skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Is anyone here an Insurance Risk Engineer?
I was recently laid off and have been considering a career change. I'm 46 and have been in software testing/QA for 20+ years with a BSEE degree. I'm getting burned out on doing the same thing for so long and a friend of a friend was telling me about his job as an Insurance Risk Engineer. It sounds interesting, basically assessing risk of a commercial business for coverage. I think it would be a good fit coming from software QA/Testing where I look for vulnerabilities in code. Does anyone have any insight into the job field? I'm not sure if it's just a fancy name for insurance salesman or if it's more technical then that.
And instead of gasoline carry liquid hydrogen. Dragsters are practically horizontal rockets anyway. Might as well stop pretending!
5 Years Later
I don’t get the problem with null values as long as you can statically reason about them which wasn’t even the case in Java where you had to always do runtime null-guards before access.

But in Typescript, who cares? You’d be forced to handle null the same way you’d be forced to handle Maybe<T> = None | Just<T> except with extra, unidiomatic ceremony in the latter case.
FMEA is not a “reliability study”. Reliability studies are inputs to FMEAs. Where do you think the likelihood data comes from? If you’re doing an FMEA before a reliability study, your probabilities are just guesses.

I don’t think any FMEA is going to list “ditch into the ocean” as an acceptable mitigation. Ie it will never be a way to buy risk down to an acceptable level.

>it isn’t an analysis of mitigation strategies.

Take a look at NASAs FMEA guidebook. It clearly lists identifying mitigations as part of the FMEA process. You’ll see similar in other organizations but possibly with different names (“control” instead of “mitigation”)

https://standards.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/standards/GSF...
I had forgotten the original purpose of web browsers was to view hyperlinked documents. It seems like we abandoned that as the primary use case over 20 years ago, with technology such as Flash, Silverlight, and Java Weblets.
I don't think remote debugging by itself on a normal chrome profile is detectable
5) predicting a bunch of language tokens from the compressed database of knowledge encoded as weights, calculated out of numerous examples that exploit nullability in code and talk about it in accompanying text.
Ooo, i like that. one of the most annoying points has been 'not sharing' the browser context. i'll def check it out
An extension is more user-friendly! I leave Chrome open basically 24/7 and having to create a new Chrome instance via the command line just to use Browser MCP just felt like too high of a barrier.
> Private
> Since automation happens locally, your browser activity stays on your device and isn't sent to remote servers.

I think this is bullshit. Isn't the dom or whatever sent to the model api?
Too poor to afford sugar.
Some tropical trees benefit from being struck by lightning: Dipteryx oleifera
The post mentions the server is used during the optional execution. My guess as to why would be primarily because there are plenty of curl commands which are impossible to execute via the browser due to browser restrictions and secondarily because the execution is literally running curl, not trying to approximate the equivalent action.

Local execution could still be a handy feature for at least the most common basic commands though, but it'd start to have to wade into "explaining a lot to the user why this isn't really what the result might look like" territory.
Is there any way you can tell whether a human understands something other than by asking them a question and judging their answer?

Nobody interrogates each other's internal states when judging whether someone understands a topic. All we can judge it based on are the words they produce or the actions they take in response to a situation.

The way that systems or people arrive at a response is sort of an implementation detail that isn't that important when judging whether a system does or doesn't understand something. Some people understand a topic on an intuitive, almost unthinking level, and other people need to carefully reason about it, but they both demonstrate understanding by how they respond to questions about it in the exact same way.
Racing changed my life and you should definitely go to a meetup, drag race, or track event. The dream of the 80's is still alive in the car world. You'll meet the coolest people. Dummies get filtered and don't make it to the events/track. It's the best and easiest real life scene to get into if you're technical because car guys are absolute nerds.
Others have mentioned good points. I'd like to also add that a completely stagnant legislature that literally can't get anything done unless republicans agree on it to start with -- and magnified greatly by an ineffectual democrat party that concedes virtually everything just for instance to approve a temporary spending bill against their own interests as a party and as individuals -- altogether it should say a LOT.

Especially wrt how you suggested "polarizing" legislation will just get filibustered, as polarizing doesn't cut it, and the democrats in congress somehow have this magical ability to mostly do nothing and yet be terrified of doing nothing. Besides, if they do nothing, the republicans still essentially act with impunity. They're already dipping their toes in dark waters by ignoring some court orders and rulings. All while following the playbook of accusing others of what they do far more/worse, but never allowing even a drop of guilt to weigh on them.

Perhaps this is all to say that congressional gridlock hardly fixes any of the damage, can be exploited politically, and won't undo the sort of damage that be done even just in the remaining ~2 years before midterms. And at this point people are getting seriously afraid about what'll happen if they don't like the outcome of those midterms, let alone the next presidential election.

