MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by simonw | 2025-04-06 21:02:51+00:00
"Any information found in a web search about Newman will be available in the training set"

I don't think that is a safe assumption these days. Training modern LLM isn't about dumping in everything on the Internet. To get a really good model you have to be selective about your sources of training data.

They still rip off vast amounts of copyrighted data, but I get the impression they are increasingly picky about what they dump into their training runs.
by clusterfook | 2025-04-06 21:02:54+00:00
The "S" in LLM stands for security

https://simonwillison.net/search/?q=llm+security

MCP is just another way to use LLMs more in more dangerous ways. If I get forced to use this stuff, I'm going to learn how to castrate some bulls, and jump on a train to the countryside.

This stuff in not securable.
by 0xbadcafebee | 2025-04-06 21:03:07+00:00
The global economy would fracture, is what would happen. A good chunk of the top performing stocks would disappear, affecting banking, retirement, housing, just everything. Most of the communication channels people use today would disappear. The online tools even non-ad-businesses use to function would stop, so those businesses would grind to a halt. News would disappear. Products would stop getting made. (US) Politicians would freak the hell out because now they don't know how to get elected. It would be a categorical economic and social disaster.
by hollerith | 2025-04-06 21:03:33+00:00
What do you have to say to the 40-year-old man who says he has a natural right to have sex with 10-year-olds and for the state to punish him for it is just as wrong as state support for slavery was?

It seems that the only effect this "natural right" term has on sufficiently curious interlocutors (who will not fall for your rhetorical trick) is to signal that you are more stubborn than people who do not use the term.
by mrkstu | 2025-04-06 21:04:28+00:00
Yep, my parents commissioned an oil back in the 70s that was a near duplicate of another artist's painting- they couldn't have afforded the original artist, so he has not lost anything and the painter did the painting as a hired work, so legally I doubt any law was broken.

Hangs on my wall now- I know I can never sell until the copyright on the original runs out (which it most likely won't in my lifetime) it but it is a very well done painting and a family legacy piece I am glad exists.
by alextingle | 2025-04-06 21:04:33+00:00
Why? Companies are regulated all the time. Is deceptive advertising allowed in the US? Didn't think so.[1] Does that violate your First Amendment too?

This case is all about forbidding deceptive practices. Did Twitter's redefinition of blue checkmarks amount to deception? Maybe. There'll be a court case where Twitter get to make their case, if they lose them have to pay the fine. Lay off the pearl clutching.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/54
by siliconc0w | 2025-04-06 21:04:34+00:00
I also created an experiment for this, giving the AI an ability to write/read from a database so you could build full CRUD apps.

It works somewhat but even with the smaller/faster models it's very slow and even with the big models it is pretty unreliable. Long term I can definitely imagine this will get more viable and maybe become a complement to the 'chat' interface with most SaaS apps essentially being replaced with a AI in front of system or systems of record.
by sepositus | 2025-04-06 21:05:23+00:00
> This shows that the limits of the first amendment are speech when its convenient. Links, webpages, and more are speech, but also completely censored in the US media.

I'm a bit confused by this. Are you saying that publishing the text (speech) of a copyrighted book, and then having the link to that text de-indexed, is the equivalent of violating the First Amendment? I assume Google and Bing just treated this as any other copyright violation.
Show HN: Chrome extension that gives Claude Pro API-free tool use capabilities
by bartek_gdn | 2025-04-06 21:06:13+00:00
Hi HN community!

I've created a Chrome extension and Node.js server combo that lets Claude use external tools (calendar, Spotify, etc.) from within regular browser conversations - without any API access.

## Why

Tool use is available in Claude via API, but I haven't found a way to use tools from the web interface.

Over a weekend I've created a PoC and spent the next few weeks polishing the details before sharing.

The architecture is modular, making it easy to add new tools. I've included detailed setup instructions in the repo.

