MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lolinder | 2025-04-25 22:36:07+00:00
It's not about the standard of guilt in court, it's about political capital and effective rhetoric.

There are so many cases where the Trump administration has flagrantly violated rule of law. Why would we waste time fighting them in the court of public opinion on a case where things currently appear to be open and shut in the other direction?

When those on the fence see us getting up in arms about something where to all appearances the "victim" actually did break the law and is being given due process, we lose credibility. If we instead save our breath for the many many cases that actually have compelling facts, it's harder for them to tune us out.

In ux design this is called alert fatigue, and it matters in politics too.
by csdvrx | 2025-04-25 22:37:29+00:00
In the last discussion about such issues, someone linked https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/rearvision/the-dark-s... which is worth a read for past abuses:

> Military authorities in California requested census data to identify the Japanese-American population. Then in 1942, president Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order to authorise their removal.
by crazygringo | 2025-04-25 22:37:48+00:00
No, just no, back at you.

That's not all the article was suggesting. You're ignoring the other three fields the article says to "store on almost any table".

I'm not "grasping", I'm describing actual reality. While you're misrepresenting the article by cherry-picking the simplest fields, which aren't even always simple for the reasons I gave.
by ivape | 2025-04-25 22:38:03+00:00
It's tough to say because we definitely have created an exoskeleton with AI. We would need to tell a society with ubiquitous exoskeletons to mindfully exercise their body so it does not atrophy. The exercise you would get hiking will never translate to core body strength with the exoskeleton on. Likewise, core body strength would only have ambiguous value since everything would be done with an exoskeleton regardless since it's simply better. For programming specifically, you can already see it with Leetcode. Which of the Leetcode problems really matter and why for most work? Few for most us, but whoever is deciding what is important will decide what it is important. Google for example decides which Leetcode problems are important and they will decide in the future in the same way. It will have nothing to do with the reality of the day to day.

This is a very long-winded way of saying gatekeepers gonna gatekeep.
by frognumber | 2025-04-25 22:39:04+00:00
The truth is somewhere in the middle.

There was a similar case in Massachusetts many years back. It never went to trial, and legal analysis could go both ways. The bargain struct was it would go into secretive judicial oversight channels.

There is a strong case to be made for obstruction of justice, and an equally strong case to be made about her making an error in her professional capacity as a judge and a government employee (which grants a level of immunity). Police officers, judges, soldiers, etc. make mistakes, but they generally don't go to jail for them because (even corruption aside) everyone makes mistakes. In some jobs, mistakes can and do have severe consequences up to and including people dying. If that led to prison, no one sane would take those jobs.

In any sane universe, it'd be fair to say she screwed up, and then the FBI also screwed up arresting her. I think the FBI screwed up more, since their mistake was premeditated, whereas she was put on the spot.

I do agree with your fundamental point of fatigue. This is not something anyone has a moral high ground to hang their flag on without looking bad.
by daseiner1 | 2025-04-25 22:39:52+00:00
> When those on the fence see us getting up in arms about something where to all appearances the "victim" actually did break the law and is being given due process, we lose credibility. If we instead save our breath for the many many cases that actually have compelling facts, it's harder for them to tune us out.

those cases are the least important to the defense of due process rights. but i'll concede that you're likely correct at the level of the broader populace given that our civic education is an embarrassment and has been for decades.
by seanmcdirmid | 2025-04-25 22:39:55+00:00
BYD could totally avoid the tariffs by making in the USA (well, they were planning a factory in Mexico, and tariffs on car parts will kill that if something doesn’t change). They already set up a bus factory in SoCal. My guess is that Chinese automakers are still hesitant about introducing their brands to Americans given politics (Volvo and Polestar are Chinese owned but I think the design is still mainly done in Sweden?).

