MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mrguyorama | 2025-04-21 18:43:29+00:00
>Do you feel that's up for debate?

Over 2000 years of philosophy would say hell yeah it's debatable.

Without some belief in a "higher power", there is nothing inherent about anything to do with humans. Sure, we can CHOOSE to ascribe every human as having value and a sanctity to human life that means we should harshly react to those who take human life for granted or cause suffering, and I absolutely and emphatically take that view, that human life is important and humans have a right to things like dignity.

But pretending that it is "inherent" is a lie. It's a thought terminating language game. Pretending that such dignity or rights are inherent only plays into those who wish to remove them. They must be CONSTANTLY and AGGRESSIVELY defended and fought for BECAUSE they are not inherent.

If we do not enforce human rights, they do not exist.

Human rights are an outcome of a regulated society. Rights can only exist when a "higher power" DOES exist, so without a god to enforce things, we must make our own higher power to enforce rights. The State.

The only inherent rights in nature are physics, chemistry, and biology. They aren't very conducive to society in general, and certainly not one that wants to build smartphones or farms.
by derefr | 2025-04-21 18:43:42+00:00
Given usernames-as-domains, is there a reason to not just piggyback this on the X.509 web of trust?

After all, we already have an established and highly-monitored set of sibling "trust roots" — we call them Certificate Authorities.

And we already have an identity-validation system coupled onto X.509 FQDN-as-CN (i.e. TLS) certificates — certificate validation levels.

BlueSky could just:

1. require a domain username for verification;

2. require that the domain presents an Organization Validated (OV) cert for verification as a "public individual" (i.e. the kind with a "personal brand" — which usually implies "worth registering as an LLC");

3. require that the domain presents an Extended Validation (EV) cert for verification as a corporation.

...and the whole problem of identity validation becomes outsourced, and federated, and decentralized. (Federated because multiple sibling CAs; decentralized because every computer administrator gets to decide for themselves which CAs their machine should trust.)

---

A rebuttal might be that "EV certs can't be used for this, because EV certs are too expensive, take too long to get, and don't integrate well with automatic per-subdomain DV cert issuance via ACME."

But (IMHO) that's not a problem to be worked around; that's a problem to be fixed. Why leave a broken generalized web-of-trust infrastructure sitting there unused?

If an online casino can KYC/AML you in two minutes with a passport scan and a 3D camera photo, it shouldn't be impossible to do for OV+EV validation what we did for DV validation with ACME. (Ideally in such a way that you can do the interactive process once, receiving not a cert, but some kind of collateral; and then, later on, any ACME server should accept that collateral during an interactive domain ownership probe, to upgrade the DV cert it's issuing you into an OV/EV cert.)

---

The other neat thing about this approach is that, in a "fat" native BlueSky app (i.e. not just an Electron wrapper), the app wouldn't have to trust the BlueSky service to say who's verified. The app could TLS-validate each domain username itself, to compute the appropriate badge for that user — just as a web browser does when you visit a website. And it would presumably use your machine's OS TLS CA store for that validation, just as (some) browsers do.
Ask HN: How do you find users to talk to?
by v1log | 2025-04-21 18:44:19+00:00
I am an engineer turned founder after job loss in 2023. Both me and my cofounder are technical. We have built one small product that essentially did not do well. We earned non-zero revenue but very small and not enough to say they were living expenses. We did some amount of marketing but not enough. My introspection tells me that this happened because we built without good ICP or any feedback from users.

We are now pivoting and searching for next idea to build that can earn us living expenses on the US west coast (~7k for 5 people). Job market is still very difficult. I am dipping in my savings but this model is not sustainable for a long term.

My question is how do you find users and customers? I am mostly relying on LinkedIn. Previously, I tried cold email without much success. My product ideas are around Sales and Marketing. Developer market is even harder to crack with all noise from BigCos and likes of Cursor, Windsurf et al.

How and where do I find users to talk to? Where do I find these cohort of people that can at least respond to user interviews or MVP feedback. I don't have good network and that hurting most.

I would appreciate your insights and if you have built a company any guidance on finding users.

