MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by simonw | 2025-04-20 03:12:32+00:00
These are good examples of things that I wouldn't expect an LLM to get right, based purely on my own intuition.

I don't believe they have much training material on the UI for tools at the moment - it may well come in the future as these new "computer use" models get fed vast amounts of screen capture videos, but to date my hunch is that there hasn't been much focus on that, especially for tools like Photoshop and Blender (training them to use a web browser is a whole lot more useful for the moment).

I'd encourage you not to assume they suck at code just because they suck at answering questions about Photoshop and Blender. I wrote about that a while back: "Don’t fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing LLMs and assuming that failures which would discredit a human should discredit the machine in the same way." - https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/#s...
by areoform | 2025-04-20 03:13:40+00:00
It does. Because a child is a sentient being. Not an accessory for a parent. If you respect the autonomy of someone who is sentient, even when they're dependent on someone else, it's important they're given the ability to forge their own life.

And no, it's not an "extreme case" — it's a common one.

Wildeman et al. estimated the lifetime child maltreatment prevalence for US children as 12.5% by age 18 years, but considered only child maltreatment reports substantiated by CPS.12 Substantiated reports are a small subset of all reports. In 2014, only 21.9% of investigated reports were substantiated.10 (Technically, “investigated” indicates “investigated or assessed” and “substantiated” indicates “substantiated or indicated” here and after.)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227926/pdf/AJPH.20...

1 in 5 is hardly uncommon. Note, these are the substantiated reports i.e. an investigation was done and it was found, "yes, the child is being abused."

But even if it was 1 in 10, or 1 in 100, or 1 in 1,000 then we still can't design the system without this in mind, because any system needs to have a safety margin for failure, and that includes caring for children.
by dheera | 2025-04-20 03:13:45+00:00
They should really implement a dual user / dual password system to combat those countries.

If you enter password 1 it goes into your normal account, if you enter password 2 it goes into another user account with a burner environment where you can install a few token commonly used apps for plausible deniability.

The existence of password 2 should be optional and you should not be able to tell if the system has one or two passwords configured.
by weft | 2025-04-20 03:15:33+00:00
There's no "logic" here, you're just not aware of the history of the term and the sociological history behind it.

The nuclear family was an oddity that developed in England concomitant to the Industrial Revolution in middle-class families for whom occupational relocation was common. It was enshrined as an ideal sociological familial arrangement in the United States because its normalization was conducive for developing larger pools of productive labor.
by jandrewrogers | 2025-04-20 03:16:52+00:00
For pure number crunching, Fortran is nicer. Unfortunately, performance for most codes became about optimizing memory bandwidth utilization at some point in the 2000s, and systems languages are much more effective at expressing that in a sane way. It was easier to make C/C++ do numerics code than to make Fortran do systems code. Some popular HPC workloads were also quite light on numerics code generally, being more about parallelization of data processing.

This was before modern C++ existed, so most of the code was “C with classes” style C++. If you can read C then you can read that code. I don’t consider that to be particularly maintainable by modern standards but neither is Fortran.

Modern C++ dialects, on the other hand, are much more maintainable than either. Better results with a fraction of the code. The article doesn’t say but I would expect at least idiomatic C++11, if not later dialects.
by aisenik | 2025-04-20 03:17:25+00:00
Almost everyone who opposes trans people's existence today. Opposition to trans rights is rooted in patriarchal hegemony and the control of bodies. Our existence is a fundamental threat to the foundational perspective of the predominant power-structure in society.

No one does a womb-check before granting women validity. It's always been a vibe thing and people who do not conform to the prescribed model of existence as a man or woman are constantly denied full privileges under the framework. It's not just trans women getting the short end of the stick here, it's everyone: men who do not embrace dominance culture or otherwise display "effeminacy" are denied true Man status, women who don't meet beauty standards or possess a submissive demeanor are slurred as bull-dykes or the dreaded transexual.

This isn't an issue with any real reasonable basis for it's opposition, it's a golem of pure hatred and disgust in a suit vs. people who want to live full, free lives.

editing to add: the first known uterine transplant was performed on Lili Elbe who received treatments through the Institute of Sexology in Germany. The Institute was famously destroyed by the Nazi regime. It's barely coincidental that fascism has risen again as medical science brings this technology to maturity. Trans women gave their lives for this medical miracle.
by anonym29 | 2025-04-20 03:19:15+00:00
The modern infosec scene has shockingly little in common with the old school cypherpunk / hacker scene, besides appropriating the aesthetics and lingo.

Many of the people in it are even pro-information-censorship, pro-government, pro-intelligence-agencies, pro-big tech, etc. They have zero concerns about proprietary software, they trust Microsoft, they trust Google/Alphabet, they trust their government.

