skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1999 was pretty great! I was running Linux, with a nice huge full-colour display running XFree86. Back then it was Mozilla, not Firefox. I had Emacs. TCP/IP and Ethernet had won. MP3s were common. Streaming existed, albeit the options were pretty poor. I had a CD player in my computer and a DVD player in the den. OTOH, CPU, RAM and hard drives were a lot smaller, slower and more expensive.

Here in 2024, I am running Linux, with a nice huge full-colour display running XOrg (because Wayland is still not ready for primetime). I’m using Firefox. I have Emacs. TCP/IP and Ethernet are still around, although if I want spotty performance there’s always WiFi. FLAC and Ogg Vorbis have mostly replaced MP3s. I can easily watch high-resolution video, which is a definite improvement. Streaming, too, has gotten a lot better. I have a CD/DVD RW drive in my computer. CPU, RAM and storage are a lot larger, faster and cheaper.

It’s not really that different, other than the spyware infesting the web. That pretty much didn’t exist in 1999.

I wouldn’t mind going back to 1999. The software I used had a lot less bloat!
Qualcomm responds to benchmark cheating allegations
If so, then it is also determined whether I believe in free will or not.

That is, I don't have the free will to believe in free will or not.
I remember many of these pronouncements recently being during rolling brownout/blackouts due to high loads in summer AND
after PG&E had stopped providing decent pricing for infeed from home solar systems.

I agree that some of the discussion was before the BS was apparent, but a lot of it was well after it was obviously not how this was going to work.

Still possible (if in a setup with good insolation!) to provision your own home solar setup and charge off that - and high income folks, it would likely pay off pretty quickly due to the current insane rates - but then that’s why the utility companies seem dead set on trying to stop it too.
In 2021 coal in China generated 5,417,484 GWh of electricity which was 63%
of total electricity generation.

To replace that coal generated electricity it would take 5,417,484 GWh of electricity from non coal sources.
That's a big scary number to your average California taxpayer.

What's frustrating about these articles is there's no talk of what's on the other side of the scale. What's the cost of doing nothing (and presumably stifling the rise of EV's so we can do nothing)?

Continued dependency on fossil fuels (and the associated oil infrastructure, health, and the you know, global existential stuff), and the occasional transmission line hook failing from severe wear, dropping the line, and burning down a good chunk of the state.

On the other hand, presumably if you're upgrading the transmission lines, you're going to replace those 80-year-old worn down hooks at the same time. I don't like using grid update subsidies to bail out corporate malfeasance on negligently-deferred maintenance, but pragmatically, how many Paradise's is 6-20B worth?
I miss how production focused those applications were. There's some really good apps on F-Droid, but it's clear those apps come from a different community. PalmOS apps were for people trying to automate the boring or laborious bits of a working day at an office, F-droid productivity apps are for programmers on HN ;)
Suppose I value human life at all, why is a scenario with no humans but an AI and microplastics and earthworks remaining better than the scenario with only microplastics and earthworks remaining?
> gun tragedy

I'm uncomfortable about that phrase being used to refer to a guy with an assault rifle deliberately murdering a bunch of people he doesn't know. A "tragedy" generally involves some kind of mistake or accident caused by a character flaw, or by some circumstance that isn't obviously going to cause misfortunes. I don't think it's right to refer to something as a tragedy, if the misfortunes or deaths were exactly what the perpetrator intended.
I liked PalmOS, but I want to give a shoutout specifically to WebOS, which I felt was ahead of its time, both in concept and execution, in terms of what it could do and its potential. An entire OS built around web technologies, has not only proven to be something people would have gravitated toward (given the prevalence of React Native, NativeScript, Ionic et. al.), I also felt it looked beautiful and for its time, it was very snappy.