As a sidenote, it has become miraculously difficult to get a job as a developer in late 30s.
by iamleppert | 2025-04-21 18:44:21+00:00
If a big tech company shows any interest in your open source project, don't ever assume there are any good intentions. Never agree to any meeting or unpaid work, or do any work or go out of your way for them unless you have a contract. Be extra careful when dealing with a big company, because they have a lot of resources and do not care about you or your project.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-04-21 18:44:38+00:00
> you mean the Wikipedia articles? Which details?

Takeoff times and ships.

> didn't shoot down the F-117 as it landed or took off, but in the air over Serbia

In Serbia they had a full mission profile. The commonality is knowing where something will be when. The difference between the situations is hitting something low, slow and above a relatively-uniform body like the ocean is a lot easier than doing so when it’s high and fast.
by icarito | 2025-04-21 18:45:08+00:00
Yeah absolutely, I've just got to point where I'm happy with the architecture so I'll continue to add UI. I've just added support for fragments and I've thought to add them as if they were attached documents. I've in the radar to switch models in mid conversation and perhaps the ability to rollback a conversation or remove some messages. But yeah, system prompt and parameters would be nice to move too! Thanks for the suggestions!
by gh0stcat | 2025-04-21 18:45:12+00:00
You've perfectly captured my experience as well, I typically only trust it and have good experiences with LLMs when I have enough domain expertise to get to at least a 95% confidence the output is correct. (Specific to my domain of work, I don't always need "perfect"). I also can mostly use it as a first pass for getting the idea of where to begin research, after that I lose confidence that the more detailed and advanced content it is giving me is accurate. There is a gray area though where a domain expert might have a false sense of confidence, and over time experience "Skill Drift", where they lose expertise because they are only ever verifying a lossy compression of information, rather than re-setting their context with real world information. I am mostly concerned with that last bit.
by bryanlarsen | 2025-04-21 18:45:17+00:00
China's coal usage is down 5% in the last 12 months: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/20/chinas-coal-generation-...

They're adding coal capacity quickly, but they're lowering the capacity factor of that usage even faster. Those coal plants are peakers that only run when solar & batteries are empty.
by mishkinf | 2025-04-21 18:45:17+00:00
a grassroots nonprofit defining a democratically managed global currency around four simple ideas—one government, one vote; transparent blockchain accounting; automatic trade‑balance rules; and jobs as a human right. with de‑dollarization chatter, tariff war, the cbdc arms race, china & the brics pushing their own monetary bloc, and ai upending work, it feels pretty timely...
by rundmc | 2025-04-21 18:45:19+00:00
Great entertainment although the Simpsons did the best fictional Tontine IMHO:https://tontine.com/videos/simpsons/

That said, each Last Will & Testament creates the same scenario and (unlike in a Tontine) you typically know who you are in the Will alongside but this still doesn't seem to result in a spate of murder cases either.
by fp64 | 2025-04-21 18:45:46+00:00
A long time ago there was this “web of trust”, I don’t think it exists anymore. Was one of the big CA and you could get different certificates through some form of vouching, I think it even went as far as meeting people to show your ID and then they sign you or something. As it was run by a big CA, not really distributed but IIRC they kept their involvement minimal. It’s been a long time but if you’re curious maybe look into that
by alexdanilowicz | 2025-04-21 18:46:03+00:00
Do you have the prompt you used for Gemini 2.5 pro? I think it would be interesting comparing prompt for prompt!

In this case, it looks like the Gemini output that you linked — as you mentioned — doesn't include the requirement for a scrambler/solver/timer, so it's hard for me to comment directly on the comparison.

I ask because we can totally add Gemini 2.5 pro as one of the models we use under the hood!
by Graphon1 | 2025-04-21 18:46:14+00:00
Interesting. I had the exact opposite experience recently.

I've also been writing code for a long time, did the 6502 assembly thing way back when, and lots since then. For this current project I wanted to build a web app with a frontend in Angular and a backend in Java 21 relying on javalin.io for the services layer. It had a few other integrations as well - into a remote service requiring OAuth and also into subtlecrypto. After less than 10 hours I had a fully functioning MVP that was far superior to anything I could have created without an assistant. It gave me build files, even a test skeleton. Restyling the UI or reflowing the UX to include confirmations, additional steps, modals, ... was really easy. I just had to type it, and those changes would get made. It felt like I was "director of development" for a day.

