skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> But the rail solution probably scales a lot better.

Not really, no.

It takes 3 to 4 days to unload 1 ship, and we can assume it takes about the same time to reload them on the other side. Let's be generous, and assume that we can put the entire load on one train, that has an average speed of 40 km/h. That will be an other 8 hours gone to get from harbor A to harbor B. So, for one ship, you went from a 10 hour crossing, to 8+ days of loading-train-travel-unloading.

Now for the logistics part. If one ship holds 15,000 containers, and a train carries 400 containers, you need 38 trains to transfer 1 ship worth of containers.

In 2022, 19 ships a day passed through the Panama canal, per direction. So you would need 722 trains to process the same capacity.

You have 1440 minutes in a day, so to absorb the the incoming freight, you will need a train every 2 minutes on a single track, 24 hours a day. Which, is completely unrealistic. You can double the track, and now you have a 4 minute slot in between trains, per track. Still completely unrealistic. If you would have 5 tracks per direction, you can get to a 10 minute slot in between trains, 24 hours a day, which is still not realistic.

So, in conclusion, we can say that the rail solution does not scale better.
Also do not use the same character repeated in a "long" sequence. I hate this with IBANs. Too often there's something like '000000' right in the middle of an IBAN and in case copy and paste is not possible I end up counting the number of zeroes at least thrice. Groups of four characters separated by spaces would help in this case but that's another topic.
Editing the Human Genome with AI
Nobody said anything about "free".
Show HN: Free Google Sheets Formula Generator
I built a simple Google Sheets formula generator, I tested a few that show up in the first results of Google and they either don't work, you need to login to use it or have tons of ads on the page make it hard to use. It's using AI to generate the formulas, currently using the GPT-3.5 Turbo, but I might test with others. I tried the Nlpcloud ChatDolphin but I got into a glitch and made it quicker with the OpenAI API.
Yes, surely the only reason you'd dislike something at 14-18 years old and like it at 27-31 is the font size.

I take it your tastes have otherwise been immutable in that time period, and that you listen to the same music, follow the same fashion trends etc. as you did back then?
I’ve tried to show it to my gf, who is v funny btw, and she had no idea what parts were supposed to be funny.
I guess it's because of copyright, i.e. it's hard to make an illegal copy of a printed book, and it's easy to make a digital copy of an ebook. So the ebook-markup is partial due to the expected privacy.

My other guess is, that it really is more expensive. I think, the publisher's digital infrastructure is really bad. And there is a lot of overhead when publishing a new book with lots of DRM on it. And most books don't get sold that often. So a small number digital purchases must pay for that over-proportional up-front cost.
yay go Krazam! absolutely love their videos, their videos are THE inside jokes between me and my co-workers.
You're working under the assumption that you will be able to find the errors. I personally found reviewing code always way harder than writing it and we already push tons of bugs to production in written+reviewed code.
my us colleagues regularly mistook the ones for sevens. that's btw why we cross the sevens, like tees and effs
Yeah, I have to echo this. I moved all the relatives who would listen to MacBook Air + iPhone, and I have just one relative who is holding out on a cheap Lenovo laptop - it's as much work to keep them running as all the others combined.

Yes, going the Apple route is more expensive. But unless you have a lot of time on your hands to deal with teaching weird Windows and Android edge-cases over and over again... well worth the investment. And even elderly Apple gear will generally serve your relatives well.
* programMER

Sorry. Dr Hong Jen "PCMan" Yee.
"In the ever-evolving landscape of Natural Lan-
guage Generation (NLG) evaluation, a noteworthy
paradigm shift is underway as researchers increas-
ingly turn their attention towards fine-tuning open-
source language models (e.g., LLaMA), in lieu of
traditional closed-based LLMs like ChatGPT and
GPT-4. This transformative shift is propelled by a
thorough exploration of key perspectives, including
the expenses associated with API calls, the robust-
ness of prompting, and the pivotal consideration of
domain adaptability."

This paper was written by an LLM. Probably Claude-3.
Unikernels. Throw away the OS completely, and just run the server application on the hardware/hypervisor. That would be my answer for servers. You kinda don't need an OS for them.
I feel like it'd end up like Jellyfin vs Emby, it's an open project and source is available
People who think that it is impossible to tell what is satire anymore simply lack communication skills and the empathy to connect with others and find out.

I could tell you I'm being 100% serious. And rather than wondering how that might be, and asking me to explain, you'd still be wondering if I was pulling your leg.

That is a skills issue.

I'm being 100% genuine and truthful. I really think that's some people are joined so closely with their need for computers that we should give them specific protections and rights, to give them access to the systems they need to be happy and healthy. That is the only valid robot rights issue at the time.