Unfortunately, it took them too long to acknowledge and figure out touchscreens, and by then they had dwindled their capital to such a point that a buyout was their only hope of surviving at any rate, and their touch screen phone never shipped. HP buying them out was the worst thing that could have happened, they had no resolve to sustain the phone market, which was and is incredibly competitive. I do feel though, with sustained investment and prioritization, that WebOS could have supplanted Android, particularly if they licensed it (which I think was ultimately what Palm needed to do. Their hardware was never the secret sauce).

FireFox OS was also a valiant attempt at something similar, but Mozilla couldn't quite get it where it needed to be, unfortunately.

disclosure: this is a very biased take, very much my opinions, but I look forward to discussion!

EDIT: To clarify, what I mean by 'figuring out touchscreens' is using one as the primary modality of interaction, sans any hardware inputs (like a hardware keyboard). For instance, the Pre had a touch screen, but no onscreen keyboard, so to type anything into it, you had to slide up the screen.
I don’t buy it at all. Effective learning[1] is about effortful recall. Things that you just read have a transient learning effect. But the common way of cramming is done through this transient means because it is a simple strategy for unstructured/otherwise busy students and it works until the exam (but not much after).

And you are… maybe in the sense that it always remains in your unconscious. But what use is that? Memory and learning is about being able to pull things out of the subconscious (unconcious?).

Look at any serious craft or activity where people have to learn things. They learn by doing. Doing things as realistically as possible is better. And doing-learning also transfers to talk/read-learning (discussing how to do something). Meanwhile talk/read-learning does not transfer to doing-learning as much.

Frankly our culture overrates book-learning. By a long shot. This might not seem the case because now frequent long-form reading can be regarded as a practically monastic activity, what with all the stupid alternatives we have at our disposal. But book reading and learning hardly ever directly translates to practical learning.

This attitude (of Emerson’s) sounds like Behavioralism. That you’re whatever input you have processed. I find Chomsky’s Nativism and Rationalism to be more compelling. Consider a socialist who reads 500 liberal think tank pieces. He’s more likely to either be as socialist by the end or more (double-down effect).

> I have to constantly remind myself of this. Especially in an environment that prioritizes optimizing and maximizing personal productivity, where it seems if you can’t measure (let alone remember) the impact of a book in your life then it wasn’t worth reading.

This for sure is a problem if you have set some goal of reading one book every week. But that goal is borne out of that exact same Optimization Mindset. Most people don’t fret over how many Good Words pass by their eyes in a year.

[1] the book Make it Stick
I keep hearing this idea of artificially restricting residencies like some sort of opec cartel. The fact is no one wants to do primary care there are easy residency spots for family med, peds, internnal med and psych all across the country. 94% of residency spots filled in the country last year (nrmp)

But then again I am a decade out of all that stress of matching so I’m over it.
Unfortunately, this is wrong. Sql is everywhere in databases.

I think it's horrible, it's an endless torture of the beautiful-beautiful relational algebra, but it is more popular than ever and there no way around it.
>> 2) code density is not as important because memory is faster and cheaper — again, memory may be cheap, but keeping icache full more important for the performance than ever;

RISC-V achieves better code density than x86, so the same C-code when compiled takes less icache. IIRC it's not a lot smaller, just a little.
People want native applications, but they will not want to pay for it. Cross platforms toolkits suck. There are frameworks for Android/IOS cross platform development like Xamarin and they suck, companies tend to move away from them after some time as more integrations to the platform are desired. Windows no longer even has a proper native toolkit unless you use old Win32/WPF, I hold MAUI or whatever they call it today a joke. Linux has GTK/QT clusterfuck. Try makin non-OSS application for Linux. There isn't even a single Linux target, instead you need to target each distribution to do it properly, there are many, and few users. Clusterfuck. Only MacOS has a decent desktop toolkit.

Electron/Web let's you bypass all this shit, mostly. Also, the only reason why Linux desktop is actually useful to me is those webapps those people hate. It just makes sense to target web first.

