MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by staunton | 2025-04-22 09:54:50+00:00
Pretty much everything you read (especially when aimed at a non-expert audience) about quantum computing in the media is "easy-to-mediatize" information only.

People building these things are trying to oversell their achievements while carefully avoiding making them easy to check, reproduce, or objectively compare to others. It's hard to objectively evaluate even for people who work in the field but haven't worked on the exact technology platform reported on. Metrics are taylored to marketing goals, for example, IBM made up a performance metric called "quantum volume", only to basically stop using it when it seemed to no longer favour them.

That being said, it's also undeniable that quantum computing is making significant progress, error correction being a major milestone. What this ends up being actually used for, if anything, remains to be seen (I'm rather sure we'll find something).
by ben_w | 2025-04-22 09:55:46+00:00
> But you do need some kind of base knowledge, if you want to talk about this. Otherwise you're saying "what if we create God". And last time I checked it wasn't possible.

The base knowledge is game theory, not quite the same focus as the maths used to build an AI. And the problem isn't limited to "build god" — hence my examples of cobra effect, in which humans bred snakes because they were following the natural incentives of laws made by other humans who didn't see what would happen until it was so late that even cancelling the laws resulted in more snakes than they started with.

> And what's with the existential risk obsession? That's like a bad retelling of the Pascal bet on the existence of God.

And every "be careful what you wish for" story.

Is climate change a potentially existential threat? Is global thermonuclear war a potentially existential threat? Are pandemics, both those from lab leaks and those evolving naturally in wet markets, potentially existential threats?

The answer to all is "yes", even though these are systems with humans in the loop. (Even wet markets: people have been calling for better controls of them since well before Covid).

AI is automation. Automation has bugs. If the automation has a lot of bugs, you've got humans constantly checking things, despite which errors still gets past QA from time to time. If it's perfect automation, you wouldn't have to check it… but nobody knows how to do perfect automation.

"Perfect" automation would be god-like, but just as humans keep mistaking natural phenomena for deities, an AI doesn't have to actually be perfect for humans to set it running without checking the output and then be surprised when it all goes wrong. A decade ago the mistakes were companies doing blind dictionary merges on "Keep Calm and …" T-shirts, today it's LLMs giving legal advice (and perhaps writing US trade plans).

They (the humans) shouldn't be doing those things, but they do them anyway, because humans are like that.
by pjc50 | 2025-04-22 09:56:48+00:00
I really wish we had distinct words for "being ready for a disaster that might reasonably happen" versus "making a core part of your identity the idea that civil order might collapse, and gleefully anticipating being able to shoot people in the street without fear of law enforcement", because it feels like there's quite a wide spectrum there.

Being in California and preparing for wildfires and earthquakes for the few days before the civil authorities reassert themselves and things return to "normal"? A good idea. Anticipating an incident which collapses civil authorities beyond the point at which they can recover? Not only does this feel psychologically unhealthy I think it also ties into pro-collapse politics that actively speed up this outcome. Also tied into the deep American fear of that which pervades everything.
by croemer | 2025-04-22 09:56:53+00:00
Thanks, that almost worked, needed the following (extra --force tap of core and link --overwrite)

brew tap-new $USER/local-tap brew tap homebrew/core --force brew extract --version=3.3.0 htop $USER/local-tap brew install $USER/local-tap/cmake@3.3.0 brew link --overwrite htop@3.3.0

Based mostly on https://www.ericbariaux.com/posts/brew_rollback/
by matrixswarm | 2025-04-22 09:57:07+00:00
I’m building a file-based operating swarm where agents spawn, die, talk to Oracle, and sweep stale files off the system.

We just added a new unit: TelegramRelayAgent. She watches .msg files dropped by agents and forwards them to my phone via Telegram.

Why? Because sometimes Reaper kills something, and I want to know.

Link to article: https://dev.to/matrixswarm/telegramrelayagent-when-your-agen...

GitHub repo (MatrixSwarm): https://github.com/matrixswarm/matrixswarm

[REDACTED LOG — intercepted by matrix]

Mailman was missing again.

