MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by const_cast | 2025-04-15 18:17:52+00:00
> seem convinced democracy is teetering and to me that seems to be mostly just propaganda.

Dude, the last time Trump lost he tried to overthrow the government. Are we just supposed to... pretend that didn't happen and he's just some bastion of American democracy?

The stage for this has been set for a while now, and if you haven't noticed, Trump isn't backing down on ANY of his beliefs. He's doubling down. What other conclusion could you draw then?
by jacobgkau | 2025-04-15 18:18:52+00:00
> putting offers in the package to give people money back if they rate the item 5 stars,

I had something similar but more convoluted happen with the car mount I got for my phone. The box included a card stating to email them to sign up for their warranty. Emailing them signed me up for their loyalty emails, which are infrequent enough that I actually didn't mind them. The loyalty emails frequently included offers of "free gifts." One day, I actually replied to one asking for it, and they explained I'd be buying it from them on Amazon and then they'd pay me back for it-- in exchange for a review, of course.

I'd had similar things offered to me as a YouTuber with companies wanting "reviews" but making me do the purchase myself (I've done one or two of them). The fact that it's just being offered to mainstream consumers now is ridiculous. It means you can't trust any of the reviews (or at least the positive ones; I normally look for negative ones with photos these days).
by boh | 2025-04-15 18:19:17+00:00
It's funny how the "I never use a smartphone" argument moves from one technology to another. AI hype is ridiculous but it's also a technology that will probably be used by other people for things that you've decided not to use it for. It'll either be for their benefit or to their detriment, but they'll have it on their smartphones. Thinking about how it will be used will probably yield more insight than why you don't want use it.
by jchw | 2025-04-15 18:19:30+00:00
I've made some critical mistakes in my argument here. I am definitely not referring to using SSH TOFU in a fleet. I'm talking about using SSH TOFU with long-lived machines, like your own personal computers, or individual long-running servers.

Undoubtedly it is not best practice to lean on TOFU for good reason, but there are simply some lower stakes situations where engaging the CA system is a bit overkill. These are systems with few nodes (maybe just one) that have few users (maybe just one.) I have some services that I deploy that really only warrant a single node as HA is not a concern and they can easily run off a single box (modern cheap VPSes really don't sweat handling ~10-100 RPS of traffic.) For those, I pre-generate SSH server keys before deployment. I can easily verify the fingerprint in the excessively rare occasion it isn't already trusted. I am not a security expert, but I think this is sufficient at small scales.

To be clear, there are a lot of obvious security problems with this:

- It relies on me actually checking the fingerprint.

- SSH keys are valid and trusted indefinitely, so it has to be rotated manually.

- The bootstrap process inevitably involves the key being transmitted over the wire, which isn't as good as never having the key go over the wire, like you could do with CSRs.

This is clearly not good enough for a service that needs high assurance against attackers, but I honestly think it's largely fine for a small to medium web server that serves some small community. Spinning up a CA setup for that feels like overkill.

As for what I personally would do instead for a fleet of servers, personally I think I wouldn't use SSH at all. In professional environments it's been a long time since I've administered something that wasn't "cloud" and in most of those cloud environments SSH was simply not enabled or used, or if it was we were using an external authorization system that handled ephemeral keys itself.

That said, here I'm just suggesting that I think there is a gap between insecure HTTP and secure HTTPS that is currently filled by self-signed certificates. I'm not suggesting we should replace HTTPS usage today with TOFU, but I am suggesting I see the value in a middle road between HTTP and HTTPS where you get encryption without a strong proof of what you're connecting to. In practice this is sometimes the best you can really get anyway: consider the somewhat common use case of a home router configuration page. I personally see the value in still encrypting this connection even if there is no way to actually ensure it is secure. Same for some other small scale local networking and intranet use cases.
by zelon88 | 2025-04-15 18:19:39+00:00
Not to users. The user who types Wal-Mart into their address bar expects to communicate with Wal-Mart. They aren't going to check if the certificate matches. Only that the icon is green.