In my experience talking with these types, many of the same ones hysterical about MITRE's taxpayer-funded contract ending have seemingly never ever heard of OSVDB - the idea of a community-run vulnerability database is foreign to them. They seem to believe that it's simply not possible for a non-government-funded entity to perform this kind of work without commercialization.

Offensive Security - the company behind the OSCP, OSEP (formerly OSCE), and OSEE - have their official, primary support through Discord first, their own forums second.
by paul7986 | 2025-04-20 03:19:22+00:00
Not driven by feelings or political emotional babble as it's hard to believe anything when it comes to politics. Im all about clear cut right from wrong and clear cut facts, as well that was a wrong act! It was something that led to the revolutionary war, which is a clear cut fact!

I guess you showed that your mind is driven/controlled by political emotional babble & narratives made up by the right (tho maybe your left or an independent who leans right) & it's media (right or left .. all make up narratives) you consume. But I don't want to jump to conclusions.
by froh | 2025-04-20 03:20:57+00:00
this analysis of (mostly European) democracies is not based on some metric of how well the population is faring, oecd has some of those, but based on handpicked anecdata and peak examples.

the most massive political injustices, poor housing, health care, education, elderly care, affordable transportation, queer human rights, all of them despite high GDP, just to name a few quantifiable properties of a state... the worst digressions happen in FPTP systems currently.

also the article throws both hands in the air as if no mechanisms exist to further improve democracies. it doesn't mention popular vote, or some mechanisms for balance of freedom of speech vs freedom to slander and distort and lie ("hate speech", the word polemics has 'polemos', war, as root), or press codex, or application thereof on all media, including "social" media, ad engines made of letters to the editor largely left alone and unmoderated... nor does it mention panachage and cumulating of votes on lists, the right to adjust the party list proposals in the voting booth.

the article does mention the brazen influence of financial power as a problem though.

but really, proportional representation is part of the solution.
by avsegal | 2025-04-20 03:21:44+00:00
This isn't too expensive for Tesla, it's just nowhere near the level needed for an AV. Automotive lidars are 10-20 scans/second, rated for dust/rain/etc, and need a range of at least 50 meters, but 100-200 is more ideal. Not a fan of Tesla's approach, but I wanted to clarify that it's not like they can just use a lidar like this and call it a day. The specs are completely different and that really drives up cost!
by jonas21 | 2025-04-20 03:21:57+00:00
> Five subjects were recruited for this experiment ... Subjects 10001R, 10003L, and 20205R are coauthors on the paper and were blinded to the test conditions but were aware of the purposes of the study. The other two subjects were members of the participating lab at the University of Washington but were naive to the purposes of the study.

Is it normal for the authors to experiment on themselves and their colleagues like this? Or did they not like the idea of laser-stimulating the photoreceptors of random strangers?
by hedora | 2025-04-20 03:22:07+00:00
Or leave the drive on all the time in an enclosure that keeps the nand cool (near room temperature).

Any decent SSD will background rewrite itself over time at an appropriate rate. Detecting that it needs to do so after 2 years in storage seems trickier to get right (no realtime clock) and trickier to test.

I’d be curious to know how quickly the drives in the article “heal” themselves if left plugged in. There’s nothing wrong with the hardware, even if they did lose a few sectors.

If you really want to create a correct protocol, you can accelerate nand aging by sticking them in an oven at an appropriate temperature. (Aging speedup vs temperature curves are available for most nand devices.)
by Avicebron | 2025-04-20 03:27:20+00:00
I'm going to share my anecdote, because it may help, but everyone is different and your mileage may vary.

I'm a MechE by classical training (professionally I actually work doing software/network stuff, don't ask, DNS (screams internally)), so here's where it stood out for me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_analogy

Internalize what this simple example represents, think about why that's mathematically interesting, and start looking for where it applies elsewhere. You too could be roped into doing systems engineering at scales you didn't think people haven't already figured out.
by kernal | 2025-04-20 03:27:52+00:00
> GrapheneOS was ahead of the curve there

Not really. Samsung was the first with this, but their reasoning had absolutely nothing to do with security. It was because their phones slowed down over time and their solution was to give users the option to reboot it at specific intervals. You could even make the argument that the Samsung solution is still the superior solution because you get to set the interval.
by jodoherty | 2025-04-20 03:27:57+00:00
One of my undergrad degrees is in math. As you study it, you learn to identify your assumptions (axioms), find or build interesting abstractions, prove properties about them (theorems), and then map all sorts of other things into those abstractions by figuring out that they're really the same thing. It's even more interesting when you start to find things that are different or question things you always took for granted.

Math gives you the ability to leverage the very structure and relationships of pure abstraction. It's quite the super power.

None of the specific things you learn studying math will be nearly as useful as the ability to think mathematically.
by makeitdouble | 2025-04-20 03:28:25+00:00
"More books than ever" will be eternally true unless we actively destroy books (god no).