Japanese, Korean, and European brands already make a lot of vehicles to get around tariffs, although it makes sense for some sedans to be made abroad given American lack of interest in them (so economy of scales doesn’t work out), and sedans typically not being tariffed as harshly as trucks.
by sharkjacobs | 2025-04-25 22:40:01+00:00
from clevercoloringbook.com:

> Please only upload photos that are in line with OpenAI's Usage Policy. > We are not able to include any photos that do not follow their policy in the final printed book.

from openai.com/policies

> Editing uploaded images or videos that contain real people under the age of 18 is not permitted.

The first two sample pictures on the page contain of adolescent children. Are you concerned about this apparent contradiction?
by jrapdx3 | 2025-04-25 22:40:45+00:00
AFAIK cationic calcium, et. al., combine with dissolved CO2 forming carbonates which having low water solubility eventually precipitate out of solution. Area with "hard water" often have issues with buildup of scale in water pipes. The scale is mainly calcium carbonate and sulfate.

This is normally a gradual process requiring ample moisture. Releasing finely ground rock into the air wouldn't likely be effective. For one thing, such dispersal would be rather dilute. IOW the dispersion wouldn't reliably react with CO3 ions before settling out of the air. Another consideration is the salicaceous content of the rock being a potential health hazard.

The original idea of adding crushed rock to water-containing soil is logically the best way for the project to accomplish its goals.
by WalterGR | 2025-04-25 22:40:57+00:00
Article tagline: “Just the dialogue—no sound effects or music cues.”

Do any HNers find those cues sufficiently distracting that they’re excited about this feature? I always have subtitles on. While I find those cues occasionally amusing, I’ve never found them to be an impediment to my enjoyment. Maybe they are for people who read slowly? Or because they break the fourth wall?
by reaperducer | 2025-04-25 22:41:06+00:00
What is the need for OTA updates for an EV, once you remove the autopilot and touch screen? Genuinely interested, I would guess there is none, right?

Yes, and no.

I've only started following this recently, but a lot of OTA updates aren't just bug fixes, they're additional features.

My wife's car recently got a free OTA update which upgraded her radio to get HD stations. A previous update allowed her car to start recognizing more types of School Zone and Night Speed signs.

I've read that every year (February, I think) Tesla pushes out a big update that adds features. However, the last two Tesla pushes included a bunch of features that came standard with my wife's (much cheaper) car years ago.

You could certainly argue that her car should have come with HD Radio enabled from the start, and ditto for the Tesla features. But to suppose that all OTA car updates are nothing more than more invasive tracking and bug fixes is not strictly correct.
by okthrowman283 | 2025-04-25 22:41:12+00:00
It’s becoming clear that this issue is going to become one of the most divisive in history.

Apparently a large number of people outright dismiss even the possibility of “machine sentience”. It seems to trigger some pretty visceral reactions.

Never mind the fact we can’t even define sentience/consciousness to begin with. We have no idea why or how it arises - yet we’re very quick to make strong claims about it.
by bob1029 | 2025-04-25 22:42:09+00:00
"strong safety standards" are what got us to the point of 5000lb pickup trucks and A-pillars that are so wide they arguably kill more people (predominantly pedestrians & cyclists) than their constituent airbags save.

It is cartoon villain tier to compromise the visual range of the driver at the safety expense of everyone outside the vehicle, who is not shielded by 2 tons of mass.

Much of what is wrong with automobiles is a severe inability to think in higher order terms.
by mdeeks | 2025-04-25 22:42:30+00:00
This is a cute and simple idea!

I'd like to see what a real physical book looks like before I buy it though. Do you have real pictures of a printed one?

I think our kids would appreciate seeing the original (even if a small thumbnail) along side it. You can't always tell from these AI drawings that it was originally you and your family.

Also, it's REALLY expensive. $30 for a book that my kids will draw on in one or two nights and then never touch again is probably too much.
by wizardforhire | 2025-04-25 22:42:46+00:00
Stay strong and don’t give up! You’re providing an incredible value to your community even if you do not see nor reap the rewards directly. As humans in a post internet post pandemic world we need people like you with your perspective, insight and passion more than ever. Building community, navigating the complex real world human networks and subsequent complexity is and will be a uniquely human endeavor… at least until we have functioning protocol droids. Even then there will always be necessity for leaders such as yourself.