I just wish there was more separation of website and webapp in the browsers. Two different things, in my opinion.
True, all are existing risks with some known likelihood factor. But the coffepocolypse argument and the article's contents aren't discussing the current breeds of AI, they're hypothesizing about a future super intelligent sentient AI arising or not arising. And if one does, it will have more tools at their disposal than conventional ballistic weapons, the likelihood of it using existing levers to disrupt society or cause mass die offs is simply unknown.
A Brief Note on the FTC Noncompete Rule
The article points out that the sky has fallen several times. The fall of Rome, WW2, the Great Depression, the black plague, etc.
Show HN: Floww – Firefox extension to improve focus
Hyrdogen cars are DOA.
Was it picked as $50/day because that represents some (not even most) of the cost to the State of Florida for incarcerating you for crimes? Did Florida justify this or decide that taxpayers shouldn’t be so heavily burdened by individuals who decide to commit crimes?

I’m not even sure this is simply a “rent” — unlike renting an apartment or a house (shelter), while the prison is also shelter, it also has to be 24x7 staffed with guards (and likely other personnel like a medical clinic). There’s fixed costs like utilities which probably don’t vary much based on population (lighting and heating), and variable costs like food, water and waste management.

It’s certainly a bit crazy to charge someone for 7 years if they only serve 70 days, but I see some logic to charging per day you’re actually incarcerated. It’s not a “rehabilitation friendly” policy due to the effects on your finance after release, but it may be argued it amplifies the deterrent — “if you don’t want to do the time (and pay); don’t do the crime”.
What does it mean to "transmit energy asynchronously"?
I think they're referring to this implementation: https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-anywhere

but cleverca22's work is solid as well

there's also the earlier https://github.com/elitak/nixos-infect

and the built-in NIXOS_LUSTRATE: https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-installing-from-o...

I'd go with nixos-anywhere, personally
sudo apt install snapd- flatpak
That’s the claim, right now. Originally it was $0.

I left California awhile ago.

My current (peak) electrical rates are less than $.15/kwh, and i’m not far from the border though.
Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot
Yes. The app will work over wireless. Not wired.
agreed, tends to be the best way in general. thank you!
The 2007 Ford Escape Hybrids were using a lot of shared parts with the Toyota Prius, so the battery pack is definitely not Li-ion. The newer high-density Li-ion packs will not survive 15 years without loosing significant capacity, if they survive at all.
This "n00b" seems to disagree with your sentiment on the importance on architecture: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40155667
Current lack-of-supply causing increased cost and delays in just about every single major grid interconnect/hookup/switching component would indicate that the present day cost of the upgrade is not likely to be fully correct. I'm a little too lazy to grab the link, but for context listen to an episode of Odd Lots from Bloomberg from a week or two ago about issues facing property developers all over the sunbelt getting switch gears and transformers for new commercial multi-tenant buildings. The combination of EV charging stations and AI data centers is making grid upgrades more than double their previous decade growth trends, which is throwing power companies and electrical infrastructure component manufacturers for a loop and they're not bringing supply online nearly fast enough, particularly in light of complex grid rollouts like all the renewable that CA is requiring by law. Combine that with a general lack-of-supply of the skilled labor necessary (linesmen and electricians with high voltage/commercial training and experience) and you won't see it happen on time or in budget. Also, for comparison, grid upgrades require a certain amount of new infrastructure installation in places without current right-of-way, which has gone particularly poorly for the high speed rail out there, so I would be willing to take a bet that this follows a similar growth curve of at least tripling the high end estimate.
No one even bothers reading a one-page resume past skimming for a few keywords. You really think potential employers are going to sit down and read a 5,000-word essay??

I'm fairly confident that OP is safe here.
> Very valuable comment with a lot of interesting information, just doesn't apply to context.

I guess I'll accept that instead of dragging this thread on ;-)

Except...