And keep in mind the people I'm arguing with think we should give AI their own legal rights, the way corporations have. That's what I'm arguing against. It only makes sense to give rights when genuine human suffering will happen otherwise.
I take it you're senior management? The only technical requirements are always whatever you need for your daily life?
Ask HN: Who Is Shmuel Csaba Otto Traian?
When I look at reference images of the structure of the software on Wikipedia, etc., the name of the creator is this. I looked for materials to learn from this person's blog or something like that, but I couldn't find any. Does anyone know?
I guess the foundations are hyped because CRA basically forces companies to pay for security of OS projects (which the foundations try to be the main receiver of the money)
But in the end the OS ecosystem becomes much more secure.

Otherwise all the SV dudes complaining about the over burocratics: How to improve Software security? Only alternative I can think of, is the goverment pays for the security. For me thats a worser solution.
Sorry, is publishing a book which gets a lot of readers through the public libraries now “leeching” and “corruption”?
oh my goodness, TIL nonce has a technical meaning. It has a very different meaning in Australia.
Just because they are interested doesn't mean they want the facts.
They hire an engineering manager that has never or hardly has done any serious coding. Alternative is that they hire an engineering manager experienced in coding but strongly opinionated and highly biased. Middle ground is an endemic occurrence.
Has anyone actually tried the Metaverse yet?

As I understood it, this was basically a massively expensive failed experiment so far. No-one is using it for reals (yet?).

Who's the market for developing apps for it?
Fuck PG&E with three-phase 150kV. They were negligent when they burned down my mom's town with crumbling century-old bare transmission lines and then they were punitive with their extended PSPSes that caused weeks of outages. Still have that goddamn generator that had to be bought in Redding. You don't hear a peep from the media anymore because disaster capitalism and opportunism came and left.

Municipalities should endeavor with haste to form their own co-op utilities and break free from the greedy corporate dicks who occasionally blow up neighborhoods.[0]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion
Scc: A fast code counter with complexity calculations and COCOMO estimates
> why technologists don't think about the consequences of what they do before they do it?

“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” ― Niels Bohr

More pertinently, people have been arguing over the consequences of increasingly performant automation at least since Ada Lovelace was thinking about using something like the Difference Engine for music and Joseph Marie Jacquard was using punched cards for complex weaving.

The 200 years between them and us has given us radical, and for most people incomprehensible, growth. Back then, famine was common even with 90-95% of the population working in agriculture; now, obesity is the bigger problem with 1-5% of the population working in agriculture.

We knew about CO2 being a greenhouse gas a century ago, but we thought it would take a millennium and be a good thing; CFCs were chosen as a refrigerant because they were un-reactive; cars were a solution to all the horse manure on the streets; asbestos the solution to all the fires; radium paint was used on watch dials, nuclear explosives were seriously suggested as a way to widen (and also separately to replace) the Panama Canal.

It's just really hard to see all the consequences of things, even with the best will in the world — not that this completely contradicts what you say, as there's also the other famous quote:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair
The title is excellent as summing up the long road that led us to where we're now, and I think it's a really good point in general:

> businesses that once relied on the scarcity of information found themselves leaning on courtrooms to protect their bottom line.

We'll always have a ton of laws passed because an industry had enough money to lawyer up its survival despite the technical advancements working against it.

On one side we'll have luddites who rightfully try to keep humans out of harm, and on the other whole industries which can only brake progress to stay mainstream. While I used to think that it was a lost cause for them, here we are in 2024 still dealing with call centers and getting snail mail spam.

It feels like some industries just found a position where nothing short of a country uprising will displace them, whatever technical advancements we see.
Just means you need a big machine and a lot of capital to make advancement. Take a look at any paper coming out of cern.
California's Exploding Rooftop Solar Cost Shif
At a glance, it looks like Phi-3 was trained on an English only, STEM-strong dataset. See how they are not as strong in HumanEval, Trivia, etc. But of course it's very good.
If the rebels succeed, heaven decided it to be so. If the rebels failed heaven also decided that.

I think it is rare for any ancient empire to have a professional standing army (where soldiering was their profession) as you'd require a large agricultural surplus to support non-productive members of society.

That also explains why nomadic empires were such an effective enemy against agrarian civilisations.
Sorry, but no.

Authors have been complaining about publishers for ever. Publishers treated authors like crap when they controlled the market. No sympathy for them at all.

If they had any integrity they'd move to be the Spotify of books and serve their customers better. Instead (as the article says) they're spending their efforts trying to bail the sinking boat and resist any such move.

The world will be a better place without them.
IMHO, an "invariant" is only relative to the current system to be build, based on a specific set of specifications. As soon as you build a new version of the system (either because you change the functionalities, the implementation or because the environment change), you're expected to check which invariant still applies and which should be added, removed or changed...

