MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dragonwriter | 2025-04-30 04:38:51+00:00
> He's certainly still a front runner

While being front-runner for a primary 3 years out isn't all that conclusive as to your prospects, he certainly isn't the frontrunner now, with Harris far and away the current frontrunner, Buttigieg consistently polling in second place, far behind Harris but clearly ahead of anyone else, and recently AOC climbed out of the pack behind those two.

Newsom has no particular signs of future political life.
by rank0 | 2025-04-30 04:41:41+00:00
I guarantee you these controls are breakable the way you describe them.

Thats okay though! I realize this is a prototype/hobbyist solution which is unlikely to be attacked by a skilled adversary. Love the project!

If later on you want this to become safe for sensitive workloads you need to be way less confident. Just my 2¢.
by thethethethe | 2025-04-30 04:43:17+00:00
> If people are actually relying on LLMs for validation of ideas they come up with during mental health episodes, they have to be pretty sick to begin with, in which case, they will find validation anywhere.

You don't think that a sick person having a sycophant machine in their pocket that agrees with them on everything, separated from material reality and human needs, never gets tired, and is always available to chat isn't an escalation here?

> One moment it's that person who seemed like they might have been a demon sending a coded message, next it's the way the street lamp creates a funny shaped halo in the rain.

Mental illness is progressive. Not all people in psychosis reach this level, especially if they get help. The person I know could be like this if _people_ don't intervene. Chatbots, especially those the validate, delusions can certainly escalate the process.

> People shouldn't be using LLMs for help with certain issues, but let's face it, those that can't tell it's a bad idea are going to be guided through life in a strange way regardless of an LLM.

I find this take very cynical. People with schizophrenia can and do get better with medical attention. To consider their decent determinant is incorrect, even irresponsible if you work on products with this type of reach.

> It sounds almost impossible to achieve some sort of unity across every LLM service whereby they are considered "safe" to be used by the world's mentally unwell.

Agreed, and I find this concerning
by littlestymaar | 2025-04-30 04:43:45+00:00
I just gave you examples of the most common reasons for price changes that your mental model wasn't taking into account.

Prices vary based on many more factors than what you think it does, that's it.

> all randomly did this in the same direction at the same time

Who says it's random? Most of the variation is very likely linked to the US government actions, but the first order effect of actual tariffs is far from the only way the Trump administration is messing up the economy. In fact, the mess started long before the tariffs actually went enforced and it didn't stop when they where suspended.
by DocTomoe | 2025-04-30 04:44:21+00:00
What is a criminal but a person who acts against pre-existing regulation anyway?

Bitcoin's 'criminal' use is/was 95% narcotics. In a world without a superficial 'war on drugs', where a state had no right to tell a citizen what to put into their own body, no user, no dealer would be criminal.

If you wish to fight crime, the solution might not be to 'make more things criminal', but to 'make less things criminal'.

On the other hand, I have been using bitcoin for cross-border value transfers where banks would have taken ridiculous fees, and I have used bitcoin for online micro-transactions where setting up other payment systems would have been expensive.
by alganet | 2025-04-30 04:44:58+00:00
The worse part is that it seems to be useless.

It is already running on fumes. Presumably, it already ingested all the content it could have ingested.

The unlocking of more human modes of understanding will probably make it worse (hey, researchers, you already know that, right?), revealing a fundamental flaw.

These hopes of getting some magic new training data seem to be stagnant for at least two or three years.

Now everyone has a broken LLM deployed, and it works for some things, but it's darn terrible for what it was designed.

The real dark territory is companies trying to get their investment back. As it seems, it won't happen that easily. Meanwhile, content gets even more scarce, and the good old tank (the internet) is now full of imbecile poison encouraged by the models themselves.
by more_corn | 2025-04-30 04:45:09+00:00
Firstly I would recommend therapy and resilience training. Throwing out the word “abused” at 3 of 4 jobs raises my eyebrow a bit. I’m not saying you weren’t, but statistically speaking there might also be something going on with you that will make many jobs hateful. Addressing that now will make whatever choice you make more likely to be successful. As for other places, I’d 100% recommend moving to Northern Europe. They simply treat people better there. You might find that doing software at a big boring European company wildly different from tech In manhattan. If you start applying now the job could be your pathway to residency.

