MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mjevans | 2025-04-25 23:37:03+00:00
If the 'addressee' is some human read blob that the shipping stuff and even postal carriers don't need to read, great. Heck it might be nice if everyone globally had their own UUID which could even get a lookup to 'current desired delivery address'.

Re: Unicode

Some sort of baseline protocol that just flattened everything out to what's really used and left behind anything remotely like Emoji ( E.G. Just 'single pen (monochrome imprint) compatible' Unicode ) might be useful enough.

I will likely forever absolutely loath how UCS-2 ended up baked into UTF-8 and the Unicode namespace generally _forever_ so that it gets kneecapped at an arbitrary low page size and yet still majorly complicates decoders that have to map around that inanity.

I think I'd want to review the 'Advanced Sub Station' bitstream format for inspiration of useful ways to extend 'font' operations. Any sort of 'color' or 'combining' operation would be relegated to _advanced_ / extended (not required) use cases and treated as a blob associated with either a single rune/character or a special meta character that denotes a sequence length. Among a bunch of other changes that would probably also include dropping UTF-8's 'resynchronize at next character' design in favor of some other mechanism that might include a simple checksum, and could change preferred encoding length at the next resynchronization.
by richardw | 2025-04-25 23:38:52+00:00
My opinion isn’t fully formed but I currently think either all content producers have a claim (potentially workable as eg a discount), or only those who contribute should get access to AI’s.

And by all I mean the AI companies owe a huge debt to all humans who wrote or designed or drew anything. The vast majority of the benefit of this technology relies on volume: the billions of pages and lines of code we wrote for other humans, but have now been repurposed. This technology relies on bulk, which was mainly unprofessional or freely given content, by those who intended it for other humans. It was not 100% built only on the output of the few who charge for their exquisite words or designs, even if their output is higher quality.

Alternatively, let the AI companies go for it but everyone who uses any kind of AI should understand that they’re standing on the shoulders of the millions of developers and nonprofessional writers whose work has now been repurposed. Not the few artists and journalists. So those artists and journalists should both refuse to contribute to, and use, AI.

* I’ve written very little of this useful content, but would be happy to pay my share to those that have built what we have. I also turn off training on my content, but I pay a lot for models. Feel free to help me think through this with comments of your own.
by aught | 2025-04-25 23:40:22+00:00
I just had two surgeries with general anesthesia. While I haven't had any cognitive effects in the task sense (surprisingly the opposite), I lost my sense of taste completely and kind of worse than lost. My brain seems to believe food is some kind of poison with some very odd anecdotal events. I tried to make myself eat my favorite rotisserie chicken. I was shocked to see it sliding down the wall, I threw the chicken. I have never been more shocked in my life. The doctor said not to worry, but it will be at least six months before it comes back. Everything tastes rotten, or chemical.
by mikeyouse | 2025-04-25 23:41:14+00:00
I’m sure you’d find the exact same thing if some grifty billionaire funded a fake investigation into those people who were contributing money to WinRed and yet, only one of the two is facing investigation.. it is so far past the time when this DOJ should be given the benefit of the doubt and steel manning their obvious corruption doesn’t make anyone seem scholarly, just credulous.
by wwweston | 2025-04-25 23:41:19+00:00
The popular wisdom is that FB has deprioritized external links -- some accounts on FB are now posting an image with a blurb and then saying "link in comments." I don't know if they're doing it on rumor, official communication, or having tested clickthru rates themselves, but several of these have large enough media operations that all of those sources are plausible.
by nailer | 2025-04-25 23:41:35+00:00
Regarding the missing topics mentioned in the article (updated to quote them for convenience):

The Barack Obama article completely fails to mention many well-known scandals: Benghazi, the IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal, and Fast and Furious, to say nothing of Solyndra or the Hillary Clinton email server scandal—or, of course, the developing “Obamagate” story in which Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump.

For example, the September 11 attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi objectively happened - few people on the left or right would pretend they did not happen or that were not notable events of Barack Obama’s presidency (as the article discusses).