"Why doesn't this random cheap ESP32 board fit properly on a breadboard" is a super common new user frustration that's easily avoidable if they knew it was something they needed to be aware of, and I don't understand why people who should know all that will point people to ~28mm boards. My bad for not also pointing out that "ESP32 38-pin Narrow" (NodeMCU ESP32S) boards should be 25.4mm and are plentiful on Amazon at the very cheap end of the pricing spectrum.
There’s some enormous caveats to this.

The model architecture is 100% the thing that makes LLMs special. You would not get this doing token prediction with word2vec.

The model sizes are also hugely important. Adding billions of parameters does introduce the capability to fit to new features.

The models eventually reach saturation of how much they can fit to. There’s reason to believe that current LLMs are underfit to what their sizes could theoretically utilize, but it could also be that the optimization algorithms are simply not capable of easily and efficiently utilizing another 2x data to fill out the space. Doubling the model size, on the same training data, and letting it be even more underfit could result in a better model.
Relevant context & reading:

> for most of the history of sql we did not know how to translate it to relational algebra, and now that we do know most databases still don't do it.

https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/writing/unexplanations-sq...

> None of this could be expressed in the original relational algebra, and once you add it all it's not obvious we should even still be calling this an algebra, let alone granting it any mathematical mystique. I'd settle for calling it the 'sql calculus'. Or 'the algebra formerly known as relational'.

> It is still a reasonably good compiler IR though, and that's still the most useful way of thinking about it.

https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/writing/unexplanations-re...
Same with me, I have active projects on github but the repos are private and bespoke, very specific to my environment. It's not performative activity to make my profile look good, I actually use the stuff.
If you'd been able to buy a Psion 3 (or even better 5) you'd have got your wish, they came with OPL to write on the device :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3
I wonder why the web technologies are not fully integrated like the Smalltalk and Self graphical environments... Is it impossible or did it just end up that way and it's too late to change it now?
the images are great, but need more info about strengths & weaknesses of each type
There was no national security justification given for confiscating TikTok. There is no US national interest-driven reason for doing so. TikTok happens to be beating Meta, Netflix, etc., and so the US government is stepping in to steal it.

I'd rather have the US foster innovation and let the best company win. TikTok is more entertaining and is growing because it has better/smarter feed algorithms and content creation tools, plan and simple.

Meta was an early innovator in this area but has stagnated due to revenue pressures leading to the over-promotion of low quality content. Netflix has failed to adapt.
Muse Among the Drafts. The Unforgettable in Art
what about "self freeing" pointers?

you allocate and must / are extending its lifetime all the time or else it frees itself! very predictable behaviour of memory collection.

you get pointer and keep it allocated by "extending" its lifecycle.
PG&E CEO pay was $9.3 million in 2018, $18.5 million in 2019, $6.2 million in 2020, $51.2 million in 2021, $14.1 million in 2022 and $17 million in 2023.

Just sayin.
Simplicity depends on the observer
Yes, and because you now know it exists, and you later look it up again if you need the specific details. Which you otherwise wouldn’t know to do
This idea of "user fees" for subjects of the government is a cancer. Governments need to be seen as their own independent entities with their own responsibility for their actions, not some blameless ambient authority that just exists.

The government chose to put these people in cages, regardless of it perhaps being sensible policy agreed upon by the public. The responsibility of paying for the cages to put people in should rest fully on the government. It's quite perverse to take away someone's freedom and then charge them for the "privilege" as if it's some type of consensual arrangement. The same goes for criminal "court costs" and even "permit fees".

The true cost of government needs to reside with the government rather than being externalized. If that makes certain government activities "too expensive" and there is no political will to pay for their true costs, then those activities should be scaled back to exist within their means.
> I think you might doing some disservice by not pointing out such things. Outsider's perspective can be very valuable to improve processes.

They absolutely can, and I make note of my thoughts during my early employment so I can revisit them once I'm more familiar with the context that things are done in.