The book industry isn't in a good shape otherwise[0], revenue has recovered while unit sales is declining.

I actually don't get recommendations per se, I mostly read books from authors I already like (fiction), or books on subject I think want to read and will scrape the reviews to see what to settle on, or straight go through each book if it's at my local library (non fiction).

A surprising number of them are available in the Kindle Unlimited bundle or at the library, so I read a lot without per unit money involved, and without the sunk cost calculation.

> your next read

I think that might be the core of it. I don't see books as something that needs to be read continually. I already use my eyes way too much, so it's not a hobby and I expect value that can't be gained from other means.

[0] https://nielseniq.com/global/en/news-center/2025/internation...
by hliyan | 2025-04-20 03:28:35+00:00
There was an earlier discussion on HN about whether advertising should be more heavily regulated (or even banned outright). I'm starting to wonder whether most of the problems on the Web are negative side effects of the incentives created by ads (including all botnets, except those that enable ransomeware and espionage). Even the current worldwide dopamine addition is driven by apps and content created for engagement, whose entire purpose is ad revenue.
by Animats | 2025-04-20 03:28:52+00:00
More output power, larger optics, more sensitive detectors, more rejection of unwanted light, more pixels, larger rotating machinery, active stabilization... And the big units are low volume.

Here's a top of car LIDAR you can buy for about US$27,000.[1] 128 pixels high sensor, spinning. This is roughly comparable to Waymo's sensor.

[1] https://www.hesaitech.com/product/ot128/
by gonzobonzo | 2025-04-20 03:28:54+00:00
> Do you always immediately disregard what people say in favor of your own beliefs?

It's the internet, it's easy for people to make claims, and we have to use our own faculties to try to guess at the accuracy of these claims. These might not even be outright lies, but they could be exaggerations, partial truths, or simply misremembering (most people can't clearly remember things that happened to them when they were 6 years old).

You claimed both that the books available to you at your elementary school weren't advanced enough for your 6 year old self, and that your elementary school made Mein Kampf available to you. I'm not going to make a judgement on the veracity of your claims, but I will say that looking at both of your claims together, I'm entirely unable to tell what level of books your elementary school actually made available to students.
by Escapado | 2025-04-20 03:29:34+00:00
N=1 datapoint here. I studied physics in university and before I started I was not aware that physics is basically just math where the results sometimes relate to reality. The pure math courses I took were the most difficult and in the beginning I loathed them, because it felt so unattainable to get any intuition, let alone real proper comprehension for all the concepts they threw at us. For a long time I felt like I was just hanging on by threads and especially if I compared myself to those who had some innate interest in math or generally some really good intuition on the abstract concepts (or even prior knowledge) it was really demotivating. But I also felt like I had no choice but to continue and as time went on the I grew fond of it. And the feeling of being overwhelmed changed - that is to say I still was completely lost every time a new topic was breached and I could not understand even half of the proofs in class - but I did not feel so defeated about it. And I grew to like the feeling of actually completing the work sheets they gave us every week. The process of solving them was often excruciating but if you did the sense of accomplishment is real. I think for most people higher math is really difficult and that is part of why it is interesting. Another aspect I had to accept over time is that even though you can state a mathematical fact or conjecture in just a hand full of symbols or a plain sentence it does not mean that truly understand it, its implications or how you got there can be understood the same way that other prose can be. Sometimes you have to stare at, contemplate and scribble around one equation for days until you understand whats up.

If there was any advice I would give, then it's probably similar advice on how to stop procrastinating on anything that is difficult. Establish a routine first - find a spot that you will only use for studying this (like a spot in a library), start small, divide and conquer, accept that you will not understand most things easily, reward yourself for the small wins along the way, find an accountability partner or someone to study with if that's your thing, make a regular schedule with regular times where this is what you do - consistency is key, even if its just for 5 minutes, stack it onto other habits, see yourself as a scholar of math - it is what you do, lean into the discomfort, as enduring that is a valuable skill in itself.
by WuxiFingerHold | 2025-04-20 03:30:14+00:00
As someone who started modal editing with Helix and then moved to NeoVim (LazyVim):

After a very short transitioning period (a week or so), I don't have this issue anymore (at all). Keeping coming back to visual mode is probably counterproductive for your transition. So maybe you should stop doing this for some time. Then you'll hopefully find yourself using the visual mode rarely.
by bccdee | 2025-04-20 03:30:32+00:00
Realism doesn't mean doing nothing. It means taking a critical attitude toward your own strategies for effecting change.

> but doing nothing and expecting things to get better on their own isn't going to work either

Isn't this exactly what you advocate for? You say democracies faithfully represent the will of the people, and yet the American president's rock-bottom approval ratings indicate otherwise. Your attitude (correct me if I'm misrepresenting you) is basically that the system is fine, and the problem is that all the people in it are just irresponsible. Well, that's not a plan to fix anything. It's a do-nothing ideology. Or are you going to wave your magic wand and make everyone responsible?