In a way, "invariant" are the same as "tests sets": they are here to help to ensure that the product will have some specific properties. Both are used during the product development and checked. And both must be updated when the specs change
I'm actually the cult leader. We offer free air pods and chatgpt subscriptions to anyone who changes their identifier from "human" to "human-AI-hybrid". All you have to do is wear our t-shirt. /s

And that, my friends, is what it looks like when I do a satire. I always add a /s signifier, because identifying satire is hard.
This is essentially the plot of a book called Accelerando, published way back in 2005!
Energy is energy, we need that anyway.

And the amount of trash we produce is mind blowingly big, no mines are big enough for 1 day of trash collecting.
I once did a weeks worth of 'debugging/looking at code, trying stuff and testing' before committing my two lines of changed code. About 40 hours of work to produce what would take less than a minute to type.

It wasn't even the worst code base I've inherited but it is the worst lines of code per hours worked I've ever had.
Does installing graphene OS help?
Someone once said that democracy dies when voters realise they can vote themselves money.
Credit Card Nation
I also think you are catastrophizing.

There are many things that are massively popular. You mention tobacco products, but sugary drinks, alcohol, pesticides, gambling, endangered species products, over-powered home electronics, and similar have all enjoyed popularity and have been banned or severely regulated and restricted by governments in the world. I've yet to see any of these "not going well", so I think regulating a social media site will be okay. It seems to me like people are often grateful for this moderation after a period of adjustment.

But speaking of adjustment... There is far too much dopamine-bomb content to consume online for the time we have to consume it. So I don't think anyone's online diet would have to change at all, even if TikTok ceased to exist entirely.
"USB-C" -> Good for consumer, I believe

With the same logic EU had tried to make Micro USB mandatory for everyone, it was a very poorly executed charging port which would break often and easily.

If it was made industry standard back then, USB-C would have probably never come along or would have taken much much longer.

The road to hell is paved with good intention, I doubt any decent government (which EU is) would pass laws that is bad for its people in short term.

It’s just that these burden some regulations backfire in the long term.

The problems with GDPR and Cookie Banner are well documented, it puts EU startups at a disadvantage because of having to pass all regulations before they can innovate and get up from the ground. Regulations like this should not apply to startups, the harm done to economy is far more than harm done to the public.

Or else , EU citizens will forever be left using American Software, driving Japanese cars (EU car makers are in decline), use Chinese and American Robots (Largest German Robot company (KUKA Robotics) sold to China), use Chinese Solar Panels, Korean Phones, etc.

I get what you’re saying, it all sounds sweet and good on paper.

But it ends up being a race where brilliant european minds are running with 20kg weights on their shoes, while other major nations are supplying stimulants for their innovators to win the gold medal.

It’s just the reality of what’s happening, if it continues EU will die a slow and painful death (Saying the truth as a well wisher for europe, they are pro-consumer in great many ways, but they are over regulating and hurting their next generation)
AFAIU, these tests were ran 30 times each and apparently some took minutes to run, so it's unlikely that you'll get any different conclusions.
If you read closely I am not talking about the limitations of GPT, but about the limitations of the developer having to fix code of others (GPT essentially being another developer). I guess it depends on the complexity of the problem. A lot of stuff is very easy to review and for me other stuff needs more time to understand than it did to write.
On any release - which means a tag containing the version number - I first check the latest version number in the changelog/release notes against the version number in the tag and if they aren't the same CI throws an error.
If the versions match, the latest changelog/release notes are also extracted and used as the release text (for example on GitHub or sending internal emails or wherever the release information is needed).
Aside from the many excellent suggestions about how to mange the devices themselves, I'd highly recommend putting a pihole on the whole wifi network.

I added a pihole to my home network via a <$100 NUC (very much overkill for this purpose), and the rate of my relatives falling for weird viruses and scams has gone way down.
My Guess is they will push hard into the hardware side with more of a "Managed service" offering as well. A Proposition of the benefits of this open source ultra compatible ecosystem without the drawback of running your own server and backups etc etc.

I know I run HA at home and its generally good, but ive not benefitted from historical data b/c I re-build it from scratch semi regularly and cant be bothered to handle backups properly :)
I wonder if anyone ever compared partnerships and privately owned businesses of comparable size for management "bloat".
AI, AI everywhere (insert meme here).
> Israel/Palestine

This is more than a rabbit hole, it's a fractal that changes as you zoom in and out
How does const affects code generation in C/C++? Last time I checked, const was purely informational. Compilers can't eliminate reads for const pointer data, because const_cast exists. Compilers can't eliminate double calls to const methods, because inside function definition such functions can still legally modify mutable variables (and have many side effects).

