skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There will be another sale. Probably pretty soon.
Improved Detection Signature for the K8s IngressNightmare Vuln
35% of books published are profitable

96% of books sold less than 1,000 copies in 2020

50% sold less than a dozen copies in 2020

This is the state of the industry, publishers publish many books gambling for the hits the make up the vast majority of their revenue.

It is a very cold industry with many authors failing to get readers interested. They best measure of schuss is to have a preexisting readership or be popular elsewhere, and even then that's by no means a guarantee of a books success. And this data is from before AI. The 35% probably undersells it because books like hers probably received no marketing.

[1] https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books
Credit cards are just a mechanism for micro loans.

Loans and debt do not exist just because some people lack discipline.
Or get the best of both worlds: buy now and always pay off your full credit-card bill so you never pay interest and get, in effect, a free short-term loan.
So pass and wait for a sale to occur when you actually have the money. Since you save overall, you only have to go through the pain of waiting just once, hopefully in your youth. After that, your savings on the last purchase (in not paying interest) pays for the next purchase, every time, given the same purchasing habits.
Agreed. We changed the URL to the original source from https://techoreon.com/a-man-powers-home-8-years-laptop-batte..., and banned the latter site. Thanks!

Edit: We also changed the title (submitted title was "A man powers home for eight years using a thousand old laptop batteries")
Thanks - sounds like a fun project!

Given that you've built your own coding tool, I assume this is as much about testing what AI can do as it is about the project itself? Is it a clear win as far as productivity goes?
Why ask why? Try Bud Dry.
Empire of Illusion: Frank Dikötter on Why China Isn't a Superpower [video]
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43549073 (after changing the URL - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43552105)
There are more books published today than ever before. 96% sold less than 1000 copies when published by the big publishing houses. I feel like that is the strongest sign the market can give that there are too many authors or many of them aren't good enough.

https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books
I found using partials between projects to be a headache. I wanted a way to standardize my UI for accessibility across all projects and not have to re-implement the same standards over and over. It's nice to be able to package the UI up into a gem and keep it maintained everywhere.

It's got a nice path for incremental adoption, so there is no need to go all-in unless you want to. Personally my Rails projects are all 95%+ ruby now.

Another nice knock off effect is that the LSP and integration with my IDE (neovim) is much nicer with Phlex components than it is with ERB.

I also think personally I don't like "magic" spaces like ERB where its hard for me to follow the code path. How does ERB manage multiline blocks with html in them? Hard to understand, harder to explain. To me it feels like there is less to worry about in Phlex where I'm thinking more in Ruby, less in the specifics of the view context.
Electrochemical ohmic memristors for continual learning
I don't think it's any "key sentence". I think it's simply summarized by the first sentence of the current top comment by christina97:

> I’m not sure what the author expected?

It's less about being angry or offended, and more like, why is this being posted? It's not news. It's how publishing works.
> It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory.

Don’t worry, there will be another one along any minute now.
They did. It’s in the #1 spot

Update: looks like the removed themselves from the graph since I saw it earlier today!
Fraud protection is inherently better for credit cards, because you haven't spent your money. The bank has spent the money, and you don't have to pay the bank if someone defrauded the bank. So the bank has every incentive to get the money back. Not so with debit. You spent your own money.
I've made thousands of dollars in cashback and rewards from my credit cards without ever paying a cent in interest. That's the main value proposition of credit cards for people who never carry a balance.
Thought this was an April Fools joke - please tell me it is! That UI looks exactly like a phishing email. And then to make users login once they click it? Exactly like a phishing email.
As much as I like lifetime purchases I think for software products it creates too many liabilities for all parties. Probably in the fine print you need a carve out saying it won't actually be provided in perpetuity (what software is?). As a purchaser I don't think it's realistic to really expect the software forever. I think of it more as a supporter/founder tier with various privileges that will one day end - and it should probably be advertised as such.
It’s also a popular investment strategy to draw the credit ( potentially from multiple credit cards) and invest it.
Works great with healthcare?
I don’t live in America but here we don’t use credit cards but we have micro loans and people overwhelmingly sign those for things they absolutely do not need.
Looking from the outside, it seems that people in the US are always using credit cards as opposed to debit cards, and I don't really see a good reason for that. I have owned credit card in the past, and I could get one easily now, but I don't see any reason to: I have money in the bank, I want to spend it, and I don't need to lend anything.

Why and how does _credit_ becomes the first and default way of payment?
We've since changed the URL (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43552105).
I don’t think that logic works well with digital goods. Because there is zero marginal cost, you always want more purchases even if the price is incredibly low.

And digital goods can be infinitely large. Conceivably the combined works of JK Rowling or Tolkien could be sold as a single unit. Therefore able to cut beneath a minimum price.
That depends on whether:

1. You're looking for a very specific person.

2. You want to unconstitutionally punish somebody for free speech, and you don't care who, you just want to cheaply find a convenient victim.