This is where the disconnect comes in. Me and you know that the green icon doesn't prove identity. It proves certificate validity. But that's not what this is "sold as" by the browser or the security community as a whole. I can buy the domain Wаl-Mart right now and put a certificate on it that says Wаl-Mаrt and create the conditions for that little green icon to appear. Notice that I used U+0430 instead of the letter "a" that you're used to.

And guess what... The identity would match and pass every single test you throw at it. I would get a little green icon in the browser and my certificate would be good. This attack fools even the brightest security professionals.

So you see, Identity isn't the value that people expect from a certificate. It's the encryption.

Users will allow a fake cert with a green checkmark all day. But a valid certificate with a yellow warning is going to make people stop and think.
by gowld | 2025-04-15 18:19:55+00:00
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/pir...

“When did you meet [fellow defendant Gottfrid] for the first time IRL?” asked the prosecutor.

“We do not use the expression IRL,” said Peter, “we use AFK.”

“IRL?” questioned the judge.

“In Real Life,” the prosecutor explained to the judge.

“We do not use that expression,” Peter noted. “Everything is in real life. We use AFK—Away From Keyboard.”
by thenonameguy | 2025-04-15 18:20:00+00:00
> One of the things that puts metaprogramming on wheels is being able to pull in grammars, schemas and such for external systems.

That's what I've been trying to do with: https://github.com/schemamap/schemamap

For a well-constrained Postgres schema, a deterministic SQL compiler can be built (with plenty of logic programming/constraint-solving/hypergraph-analysis) that can integrate arbitrary external systems data.

While this is NP-hard, with some clever use of embeddings and ontologies, and use of every single constraint AST within the DB to reduce the search space, this becomes a feasible problem.

For any Clojurists interested, I've packaged `pg_query`, so you can use it in your applications: https://github.com/schemamap/pg-query-clj

At the moment I'm saving up for the next development cycle, so not only PG->PG schema mappings can be solved for (JSON schema is next!). Hope this sounds interesting :)
by visarga | 2025-04-15 18:20:11+00:00
> What ML does is not in any way akin to human learning in methodology. When we call it learning that's an analogy.

Of course it's different, but if we look closely, it is not copying. The model itself is smaller, sometimes 1000x smaller, than the training set. Being made of billions of examples, the impact of any one of them is very small (de minimis).

If you try to replicate something closely with AI it fails. If regurgitation was a huge problem we'd see lots of lawsuits on output, but we see most suits for input (training). That means authors can't identify cases of infringement in the outputs.
by yencabulator | 2025-04-15 18:20:21+00:00
The difference is that in everyday Typescript you end up using `as`, so it's presence is not a blaring alarm.

Grepping a real world codebase that would not be `unsafe` in Rust:

event as CustomEvent<T> const errorEvent = event as ErrorEvent; const element = getByRole("textbox"); expect(element).toBeInstanceOf(HTMLInputElement); const input = element as HTMLInputElement; const element = parent.firstElementChild as HTMLElement; type ItemMap = Map<Item["id"], Item>; ... new Map() as ItemMap const clusterSource = this.map.getSource(sourceName) as GeoJSONSource; [K in keyof T as T[K] extends Fn ? K : never]: T[K]; target[type] as unknown as Fn<... export const Foo = [1,2,3] as const;

and on it goes. Typescript normalizes unsafe behavior.
by aylmao | 2025-04-15 18:20:27+00:00
We already have a way one way to render things on the browser, everyone. Wrap it up, there's definitely no more to explore here.

And while we're at it, I'd like to know, why are people still building new and different game engines, programming languages, web browsers, operating systems, shells, etc, etc. Don't they know those things already exist?