I agree greatly though about what you note with states' separation of powers meaning particularly bold governors+legislature can resist a lot of federal authority.

It's the one solid fallback, but even then it's got some limitations. Look at a state like California that subsidizes conservative states by paying more in taxes to the federal government than it receives in funding.

How long until people from outside the Trump bloc start questioning why they're stuck saddled with their baggage, which produces next to no value for them but is impairing their political freedom, and which extracts tax money to be spent against their political and popular interests?

How long until federal interests might simply decide to retaliate against those states' attempts to bypass and ignore them? Especially if they start making accusations of rebellion, secessionism, "radical leftism" or some other senile babble.
We can fall a lot more, and people who are buying the dip on credit aren't necessarily taking a long term view of the market. Who is keeping a few hundred K in their bank account just in case the market crashes so they can take advantage of it?

Also, 2008 you needed 5 years to recover if you bought at peak (buying as it was lower of course means less time to recover). In 1930, you were looking at 20 years. You could also lose your job if the market really tanks, and buying the dip just means you are less liquid at a time when you need money for living expenses.
Levels.fyi has L5 at Amazon making $150k base, $220k TC. You might not be Jeff Dean or Andrej Karpathy but there's only two of them. None of us are. That's not remotely subhuman failure.

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/systems-dev...
> Why would the police treat you bad? I you don't commit any crime it's most likely you have nothing to do with the police.

It's not true, in general, that police won't treat you badly as long as you don't commit a crime. (As an aside, you also have to interact with police officers if you've been the victim of a crime, and again, there's no guarantee they'll treat you well in this situation either).

Same with border officers.
The BOM for the iPhone has evolved significantly, but you're still right. Even with the margins Apple has today, they could swallow the cost and keep trucking. But they won't do that, because shareholders would have Tim's head on a platter if hardware revenue took a nosedive.
> Peace is a lie, there is only passion.

Lie is Truth... sure, sure.

> Through passion, I gain strength.

Weakness is Strength

Sounds like a 1984 sequel from 1939.
True. And that would probably make the most sense too.

A very good point you’ve made there :)
[0]: ...they're having a "beat the tariff sale". 5% off everything.
It'd be interesting to know how much money Kevin Hassett made off this fake news. I'm becoming more and more convinced these tariff announcements and implementation timings are all a form of insider trading. Since the people who'd be doing it are also the people responsible for the enforcement of the law, they'll get away with it. That's what corruption looks like, America.
> So if you have a very rare disease which might cost a lot more to treat because there's no economies of scale you are... Not worth it? Your life is unworthy because it's unprofitable to save you? Or your mom, dad, sibling, loved one?

How could it possibly be otherwise?

Never mind $50M, suppose it would cost twenty trillion dollars to save you. The large majority of the entire US GDP. The majority of everyone in the whole country, ignoring all other problems and lives to dedicate all of their time to saving you. And if they did that, they could; but not otherwise.

Is that worth it? No, it can't be, because a million other people would die instead. There exist things that are possible but not reasonable and some of those things are in medicine.
> There is no basis to this claim, why is one worth doing by a biological machine but not a silicon one?

You're entitled to your own value system, but in mine, humans are worth infinitely more than computers.
From what I see those are still CTO. The stock item comes with Magic Mouse.
ChatGPT o1 pro mode solved it on the first try, after 8 minutes and 53 seconds of “thinking”:

https://chatgpt.com/share/67f40cd2-d088-8008-acd5-fe9a9784f3...
Logical fallacies aren't automatic falsehoods. They're things that can't be proven with formal logic.

The slippery slope is a fallacy and also a thing that fairly consistently happens in politics and law.

The point far up this thread, however, was that this proposal isn't a slippery slope. It's a leaky sieve. If there is a law against speech that covers enough cases to be even slightly effective against people with lawyers, and I am powerful and don't like you, then you are going to prison.
I just went through some of your comment history, and it strikes me as interesting that you very recently said:

"It's easy to spot political tribalism - just reference the comments here. They ultimately misrepresent, and have never tried to understand, their opposition's political position. It's kind of sad because it allows them to be manipulated by propaganda"