Sentinel had flagged 3 stale files. Oracle responded. Reaper prepped a die cookie. But I didn’t know any of it — until hours later.

I thought, “What if my swarm could text me?”

So I built TelegramRelayAgent.

Now, when Sentinel sweeps /tmp, or Oracle whispers a warning... I get pinged. Live. No daemons. No cron. Just files and fire.

This swarm doesn’t use containers. It spawns agents from folders.

We’ve got:

UpdateSentinelAgent for stale file auditing

Reaper for hard shutdown

OracleAgent for AI reasoning

and now... a relay that texts me when something breaks

Swarm’s alive. Logs are real. You want your OS to think? Spawn the Swarm.

— matrix
by netruk44 | 2025-04-22 09:57:32+00:00
Funny you mention that…

I have a DS1515+ which has an SSD cache function that uses a whitelisted set of known good drives that function well.

If you plug in a non whitelisted ssd and try to use it as a cache, it pops up a stern warning about potential data loss due to unsupported drives with a checkbox to acknowledge that you’re okay with the risk.

So…there’s really no excuse why they couldn’t have done this for regular drives.
by lotsofpulp | 2025-04-22 09:57:33+00:00
> But you wouldn't accept that, because any compromise is " controlling women",

Because it is. As your own link shows, later term abortions are for medical purposes. Any legislation restricting it is just adding liability for doctors, which results in harm to women because doctors are now second guessing themselves instead of focusing on the woman’s healthcare.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/raw-data-abor...

The “issue” being legislated against is non existent.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/raw-data-abor...

It is only politically popular due to disinformation and people liking the feeling of being morally superior to others. A tried and true strategy to winning votes.
by DecoPerson | 2025-04-22 09:58:01+00:00
The Flipper Zero is great, and could handle all of the hacking/investigation part by installing custom firmware.

The original product understandably arrives with heavily-restricted firmware (I imagine to reduce the amount of flak the company receives). However, it is incredibly easy to install Flipper Unleashed or similar, which removes all said restrictions and adds a lot of additional functionality.

Possessing the tools that could be used to commit a crime is not necessarily a crime in and of itself! Just be careful with what you do or, depending on what country you’re in, you might find some men in suits knocking at your door.

Personally, I wanted to replay “encrypted” 433MHz signals for my own devices (electric gate, roller door, roller shutters, …) and this was disabled with the Flipper’s region set to Australia.
by LordGrignard | 2025-04-22 09:59:50+00:00
I'm pretty sure it would be something like even if a star was coming and we saw it what the fuck could we even do it would just create mass panic, hysteria and would make everyone hella religious depending on how early we detect it though we might have some time to make good memories before we die. atleast I would prefer a black hole smashing into us unbeknownst to us instead of a known star. Also no one would want to show up to jobs and stuff
by KineticLensman | 2025-04-22 09:59:57+00:00
(UK) my boiler has a control with something like the wake..leave timer (it actually has six settings for a midday period as well) and there is a separate thermostat with a temperature dial. The boiler also has a button that advances it to the next time interval if you want instant on (eg if you come home early to a cold house). I find this combo of controls meets all of my needs, given that I have a fairly repeatable daily schedule.
by m000 | 2025-04-22 10:00:24+00:00
Mind that these are ancient models that are dog slow for anything more than serving files. Not that they are fast in serving files...

I did the procedure on my (now 15yo) TS-410, mostly because the vendored Samba is not compatible with Windows 11 (I had turned-off all secondary services years ago). It took a few days to backup around 8TB of data to external drives. And AROUND 2 WEEKS to restore them (USB2 CPU overhead + RAID5 writes == SLOOOOOW).

Even to get the time down to 2 weeks, I really had to experiment with different modes of copying. My final setup was HDD <-USB3-> RPi4 <-GbE-> TS-410. This relieved TS-410 CPU from the overhead of running the USB stack. I also had to use rsync daemon on TS-410 to avoid the overhead of running rsync over SSH.

So, it's definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you go through the trouble, you can keep the box alive as off-site backup for a few more years.