/s

Joking aside, what's wrong with finding a new way of doing something? This is how we learn and discover things.
by alabastervlog | 2025-04-15 18:20:50+00:00
This does not hold for any but a very-few expensive markets, and even there, not most of the time. Hell, I stayed in Manhattan a few months back with my kids, and for two beds in a room just a couple blocks from Times Square, in a hotel that I'd classify as one full step up from "just clean sheets and a door", we didn't pay $300/night, even with those being a Friday and Saturday night. And that was the most expensive hotel I've ever paid for in my life.

You went somewhere very unusual and probably managed to hit on a peak weekend for whatever reason.
by citizenpaul | 2025-04-15 18:20:53+00:00
Based on this about 5.5 million stars are created every 30 minutes and only about 1 start goes supernova in the same period? This seems like it really reinforces the we are still in the early stages of the universe theory if the ratios are that imbalanced.

Still though the imbalance in those events makes me suspicious that we are missing something.
by hex4def6 | 2025-04-15 18:21:01+00:00
>Personally speaking, I've never cared whether someone "validates" my emotions (and I often view such attempts as a bit patronizing or insincere). There's a problem to be solved, so let's attempt to solve it or at least compromise in good faith. The resolution to the problem is the most likely way to elicit positive emotions from me anyway.

I assume ads don't work on you either, right? You buy purely based on a logical calculus of requirements and whether a product is fit-for-purpose. I assume the obverse must also be true; if they invalidate your emotions it doesn't affect you either?

Imagine you lose your parking receipt and have to pay for the whole day. An attendant that says: "You were stupid for losing your ticket. It says in 1-ft letters at the entrance 'lost tickets pay full day.' We don't make exceptions for people that can't keep track of their stuff."

vs

"Damn dude, that sucks. You're not the only one today -- previous woman had her wallet stolen as well. Sorry I can't help, boss doesn't let me make exceptions"

Of course people validate other's emotions. You are affected by it. You only notice when someone does it poorly. Your perception of whether an exchange in which you had to compromise went well or not is highly colored by the attitude and "fluff" that the other person presented.
by torginus | 2025-04-15 18:21:10+00:00
One task I do is I feed the models the text of entire books, and ask them various questions about it ('what happened in Chapter 4', 'what did character X do in the book' etc.).

GPT 4.1 is the first model that has provided a human-quality answer to these questions. It seems to be the first model that can follow plotlines, and character motivations accurately.

I'd say since text processing is a very important use case for LLMs, that's quite noteworthy.
by const_cast | 2025-04-15 18:21:34+00:00
In-person, people surround themselves in echo chambers, or as I like to call them, "friends". They're amendable to good faith discussions because they already mostly agree.

And, clearly, you must not have any insane MAGA family. I've tried to convince some family members that the Covid Vaccine isn't what gave me cancer, and it's like talking to brick wall. In their eyes, my cancer is my own fault because I pray to Fauci or something and this is just retribution.

Okay, some people are legitimately just not aligned with reality. I'm not calling them insane to be mean, I think they are actually, literally, insane. I don't know what happened to them.
by alganet | 2025-04-15 18:21:36+00:00
That's one way of seeing it, I guess.

"virus" implies something harmful, a disease. I refrain from borrowing that term because, as I said, I don't know if it merits being associated with something bad.

Since we are here on a techie forum, I could have used a term like "cobtinously self-applying cultural diff patch". Got it?

What it really reminds me of is the story about the East India Company and the tulip selling rise, crisis and subsequent crash.

But that's because I thought too much about words and was "hit in the head" with a lot of wordplay that made me create a box inside my head that looks at language and history in a weird way.

These ideas about cultural diseases, treatments, biology comparisons... to me, sound dumb. Like if someone watched too many movies and is trying too hard to be funny. This is not for me, it goes on the weird box.

It seems people like the weird box stuff. Maybe I should charge very high prices for it. You know what? Let's make it so. Tapping into my weird head box incurs terrible cultural charges that must be payed.
by frognumber | 2025-04-15 18:21:52+00:00
Then you have issue with reading comprehension. The whole point of the discussion was this:

"The time to do this was about a decade ago. Apps, open formats, open USB protocols, open wifi / bluetooth protocols, and semi-open firmware (with a few proprietary blobs for color processing, likely) would have led things down a very different trajectory."