> By living in a democracy, you enjoy boundless riches, housing, health care, fair trials

Tell that to poor people, homeless people, uninsured people, and the countless people unjustly imprisoned in the largest prison system in the world (1.8 million inmates).
by pvg | 2025-04-20 03:31:20+00:00
That is the tradition.

I tooke a bodkin gh & put it betwixt my eye & the bone as neare to the Backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye with the end of it (soe as to make the curvature a, bcdef in my eye) there appeared severall white darke & coloured circles

https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NAT...
by fragmede | 2025-04-20 03:32:57+00:00
Under capitalism, what do you want? If you went and put in a bunch of your own time, money, and effort into something, is asking for something back so you can put food on the table so reprehensible? I mean, I'd love it if I were independently wealthy and could go off and do a mission like that and just give it away for free, but some of us didn't get a trust fund and have bills to pay and so, is that really so ridiculous?
by hedora | 2025-04-20 03:33:03+00:00
Clay works well. The Rosicrucian museum in San Jose has a cuneiform tax receipt stating that a goat was eaten by wolves, and therefore no tax is due on it.

This is similar, from 1634BC, but I don’t know what it says:

https://archive.org/details/mma_cuneiform_tablet_impressed_w...
by alganet | 2025-04-20 03:34:00+00:00
That seems about right according to research.

There are many articles about bird intelligence available from multiple sources.

A more open minded perspective would instead try to look to what is "remotely close" to a human brain.

Although primates can't quite communicate like humans, they are known for being our closest relatives in scientific biological terms.

I know I am deviating from the birds subject a little, but stick with me. I need to address the "remotely close" expression you used.

Primates can display what humans would recognize as human behavior. Work in groups, social dynamics, use of simple tools.

The "looks like human" effect could be explained by anthropomorphization performed by those very humans (to put it simply: an effect where humans see human features in non human things). In fact, some behaviors considered as human are not commonly displayed by primates, like the ability to keep a pet. There is no clear definitive answer to it, and any dismissal of such behaviors could be also used to dismiss humans themselves, therefore I must refrain from entertaining them too much.

Birds also show a lot of human like behavior. Like the ability to gather objects (to construct a nest and to attract a partner are common examples).

Remember, the closest thing to humans in anatomy and biology (primates) is not very much different from birds in terms of "how it presents human-like" behavior.

So, as a counter argument, I would ask: what makes the difference of thinking between a primate and a bird so different to you? Is it their anatomy that prevents you from anthropomorphizing it so readily? Or do you also think primate brains are "nothing remotely close to a human brain"?

It cannot be denied that "closeness" is a loose definition and could generate endless discussion. I tried to concede a little bit to find a reasonable common ground that is both based on rational thinking and a little bit of open mindedness.

Under such criteria, I can assert that birds might be much more intelligent than previously assumed.
by esperent | 2025-04-20 03:34:33+00:00
Have you actually extensively tried using any LLMs for help with Blender/Photoshop/other apps, or are you just speaking based on your intuition?

I use Claude for help with Blender all the time and it's amazing, for the most part. It does have an in depth knowledge of the UI and also of many specific technical ways of doing things. The main thing that it gets stuck on is UI changes between versions, and to be fair, I gets stuck on this too.

I will try this same query on Claude tomorrow when I'm in my office. I suspect it'll get it wrong as well, but it's not so much the getting wrong that I had an issue with, but how persistent Gemini was in refusing to admit error and making it seem like I was the one at fault.
by anta40 | 2025-04-20 03:35:28+00:00
Perhaps think of them as solving logical puzzles. It's fun. Even though not always related to everyday tasks.

For me, it began many years ago when reading about Hilbert's hotel paradox. Turns out our laymen's understanding about infinity isn't as really refined.

I write mobile apps for living and indeed these stuffs are irrelevant for my work.
by searealist | 2025-04-20 03:35:55+00:00
Just to clarify, many third wave shops do serve medium and dark roasts. My point is that third wave coffee shops often call a roast dark when they are actually medium or light. Additionally, I think only light roasts really qualify as third wave.

Most of the coffees you listed look like actual dark roasts.

"Full City Roast" with "lemon zest" in the flavor notes raises some red flags for me. Indeed, from the reviews: "Yum! I don't like dark roasts, and this is not a dark roast which is why I liked it. Lots of chocolate. Very smooth, not bitterness, a hint of fruit as it cools. I really enjoyed drinking this."

"Imunika Black" might also be an exception: the "blackberry" tasting note makes me think it isn't very dark.

I see more with citrus or other fruity descriptions, and I doubt those are dark roasts either.