This is not a matter of whether you watch Fox News or not.
by jjulius | 2025-04-25 23:42:04+00:00
This forum, in spite of the name, was never about the older hacker ethos that began way back when. It was founded by a VC and was called "Startup News" at first, only changing its name six months later. It was created by the wealthy, for those who wanted to get wealthy (and make it's founder wealthier in the process). It co-opted "hacker".
by jeffbee | 2025-04-25 23:42:13+00:00
Generally yes. This is not for "simple" cores this is the state-of-the-art static branch prediction algorithm as described by Intel in their optimization manual.

"Branches that do not have a history in the BTB ... are predicted using a static prediction algorithm: Predict forward conditional branches to be NOT taken. Predict backward conditional branches to be taken."

It then goes on to recommend exactly what every optimizing compiler and post-link optimizers like BOLT do:

"Arrange code to be consistent with the static branch prediction algorithm: make the fall-through code following a conditional branch be the likely target for a branch with a forward target, and make the fall-through code following a conditional branch be the unlikely target for a branch with a backward target."

This is why a reduction in taken forward branches is one of the key statistics that BOLT reports.
by crote | 2025-04-25 23:43:16+00:00
Honestly? I want a footprint editor with constraint-based modeling.

The datasheets often show measurements like the horizontal distance between the leftmost side of the left-row pads and the rightmost side of the right-most pad, and the distance between the rightmost side of the left-row pads and the leftmost side of the right-row pads.

Converting that into the stuff you need to enter in the editor (width of pad, distance between center of pad and center of footprint) isn't hard, but it is cumbersome and error-prone. Being able to directly enter it as constraints[0] would make it literally an order of magnitude easier to input, and it would allow for a simple 1:1 comparison with the datasheet for verification.

[0]: Something like https://wiki.freecad.org/images/thumb/7/71/FC_ConstrainedSke...
by margalabargala | 2025-04-25 23:44:37+00:00
It could make sense. We don't know the numbers.

Let's say net X lives are saved each year because of automatic lights turning on.

Let's say net Y lives would be saved each year without automatic lights, via more effective detection of drunk drivers and stopping them before they kill someone.

Is X > Y? We don't know.

> Eliminatung DUI is not a matter of detection

There are a lot of avenues to decrease DUI, among which one is effective detection combined with enforcement.
by hayst4ck | 2025-04-25 23:45:29+00:00
By the time that happens, everyone who understands what is happening will have already left because people like you want to wait until power is consolidated to such an extent that it can't be reasonably fought.

That law was enacted after they thought they had the power to do it, not before as with every salami slicing action. If they think there will be a response, they back off while they continue to slice.

You talk about political capital like it's in a bank account just waiting to be spent, while political capital is being lost through inaction itself, especially in people seeing that it's more rational to run than fight.

Schumer's strategy to wait for 40% unpopularity didn't save any political capital, just the opposite, it demoralized everyone on his side, destroyed resolve, and shattered solidarity.

What is the difference between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Against_the_Formation_of_P... and https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/24/trump-actblu...

Intent is already declared, time passes which allows power to consolidate. When would it be easier to act, after several months of power consolidation?
by sundarurfriend | 2025-04-25 23:45:34+00:00
> neoclouds

For anyone else who hadn't heard of this term:

> Neoclouds are startups specializing in AI-specific cloud computing. Unlike their larger competitors, they don’t develop proprietary chips. Instead, they rely heavily on Nvidia’s cutting-edge GPUs to power their operations. By focusing solely on AI workloads, these companies offer specialized solutions tailored to AI developers’ needs.