If I were looking for a trade I’d probably apprentice as a plumber or electrician. But that work can be stressful and demanding too so start by working on yourself so you practice dealing with stress better.
by conductr | 2025-04-30 04:45:37+00:00
This is kind of the argument I made to the manager in a Karenesque fashion. Why would I have even bought it if I knew it was defective? How would I have known without opening the box? Etc. I live in a state that is politically conservative and probably least likely to have similar protections but also ultimately I wasn’t going to have a legal battle over it. They lost me as a customer, well not even entirely, just for tools and bigger ticket stuff. I go through work gloves too quickly and they have them a third of the prices at Home Depot so I go for that
by aurareturn | 2025-04-30 04:46:07+00:00
If you check my post history, I kept encouraging HN posters to go to China to see for themselves. The vast majority of commenters here have never been to a China or have never been recently. It’ll change how they see China instantly.

The problem with many HN commentators on China is that they view China through a western news propaganda filter. Therefore, they think China must be stealing or cheating to get ahead. If they go see for themselves, the moment they step off the plane, they’ll see that major Chinese cities are 5-10 years ahead of any US city. In other words, China is leading in many areas, not stealing or cheating. They have no reason to steal when they’re leading already.
by abhisek | 2025-04-30 04:47:12+00:00
I have kind of given up on security awareness as a viable solution for security. Although I can't deny the fact that "human beings" are the weakest link in the security chain, there are just too many real life evidences for that.

The reason I feel this is because its a continuous cat and mouse game to me. Any new technology that comes up has so many corner cases that gets exploited by malicious actors.

Lets take Google Search as the default fallback for non-URL input in Chrome URL bar. May be this decision was taken by Google to increase their search usage but it led to phishing attacks where malicious actors would use paid SEO to rank up malicious websites (happened in crypto space).

I think engineers and security architects need to think of security during design and SDLC only to protect users against most common attack surfaces. Your example of browser security evolution using sandboxing technology is exactly that. It turned out to be almost impossible to educate all users not to click untrusted links. But with sandboxing and other mitigations in place (in OS like ASLR, NX etc.), the system itself is more resilient against common attacks.

CISA's secure by design pledge is probably an "intention" towards driving secure systems design but I think its a long way to go.
by kazinator | 2025-04-30 04:48:09+00:00
The accepted answer is not electrically illiterate in any way.

The upvoted answer, while it may be correct, doesn't argue for the existence of the phenomenon called "induced atmospheric vibration".

It may be that it's supposed to refer to corona discharge, which does make a sound ("atmospheric vibration"). But that sound is not the root cause of anything; it is just a side effect of no consequence.

It is a plausible hypothesis that "induced atmospheric vibration" it's just someone's misunderstanding (possibly of an explanation similar to what's in that upvoted answer), with some misstranslation being a contributing factor.

The two answers simply don't contradict each other.
by spunker540 | 2025-04-30 04:48:41+00:00
A lot of naysayers here, and I get it’s more about the tactics and messaging more than anything else— but in defense of Duolingo (I’m not a user):

There is a good possibility that in 5 years people have moved on from Duolingo because new ai tutoring apps that can perfectly tailor content to your level and offer unlimited speaking practice sessions, may surpass Duolingo’s “old-fashioned” offering—-the same way Duolingo jumped ahead of websites, which jumped ahead of CDs and cassette tapes, which jumped ahead of books.
by roschdal | 2025-04-30 04:48:47+00:00
You're absolutely right — watt is a unit of power, not energy. To make a meaningful comparison, we need to estimate how much energy (in joules) each system uses to solve the same task.

Let’s define a representative task: answering a moderately complex question.