In that respect, tracking-dots are an invitation to #2, since they don't really need much in the way of human labor-hours or focus.
Obligatory: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ZJKN_5M44
Reminds me of one of my all-time favorites sites: https://www.whosampled.com/
IMO, that's the correct/normal usage of a credit card. It's how my friends (most of them anyways) and family and myself do it.
We've since changed both the URL and the title (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43552105)
Popular among whom?!
Because wages are insufficient. Credit fills the gap to survive. Half of bankruptcies in the US are from medical debt, for example. In 2023, approximately 36.8 million Americans, or 11.1%, lived below the poverty line. ~50% of Americans carry a balance, and the average U.S. household with credit card debt has a balance of around $6,065.

Credit cards are expensive short term financing.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medi...

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/may/which-us-...
I always thought a fun but fireable April Fools joke would be to sprinkle the words "probably" and "likely" to key parts in technical documentations.
In Europe they have debit card with the same level of fraud protection - and without credit.
That cash back is basically a scam. It's paid for by the credit card processing fees - fees which are charged to merchants and ultimately get passed on to the customer in the form of higher prices. Some merchants even tack on explicit ~$3 transaction fee for credit card purchases, to cover transaction costs.

So the cash back is just a partial refund on your credit card processing fees.
Because credit cards offer better protections from fraud making the consumer not liable. Debit transactions don't have that and they are also linked straight to your account so theres also additional risk where if someone steals the money using your debit information it's just gone.
Let’s just say you’re a wealthy consumer with a million dollars in the bank. You’d still buy things with a credit card, why?
1. Purchase protection (insurance)
2. Chargeback protection
3. Rewards either points or “cash back”
4. Merchants hardly ever give cash discounts anymore, credit card fees are baked into the price of everything so you’re going to pay for the advantages above and receive nothing in return, plus have the burden and liability of carrying cash.

Merchant side.
1. CC fees are high so we add 3.5% to the retail price of everything. Someone pays cash? Good, a small bonus.
2. Merchants are being charged the same for “debit” cards which allow electronic payments from bank accounts, coming with the same chargeback risks and fees as a CC.

So what the heck assume the worst for every transaction.

How to fix this. Does it need fixing? If the gov is going to push everything to electronic payments, you might as well get the rewards.

The trap, if you’re not paying off your balance every month, the rewards are nothing and the interest rate is crippling.
I have operated under this model for about 10 years now as well. But there was a recent Atlantic article that gave me pause: those rewards are exactly the results of credit card companies’ usury, extracting money from other people.

It just doesn’t seem ethical to me (for my parameters) any more. :-/
Brain waves become spoken words in AI breakthrough for paralysis
I'll definitely do a technical write-up in the coming days! I'm storing any valid word they type, though I'll probably quite quickly put in a TTL for words <= 3 letters long. But every thing they write is from a deterministic seeded RNG, with a tick that is randomly generated every 15 seconds, combined with the monkey salt (that I may rotate on a schedule). So you can technically go back in time and regenerate all of the content.

Supabase/postgres backend. First time for me, I actually was using firestore a week ago and migrated in a delirious frenzy at the last moment - which I think was a good call. Firebase charges per document write, and I had words as documents... which would get out of hand quickly. There's ways to be more clever than that (I also would store 16 monkeys to a single doc) but it just wasn't a good fit for what I was trying to do
They offer more protections for the purchaser than a debit card with no direct additional cost as long as the bill is paid in full. They also often provide additional incentives like some percentage cash back.
Because I get rewards when I use it. I always pay at the end of the month so I never pay interest
Location: UK near Newcastle

Remote: yes

Willing to relocate: no

Technologies: Go, Golang, Typescript, many more

Résumé/CV: https://keloran.dev/post/cv/

Email: jobs at develbox dot info

A better format of CV available on request
Credit cards have better consumer protection than debit cards.

You are on the hook for like $50 max of fraudulent credit card, and like $500 of fraudulent debit. If you don't catch debit in time, you might be liable for all of it.
And 30 days no payment no interest.
They're pretty handy just as a form of payment. I've never once carried a balance and never paid a cent of interest to a credit card company, but I use credit cards for basically all of my spending. I get back ~$1000/year in rewards, plus all the convenience of having plastic whenever I want to spend, recurring billing, dispute resolution, fraud prevention, etc.