from https://www.tlciscreative.com/the-rise-of-neoclouds-shaping-...
by MPSFounder | 2025-04-25 23:45:50+00:00
The PhD institution I went to reduced their acceptance from 50 to 26. There is fear of not securing funding. The damage done is projects that are promising were cut. These projects will get picked up by other countries. The damage in the long term will be losing our edge in many regards, which will harm our economy. Where I did my undergrad just replaced their dean with an AIPAC member who has no experience in academia (a first in nearly two hundred years of this institution's). It is insane what is happening. A judge in Wisconsin was arrested today. There are those who believe America is resilient. The damage being done (I can promise you) will cause this great nation unbelievable harm in the long run, when this traitor in charge and his foreign allies (Putin and Netanyahu) which he promises allegiance to OVER our constitution and our moral values have long since passed. There is much noise, much of it as a distraction, but on the small level, many changes (most recently the NSF director leaving) are tangible changes that have a real impact that is certainly felt immediately in budget cuts, but will be even more drastic in its long term strategic impact. Also, I fly a bunch, and I see an immediate change in the respect America used to command abroad. Our values and reputation, which took over a hundred years in the making, became a laughing stock, and our closest allies no longer view America as a beacon.
by pedalpete | 2025-04-25 23:46:12+00:00
I'm not sure I agree with this - though I'm not in central Europe.

Sustainability and climate are not products or businesses in themselves.

If you're trying to sell sustainabiity, what is your business? What are you selling? If it's advice on how people can be sustainable, or carbon credits or something, sure, those are things that may be tarpits.

But electric vehicles were probably a tarpit idea until they went from being advanced golf carts to being real cars.

Environmentally friendly packaging is doing very well. Etc etc.
by firesteelrain | 2025-04-25 23:46:30+00:00
Wikipedia/Wikimedia could move to a country that allows this type of manipulation on their platform or figure out how to comply with the existing US law.

Wikipedia could also stop operating as a 501c3 and incorporate.

But the typical out for these organizations are that they are not responsible for what people post. I don’t feel like that is very responsible. They already have moderation on the platform.

But Wikimedia/pedia can’t claim 501c3 status. It could spin off the political content/controversial into 501c4 which has more leeway. It can tighten editorial controls, emphasize first amendment, look at Section 230. Publish reports showing how misinformation is identified and corrected, partner with fact checking organizations.

But also if they cannot police their own content without an unpaid army of volunteers then herein lies the bigger issue with their model.
by alozie2k | 2025-04-25 23:47:40+00:00
Diary of a Voice AI Developer — Entry #4

Pipecat, Encryption, and Global Deployment Challenges

Back with Entry #4 of my Voice AI Diary series I been writing.

The last couple of days, I’ve been deep on one specific project:

1⃣ Building and deploying a voice agent using Pipecat, an open-source voice AI framework from Daily

Why Pipecat?

A client I’m working with had two specific requirements:

1⃣ Encrypt certain sensitive data before it reaches the LLM

2⃣Deploy the voice agent outside the U.S. (like Asia)

The second requirement—regional deployment—was the real challenge. Most voice platforms only allow regional hosting (outside the U.S.) through expensive enterprise plans.

So instead of going through that, I decided to try Pipecat. It’s open-source, flexible, and I've seen it pop up around LinkedIn a lot. I figured it was worth diving into.

Setting Up Pipecat + Adding Encryption

Getting Pipecat running was pretty straightforward thanks to plenty of example code and docs.

The first task was to encrypt the transcription before it’s passed to the LLM. But once I started digging in, I realized the STT output wasn’t handled directly in the visible example code—it’s managed under the hood by Pipecat’s pipeline framework and pipecat's other frameworks.

That meant the data flow—transcription → context → LLM—was abstracted. I couldn’t just insert encryption logic into the sample; I had to figure out how to intercept the value as it moved through the pipeline.

Made handling encryption tricker than I first thought it be

Hosting Outside the U.S. — The WebRTC/WebSocket Puzzle

Next was figuring out how to deploy the agent in non-U.S. regions, like Asia.

That meant 1 digging deeper into what components I had to deploy

For example had to do research on how WebRTC and WebSockets actually work—not just conceptually, but architecturally.