## How it works

- The extension injects a content script onto claude.ai/chat pages

- A background script captures all Claude responses via Chrome debugger API

- When Claude generates XML tool tags (e.g., <calendar>...</calendar>), the server executes the corresponding action

- Results appear as system messages that you can paste into your conversation, so that Claude is aware of failures etc.

Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8lgsGurY1w

GitHub: https://github.com/BartlomiejLewandowski/claude-browser-tool...

## Tools currently supported

- Google Calendar (create events)

- Spotify (play music)

Would love feedback on the approach and ideas for other useful tools to add!
by yjftsjthsd-h | 2025-04-06 21:06:14+00:00
Research I've seen seems to say that 70-80% of vulnerabilities come from memory safety problems[0]. Eliminating those is of course a huge improvement, but is rust doing something to kill the other 20-30%? Or is there something about RCE that makes it the exclusive domain of memory safety problems?

[0] For some reason I'm having trouble finding primary sources, but it's at least referenced in ex. https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-s...
by wruza | 2025-04-06 21:06:18+00:00
If any logic produces a syntax error anywhere in the sshd_config include chain, ssh is broken now. And you will have templating logic in automatic configuration one way or another, at least for different dns/ips.

I don't grep this argument at all. It feels like everyone's comparing to that "regular [bad] detergent" in this thread. A templating system will be as good and as error-prone to change and as modular etc as you make it, just like any program.

It applies only to local patchers (like e.g. certbot nginx) and manual changes, but that's exactly out of scope of templating and configuration automation. So it can't be better, cause these two things are in XOR relationships.

Edit to clarify: I don't disagree with foo.d approach in general. I just don't get the arguments that in automation setting it plays any positive role, when in fact you may step on a landmine by only writing your foo.d/00-my. Your DC might have put some crap into foo.d/{00,99}-cloud, so you have to erase and re-create the whole foo.d anyway. Or at least lock yourself into a specific cloud.
by simonw | 2025-04-06 21:06:41+00:00
I had to look up these acronyms:

- USAMO - United States of America Mathematical Olympiad

- IMO - International Mathematical Olympiad

- ICPC - International Collegiate Programming Contest

Relevant paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.21934 - "Proof or Bluff? Evaluating LLMs on 2025 USA Math Olympiad" submitted 27th March 2025.
by rsynnott | 2025-04-06 21:09:00+00:00
> and has less class mobility than the US.

So, interestingly, this is something that Americans tend to believe, and that Europeans tend to believe, but it is empirically not true.

Americans in the bottom income quintile are less likely to make it to the top quintile than people in the major European economies, but they are more likely to _believe_ that they can: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...
by ChuckMcM | 2025-04-06 21:09:40+00:00
Pretty standard stuff, a bit about my background, what I thought of Commodore and the people I had met so far, If I could change one thing at Commodore what would it be (I responded with my belief that the Amiga was the future of Commodore and some stuff about "workstation for the masses", I was at Sun at the time). What was memorable to me wasn't so much what he asked or we talked about as it was about his body language when I expressed approval or how impressed I was by things others on his staff had done. You would expect "pride" but I got "irritation?" I had very little experience dealing with people like that and it was confusing. Later research and observations led me to believe he was irritated by people that excelled.
by convolvatron | 2025-04-06 21:09:45+00:00
you can very reasonably do welding in your garage. aside from a welder (as little as $150 for a barely-usable mig), all you need is an angle grinder to cut and finish the welds. commercially you can get a mid-range mig and a couple more smallish tools and you can start selling custom fencework and mounting brackets and such.

blacksmithing you need a forge, which immediately takes up more space and is somewhat more likely to start a fire. an anvil, and tongs, and hammers. its also a lot more physically demanding, even if you use a power hammer.

your #2 and #3 are pretty key. most importantly most fabrication jobs are much happier to get quick work with reasonable precision using stock shapes. once you start talking about real free-form hot shaping you're immediately going up at least 10x in price/time. welded table base - $500. handcrafted wrought table base - $10,000.