Thanks for sharing!
by groby_b | 2025-04-25 22:43:48+00:00
Given that the entire industry is in a frenzy to enable "agentic" AI - i.e. hook up tools that have actual effects in the world - that is at best a rather native take.

Yes, LLMs can and do take actions in the world, because things like MCP allow them to translate speech into action, without a human in the loop.
by reaperducer | 2025-04-25 22:43:57+00:00
The world is pretty freaking boring when it's just pavement and the 5,000th time you've passed the same strip mall, gas station, and McDonald's. The same dirty snowbanks on either side of the same gray asphalt under the interminably gray winter sky.

And yet, somehow the children survived and thrived.

They learned to make up games, to entertain themselves, and to -- perish the thought -- talk to other human beings in their own family! /shudder/
by dataflow | 2025-04-25 22:44:43+00:00
> it's a pretty important detail

It doesn't seem like it matters here. Per 18 USC §1071:

Whoever harbors or conceals any person for whose arrest a warrant or process has been issued under the provisions of any law of the United States, so as to prevent his discovery and arrest, after notice or knowledge of the fact that a warrant or process has been issued for the apprehension of such person, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned.

Unless you're arguing that the facts are misrepresented, or that the law is somehow unconstitutional, this seems pretty slam-dunk, no? The judge seems to have deliberately escorted the defendant to the jury room for the purpose of letting them hide/escape arrest. That's all there seems to be to it.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/25/us/judgedugan...
by jpeloquin | 2025-04-25 22:45:23+00:00
The median sample size of the studies subjected to replication was n = 5 specimens (https://osf.io/atkd7). Probably because only protocols with an estimated cost less than BRL 5,000 (around USD 1,300 at the time) per replication were included. So it's not surprising that only ~ 60% of the original biomechemical assays' point estimates were in the replicates' 95% prediction interval. The mouse maze anxiety test (~ 10%) seems to be dragging down the average. n = 5 just doesn't give reliable estimates, especially in rodent psychology.
by lauriewired | 2025-04-25 22:45:55+00:00
It takes a bit of curation, but I find substack's algorithm to be quite good at recommending other bloggers I'd be interested in.

It's also pretty trivial to find what writers other bloggers enjoy based on the "reads" list tab. My algorithm is:

-> Find blogger you like -> Check their substack "reads" for other writers -> Repeat
by sanderjd | 2025-04-25 22:46:23+00:00
Yeah I don't doubt any of this myself. But the Court is still going to have to rule on it. Which isn't so weird. The Court has to reiterate rulings sometimes.

The thing that is unusual is that I have some genuine uncertainty around whether the current Justices will try to give the executive more leeway here than they should, as "compliance in advance" out of concern about their rulings being ignored by this administration.
by kelseyfrog | 2025-04-25 22:46:40+00:00
Just wait until you get to the part of the They Thought They Were Free where it mentions over-reacting. That strategy doesn't work.

There is no moment of egregious violation. It never comes. Even when the state is clearly totalitarian there were Germans holding out hope that Germany would lose the war. As if that was their final straw.

The salami is purposefully sliced thin enough that one slice on it's own will never provoke enough outrage. How do you hope to oppose that?
by ivape | 2025-04-25 22:47:37+00:00
Domain knowledge is just useful in that particular domain unless you distill down general things into something you can carry forward. You cannot carry over skills from Call of Duty over to Starcraft, other than maybe, teamwork makes the dreamwork in multiplayer (this you can distill out). Once you leave a domain (the front lines), you will never be as in-tune as the people in it right now. I'm at peace with leaving domain-specific knowledge wherever I left it, because trying to bring over non-distilled concepts to new domains is a forced attempt at feigning experience. It's one of the problems with much of leadership, they ride on carrying over domain-knowledge from another domain when in reality they are total newbies in the new domain (ego does not allow you leave something behind, it wants to aggrandize you at every step).

