet79 | 2026-03-13 19:02:31+00:00
How is the performance when emulating the x86 architecture via parallels?

Also is it possible to convert an existing x86 VM to arm64 or do I just have to rebuild all of my software from scratch? I always had the perception that the arm64 versions of Windows & Ubuntu have inferior support both in terms of userland software and device drivers.
by gamblor956 | 2026-03-13 19:02:49+00:00
I just tried to open the context menu in Windows Explorer. It showed up almost as soon as I released the mouse button, and I have a much slower CPU, older video card, and way less RAM then you do. I was also running 12 windows of Firefox with collectively 1000+ tabs (though only about 36 or loaded), Steam, a Unity game, and Microsoft Teams, plus a number of background programs.

If your Explorer context menu is taking more than a split second to load, there's something wrong with your hardware.
by eegG0D | 2026-03-13 19:03:00+00:00
This is such a clear example of what I call "Signal over Noise."

I’ve noticed a major market shift recently where people are becoming paralyzed by the "firehose" of content. Information scarcity used to reward knowledge acquisition, but we now live in an era of information abundance, which requires better pattern recognition and synthesis.

In my own work building AI systems, I always say that leverage is a function of your skill multiplied by your clarity. Most "brain rot" happens because we outsource our clarity to an algorithm that is engineered to keep us emotionally volatile and stagnant. By returning to human curation, you’re providing the kind of focus that actually recharges a person rather than numbing them out.

I’m also a huge fan of the "no accounts" approach. I talk a lot about data privacy and the importance of keeping your personal "mental OS" protected—keeping data local is the ultimate firewall against being treated like training data for a system you didn't opt into.

I often tell founders to "launch faster" and "keep it stupidly simple" for V1. This nails the core "aha moment" without unnecessary complexity. Curation is a massive, underserved opportunity right now. Great work shipping this.
by alsetmusic | 2026-03-13 19:03:06+00:00
This was on a poster in my 8th grade English teacher’s class:

“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes. He who does not know and does not ask remains a fool forever.”

Becoming proficient enough in my professional life such that I no longer felt anxiety about admitting what I did not know through asking questions was a massive achievement. Fortunately, I learned that lesson well and started applying it everywhere, not just in my work.
by owlcompliance | 2026-03-13 19:03:17+00:00
> I'd much rather spend a reply helping someone that may still be helped rather than waste it on one of the more unethical, irredeemable pseuds that tend to congregate here looking for people who don't call them out for being such.

Well, that certainly makes two of us man. I'd be lying to you if I said this was my first account lol. I'm in Illinois; I don't know what exactly made me think you were in the UK, but figured I'd ask.

This forum is definitely either abounds with people of a certain type of inclination, or is presided over by people with said inclinations; probably both. So I hear ya loud and clear.

I think you chose the right person to help; not, as we say in Spanish, because I'm the last Coca Cola in the desert, but because I like to be guided and taught. If someone calls me out on something I need to change, I only appreciate them more.

So again, I'm incredibly grateful for you taking the time, man. If you're in Illinois somewhere, let me know because I could use another hour or four of your wise counsel.
by maliker | 2026-03-13 19:03:39+00:00
It might just be me, but this interface is the first time I felt the desire to interact with long-running agents even though I use chat interfaces all day long. Maybe it was the demo video on the landing page which was compelling with its examples. Maybe it was the feeling that I could see what was going on because I would be on a canvas. Nicely done!

Off to keep iterating on the prototype app I started...
by moogly | 2026-03-13 19:03:51+00:00
I think if you've been set for life since the late 90s/early 2000s and didn't really have to work another day in your life if you didn't want to, it's a lot easier to be cavalier about giving away some of your output from way back when.

He can easily afford to be altruistic in this regard.

But Carmack isn't wired for empathy; he has never been.
by True-Good-Craft | 2026-03-13 19:03:59+00:00
I’ve been building BUS Core, a local-first ERP / workshop OS for small maker shops.

The target is the gap between “a spreadsheet is good enough” and “I’m not paying for a giant ERP just to track materials, runs, stock movement, and purchasing.”

The interesting part for me wasn’t just the product. It was the method.

I used LLMs heavily, but the only way it stayed coherent was by forcing a strict process:

update a living Source of Truth before code

keep code aligned to that SoT

run smoke tests constantly

treat code as ground truth when docs drift

ship in small additive passes instead of grand rewrites

That made the models useful. Without that, it degraded fast.

I’m curious about feedback from people who’ve either:

run small manufacturing / maker workflows, or

built serious software with LLM assistance and had to invent anti-drift controls.

Main question:
What breaks first when a small shop outgrows spreadsheets?