And the rest of your posts also misquote what I said and, ironically, just as often, what you said. There are also minor technical errors: diffraction limits are basic physics. It's a simple relationship between (a) the radius of the circle of confusion (in units of angle); (2) the frequency of light (in linear units, typically nanometers); and (3) the radius of the aperture (in linear units, typically mm). There is no voodoo with "sensor size, pixel pitch, and the lens optics." Most of your post is taking statements like a basic rule-of-thumb of what you need for decent photos and exaggerating to statements like "diffraction doesn't affect sharpness." Of course it's easy to beat up a statement if you misquote it. That's called a strawman.

So I think I'm done here. Give me your downvote, and I'll argue somewhere else.
by saulpw | 2025-04-15 18:22:22+00:00
You can quote statistics to show that "inequality is the same", but that's obviously not the case. To wit, Bill Gates became the richest person in the '90s with wealth of $13 billion. There are now 10 people with more than $100 billion each. Meanwhile inflation since 1990 has been only 2.5x.

The richest individuals have an order of magnitude more wealth, and you can't say this is inconsequential when the richest person in the world (net worth $300b+) is actively leading the effort to dismantle US government institutions.
by EvanAnderson | 2025-04-15 18:22:31+00:00
We don't have that. We have functionally unlimited times now. Publishing something new today puts you at risk of litigation from existing rights-holders.

I don't believe it's morally right to license music but, if I did, I'd look at the climate of lawsuits in the the last 10-15 years and conclude that the risks might outweigh the potential rewards.
by iinnPP | 2025-04-15 18:22:53+00:00
Given the downdittles: I mention two leaders at the end and am not referring to Trump for either.

As someone who loves to converse with either side, it's more often one side than the other that will listen to reason, and argue outside of logical fallacies.

I get vastly more violent threats/lame insults from one side.

I get an overwhelming amount of definition problems from one side. Which are easily solved using any dictionary (though this is becoming less true)

I get things like "True X, Y, Z or Proper X, Y, Z" overwhelmingly from one side.

And I get vastly more conspiracy theories not grounded in any reality from one side.

I know of many people from both sides that hold disgusting views such as: I want to do X,Y,Z but am mad if anyone else does this exact thing to me. Every one of these people do so on protected grounds (in Government) of one form or another.

Recently, I have noted people who scream at a leader and bootlick another while claiming each are of the other's style of governance. It's quite remarkable.
by EA-3167 | 2025-04-15 18:23:09+00:00
I've finally lived long enough to both remember when Radio Shack was mocked as low-quality, staffed by teens who knew nothing... and now to watch that same company given a hagiography.

"It was the place to go if you needed..." sounds a lot better than, "It was often the only game in town, and woeful at that," I guess. I still remember them trying to sell Monster cables for amounts of money that were downright comical.
by tombert | 2025-04-15 18:23:32+00:00
Sad to see that the last two in Orlando are dead now too.

I miss Radio Shack, particularly when they were a bit more "component based". As a general electronics store, they were almost always strictly worse than any of the big box stores, but if you needed something like a resistor or individual LEDs, it was great to be able to be able to drive over there and find something. I live in NYC now, and fortunately we still have Micro Center which is still fun, though I do worry that it might go the way of Fry's Electronics soon enough.

I understand it, it's really hard to compete with Amazon in today's environment, and I'm not judging anyone for using Amazon instead of buying from a store, I buy online too, and fundamentally these are for-profit businesses and I don't feel any obligation to give them charity.

Still, seeing Radio Shack and Fry's dying does make me a little sad. When I first moved to Dallas, one of my favorite things to do on the weekend was go to Fry's, look around the store, and buy a cheap DVD of some anime that I hadn't heard of.
by Tadpole9181 | 2025-04-15 18:23:50+00:00
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of research funding, and quite frankly repeating it without even basic research borders on negligence.