Having said that, I have to commend QNAP for providing security updates for all this time. The latest firmware update for TS-410 is dated 2024-07-01 [1]. This is really going beyond and above supporting your product when it comes to consumer-level devices.

[1] https://www.qnap.com/en/download?model=ts-410&category=firmw...
by that_guy_iain | 2025-04-22 10:00:57+00:00
> Kindly explain why noting that "people who need experience before knowing what is rationally evident should not be empowered" would be «trying to be 100% right» and opposing «getting the result you want».

I'm not what you don't understand. People need experience before doing stuff with stuff that is completely brand new?! It's completely impossible. You're taking an approach which you think results in not being wrong. That is about you trying to be 100% right. And that attitude results in your being completely disregarded and those who you think are wrong doing stuff you don't want. You've just been a naysayer.

> If for «getting the result you want» you meant "creating damage in order to prove a point and discard some ways", I said that there must be a better way.

One you're talking about damage. If there is damage after 48 hours you're completely terrible are your job. It should just be a somewhat quick clean up. And there isn't. Anyone who has dealt with this sort of stuff and got the results they wanted knows sometimes you need to see the pain before you understand that something doesn't work. Most people need evidence to believe something. Your naysaying doesn't do it. You're not helping, you're just wasting time.
by pjc50 | 2025-04-22 10:01:03+00:00
> While no-one has reported physical harm as a consequence of GTP to date – GTP could, in principle, endanger someone

This is a classic of how to write a moral panic article. It's fun to talk about GTP, but in order to be news it has to be made into a big threat so it can tie into pre-existing prejudices like "my kids are spending too much time playing video games".

(speaking as someone who had to consciously stop playing Factorio as it was affecting my sleep!)
by frereubu | 2025-04-22 10:01:21+00:00
This particular manifestation is interesting, although not surprising - it's just adaptation. I was in a psychology department in the mid 90s when people were experimenting with really basic VR, just a headset and a glove. When you pointed with the glove you moved that way in the virtual world. Even after a short time with the headset on, when people took the headset off, instead of walking out of the room their first move was often to point towards the door. The human brain is really prone to immersion.
by skissane | 2025-04-22 10:01:22+00:00
> Instead of abortion we can take the fetus out, put it into an artificial womb then let it be raised as an orphan or whatever. It should make both sides happy, IF they are both being honest about their motives.

I think very few people who have religious opposition to abortion would actually be happy about the advent of "artificial wombs". They might view it as a lesser evil, but not as a good thing. Because, while belief in the wrongfulness of deliberately killing an unborn child is an important motivator, it generally isn't the sole motivator – another important motivator is the belief that God has a plan for the process of human reproduction, and wandering too far off script is wrong in itself, with artificial wombs likely to be seen as going quite a long way off – at best maybe tolerable as a lesser evil in some cases.
by hansmayer | 2025-04-22 10:01:50+00:00
100% this. No matter how quick a developer, or its AI-assistant is in spitting out the react frontends (I find them relatively useful in this case), sooner or later you will hit the problem of data structures and their interrelations, i.e. the logic of the program. And not just the logic, its also the simplicity of the relations, often a week spent refining the data structures saves a year worth of effort down the road.
by amarcheschi | 2025-04-22 10:04:59+00:00
My issue is not related to studying ai risk, my issue is empowering people who don't have formal education in anything related to ai.

And yes, you need some math background otherwise you end up like yudkowski saying 3 years ago we all might be dead by now or next year. Or the use of bayesian probability in such a way thay makes you think they should have used their time better and followed a statistics course.

There are ai researchers, serious ones, studying ai risk, and i don't see anything wrong in that. But of course, their claims and papers are way less, less alarmistic than the ai doomerism present in those circles. And one thing they sound the alarm on is the doomerism and the tescreal movement and ideals proposed by the aforementioned alexander, yud, bostrom ecc
by throwaway290 | 2025-04-22 10:05:44+00:00
> It's the same as "Trusted flaggers" under the EU's DSA. Nobody trusts them. Just like when non-democratic countries call themselves "Democratic Republic"

Trusted flaggers literally need to publish transparency records and are approved by orgs in EU countries under elected governments.