Usually I hear some mix of:

inventory accuracy

receiving / purchasing

job costing

manufacturing runs

reconciliation

If you’ve lived this, I’d like to hear where the pain actually starts.
by sigmoid10 | 2026-03-13 19:04:11+00:00
China also had made industry espionage their way to go in these things. They are not even hiding it anymore. It's almost comical how much they copied SpaceX. And I'd be surprised if they hadn't supply-chained themselves into some level of access in all the big aerospace corpos by now. But Europe? Developing this kind of stuff from scratch in a few years without an unregulated messy startup ecosystem and no army of state sponsored hackers? No chance.
by Spivak | 2026-03-13 19:04:13+00:00
I really don't get this comment section. You get a Macbook then you have a perfectly usable machine which will run all the mainstream software you ask of it, and then you get natively compiled well supported developer tooling, no VM required. The best argument for Chromebooks is that you can throw away ChromeOS and install Linux or use Linux in a VM. These are not even close to the same.

I think folks want to hate Apple more than they want to admit that Chromebooks kinda suck.
by d--b | 2026-03-13 19:04:27+00:00
That law is perhaps an annoyance for Apple, but it can't cost them billions, can it? I seriously doubt that it would cost Apple more than the several hundred million dollars Meta still needs to funnel in order to get those laws passed in more states.

Plus, Apple gets to be the gatekeeper for Meta and other apps which can't be good for meta, and Apple gets to know the age of its users, which in itself is monetizable.
by Tadpole9181 | 2026-03-13 19:04:57+00:00
It's not a "flawed" thought experiment and it's certainly not "instructive", it's utter trite clearly framed to promote the idea that the retailer can do whatever they want to save money.

This isn't what happened. It's nowhere near what happened. This will never happen. And our laws are written for the real world, not some hyperbole designed for corporate interests where any and all consumer protections are impossible because "what if the moon explodes".
by LeFantome | 2026-03-13 19:05:09+00:00
Extensiosn are not just for academia. If I am building a microcontroller to control the storage media I am selling (eg. hard drives), why do I need to implement a bunch of features I am not going to use? What about my flow rate monitor? Or my pacemaker?

In some of these, less silicon means less power means more better. Like that last example.
by dang | 2026-03-13 19:05:40+00:00
You not only broke the site guidelines badly with this comment, you actually escalated how bad the thread was by quite a margin. Please don't do that.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
by eegG0D | 2026-03-13 19:05:52+00:00
This is a massive win for anyone serious about "Signal over Noise." I’ve been using Claude Code on the Max plan for months, and while it’s the best tool for actually getting work done, the "all-you-can-eat" token arbitrage is a trap. Agents are notoriously sloppy with context; a single misaligned grep can dump thousands of tokens of pure noise into your window, leading to what I call "contextual brain rot" where the model’s accuracy just falls off a cliff. By sitting in the middle and ruthlessly prioritizing signal, you’re providing the exact kind of "ruthless prioritization" that separates a hobbyist from a profitable AI solopreneur.

The fact that you’re using Small Language Models (SLMs) to detect signal matches my philosophy of using AI as a sparring partner to check its own work. Most developers spend 30% of their day context switching or debugging "hallucinations" that only happen because the model got lost in its own bloated history. The expand() feature is the "trust but verify" layer that every production-ready AI system needs. You’re effectively treating the LLM like a senior architect who doesn't need to see every line of a dependency file unless they specifically ask for it, which is the only way we scale these systems to 10M+ users solo.

Finally, those spending caps and Slack pings are the ultimate "millionaire cheat codes" for leverage. I tell founders all the time that running a business is boring drudgery—it's about fixing bugs and managing resources—and this proxy handles the resource management part on autopilot. If this saves an indie hacker $500/month in token waste while keeping their agent from rage-quitting due to context limits, you’ve built a high-leverage asset. I’m definitely adding this to my links database; it removes a huge excuse for why people "can't afford" to build complex apps.
by bryanlarsen | 2026-03-13 19:05:58+00:00
Starlink is redeploying to 300 miles. Many consider Kessler to be impossible at 300 miles. Any unpowered satellite at a 300 mile orbit will deorbit within a couple of months. But a collision means fragments which deorbit faster because they have a higher surface/weight ratio, and because orbit disturbances lower that time considerably. Any single disturbance that raises aphelion lowers perihelion.
by timoth | 2026-03-13 19:06:42+00:00
The name suffix might look a little clunky at first sight, but having just been thinking about replicating buckets to other regions for DR, having a built in naming template seems useful (of course, you can devise your own, but...).