If I’m self-hosting, I need to aware of and understand every hosted competent thats is part of the deployment.

Deployment Plans & Infrastructure Tradeoffs

Another thing I had to understand is what tool I would use to deploy these.

Originally, I planned to package everything in Docker and deploy it via Cloud Run—but from what I read is services like Cloud Run (and serverless platforms in general) don’t really support or work well with WebRTC or WebSocket.

So that was off the table.

One alternative is Kubernetes, but thats little bit more complex setup and could be overcomplicating things.

Pipecat also suggests couple SaaS platforms for deployment.

I found one called Cebruim, which looks great—they even have step-by-step Pipecat deployment docs. Only drawback: it runs on AWS.

I was planning to use models hosted on Azure or Google Cloud so I could deploy them in a specific region. But now I’m wondering—if the AI models are hosted on Azure, and my voice agent backend is on AWS, is that going to cause unnecessary latency or inefficiencies?

Can check out video version of me breaking everything down here -https://youtu.be/51PmMy3qhFA?si=hs8PmqTcjxxQ-Ak0
by ollin | 2025-04-25 23:47:59+00:00
Yes! This was a solo project done in my free time :) to learn about WMs and get more practice training GANs.

The special aspect of NNs (in the context of simulating worlds) is that NNs can mimic entire worlds from videos alone, without access to the source code (in the case of pokemon) or even without the source code having existed (as is the case for the real-world forest trail mimicked in this post). They mimic the entire interactive behavior of the world, not just the geometry (note e.g. the not-programmed-in autoexposure that appears when you look at the sky).

Although the neural world in the post is a toy project, and quite far from generating photorealistic frames with "trees that bend in the wind, lilypads that bob in the rain, birds that sing to each other", I think getting better results is mostly a matter of scale. See e.g. the GAIA-2 results (https://wayve.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/generalisation_0..., https://wayve.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/unsafe_ego_01_le...) for an example of what WMs can do without the realtime-rendering-in-a-browser constraints :)
by wredcoll | 2025-04-25 23:48:07+00:00
> This doesn't explain why the used car market is full of very cheap cars like the Honda Fit for much less than a new SUV.

Is it really? Just to check I looked at carmax and found this kind of price:

2016 Honda Fit LX $16,998* 26K mi

You can get cheaper ones in the $11k range with like 110k+ miles on them, is this really a meaningul price difference?
by acdha | 2025-04-25 23:48:35+00:00
First, you really want to read the link you posted because it highlights that there’s more to it than NARA’s general guidance for the entire federal government, including specific laws for defense information. That’s presumably why it quotes people saying that they think it’s illegal but avoids making a definitive statement.

Even if that defense-specific law is determined not to apply, as that article explains this is still at least borderline illegal. It links to the relevant law:

> (Sec. 10) Prohibits an officer or employee of an executive agency from creating or sending a record using a non-official electronic messaging account unless such officer or employee: (1) copies an official electronic messaging account of the officer or employee in the original creation or transmission of the record, or (2) forwards a complete copy of the record to an official electronic messaging account of the officer or employee not later than 20 days after the original creation or transmission of the record. Provides for disciplinary action against an agency officer or employee for an intentional violation of such prohibition.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1233

I haven’t seen even his most devoted defenders claim that he officially set up a process to archive all of their Signal messages at all, and the fact that the chats were set up to delete messages after 7 days certainly doesn’t suggest an intention in following it. Moreover, even if they didn’t have messages deleted automatically Signal allows people to manually edit or delete messages so they’d be placed in the difficult position of proving the negative that they hadn’t removed official records.
by sneak | 2025-04-25 23:48:48+00:00
The US has not been a force for good in the world in some time, if ever.

Unfortunately for Americans, it has to get worse before it can get better. Much worse.

The institutions are deeply corrupt, and have been for decades. They must be destroyed and possibly replaced. It sucks, and it will hurt. It may even possibly require an entire revolution, as many of the deeply evil US institutions such as the CIA and FBI are so deeply and tightly integrated with the federal government that it may require destruction of the state itself.