really its that metalwork is mostly functional (fences, stairs, railings, walkways, enclosures, stainless for commercial kitchens, pipefitting, etc). its very difficult to stay in business as a actual craftsman making well-designed objects. architectural metal is probably the easiest in (wall coverings, nice looking railing and stairs, lamps, and other decorative elements). and there its still dominated by fabrication processes (machining and welding of stock shapes), although nicer materials like bronze start to have their place.

edit: you know I left this thinking I was missing something and I realized what it is. welding you make shapes out of like-shapes. like making drawings in figma. I don't think a lot of people have what it takes to learn to be a really good freehand artist. and even if you have the skill, being able to design those kind of organic arbitrary shapes so that they are emotive and attractive is another step up. do you want a piece of art which is a direct expression of the concept held by the artist? or do you want a 3x5' 32" inch high workbench for 1/20 the cost?
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-04-06 21:10:15+00:00
> This shows that the limits of the first amendment are speech when its convenient. Links, webpages, and more are speech, but also completely censored in the US media.

For better or for worse, the US only has free speech protection which is binding on the government. Sometimes that's good (you can kick out people who don't behave). Sometimes that's bad (censored media). But even in the cases where it's bad, it's not clear to me that it would be worth it to enact freedom of speech laws that apply to private parties. It seems like the cure might be worse than the disease in that case.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-04-06 21:10:47+00:00
> you saying you are researching sellers' voting records, then buying the farms of the ones who voted for Trump?

I’m buying cropland from creditors. They can sell it because the farmers are behind on their loans. They’re failing to make payments because we’re in a trade war.

As an ethical limit, yes, I look up the property owner and have only been buying if they’re registered Republican. That doesn’t mean they voted for Trump. (Though they’re all in heavily Trump-voting precincts.) And I don’t think people should lose their farms just because of how they voted. But it does increase the chances I’m not profiting from someone who had nothing to do with a mess they found themselves in versus someone who sort of brought it on themselves.
by bofadeez | 2025-04-06 21:10:59+00:00
I would tell the man that he should just take a class or read the Wikipedia on what a natural right is if he's so interested in it and using it to protect himself. I would tell him that commenting on it in this manner embarrasses himself and exposes that he has no education on the topic.

Any involuntary contract imposed on any individual is axiomatically immoral and unethical, as I've said below. There's no need to use such extreme examples.
by josephg | 2025-04-06 21:12:45+00:00
Yep. Safe rust also protects you from UB resulting from incorrect multi-threaded code.

In C++ (and C#, Java, Go and many other “memory safe languages”), it’s very easy to mess up multithreaded code. Bugs from multithreading are often insanely difficult to reproduce and debug. Rust’s safety guardrails make many of these bugs impossible.

This is also great for performance. C++ libraries have to decide whether it’s better to be thread safe (at a cost of performance) or to be thread-unsafe but faster. Lots of libraries are thread safe “just in case”. And you pay for this even when your program / variable is single threaded. In rust, because the compiler prevents these bugs, libraries are free to be non-threadsafe for better performance if they want - without worrying about downstream bugs.
by cadamsdotcom | 2025-04-06 21:13:06+00:00
Article assumes saturated resources and finite production capacity - neither of which are true when technology is added to the picture. What if, for example, tariffs incentivize technology development that allows hydroponic wine - making previously unviable land suddenly productive?

Another counter-argument to the article: due to long-term reliance on trading partners for goods, production has likely been “turned down” for some goods/services to a point that there’s less opportunity cost than this article posits. For example the widely-quoted stat that almost one-quarter of Americans are functionally unemployed suggests trade has created new equilibria that leave capacity on the table. Especially when considering China’s well known policy of making the RMB cheaper against the USD than if it were allowed to float.

If tariffs have the potential to drive employment up by bringing latent capacity online (through investment & after a lead-time), you can see how people are okay with experimenting.
by hagbard_c | 2025-04-06 21:14:26+00:00
> Most of EU citizens are pro freedom of speech and anti immigration btw.