I used Aider, plugged into Gemini 2.5.
by roguecoder | 2025-04-21 18:46:53+00:00
EEE assumes open source software is only going to be created if it is widely used. As soon as that isn't true, it is irrelevant.

It was effective against companies that relied on interoperability and profited when people used their software projects. On the other hand, if someone wants to add features that my project can't support, it changes nothing about my life or work.

When the goal is "make the best software possible", the $MegaCorp would only compete by making software that is better that what is available in the open source ecosystem. That doesn't take anything away from anyone else. It is a Pareto improvement: people can pay and have even better software, or not pay and use the still-good free option.
Show HN: I Made Cursor.ai for the Browser
by ark296 | 2025-04-21 18:47:08+00:00
Hi HN,

I built Sophon, a chrome extension that allows you to chat with tabs. Here's a write up I did reflecting on my build process.

https://open.substack.com/pub/retconnedone/p/my-journey-to-b...

Would love to hear your thoughts!
by crazygringo | 2025-04-21 18:47:16+00:00
But... it usually does. For example, try:

Decimal('3.0') / 2

It works fine. It doesn't work with a float, which is for good reason. That's the whole point -- its general philosophy is to be pretty liberal with types, except when there's a good reason not to be. Heck, you can even do dumb things like:

4 + True

And get 5 back. If that's not "blindly interchanging different types for no good reason" then I don't know what is. You can even multiply your Decimal object by False and get an answer...

Or it's like my original example -- the Regex module isn't restricted to r-strings. It happily works with regular strings. Python's general philosophy is to handle input liberally. Even type hinting is an add-on. Now, it doesn't go as far as JavaScript in allowing e.g. "4"+1, but it's still awfully liberal. I just don't see how you can claim otherwise.
by hollerith | 2025-04-21 18:47:28+00:00
I grew up and chose to remain in the US, and I have never seriously questioned the American norm around speech, but if I lived in a society that never had such a norm, I imagine I would regard the advocates for introducing such a norm into my society to have the burden of proof that doing so would be worth it.

I respect the advocates who make a consequentialist argument for the norm, but not the advocates that say that free speech is a natural right or a God-given right and believe that that settles the question.
by gruez | 2025-04-21 18:47:32+00:00
I'd take that with a grain of salt. I've went through the process to cancel an uber one trial recently, and I would say it's not anywhere near "23 screens". Maybe the user in question got unlucky and got hit with all the A/B trials, and they're being super generous with what counts as a "screen", but the process was relatively painless.
by actsasbuffoon | 2025-04-21 18:47:46+00:00
And even then, there are appropriate and inappropriate times to bring up certain pieces of information.

For example, I’m not embarrassed about the fact that my mom died when I was young. But it would be deeply weird to open a job interview by saying, “Hi, I’m [name] and my mom died when I was young.”

I’m not hiding that information from employers. But maybe we should know one another a little better before I bring it up.
by thethirdone | 2025-04-21 18:47:48+00:00
The study is testing a very specific type of "recognizing shapes"; which the title of the article calls "geometric regularity". The "background stimuli" are shapes that crows would be expected to be able to distinguish, and are used to train the crows on the task. Whereas the "probe stimuli" are the actual experiment.

As a sibling indicated baboons can not distinguish these shapes easily. Additionally, rather than a binary "crows can recognize shapes" the study shows how well crows process the shapes. One of the graphs in the paper, but not the article shows that two different crows have a similarly hard time with the rhombus.

In other studies, this same test was applied to humans to find that it is a fairly innate skill rather than developed by doing geometry in school.
by pron | 2025-04-21 18:47:48+00:00
I'm sorry, but not being able to see that a design that uses a touchscreen to eliminate the keyboard is novel despite the touchscreen itself having been used elsewhere alongside a keyboard, shows a misunderstanding of what design is.

Show me the language that used a general purpose compile-time mechanisms to avoid specialised features such as generics/templates, interfaces/typeclasses, macros, and conditional compilation before Zig, then I'll say that language was revolutionary.