I'd argue that this suggests another hypothesis that the article only partially considered: high interest rates are a cross-subsidy to attract the 40% of credit card users who never carry a balance, and the 40% of credit card users who never carry a balance are a marketing expense to normalize credit card use and make the 60% who do think it's completely acceptable to spend without a thought. I get literally thousands of benefits from the credit card company, and I don't pay a cent. That money has to be coming from somewhere, and I'd bet that it's coming from the 60% of consumers who pay usurious interest rates.
Personal preference, hence nitpicking. It forms a special case of the signed integer algorithm, which feels nice.
ui designers moved graphicics for good reason. conrotl-s makes sense - now what is the shortcut that makes sense for any of the other thousand things someone wants to do in word processor? There will always be some that don't make sense.
If you are able to pay off your credit card balance each month, you can earn rewards points on every purchase which is money back in your pocket. Even if it seems like a tiny amount, in the long run, you are leaving money on the table using a debit card as opposed to a credit card for most of your purchases.

The big caveat being you MUST pay the balance off each month to avoid paying interest otherwise you are losing money by using a credit card.
Another vote for The Hut Six Story.

The title includes ‘Six’ not ‘6’ (not that it should trip up a search algo, but you never know)
In Europe they offer the same amount of protection.
LiveSWEBench
Okay so I’m also a writer - self publishing on Medium (and earn $x.xx occasionally some months) and also a 100% independent musician and producer and songwriter. I release through DistroKid which I found here ages ago. I actually lose money by having it available to stream.

You are absolutely spot on about the tone. It’s incredibly whiny and woe-is-me and complaining about a system that, as she admits, is known to be poverty level revenue for the vast majority. The big tell is “support authors!” as if it’s some kind of requirement people do more than simply sustain an industry already on the brink. She has the gall to even get an advance, publish, and make it the audience’s guilt trip she’s gotta tell people she didn’t make squat? That’s a high horse.

I dislike the article and its perspective. It’s PETULANT. Thousands of writers simply appreciate audiences for sharing their TIME for reading a piece. This article? It’s a dressed up complaint and I’ll have none of what she’s having.

For reference, I’ve got 10k Spotify plays, worldwide, over the course of 10 years and it’s under $20 worth of revenue. When I write about this fact, I don’t complain about the income. What is my big takeaway? I’m grateful people I’ve never met and will likely never meet have found my music worth listening to and chosen to give it a little slice of their life. That’s a good perspective, a healthy one, and I’m with you on your impression.
You have to pay to fight the dispute? That's insane.
It's not uncommon when using brokers to see outliers like this. What happens basically is that some models are very popular and have many different providers, and are priced "close to the metal" since the routing will normally pick the cheapest option with the specified requirements (like context size). But then other models - typically more specialized ones - are only hosted by a single provider, and said provider can then price it much higher than raw compute cost.

E.g. if you look at https://openrouter.ai/models?order=pricing-high-to-low, you'll see that there are some 7B and 8B models that are more expensive than Claude Sonnet 3.7.
Because giving it to Amazon is making society better?
The installations public statistics are interesting to look at. Seems there was a recent addition of a generator not mentioned in the article or the forum. I’m curious for an update from Glubux:

https://vrm.victronenergy.com/installation/13552/dashboard
Not only that, but an appropriately diligent student might notice with their eyeballs or nose that their bottle contained alcohol, and clean/dry it before performing the experiment.
Because it builds credit, and most credit cards these days have points/cash back programs, the caveat being you have to be very diligent about budgeting and ensure you pay the balance off in full every month.

The problem is, most people don't do that.
US has both: insane credit card rates and bonus rewards (miles, cashback, etc).

In EU rewards are shit, and the only reason to keep credit card is to be able to rent a car during summer vacation.
Is there a reason Surya isn’t included?
No I am taking the view that spam is speech, and should be included in an absolutists agenda.
> 1. Purchase protection (insurance) 2. Chargeback protection

These are available on debit cards as well. (Both by law, i.e. Regulation E, and both Visa and Mastercard requiring issuers to provide zero liability policies to consumers.)

> 3. Rewards either points or “cash back”

Which consumers more than pay for themselves – all consumers, including those paying cash.
I wonder if there is a market for secured credit cards with low interest. Maybe backed by a HELOC or stock portfolio. By lowering the default risk significantly lenders should be able to offer loan values closer to car loan numbers than loan shark numbers.

I think people with enough assets to secure such a card might be those less likely to carry a balance, but maybe a lower interest rate would entice them.
Many folks carry zero credit month to month and still use a credit card. You're giving away free money by not using it.
I wrote a small, client-side-JS-only app that does OCR and TTS on board game cards, so my friends and I can listen to someone read the cards' flavor text. On a few pages of text in total so far, Qwen has made zero mistakes. It's very impressive.
Historically it's explained as rapid inflation. IMO also due to being pre-Internet tech. Credit card "payments" can be completed offline and batch processed.

In this day and age? Inertia?
This article is actually really interesting and has non-obvious findings.

The tl;dr is that it's not mostly due to defaults or for rewards programs.

But rather due to very high operating expenses (4-5% of dollar balances!) driven by marketing.