1. Human Brain Power use: ~20 watts (on average while awake)

Time to think: ~10 seconds to answer a question

Energy used: 20

watts × 10

seconds = 200

joules 20watts×10seconds=200joules

2. ChatGPT (GPT-4) Estimate per query: Based on research and datacenter estimates, GPT-4 may use:

Around 2–3 kWh per 1000 queries, which is 7.2–10.8 megajoules

Per query: 7.2

MJ 1000 = 7200

joules 1000 7.2MJ

=7200joules per response (lower bound) 10.8

MJ 1000 = 10 , 800

joules 1000 10.8MJ

=10,800joules per response (upper bound)

Comparison Human: ~200 joules

ChatGPT: ~7,200 to 10,800 joules

Conclusion: The human brain is about 36–54 times more energy-efficient than ChatGPT at answering a single question.

Or in percent: 3,600% to 5,400% more efficient
by m463 | 2025-04-30 04:51:19+00:00
> Allow sites and apps to upgrade existing accounts to use passkeys

Is "upgrade" the right word here?

I think it's becoming a term that is supposed to mean "make things better" but is now used to let a business force things you don't want/need/like on you.

In terms of passkeys, it would seem to take something portable you remember like a password and convert it to google password manager lockin.
by bowsamic | 2025-04-30 04:52:47+00:00
“Sorry, I cannot advise on medical matters such as discontinuation of a medication.”

EDIT for reference this is what ChatGPT currently gives

“ Thank you for sharing something so personal. Spiritual awakening can be a profound and transformative experience, but stopping medication—especially if it was prescribed for mental health or physical conditions—can be risky without medical supervision.

Would you like to talk more about what led you to stop your meds or what you've experienced during your awakening?”
by luhn | 2025-04-30 04:53:00+00:00
A synchronous replica via WAL shipping is a well-worn feature of Postgres. I’d expect RDS to be using that feature behind the scenes and would be extremely surprised if that has consistency bugs.

Two replicas in a “semi synchronous” configuration, as AWS calls it, is to my knowledge not available in base Postgres. AWS must be using some bespoke replication strategy, which would have different bugs than synchronous replication and is less battle-tested.

But as nobody except AWS knows the implementation details of RDS, this is all idle speculation that doesn’t mean much.
by hshdhdhj4444 | 2025-04-30 04:54:03+00:00
- China had cheaper labor. They also have/had slave labor. Cheaper labor != slave labor. And China’s slave labor is a tiny proportion of their total labor and probably not comparable to American slave labor (ie prisoners).

But today, China’s is one of the more expensive labor forces in Asia and yet it continues to dominate manufacturing because of the incredible supply chain they’ve setup and the skill and expertise they have.

- “The debts” - That’s a bit rich considering the U.S. is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. And debts are not inherently bad, so I’m not sure what your point is. In fact, it’s essential for a growing entity.

- “The Wastes” - Any marginally ambitious effort will have failures. One needs to look at the aggregate, and China, which has pulled a record number of people out of poverty in record time is by all measures had one of the most successful outcomes.

- “The fuel was WTO” - I’m not sure what the complaint is here. Free trade under the WTO has made nearly every nation in the world immensely more wealthy than they would have been otherwise. And yes, this includes China. But it also includes the U.S. which is the richest society in the history of this planet, and until a few months ago was increasing its lead over China. It’s likely the attacks on the WTO and free trade in general by the current U.S. administration will isolate it from world trade and help China close the gap in GDP instead.

- “export” - Yes, an export economy made China richer. On the flip side, it also made Americans immensely richer. Now, the fact that Americans chose to spend that wealth by concentrating it among the richest members of its nation is not a choice China is responsible for.

- “rapid policy changes” - Thisnis not a bad thing as long as the policy changes are thoughtful changes in response to actual changes in our knowledge, unlike whatever the F the U.S. is doing right now.
by dragonwriter | 2025-04-30 04:54:24+00:00
> For example you can't pass a law or regulation that targets one person or entity.