Yes, this is clearly true. It also is clearly true that many if not most of EU political parties see freedom of speech as an obstacle and for some unclear reason are reticent to act on their (potential) voter's mandate to radically limit immigration, especially 'culturally incompatible' immigration. They still seem to consider being 'called racist' a threat even though the term 'racist' has lost most of its meaning - when everyone and his dog is a racist it is hardly surprising to be called one.

The EU has a long way to go before it can be considered a paragon of democracy. The commission is not democratically elected, the parliament is but has only limited power. To me - living in Sweden, being a Dutch native - the EU looks like the result of a metastasised bureaucratic infection of the former EEC (the European Economic Community) and I'd much prefer for the moloch of Brussels to be brought to heel and reduced to its former size and glory. That means a much smaller size and a larger glory since a group of countries which voluntarily cooperate economically while retaining their sovereignty is a better model than the current one which mostly seems to be designed to provide hooks for lobbyists and opportunities for grift while providing endless cushy 'jobs' for those who are willing to swallow their integrity.
by MrMcCall | 2025-04-06 21:14:29+00:00
> within 10 years

> within 25 years

That is "many years" in my view.

> so untrue

So you're saying his ideas were immediately accepted?

I guess that's why he was still working at the patent office for fourish years after his Miracle Year?

And I guess this is like all the other cases where new scientific theories were immediately accepted, of which you can name precisely zero, I imagine?
by freehorse | 2025-04-06 21:14:42+00:00
There is nothing wrong with sharing anecdotal experiences. Reading through anecdotal experiences here can help understand how one's own experience are relatable or not. Moreover, if I have X experience it could help to know if it is because of me doing sth wrong that others have figured out.

Furthermore, as we are talking about actual impact of LLMs, as is the point of the article, a bunch of anecdotal experiences may be more valuable than a bunch of benchmarks to figure it out. Also, apart from the right/wrong dichotomy, people use LLMs with different goals and contexts. It may not mean that some people do something wrong if they do not see the same impact as others. Everytime a web developer says that they do not understand how others may be so skeptical of LLMs, conclude with certainty that they must be doing sth wrong and move on to explain how to actually use LLMs properly, I chuckle.
by fancyfredbot | 2025-04-06 21:14:51+00:00
It didn't understand you but the response was plausible enough to require fact checking.

Although that isn't literally indistinguishable from 'understanding' (because your fact checking easily discerned that) it suggests that at a surface level it did appear to understand your question and knew what a plausible answer might look like. This is not necessarily useful but it's quite impressive.
by rainsford | 2025-04-06 21:14:53+00:00
> Turns out all the cuts are only a fraction of a percent of the federal budget.

Looking at it another way, the cuts are actually decreasing overall efficiency since they're cutting things that deliver decent benefits given that they only cost a small fraction of federal spending. Maintaining things like hiking trails and parks is incredibly cheap compared to the benefits they produce in terms of intangibles like well being and related economic activity. The National Parks Service for example helps generate a huge amount of tourism dollars that exceeds their budget several times over.

> It's an ideological purge...

See that's the part I really struggle with. Cratering foreign aid has an obvious ideological component, but who hates hiking trails? Like I'm sure there are a few people who hate the outdoors and a handful of oligarchs who want to privatize everything, but where's the constituency for it?
by Spooky23 | 2025-04-06 21:15:00+00:00
25 years of warfare have taken their toll.

Most of the airframes are in their twilight years. The Navy is in a conundrum... the surface fleet strategy is probably not strategically sound, and we slowed down submarine production at one point so many of those assets are also aging and in need of maintenance.

The Ukraine war is full of learnings that should be driving transformation and investment. Reality is that a rogue billionaire could probably build drones that could threaten strategic military assets in the field. As time goes on, that capability will likely get cheaper and better.
by fuzztester | 2025-04-06 21:15:08+00:00
Ah yes. For the last two or three weeks, or maybe ditto months, in some of my free time, that I dedicate for reading world news, I've been doing practically nothing but reading about the shenanigans of the Frump and his sidekick the Tusk / the Fsck, so I guess it makes sense that I didn't know what the DOGE was. end of /s

:)

after the /s, thanks for your answer. the /s is dedicated to the HN people I mention below, not to you.

actually by the "doge thing", I meant sahil's interaction with it, which I knew would be in the article, or in a linked one, but was a bit lazy to read.

and I continue to marvel at the brilliance of the knee jerk, trigger happy HN downvoters who can't even imagine that there can be a different interpretation of a phrase like "the doge thing" from what they can think of or know.