However, if you are simultaneously involved in multiple domains, this is when the venn-diagram works its magic. The person with five different interests and professions is in a magical envious place of being able to touch the "overlap". I can see someone arguing that this does not have to happen in real time, that if you can simply remember everything, then you are always in this magical place.
by darth_avocado | 2025-04-25 22:48:06+00:00
I understand that the total impact should be compared, which is fine. But I take issue with how the narrative is presented. If your point is to convince me that me cutting down my smoking habit is far better than me canceling my car purchase, then you need to be a little more upfront and clear about the fact that it will take almost 30 years worth of cigarettes to have a similar impact.
by Xiione | 2025-04-25 22:48:14+00:00
Thank you so much for the honest feedback. One of the reasons I tried to not get into the math details is because the preliminaries would be somewhat lengthy, some people would not be familiar with what a finite field is so explaining even that succinctly would be its own challenge for me. But for those that the concepts are within reach for (like the folks here on HN), you are right that I ought to make some effort to explain what is going on, at least intuitively. As for the UI considerations, great feedback, I'll definitely take it all into account when re-designing. I'm open to additional suggestions from everybody.

Ultimately I'm glad that I was able to get the main point across. That is, that QR codes can take a lot more abuse than one might assume. Thanks for checking my work out!
by nullc | 2025-04-25 22:49:04+00:00
Zero initializing often hides real and serious bugs, however. Say you have a function with an internal variable LEN that ought to get set to some dynamic length that internal operations will run over. Changes to the code introduce a path which skips the setting of LEN. Current compilers will (very likely) warn you about the potentially uninitialized use, valgrind will warn you (assuming the case gets triggered), and failing all that the program will potentially crash when some large value ends up in LEN-- alerting you to the issue.

Compare with default zero init: The compiler won't warn you, valgrind won't warn you, and the program won't crash. It will just be silently wrong in many cases (particularly for length/count variables).

Generally the attention to exploit safety can sometimes push us in directions that are bad for program correctness. There are many places where exploit safety is important, but also many cases where its irrelevant. For security it's generally 'safe' is a program erroneously shuts down or does less than it should but that is far from true for software generally.

I prefer this behavior: Use of an uninitialized variable is an error which the compiler will warn about, however, in code where the compiler cannot prove that it is not used the compiler's behavior is implementation defined and can include trapping on use, initializing to zero, or initializing to ~0 (the complement of zero) or other likely to crash pattern. The developer may annotate with _noinit which makes any use UB and avoids the cost of inserting a trap or ~0 initialization. ~0 init will usually fail but seldom in a silent way, so hopefully at least any user reports will be reproducible.

Similar to RESTRICT _noinit is a potential footgun, but its usage would presumably be quite rare and only in carefully maintained performance critical code. Code using _noinit like RESTRICT is at least still more maintainable than assembly.

This approach preserves the compiler's ability to detect programmer error, and lets the implementation pick the preferred way to handle the remaining error. In some contexts it's preferable to trap cleanly or crash reliably (init to ~0 or explicit trap), in others its better to be silently wrong (init 0).

Since C99 lets you declare variables wherever so it is often easy to just declare a variable where it is first set and that's probably best, of course. .. when you can.
by sunray2 | 2025-04-25 22:49:40+00:00
So I'll take a layman's view here since I've only cursory experience of the big data tasks that this software seems to made for. Or maybe the pitch is still different and it went over my head.

It loads quick, and works with large data. Crucially, you can view and edit visually, not only programmatically.

Assuming those already working with such data have Excel and Python tools etc., the pitch here is that the $39 license fee saves time or effort. So, is it that the user can spot and correct errors that you couldn't otherwise do with either Excel or with other big data tools? And/or otherwise do the necessary data manipulations?

I came across the phrase 'eyes like a shithouse rat' recently, to describe the people doing final checks at a printing press. I think there's probably plenty of people out there who would pay $39 for eyes like a shithouse rat.