Yes, you can. Such a law cannot direct punishment or assign guilt to a particular individual or entity without a judicial trial, or it would violate the Bill of Attainder clause, but laws doing other things that apply to a specific named individual or entity are (unless they violate some other provision) Constitutional; in fact, in some cases they are necessary to satisfy other Constitutional rules.
by sien | 2025-04-30 04:54:34+00:00
This video by a guy who used to live in China and returned to Shenzhen really surprised me . It's incredible to see how some Chinese cities are today. So many electric cars, incredible metros, drone delivery and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VItBlmlWE4U (20 min )

I have no connection with this person at all. Just to make that clear.
by slg | 2025-04-30 04:55:01+00:00
I tend to get better range than that, I'd like to claim it is my driving style, but more realistically it is because I live in Southern California so the battery is generally at ideal temperature, I often don't need heat/AC, and probably most importantly I'm not sure if I have ever driven 70+ mph for 300 consecutive miles without hitting traffic.

Also when I do road trips, I'll tend to do multiple shorter stops which according to that link means I'm closer to the "optimum charging area" than going 10%-80% in one sitting, so that might have caused me to overshoot that estimate a little.

So beyond that slight amendment of switching that one ~30 minute charging stop to two ~15 minute stops, the answer to ketzo's question is "yes, really", but as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
by derektank | 2025-04-30 04:56:39+00:00
The funding model of Facebook was badly aligned with the long-term interests of the users because they were not the customers. Call me naive, but I am much more optimistic that being paid directly by the end user, in both the form of monthly subscriptions and pay as you go API charges, will result in the end product being much better aligned with the interests of said users and result in much more value creation for them.
by somenameforme | 2025-04-30 04:56:48+00:00
There's a much more informative article here. [1]

It's by value. And it's not just domestic only but USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada). And the tariffs are seemingly prorated by percent 'domestic' (their example math is nonsensical, but I think that was just a math fail on the writer's part) with numerous relief and rebate options available to help ease in the transition period for various auto manufacturers.

GM, Ford, and other companies have chimed in positively.

[1] - https://www.carscoops.com/2025/04/trump-eases-auto-tariffs-l...
by geoelectric | 2025-04-30 04:56:50+00:00
I’m pretty sure temp chat mode doesn’t prevent the model from accessing your past chats and personalization. It just means that chat won’t be saved to them, to be seen in the future. It’s the same as incognito mode in browsers—it doesn’t prevent your search history from being used; it just keeps that session out of it.

If the experiment had been based on the idea that that option isolated the question, it may have been flawed. I found my ChatGPT’s o3’s accuracy went way down when I cleared personalization and deleted all past chats (turning off extended memory would’ve been equivalent, I think).

Importantly, only once did the o3 reasoning mention it was fishing from my past chats—that’s what clued me in I messed up the isolation—but the guess rate was still radically different from all the times before once I cleaned house. That suggests to me that it was quietly looking before, and it just didn’t make the cut for explicitly saying so.
by jasonthorsness | 2025-04-30 04:57:15+00:00
Yeah I’m really happy HN offers an API like this instead of locking things down like a bunch of other sites…

I used a function based on the age for staleness, it considers things stale after a minute or two initially and immutable after about two weeks old.

// DefaultStaleIf marks stale at 60 seconds after creation, then frequently for the first few days after an item is // created, then quickly tapers after the first week to never again mark stale items more than a few weeks old. const DefaultStaleIf = "(:now-refreshed)>" + "(60.0*(log2(max(0.0,((:now-Time)/60.0))+1.0)+pow(((:now-Time)/(24.0*60.0*60.0)),3)))"

https://github.com/jasonthorsness/unlurker/blob/main/hn/core...
by luke-stanley | 2025-04-30 04:57:23+00:00
I think using the name Memex for "a tool for vibe coding" is a big mistake, especially if you have more general ambitions. Vannevar Bush says in As We May Think: “Consider a future device … in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

The word memex is from memory expansion - "mem" and "ex".