The status quo has been comfy for a lot of Americans, but the world as a whole is not a better place because Facebook and Lockheed and the US CIA exist.

This has been pending for most of a century.

What comes after will be more transparent, more fair, and more integrated with society.
by roenxi | 2025-04-25 23:48:57+00:00
The medium is hard to separate from the message; it is built in to threaded commenting by the voting system. People upvote the comments that best express ideas that they support and as a consequence it is usually hard to add to the most highly upvoted comment. But that is the most obvious comment to attach opposing views to. That leads to a predictable tick/tock thread structure where every 2nd post is thematically similar but every other post is contrary.

The irony here is present but better interpreted as the forum structure being biased towards criticism.
by k310 | 2025-04-25 23:50:03+00:00
HN'ers probably don't see it, but the Russian bot/propaganda machine is very powerful on social media.

Support for Palestinians was, IMO, meant to divide Democratic voters, and just may have succeeded, with so many "sitting it out" in 2024.

I don't think that the Russians care one iota for Palestinians, but like certain leaders, view people only as pawns to be played. And that's not just the one you are thinking of.
by matthewdgreen | 2025-04-25 23:50:22+00:00
This same post appears at the top of every single HN story on reproducibility. “I was a student in [totally unrelated field] and found reproducibility to be difficult. I didn’t investigate it deeply and ultimately I left the field, not because I was unsuccessful, of course, but because I understood deeply despite my own extremely limited experience in the area that all of the science was deeply flawed if not false.”

Imagine the guy who got a FAANG job and made it nine weeks in before washing out, informing you how the entire industry doesn’t know how to write code. Maybe they’re right and the industry doesn’t know how to write code! But I want to hear it from the person who actually made a career, not the intern who made it through part of a summer.
by gavinhoward | 2025-04-25 23:50:39+00:00
I am one of the "stop exploiting UB" camp. [1]

I agree that some of us are unreasonable, but I do recognize that DWIM is not feasible.

I just want compilers to treat UB the same as unspecified behavior, which cannot be assumed away.

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/08/the-scourge-of-00ub/
by kjkjadksj | 2025-04-25 23:51:11+00:00
At the end of the day, people most trust results that validate in multiple datasets. No one really cherry picks one thing and builds off of that or they get slammed in peer review until they come back with sufficient evidence in the literature or through novel experiments.

A lot of things, in fact, do work. Hence, modern science producing so much despite this reproducibility crisis being even worse in decades past.
by Brybry | 2025-04-25 23:51:37+00:00
Is the standard deduction giving people your tax dollars? Anyone who itemizes?

What if someone declines a promotion and thus doesn't increase their income and pay more taxes? Is that also taking your tax dollars?

Sure, yes, if the government doesn't follow PAYGO[1] (which they almost never do) and offset tax expenditures (tax incentives) with reduced direct spending and government debt increases then maybe, some day, some portion of your tax dollars may get indirectly spent on this.

But how do we really know? Do we know what other secondary effects will come from these tax incentives?

If electric cars catch on maybe the government will get more revenue somewhere else (there are North American manufacturing requirements to qualify after all) or have to spend less revenue on something else (surely burning oil must have some effect).

Or maybe the person getting the electric vehicle then uses it to make more money and pay more taxes than they would have before (unlikely but possible).

But, directly, they're getting back their own money. The real issue with the credit is that it disproportionately favors people who already make a lot of money (but taxes also disproportionately tax people who make more money so maybe that's fair).

[1] https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL31943
by jimmaswell | 2025-04-25 23:51:39+00:00
This is why everyone should have a union, including highly paid professionals. Imagine what it would be like. "No, fuck you, we're going on strike until you stop inconveniencing us to death with your braindead security theater. No more code until you give us admin on our own machines, stop wasting our time with useless Checkmarx scans, and bring the firewall down about ten notches."