Using the account regional namespace is also described as a security best practice:

> Creating buckets in your account regional namespace is a security best practice. These bucket names can only ever be used by your account. You can create buckets in your account regional namespace to easily template general purpose bucket names across multiple AWS Regions. You can have assurance that no other account can create bucket names in your namespace. If another account attempts to create a bucket with your account regional suffix, the CreateBucket request will be rejected.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/gpbuck...
by bluGill | 2026-03-13 19:06:46+00:00
They can build it in a few years though. It takes money and can be done overnight but there is nothing about that that costs 10 years. 10 years got to the moon - from a much lower base. 10 years means you are starting with college graduates and building it from no previous experience - or you already have a lot but only are putting minimal budget into improving.
by dang | 2026-03-13 19:07:01+00:00
You broke the site guidelines repeatedly in this thread, including by crossing into all sorts of personal attacks. I realize that you were provoked, but you were also provoking.

We've actually been asking you not to do this for years. This is bad:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121242 (Feb 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23207733 (May 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14362936 (May 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13898229 (March 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12117076 (July 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108386 (July 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11864815 (June 2016)

I'm not going to ban you for this episode because everyone goes on tilt sometimes. But if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and do what it takes to recalibrate so that you're using the site as intended going forward, we'd be grateful.
by Kwpolska | 2026-03-13 19:07:10+00:00
> Windows 11 VM requires a minimum of 4GB of RAM to function

You can give it less. It may refuse to install, but even without using any workarounds, you can change the assigned RAM after installing and it will not refuse to boot. The minimum for Windows Server 2025 is 2 GB, and it’s basically the same OS (just with less bloat).
by icwtyjj | 2026-03-13 19:07:24+00:00
https://www.bocgases.ie/files/balloon_grade_helium_factsheet... says 95% helium and 1% oxygen while https://dan.org/alert-diver/article/helium-gas-purity-what-i... says 97.5% helium but very unlikely for it to be as low as 80%
by amarant | 2026-03-13 19:07:25+00:00
Isn't that the case, and even the point, of all open source, even before AI?

What's the point of a gift if the receiver isn't allowed to benefit/profit from it?

For instance, do you think Linus is upset that ~90% of all internet servers are running his os, for profit, without paying him?

Of course he isn't, that was the point of the whole thing!

Are you upset Netflix, Google, and heck, even Microsoft are raking in millions from services running on Linux? No? Of course you aren't. The original author never expected to be paid. He gave the gift of open source, and what a gift it is!
by skyberrys | 2026-03-13 19:07:31+00:00
Would it be possible to quit you job and fully focus on your health for the next year or two? You mentioned 'we' did the math. So it means you have some other people who are there for you during this tough time, and if you can't work because you can't focus because you might die in a year maybe stop trying to work? Could you return to your prior company in 1 year healthy and excited for the future, and then work will be easier because you won't have as much of a feeling of imminent demise pulling on you. Maybe take a relaxing do nothing vacation first.
by D-Machine | 2026-03-13 19:08:06+00:00
LLMs (or at least transformer-based LLMs) are effectively almost entirely deterministic, the randomness being largely only present due to (unnecessary) optimizations and other tweaks.

Temperature is not at all core to LLMs, it is something that rather makes the outputs more varied and desirable for human consumption generally. It is trivial to set to zero for applications like this.

On CPUs, the models are essentially fully deterministic, even with FP accuracy, and most common kernels have reproducible (albeit slower) variants even on GPUs. Otherwise, yes, FP non-associativity on GPUs is the only real source of randomness in inference.

The other issue arises from batch invariance, but this is a problem that occurs only at scale when serving multiple users / inputs have some randomness too. You can (usually) trivially eliminate this by controlling what goes in the batch or making the batch size be one. There are also other more clever mitigations for this, none of which are secrets.

EDIT - Forgot reference: https://thinkingmachines.ai/blog/defeating-nondeterminism-in...
by dang | 2026-03-13 19:08:15+00:00
You broke the site guidelines repeatedly in this thread, including by crossing into quite vicious personal attack. I realize that you were provoked, but you were also provoking.

I'm not going to ban you for this episode because everyone goes on tilt sometimes. But if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and do what it takes to recalibrate so that you're using the site as intended going forward, we'd be grateful.

Edit: actually you went to a real extreme:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342355

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47333590

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331531

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331357

Surely you know that you can't do this on HN. "sociopathic piece of shit [...] Do the world a favor and remove yourself" isn't just bannable, it's 100x what we'd ban an account for.

You've been a good user generally* so I'm going to put this down to the unfortunate circumstances of this thread, but please don't do it again.

(* although you've broken the site guidelines at other times too, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46156715, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46132102)