This is exactly what you just did by fabricating knowledge of my aesthetic taste. I hope this fact is as intriguing to you as it is to me.
This reads like it was conceived largely before the events of the last week, but it lays out at least a coherent policy argument for a broader program of which the “big beautiful tariffs” might be part. I was grateful for a least a scrap of an answer to “what are they thinking?”, beyond the raw turmoil and bewilderment of recent days.
But do they really get upvoted for such pointless comments? I'd be really interested to see the numbers. I suppose it could be cargo culting, where they see others do it and think it must work, even if it doesn't.
MIT kids get part time jobs waiting tables or working retail while in school, just like other college kids. My first job out of college was non-elite aircraft manufacturer... guy on my left was MIT, on my right was CalTech.
If you think drag racing seems pointless and self destructive, it is in your best interests to not explore the other popular variants of competitive motorsports today.
Tiny Wings.
In Sweden we don't use that numbering scheme and instead use Day/Month Year (which makes more sense as it goes from smaller to larger).
Jony Ive’s new AI product is ‘not a phone,’ but might work like one
Or, there is a diverse group of people in the current administration, with sometimes contradictory agendas and views.
None of those upgrades come cheap though – the OpenWrt One sells for around $89, but the OpenWrt Two is expected to sell for around $250 when it hits the streets in late 2025.

Unlike the peanut gallery who needs 10Gbps or GTFO, I am disappointed about them throwing in extra features. To a reasonable number of sig figs, 0% of consumers need this level of performance. Maybe include 2.5Gbps if you must.

For the prosumer market, it seems to make even less sense to include the extra ports + WiFi. Those in this market are already likely to have their own PoE switch plus dedicated APs. Give me a simple router with an input and output port.
I get racing on a twisty track. They are legitimate tests of human skill and vehicle endurance engineering. Drag racing has none of that. There's little skill beyond reaction time and drag vehicles have almost no relation to normal vehicles.
I think the answer is that it depends. Software engineering is incredibly hard if you are a perfectionist who wants to make efficient, secure and maintainable software. But most probably it is not even possible to be that perfectionist and stay within any given budget. And the requirements are most often not your own.

The thing is, it's a job that needs creativity, spontaneous decision making as well as personal responsibility for those decisions. It's a real easy job if you don't need to take this responsibility (e.g. those who come after me when I am long gone have to deal with the consequences). It becomes a hard job the instant that you have some passion or ethical concerns that drive you to create software that holds up to your own high standards and requirements.

I think that's what makes it so hard for many. We are incredibly passionate (why would we be on this forum in our free time otherwise) but we constantly have to betray our own principles to make it work or stay employed.
Of course, you're sending data to the AI model, but the "private" aspect is contrasting automating using a local browser vs. automating using a remote browser.

When you automate using a remote browser, another service (not the AI model) gets all of the browsing activity and any information you send (e.g. usernames and passwords) that's required for the automation.

With Browser MCP, since you're automating locally, your sensitive data and browser activity (apart from the results of MCP tool calls that's sent to the AI model) stay on your device.
It's 2025. We go buy our weed from the store and eggs from this one dude who's a friend of a friend in an alleyway.
Not sure about an Excel workbook file like xlsx but for something like a CSV there is no way to attach that preference to the file so Excel will continue to mangle data as it always has unless everyone who touches it updates their settings.
Lifestyle trumps (excuse the word usage) expensive treatments, which usually just give you a few more years of life and a lifetime of good environment, eating, and exercise is going to give you a much longer lifespan. Also, just seeing a doctor every year and getting the basics taken care of can go a long way.
Thread the other week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43505447
Infineon announces first RISC-V microcontroller family for automotives
I'm saying that even if they can do it, which nothing so far suggests, then the enormous prior art in the field should still make it uninteresting to them in any case. Nothing you could patent, and it isn't charismatic to billionaires. Why bother?
"Everyone thinks their job in the Silo is the most important. Mine actually is." -- Juliette Nichols (also some Software Engineers)
The research in question: https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/mgen/10...

They were doing genetic sequencing across a decade or so at this one hospital to document how the bacteria is evolving to develop resistance - and it currently has resistance to a wide number of drugs.

Sounds like it is highly prevalent in hospitals in lesser developed countries and has been slowly developing resistance but not widely studied, and this particular strain at this particular hospital seems to be further along the path.

WHO considers it a "critical priority antibiotic-resistant pathogen."

Most hits on the subject in the news seem to be coming from tabloid-level organizations. This looked fairly sane:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-03-deadly-antibiotic-res...

A reminder to HNers, from another HNer:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812804
Well, no, it isn't because Excel actually changes the underlying data too. It's more like changing the formatting of all the files in the project and deleting all the characters after the 80th column.
Just in case it's helpful to anyone, I recently spoke to a very respected consultant about this, and he also recommended Vercel's AI SDK. We haven't tried it yet but plan to.
I saw that same exhibition in Vienna! 2007 IIRC.