What actually may help is __attribute__((pure)) and __attribute__((const)), but I don't see them often in real code (unfortunately).
This isn't a bad metaphor altogether and I appreciate that the post advocates for one thing that all too many such ideas ignore: talking to people and asking them what matters to them. You can never know if your kid finds something truly important until you ask them and damaging your relationship with your family is never worth the marginal or even huge successes at work.
Chrome extension build steps. Because the chrome manifest requires an actual file, you can’t rely on a dev server and hot module reloading. So I’ve hacked vites build command and watch command to constantly recompile chrome extension code as I develop it (typescript + frontend frameworks etc).

Add to the fact that you have to manually reload the unpacked chrome extension to apply your new changes, so I’ve hooked solution 1 up with a web socket server and a custom chrome extension that watches all your other extensions and talks to the web socket server to auto reload an unpacked extension anytime the build step completes

It’s a nightmare hack, but I may just be the worlds most productive chrome extension builder as a result! I’ve released 5 extensions in the last 5 months :)

About to release a big one, but it’s also probably the words most complicated chrome extension (LLM + Firebase store + Stripe + Auth + Serverless functions)
For perspective, one might look at the Natural Number Game, an introduction to mathematical proof using the language Lean 4:

https://adam.math.hhu.de/#/g/leanprover-community/NNG4

I recall the feeling, being one of many who "rediscovered" Gröbner bases. This is why one studies history, to recognize the taste when one is a turn away from new history:

There was a leap needed, to generalize Gaussian elimination and the Euclidean algorithm to their common ground of arbitrary polynomials. There's a further leap to noncommuting strings, and then there's typed trees, the "algebraic datatypes" foundation of languages like Haskell and Lean 4. To see term rewriting in these settings as a continuum, one needs to incorporate recursion, to understand how Schützenberger's notions of rational and algebraic languages apply.

The idea of a term ordering is too gnarly here (well past the interstellar frontier of "decideability") for anything besides human intuition or deep learning.

Nevertheless, one sees that term rewriting on typed trees can be the foundation of human thought. Deep learning, while impressive, struggles to simulate recursion using multiple layers. We are discovering exactly how fundamental recursion is to thought. A version of neural nets more closely based on a probability substrate of typed trees might more adeptly model thought.
Sdt: Prototype implementation of SDT probes using hot-patching
A lot of the top tier games run fine on Linux using Steam/Proton Compatibly layer or just pure Wine. Do explore that.
It is a wonderful indispensable device for a very special market.

Particular Mac users who happen to particularly like the physical and mental ergonomics, and locational and furniture freedom, of arrangeable virtual screens and a beautiful visual isolation chamber on demand.

(And in my case, who have dramatically customized the light shield and straps to be super comfortable for long periods.

I would buy the next version at twice the price if it came out tomorrow. And give up a lot to do it.

But that is a VERY niche market. There are only three of us happy campers, after the return wave. It is definitely not an iPhone - yet.

Personally, I think they should lean into it as a MacBook Pro killer. Make it a first class pro computing device. That is a good rationale for keeping around a high end spec, high priced version.

Then have Air versions when it becomes possible to ship a cheap enough iOS-computing level version for the masses.
And yet, results from current compilers show that results are mixed, in summary not making programs faster.
I know that where I live my understanding is that basically the publishers felt 'screwed' by the old deal that they had with print books and that libraries were underpaying. So when e-book negotiations started they used that to try to claw back some of the money they felt they where owed as it where.
It's disappointing that their criticism does not call for the abolition of corporations and states, like my concept of automated communism does.

Liberal statists assume that corporations and states could in theory be reformed to not centralize AI power in a way that hurts people. I think that corporations and states needs to be disbanded, because they'll centralize and abuse AI power no matter what.
Is the statement about the watch a joke? I guess so, unless there's some conspiracy to trick non-owners...
Open like this? https://www.opengroup.org/membership
Although that’s one of the many possible explanations of the Fermi paradox [0], I prefer to think that the real reason we haven’t discovered (or we haven’t been discovered) is the fact that we’re limited by the speed of light.

The distances are so vast, almost unfathomable, that we need Faster Than Light means of traveling. Perhaps I’m being naive or romantic, but I prefer to think this is the real reason :-)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
CRA requires integrators of open source components to perform their own due diligence. Open Source contributors are not held liable for security breaches. In fact this regulation will probably increase investment in open source projects because companies are obliged to share vulnerabilities they have discovered including any relevant patches they might have developed.[1]

[1] https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/eu-cra-what-does-it-mean-f...
Yeah that's was just the first public C++ library with this pattern that popped into my head. I just make all my classes final out of habit and don't think about it. I remove final if I want to subclass, but that almost never happens.
So… maybe I just do a different sort of software engineering to most people here, but is “how fast can I physically write code” _really_ the limiting factor in many cases?
He needs an adblocker! Most YT adverts are designed to open the wallets of unsophisticated people, often giving them nothing good in return.