And also because the lending banks can't diversify. The risk of default is essentially magnified because you can't do anything if the economy turns bad and everybody starts defaulting together at the same time.
You're assuming these consumers of credit card products can pay off their cards (transactors) when the data shows, broadly, that the consumer is stressed financially. Consumers are relying on credit cards because they cannot afford not to (revolvers).

US Consumer Debt Delinquency Hits Highest in Almost Five Years - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-13/us-consum... | https://archive.today/ivRqd - February 13, 2025

Record Share of Americans Pay Only Minimum on Credit Card Bills - https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/record-share-of-am... - Jan. 22, 2025

Philadelphia Fed: Card Balances and Delinquencies Continue Upward Trajectory; Mortgage Originations Stagnate - https://www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-data/2024-q3-lar... - January 22, 2025

St Louis Fed FRED: Consumer Loans: Credit Cards and Other Revolving Plans, All Commercial Banks (CCLACBW027SBOG) - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCLACBW027SBOG

(credit card balances total ~$1T outstanding as of this comment)
There are just so many books published today that there is no guarantee of any amount of readership by just releasing a book.
Since i‘ve been doing this sort of thing for many years here are some basic rules:
- Get LTSC (W10) or IoT/Enterprise (W11) images to begin with
- Get https://www.ntlite.com/ .. you won‘t find any other tool which does a better job at removing packages, adding drivers, etc. Worth every penny with great support.
- Use GroupPolicies to configure your system. Take the time and download them for Office, Edge, Chrome, Firefox and update those that come with Windows.
- Integrate drivers not only for the base image but also in the recovery and setup image.
- Install a firewall (binisoft is fine)
- Use NextDNS
- If you don’t mind the security implications: Disable Defender, SmartScreen, BootGuard and VBS (use bcdedit)
- Disable Microcode loading (delete the DLL)
- Disable Spectre/Meltdown mitigations
- If you need Office: Use the LTSC version

Most third party tools are outdated or do stupid stuff which isn’t needed. You can silence Windows with the right GroupPolicies quite easy.
This “holiday” has gotten beyond stupid.
Debit transactions don't have that

Why not?
sorry, you don’t know what you’re talking about. as a KDP user, I see every day that it’s 70 percent, so $3.50 for a $5.00 retail price. at a minimum you’re not being clear.
Related to charge backs, it's a security wall between theft and your actual cash. FCBA covers credit cards but not debit cards. While many banks will work to resolve fraud, your cash will still be locked up during that time.
I mean, I certainly don't need credit cards, but given the marketplace, they're often the least expensive and the most convenient way for me as a purchaser to pay for a lot of things.

They're certainly not the least expensive way for the merchant, but unless they pass the merchant "discount" as a line item, it doesn't make sense as a purchaser to use anything else. And even then, I think my current card involves the issuer paying me to use it, beyond the discount (4% cash back, but I think merchant fees top out closer to 3%). There's also the delay between time of charge and when the statement is due, although I think the merchant's receipts are also delayed.
Cryptobros, maybe?
In fairness Wilde’s lack of wealth was largely downstream of his (unjust) legal problems. And Poe suffered greatly from a lack of copyright protection.

They didn’t suffer from a lack of people wanting to read their works, in the way that most modern authors do.
> I have money in the bank

Overdraft fees hit harder than interest
Some brokerages offer debit cards that let you spend excess margin at very (compared to credit cards, at least) rates.
The real answer is that US banking laws don't protect consumers the same way they do in Europe.

So Americans are forced to use credit cards and enrich the companies offering that service, because using a debit card carries risks.
Most cards in the US have a Visa or MasterCard logo, and transactions made that way have essentially the same legal protections as credit card transactions, but in the meantime, your money is not in your bank account. So other transactions may fail.

With credit cards, it's the bank's money that's missing, not yours.
Debit card interchange fees are limited to 21 cents per swipe and 0.05% of the transaction.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regii-about.ht...
I'm confused.

- Are you comparing unpublished personal journaling with professional published journalism?

- Are you saying a comparison garment sample of 2 for a single cohort has merit?
Get a silkscreen kit if you really care that much. Also allows you to print T-Shirts.
Exactly, I have 3 cards and choose the one that offers the highest rewards for each transaction. Then pay it off at the end of the month.
I wrote a book for O'Reilly. I got the same advance, $2500. I got paid the same royalty rate, 10%.

It wasn't worth it at all financially. I bet I made $6000-$7000 in total. Of course, that's not why I did it.

But, in a new consulting role there is a kid who is early twenties. It came up that I wrote a book and I told him the book and the publisher and he said "other than the car parts company I don't know O'Reilly." I was pretty shocked by that. He's a computer science graduate. That generation doesn't read tech books at all apparently.

It used to be that this was another item on my resume to stand out. It feels like that is totally devalued. And basically everything else on my resume now that Claude has infinitely more knowledge about everything. It's so depressing.