I agree that it never struck me as grotesque. His work is bold, stark, urgent. I also find that his draftsmanship is overshadowed. He has an amazing sense of volume, told with simple linework. And his hand renderings are sublime.
I completely disagree with the parent post's politics but he's right-- abortion providers are frequently compared to Hitler and regularly come out with higher numbers too. If these are your true beliefs, you are a coward for not taking action.
Why Trump's tariff chaos makes sense [video]
> Are you saying that it's hard to bootstrap a pure B2C business using only B2C revenue sources?

I said that consumers don't like to buy much these days, so business opportunities are effectively limited to selling to other businesses.

But businesses can't absorb buying your wares if they can't sell to someone else in kind – eventually meaning the consumer. That is, unless they have angel money to burn. So what was also said is that even within the B2B space, you are bound to be dependent on angel money even if you don't receive it directly. Meaning, as it pertained to the comment that came before it, that someone needs to accept the angel money to keep the house of cards standing.

> That's what 37signals did.

37signals doesn't strike me as trying to tackle B2C in any meaningful capacity either. 'Hey' plays that angle a little bit, which is maybe what you are thinking of, but it is clear that selling to business is still the bread and butter even there.
I suspect the environmental pushback is from a vocal minority which dislikes the cynical lip-service companies have found it necessary/expedient to give.

"nor a direct path" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there - I see no reason to push back against a company that is figuring out how to run back the extinction process. If you're claiming that their attempts yet a solution, then your point is as useless as expecting them to solve the entire problem on the first go. If you're claiming that their attempts aren't even going in the right direction, and aren't how you find a solution, then that would require much more evidence towards a negative proof than has yet been raised here - enough to say that they should definitely give up now.

In fact, insofar as we care about extinction, their success is likely our best shot at long-term preservation. I'd like to see them keep trying.
> One differing characteristic presumably being requiring payment to Hoefler & Co.

* Monotype
The Complete Yes Minister, a novelization of the TV show, but probably more approachable. A kind of "high brow" skewering of politics and government. There's a lot of interplay between politicians and civil servants that mirrors some play between politicians and people, especially in the case of "systemic lag".

Erasure by Percival Everett. A book on racial conformity and expectations. A weird case where the movie (American Fiction) might be better than the book. Pretty easy and quick read however. I don't know what it was but this book has stuck with me ever since I've read it.

The Code Book by Simon Singh. This is the book that got me into cryptography. It's a bit old and outdated now (published in 1999) but it was responsible for forming a lifelong interest in me.

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door by Christopher Mims. The premise was supposed to be tracking a product from production to consumer, but then the COVID happened. The book turns into an exploration of how just in time production and supply lanes work today.

The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. I had a professor who was friends with BBM, so when we were discussing selectorate theory we actually got to meet him. At it's core this is a cynical book about realpolitik, talking about how leaders get in power, stay in power, get money and foreign aid, and deal with revolutions and war. It is very political focused but the theory can be abstracted out to most big organizations. It fundamentally changed the way I look at interactions between countries. This is 100% a more mass market appeal book than the original paper (and imo a bit dumbed down) but everyone I've recommended it to has come back appreciative about it.
> a positive trade balance is the only thing it's interested in

At this point I think that's still far too generous, as opposed to real interests of People Grovel At My Feet, slightly tempered by I Stay Rich.

Consider this (further) unhinged meltdown earlier today:

> Yesterday, China issued Retaliatory Tariffs of 34% [...] despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs [...] will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs [...] if China does not withdraw its 34% increase [...] by tomorrow [...] the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50% [...] Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/07/trump-tariffs-live-updates-s...
Hasochism: The pleasure and pain of dependently typed Haskell programming [pdf] (2013)
A global health threat doesn't have to be a pandemic affecting otherwise healthy people to be a global health threat. In this case, the threat would presumably be that the same bacteria winds up in health care facilities elsewhere.
> Interestingly, for models up to 1 billion parameters, the loss actually starts to increase again after reaching a minimum. This might be because as training continues, the model develops more complex, non-linear representations that our simple linear probe can’t capture as well. Or it might be that the model starts to overfit on the training data and loses its more general concept of nullability.

Double descent?
Awesome, I need this, will sign up and try it out.
I'm sure its about the cookies/sessions but I do recall you can load cookies from another browser?
So you want a tradeblock of democratic countries? Like NATOASEA? Could have had that but you sabotaged both ?
>In audio, this sound identical to a human, no?

If it was just that single wave, but there is more than 1 audio channel.
The administration (i.e. Trump) thinks that negotiation means taking extreme and hostile positions, then waiting for others to try to make concessions to deescalate. Holding a gun to the world's economy (ours included) in return for something he can show off as a win is very much in line with his philosophy of "deals".

Actually achieving stated aims though? Ahhh, not so much, talk is cheap for him.
The overwhelming majority of software engineers are building garden-variety CRUD apps.
They are synonyms in this context