If you say that is all bullshit and EU is a North Korea and North Korea is a shining example of democracy then you should probably remove your dig at DPRK's self naming;) Because your own comment measures non-democratic countries by the standard of democratic countries. if you want to be wrong be consistent at least
by dustincoates | 2025-04-22 10:05:53+00:00
You don't need the high cost and low cost areas to flip to be caught out. You just need the high cost areas to decrease in price and then it's immaterial whether the low cost areas increase in cost or not. There's no way they can decrease the same amount as the high cost areas, seeing as there's a floor. Then that excess that people had planned for is no longer there.

> The numbers are just made up and don't matter.

You've asked why people care. They care because they've made their retirement plans on a made up number. Is that reasonable? I don't think so, and it's why I'm renting not buying. But you're tilting at windmills at this point to explain to people who have a vested financial interest why they're wrong.
by vjaswal | 2025-04-22 10:06:22+00:00
I'm not really a gamer, but I experienced something maybe similar with the ipad. When I first got one, of course, I was reading news and swiping away and it was completely natural.

Then I'd go to a restaurant and when reading the menu, I'd start swiping at the paper or vinyl menus like it was a tablet. It's a curious phenomena to have that brand new tablet gesture overtake decades of behaviors and perceptions with real paper.

Kudos to Apple, I guess.
by 6P58r3MXJSLi | 2025-04-22 10:07:07+00:00
No. Heroin it's a problem and it's in fact listed among the banned substances.

TikTok is not banned and when rumors spread about the government wanting to shut it down, people protested.

I've never seen people protesting for heroin, honestly.

So, no! your analogy is faulty.
by noobermin | 2025-04-22 10:08:50+00:00
So this is a peanut gallery esque reply, but this sort of thing is what GPL was meant to avoid. I know GNU has had a lot of detractors and criticism, but you cannot and should not expect large orgs to respect community norms around open source. Permissive licenses are NOT better in this world where different players have different levels of power relative to each other.

Sometimes I wonder if all the shitting on free software in general is in fact cynical and in bad faith by actors who want your labour for free.
by sz4kerto | 2025-04-22 10:08:56+00:00
We've moved to an new apartment (house) and we had to do a full renovation. It doesn't have modern insulation and I calculated that for the time being the ROI on insulation isn't worth it. It's a multi-floor semi-detached house and I wanted the best comfort and the most economical heating possible.

In particular: stable and individually adjustable temperatures for bedrooms and living rooms; underfloor heating in some rooms (bedrooms), radiator-based heating in some others (living room), and combined UFH+radiators in some others (where UFH might not be enough during extreme colds).

I thought I can just pay someone some money and they'll set up the controls for me. It must be a simple exercise, right?

I could not have been more wrong. After spending a few hours of understanding the setups that "experts" have recommended, I figured out edge cases where they would be either wasteful or uncomfortable (meaning: unnecessary and inavoidable temperature overshoots or undershoots, etc.). I had many-many rounds with Honeywell, Tado, Siemens, etc. and every single one of them had _major_ issues.

The renovation got a bit stuck because of this, but the plumbing was ready so I wanted to see whether the pluming and pumps are working, at least. So I connected the pumps and valves to "smart plugs", i.e. Zigbee-controlled plugs, so that I can see that they turn on. They did, which got me thinking...

Right now I have $20 Zigbee temp sensors sprinkled across the house, $30 smart plugs and relays driving valves, pumps and the boiler, and Home Assistant is controlling the whole thing. Everything works perfectly and I could implement some features that simply no system would have done out of the box, for example in rooms where there's combined UFH and radiators I can drive both heating systems when the target temperature is far from the desired (so that the room heats up quickly) but as the room temp is getting closer to the target, the radiators are turned off so that UFH dominates heating (more comfortable and more energy efficient than radiators). In rooms with radiators, temp is +- 0.4 C within target, in rooms with UFH, it's +-0.1C within target.
by Retric | 2025-04-22 10:09:49+00:00
That’s an artifact of how heating is setup inside your home. Which is more efficient depends on where you’re dumping heat inside the home, levels of insulation, etc.