DOGE is the right place for those jokers.
by settrans | 2025-04-06 21:16:13+00:00
Let me just summarize your position: European Jews, facing extermination, should have tried harder to stop Hitler, trusted the same governments that sold them out, stayed put in countries that were turning into slaughterhouses and politely avoided seeking refuge in the only place in the world that would take them just because it might offend your sensibilities. And now, after a few of them survived the industrial attempt to wipe them out, you want to tell them they were wrong to have escaped.

You dress up your objection to Zionism behind a pseudomoralistic veneer of Palestinian rights, but your real position is that Jewish survival was a problem because it confuses your personal narrative of Palestinian nationalism. That’s not a serious moral argument. That’s historical cruelty crudely disguised as moral purity.

And no, I never insulted you, but the position that European Jews should have just tried harder against the Nazis is a laughably sadistic viewpoint regardless of who holds it.
by UncleMeat | 2025-04-06 21:17:29+00:00
Yeah its remarkable.

"Tons of people globally are screwing screws into iphones. We are going to bring those jobs here."

"Inexpensive goods from overseas aren't actually prosperity. You don't want these things."

"You probably didn't earn your job in the government anyway."

True decadence is looking at a society that is broadly functioning and deciding "we need a fight" and blowing it up just for some aggressive notion of dominance.
by labster | 2025-04-06 21:18:08+00:00
From Prof. Tim Snyder, https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-absurdity-is-the-point

> War with Canada is what Trump seems to have in mind. Fentanyl is not the only the big lie. That Canada does not really exist is the other. The way that this fiction is formulated is strangely Putinist. Trump's rhetoric about Canada uncannily echoes that of Russian propagandists towards Ukraine. The claim that the country is not real; that its people really want to join us; that the border is an artificial line; that history must lead to annexation... This is all familiar from Putin, as is Trump’s curious ambiguity about a neighbor: they are our brothers, they are also our enemies; they are doing terrible things to us, they also don’t really exist.

> The imperialist rhetoric has to be seen for what it is, which is preparation not just for trade war but for war itself.

The US is preparing for war. It’s not a joke.
by ASalazarMX | 2025-04-06 21:18:33+00:00
I am one of those undisciplined ones. Routine has to be forced on me, otherwise I might find myself at 12 pm without having done any meaningful work.

Working remotely during confinement diminished my productivity significantly, measured by myself. I had to force myself to follow an imaginary schedule, because I knew in reality it is very flexible when you're at home. I tend to be at ease with disorganization, so being disciplined takes effort, and being disciplined among the amenities of your home is very strenuous.

My wife was unaffected by it, so I think I could get used to it too if needed, but I don't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
Did I just create the world's smallest AI server?
by willmccollum | 2025-04-06 21:19:06+00:00
I successfully installed Ollama in Termux on my degoogled Unihertz Jelly Star, reputed to be the world's smallest smartphone, having a 3 inch screen. The Jelly Star packs 8+7 gb ram. I downloaded and then successfully ran distilled Deepseek-R1:7b locally on the device. Is it slow? Yes. But it still steadily outputs text word by word, does not crash, and takes no longer than a couple mins to respond in full. Anyone have other examples of micro AI workstations?
by leereeves | 2025-04-06 21:19:11+00:00
I like that it's unmonetized, of course, but that's not why I use AI. I use AI because it's better at search. When I can't remember the right keywords to find something, or when the keywords aren't unique, I frequently find that web search doesn't return what I need and AI does.

It's impressive how often AI returns the right answer to vague questions. (not always though)