Also the website makes me nostalgic :)
by crote | 2025-04-25 22:49:50+00:00
Should a serial killer go unpunished because its sole witness would face lifetime imprisonment for jaywalking if they were to testify? Do you believe gangs should roam free due to a lack of evidence, or would it be better if they could be rolled up by offering a too-sweet-to-ignore plea deal to a snitch?

Laws are are already routinely being ignored. There's a massive amount of discretionary choice space for law enforcement and prosecution. It's not as black-and-white as you're making it sound.
by luckylion | 2025-04-25 22:51:30+00:00
> The big companies in this space doing the research are not making leap over leap with each release, and the downstream open source projects are coming closer to the same quality or in fact can produce the same quality (e.g DeepSeek or LLAMA) hence why it’s becoming a commodity.

This was the assertion. "Open source is close/equal in quality", not "open source is enough for plenty of use-cases, not everyone needs the top of the line".
by hayst4ck | 2025-04-25 22:51:48+00:00
Infighting is how liberalism loses. While we sit and deliberate on whether this is the slice that merits actions, they are making plans to arrest more judges.

The point of that excerpt is that there is not and likely will never be one single unifying objectionable action that provokes people into acting and we will slow walk our way into atrocity through inaction.

The argument being made is that it will continually get worse every single day. Every action will slowly become more egregious. A judge arrested politically, but for cause, today will be a judge arrested without cause tomorrow, but we will have adapted to see judges being arrested for blatantly political reasons as a new norm.

The facts and nuance will change faster than we can adapt and while we pontificate on whether this is the one that's worth it, the next bad thing will have already happened. More power will have been consolidated.

Taking in the truth requires action, so anything that lets people stay in denial or bury their heads is clung to in order to protect mental health. Eventually it will be too late, and you will wonder when you should have acted knowing you are no longer able to.
by belorn | 2025-04-25 22:52:06+00:00
> America is being confronted with a very serious problem. What happens when those responsible for enforcing the law break it or start enforcing "alternative" law? If the police are breaking the law, then there is no law, there is only power. Law is just words on paper without enforcement.

The world has a concept that fits that description and it is a civil war. People pick up arms, a lot of people get killed, several generations end up in cycles of violence.

That is what happen when there is no law, only power, and people act on it.
by darth_avocado | 2025-04-25 22:54:04+00:00
And what you’re describing is exactly the reason Kei trucks aren’t a thing despite most farmers actually liking them for their utility.

You can’t import them unless they are old because we want to protect the automotive industry. But we can’t build them new either because they don’t meet the safety standards (FMVSS) and are penalized more for being fuel efficient because the standards are stricter for smaller vehicles.
by Jach | 2025-04-25 22:54:05+00:00
What a gross looking vehicle, and at that price? I just want the old ranger design. I've been using a 2006 ranger for quite a while and it's served me well, I'd like to upgrade it to a ranger XL for that little extra cab room for crap, along with 4WD and power windows and AC, but people rightfully guard them and when they do show up at dealerships they're typically pretty expensive too.

I've thought about importing a Kei, but I don't think it's for me. When I think "American kei truck" I at least think something in the ballpark range cost of a Kei, which is quite a bit less, at least half as expensive for the best options like 4WD, even less if you can compromise. It also has charm unlike this. The range is just ridiculous, too. My little ranger isn't exactly great, I don't push it much more than 300 miles on a tank, but having half that (new! let alone after a few years) is such a deal breaker. Last time I took my truck camping it was around 60 miles each way, and that was a nearby spot.
by tw04 | 2025-04-25 22:55:11+00:00
>Trucks in particular are protected by the notorious 25% "chicken tax", which has been in place since the 1960s.

And yet, that applies to everyone, including US automakers, which is why Ford had to do unnatural things to import the transit from Europe.

They aren't protecting US automakers, they're trying to retain some semblance of manufacturing in the US, which I'm fully in support of.

Both because those are well-paying jobs and because it's a matter of national security.