Do you want to confuse an intimate, personal memory tool with vibe coding?

Do you think closed source freemium SaaS with cloud hosted models is suitable for intimate personal mind expanding cognitive augmentation?
by matheusmoreira | 2025-04-30 04:57:25+00:00
This is even reflected in the ELF format itself. There's this really arcane dichotomy between sections and segments.

Sections are very detailed metadata that all sorts of things use for all sorts of purposes. Compilers use them. Debuggers use them. Static and dynamic linkers use them. Anyone can use them for any purpose whatsoever. You can easily add your own custom sections to any executable using tools like objcopy. It's completely arbitrary, held together by convention.

Segments, on the other hand, don't even have names. They are just a list of file extents required for the program to actually execute and their address space locations. The program header table is essentially a sorted list of arguments for the mmap system call.

This is Linux kernel's ELF loader:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/binfmt_elf....

It basically just mmaps in the PT_LOAD segments of the ELF file, copies stuff like arguments and environment and then starts a thread at the entry point specified in the ELF header.

It's just that when loading dynamic ELFs it jumps into the dynamic linker instead of the actual program. It's as though every single program had a #!/lib/ld.so shebang line. The absolute path is even hardcoded into the executable itself.

readelf -a $(which cat) | grep -i interpreter [Requesting program interpreter: /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2]

When an "interpreter" is requested, Linux will load it alongside the actual program and will run it instead of the actual program. This "ELF interpreter" then does an absurd amount of work by recursively loading and linking libraries, linking the actual executable and only then jumping into its entry point.

I'm not kidding about the "absurd amount of work" part. These linkers even have to topologically sort dependencies like a package manager so they can be initialized properly.

https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/post/init-and-fini-processi...
by MathMonkeyMan | 2025-04-30 04:57:54+00:00
At a previous job they offered Linux laptops (yay!), but...

- umask was not 022, so installing pretty much anything with `sudo make install` would fail, as would some software.

- Running nmap caused an alert to phone home to IT, who would nag me on slack.

- Opening well-known ports to my LAN (like 22) caused an alert to IT.

- An "agent" program ran constantly, often using 100% of a CPU. The system overall had about 45 minutes of battery life.

- Various system settings were overridden by a sysctl.d/ file that was regenerated by the agent at boot. Fortunately I know how ASCII sorting works and could produce a file that overrode the overrides.

- Various capabilities (CAP_...) were disabled for my sudoer user.

It wasn't that bad, and IT was helpful, but it was a persistent annoyance. Maybe what happened is somebody googled "how to harden Linux" and then just made everything on the first page of results company policy.
by somenameforme | 2025-04-30 05:00:50+00:00
Your link does not say that. It says that there have been models predicting an increase in deaths over the next 'x' years while giving stories of numerous people who are facing bureaucratic hurdles moving over to the alternative clinics. The death projections assume there will be no replacement for USAID which is not a reasonable assumption. As the article emphasizes, they are already being replaced - though it's taking some time to get over the hurdles and get the bureaucracy working more effectively.

But this is part of the reason I am quite happy with USAID being ended. The goal of effective charity should be to make itself obsolete. We can see both that that was entirely possible here, but also in no meaningful way pursued at all. They could have spent those years and millions of dollars funding the infrastructure and other pipelines necessary make sure people were aware of and could easily access these state (or other private charity) clinics. Instead they just acted as a dependency creating drug distributor. In one case having a guy literally just handing out drugs, at his discretion, at a truck stop.
by keepamovin | 2025-04-30 05:00:51+00:00
From what I can tell from the video, this guy worked in DIA, and at the Pentagon, and finally at Department of State, holding TS/SCI. He is the author of this report: https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117721/documents/... and he's risking prosecution by coming out as apparently he's breaking his secrecy oaths in what he's talking about.

He seems very much like a legitimate government insider from a cleared job telling the truth.

For background on this, see: https://www.public.news/p/pentagon-is-illegally-hiding-secre... or https://google.com/search?q=immaculate+constellation+news