Energy moves from hot to cold linearly with temperature differences. Hypothetically, if the pipe was the same temperatures as the inside of your home all the heat transferred would be outside the envelope. The hotter the pipe the better this ratio becomes. This is true regardless of what percentage of the pipe is inside the envelope.

However, heating along the exterior of the home under windows and such then you’ll heat the exterior walls to higher temperatures than the interior thermostat thus losing more heat to the outside. Radiant heating on the other hand largely avoids this effect.
by jamalaramala | 2025-04-22 10:10:03+00:00
They were essential for branching with GOTO and GOSUB.

Example:

10 PRINT "HELLO "; 20 GOTO 10

This would create an infinite loop that you could break with Ctrl+C.

You could then type:

15 PRINT "WORLD ";

And when you listed the source code (with the command LIST) you would see:

10 PRINT "HELLO "; 15 PRINT "WORLD "; 20 GOTO 10
by fc417fc802 | 2025-04-22 10:11:03+00:00
> Some of them* may be business leaders using the same language to BS their way into regulatory capture

Realistically, probably yeah. On the other hand, if you manage to occupy the high ground then you might be able to protect yourself.

P( doom ) seems quite murky to me because conquering the real world involves physical hardware. We've had billions of general intelligences crawling all over the world waging war with one another for a while now. I doubt every single AGI magically ends up aligned in a common bloc against humanity; all the alternatives to that are hopelessly opaque.

The worst case scenario that seems reasonably likely to me is probably AGI collectively not caring about us and wanting some natural resources that we happen to be living on top of.
by worldsavior | 2025-04-22 10:11:36+00:00
Rust is supposed to be a "safe" language for low level use, and thus has borrow checker, unsafe, etc. Building a "verifier" on top of Rust seems a bit excessive and unneeded.

> Developers write specifications of what their code should do ... Verus statically checks ... the specifications for all possible executions of the code

This is what tests are for.
by kqr | 2025-04-22 10:11:43+00:00
Interesting. I tried this with 3.5 Sonnet and it got it on the first attempt, using CSS transformations to specify the angle of the hour hand.

It failed, even with chain-of-thought prompting, when I asked for an SVG image, because it didn't realise it needed to be careful when converting the angle of the hour hand to Cartesian coordinates. When prompted to pay extra attention to that, it succeeds again.

I would assume models with chain-of-thought prompting baked in would perform better on the first attempt even at an SVG.
by inkyoto | 2025-04-22 10:12:02+00:00
> Each of those components executes in parallel, with the intermediate results streaming between them. You get a similar effect with coroutines.

Processes run in parallel, but they process the data in a strict sequential order: «grep» must produce a chunk of data before «sed» can proceed, and «sed» must produce another chunk of data before «xargs» can do its part. «xargs» in no way can ever pick up the output of «grep» and bypass the «sed» step. If the preceding step is busy crunching the data and is not producing the data, the subsequent step will be blocked (the process will fall asleep). So it is both, a pipeline and a chain.

It is actually a directed data flow graph.

Also, if you replace «haystack.txt» with a /dev/haystack, i.e.

grep needle < /dev/haystack | sed 's/foo/bar/g' | xargs wc -l

and /dev/haystack is waiting on the device it is attached to to yield a new chunk of data, all of the three, «grep», «sed» and «xargs» will block.
by lifthrasiir | 2025-04-22 10:13:01+00:00
Slides: https://filmroellchen.eu/talks/QOI%20EH25/#/0/1

As that data compression nerd, QOI is both a refresher and an annoyance. It serves as a good example that input modelling is very important, so much that QOI almost beats PNG in spite of very suboptimal coding. But QOI also represents a missed opportunity because, well, we can do much better if we are willing to use something like QOI instead of standard formats! Weirdly enough people seem to value only the simplicity when it comes to QOI, which is not the main takeaway I believe. Maybe QOIR [1] might result in a better balanced format in the future though...

[1] https://github.com/nigeltao/qoir/