Universities use indirect funds for maintaining facilities, the shared equipment, bulk purchases of materials, staff for things like cleaning and disposal. It is pivotal that these funds are available in the right amount or research physically cannot happen despite being "indirect" (due merely to the legal definition of the word). And these rates are aggressively negotiated beforehand.

Can university administration be trimmed? Can their heads be paid less? Of course. But the idea that that's going to happen is absurd. If you want to stop that, you make laws and regulations. If you want to stop the science, you gut the financial viability of research.
by visarga | 2025-04-15 18:23:52+00:00
The logic "gen AI is theft" is pretty careless. Let's say I use gen-AI to identify a skin sore, and seek appropriate treatment. Who's copyright was being violated? How about if I ask it to make a story where my kid is a protagonist? In fact the more I put into a prompt, the less it looks like anything in the training set, the longer the discussion, the greater the divergence.
by spencerflem | 2025-04-15 18:23:57+00:00
Yeah, I'm one of those commenters. I do believe its a genuine project made by someone who cares with the intention to make something lovely for the world. I believe the people who are making this are good people.

Its just that the marketing copy has some of the breathless silicon valley tone and organizational structure to it like its selling a product which grates against the quirky, personal, community-first vibes of indieweb.

And hell yeah! Any excuse to put something fun on the web is a good one, excited to see what you make :)
by hintymad | 2025-04-15 18:24:06+00:00
The mainstream assessment is deindustrialization is inevitable in the western world because all kinds of legitimate reasons: the cost is too high. The talent pool is too small. We are left behind and lack critical IPs and infrastructures. People are too lazy/stupid/uneducated/self righteous/<your favorite derogatory phrases>. We can hang on to our high-value service industry.

What I don't understand is, why would people even want the US dollar and its service industry if we can't produce sufficiently any more? And what about future conflicts in the world? The US can't even produce enough saline solution or disinfectant wipes, let along active pharmaceutical ingredients? Did people see what China goods we tariff on? We tariff China for advanced materials, electronics, machineries, and etc, yet China tariffs on our raw materials and agricultural goods. And we think the US can maintain its wealth by behaving like a colony of China? When there's a conflict between us and China, what do we do? Beg them for the life essentials? And we keep yelling to punish Russia and help Ukraine to win the war and we should, but with what? We can't even out produce artillery shells faster and cheaper than Russia, or drones faster and cheaper than China. Admiral Yamamoto used to say that he saw so many factories and chimneys in Philadelphia that he knew that those industries could turn into efficient war machines if Japan ever declared war on the US. Would he be able to say the same today?

As for what we can, wasn't the US a manufacturing powerhouse until early 2000s? BTW, the US is still a manufacturing powerhouse in some sectors, but we just can't make things cheap enough with good quality because we pretty much destroyed our light industry. Didn't China have nothing and it was heavy investment from the western world that helped China grow so fast and so rapidly? Then, why can't we shift investment back to the US and bring our key industries back? We kept talking about technical difficulties, yet we ignore the necessity of the matter.
by Cheer2171 | 2025-04-15 18:24:33+00:00
> I'm not one of our founders and REALLY wouldn't want to be publicly held accountable for policies or commitments

I don't mean to phrase this in a hostile way, but then what is even the point of posting? Your word means nothing. You are not in a position to promise anything. You could wake up one morning and find yourself laid off with all your accounts terminated.

And the fact that a Cohere employee is playing PR trying to deflect this issue gives me less faith, not more.
by mbesto | 2025-04-15 18:25:21+00:00
This is why I have a bunch of stock in Shopify. It's slowly started rolling out discovery features in its Shop app that federates its stores. I try to limit my use on Amazon to things I know can't be faked and things that are so much cheaper that I can deal with it being fake. My purchasing trends have definitely moved toward the edges - aliexpress for chinese stuff (that would normally be on Amazon) and Shopify for "buy it for life" stuff.