I wait, though, because it's more effective to bring these things up once you're no longer so green. If my criticisms are legitimate, I can refine them to better match the circumstances in the workplace and so be of greater usefulness. Also, nobody likes or listens to the new guy telling everyone how they're doing everything wrong. The (legitimate) defense is "you don't understand the big picture". So I like to get the big picture.

None of this is to say that I keep completely silent. I'll totally question my colleagues about things that look off to me. I just won't press about them or push for change until I am standing on more equal ground.

But this changes depending on the nature of the employment. I've been talking about being a permanent employee. If I'm a temp or contractor, I am much more vocal about this stuff because very often, that sort of thing is what the company hiring the contractor is wanting.
You wouldn't even need Kabyle TTS for something like Clozemaster to support the language, since there are more than 50 000 recordings https://tatoeba.org/en/audio/index/kab

(The reason for these large numbers is that there's a political movement demanding independence or at least autonomy from Algeria, which has latched onto language promotion as a way to further their cause. Similar to Catalan topping the number of recorded hours on Mozilla Common Voice.)
It is niche in Indian call centers.
Nope that's what it meant a long time ago. Nowadays, the nm number represents the smallest possible element on the chip, typically the gate length, which is smaller than the size of a transistor.

This means that when different manufacturers use a different transistor design, their 'nm' process could be the same but their transistor density different.
That's definitely one of the main original use cases, but it would have been a bad decision to base the entire language around the limitations of HTML, and I doubt JavaScript today would be the most popular programming language today if they had. You can read the original ECMAScript 1 standard here, which is titled: "A general purpose, cross-platform programming language"[1].

https://ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-262_1...
That's a good point. I don't worry about AI turning into any kind of movie supervillain.
But, could the tribal elders transmit orally how to create a silicon chip, how to build a car, how to do all the other things that create the world we live in today? What is the maximum amount of data that can be stored and transmitted orally?
> I'm wondering if this happened anybody else

Yes.

> if so, why you think it happened

Too many other time commitments, with no "free time" left for video games.
If you think that is a lot, you're never going to believe how much 30 million EVs would cost.
The bill does eventually come due. You pay for the interest and the debt, either through taxes or money printing (hidden tax of inflation.) There's no free lunch.

For Argentina, they were paying with money printing and that's why they had out of control inflation. So far the US is doing the same, and that's why inflation spiked. I think this is the long-term plan to finance the US debt. We're not going back to that 1-2% inflation. Probably 3-5% is the new normal.

I agree with you that there's no magic number of debt to GDP where things just fall apart. But there is certainly a number where they do. We don't know it, and it will be different for each country. Japan is sitting at 263% right now and doing OK (not great, but OK.)

Obviously debt weighs on future growth. This happens at the household level and at the company level and at the state level. That's well established.

The US right now is spending more on interest than defense. And that will keep rising. I'm not saying it will cause the US to fall. But between eroding the dollar through inflation, and weaponzing it aginst other countries - I think it will lose its status as a reserve currency. Not overnight, but I do expect to live to see it happen.
What Do We Know When We Know a Person? [pdf]
Yeah, I had a few driver versions cause issues. I'm usually able to get around it by switching proton versions. Sometimes the experimental version works when others don't. There was a driver version a month or so back that broke gw2, but it seemed to be fixed by next driver release.

I think about picking up a cheaper amd card for those unstable periods when Nvidia can't seem to get it right. I know its nowhere near the top of there todo list, but really wish they'd give more attention to the Linux driver.
Re 4, cpus already have huge caches. L1s sizes are limited by latency constraints, not area. CPUs are power limited, not area limited (see dark silicon) and designers find creative ways to use otherwise unused space (hence the giant SIMD ALUs).
There's no comparison of how much grid improvements would cost without EVs so I don't know if $20B is alot. California has 5th highest GDP in the world at $3.9T so .5% if all that money was spent in one year but actually over a decade it's .05%.