I also find it hard to believe that you can't see how replacing all these features with a single one (that isn't AST macros) is novel. I'm not saying you have to think it's a good idea -- that's a matter of personal taste (at least until we can collect more objective data) -- but it's clearly novel.

I don't know all the languages in the world and it's possible there was a language that did that before Zig, but none of the languages mentioned here did. Of course, it's possible that no other language did that because it's stupid, but that doesn't mean it's not novel (especially as the outcome does not appear stupid on the face of it).
by godelski | 2025-04-21 18:48:20+00:00
I don't see what the problem was with using domains. If you're trying to claim you work for NYT then get a NYT verified account?

And what ever happened to Keybase? That seemed like a good solution. Verify by public private key? It really seems like that could be extended. I mean we have things like attribute keys and signing keys. It seems like a solvable solution but just the platforms need to create a means for the private bodies to integrate their keys.

Hell, I wish we'd have verification keys for cops and gov employees. So me a badge? No, show me a badge with a key I can scan and verify your identity. It's much harder to forge a badge with a valid key than it is to forge a badge that just looks good enough
by neilv | 2025-04-21 18:48:25+00:00
Getting 'forked' (so to speak) by Microsoft was the norm, and might again be.

Up until the dotcom boom (and in the earlier days of it), one of the questions I'd heard of software startups was something like, "What will you do when Microsoft decides to own your space?"

Fortunately, the broad tech industry overall got a decade or two reprieve from that, though it might be starting to return.

A long related question, when partnering with Microsoft, which sounds like it still applies, is "What's your plan for when Microsoft stabs you in the back?"

Microsoft never had a self image of "Don't Be Evil", and is more a close releative of Cantrill's Lawnmower.

My suspicion is that ruthlessness and the long-con have deep roots in Microsoft's culture.

Microsoft only appears to play nice when it has to, and is shameless otherwise.
by dang | 2025-04-21 18:48:48+00:00
If you keep using HN primarily for political battle, we're going to have to ban you. We've already asked you to stop, and you've continued to do a ton of it. If you want to keep posting to HN, please fix this properly.

Also, please stop posting snarky and/or unsubstantive comments (like this one).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
by dimonomid | 2025-04-21 18:48:48+00:00
Re: the date/time format, I was thinking about implementing support for an option like timefmt, so you'd be able to do :set timefmt=2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00 , but postponed for now.

That's not hard to implement, however to make it persistent requires implementing some config / scriptability, which is a whole other thing and requires more thought.

Re: runit, I never tested it, but after looking around briefly, it sounds like there is no unified log file, and not even unified log format? I mean it's possible to make it work, treating every log file as a separate logstream, but I've no idea what these logs look like and whether supporting the formats would be easy.
by jannyfer | 2025-04-21 18:48:55+00:00
In my experience, when you’re within 24 hours or so of an upcoming renewal, you have to contact support to stop the renewal. And there isn’t a prominent way to contact support, because the contact form is hidden until you view a past order. That’s not really an edge case…

On another note, an actual edge case that happened to me is that I was in a different country when my Uber One was about to renew, but I had no way to cancel because the app kept geolocating me and displayed a UI specific to my visiting country. I got no Uber One benefits in that country anyway. So I had to send an email to stop renewal, and while I was waiting for a reply, I got charged. Support said they can’t refund me, and I ended up having to do a chargeback.
by conartist6 | 2025-04-21 18:48:56+00:00
That's incompatible with why I do OSS. For me OSS is the ratchet for humanity, the way we fight enshittification and force companies to innovate and compete with each other to make better things. As soon as you abandon that mission and split it into fiefdoms, you're now just the thing that true OSS has to disrupt in order for humanity as a whole to get better software.

A shame though it is, helping everybody the same amount is not likely to get your much gratitude from anyone. But that's the job.
by j45 | 2025-04-21 18:49:20+00:00
This feels like the scene from Silicon Valley about brain rape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_STfy0QQjJY

Also, many large orgs are known to do this.

Billion dollar companies are not hanging out with you to be your friend, even if you're at the table for a reason (you belong there because you know something they don't).

When speaking with big companies, you are not there to impress them.

Speak for impact + meaning, they are so big and brilliant and rich and should already know how.

There are examples where a large corporation simply sponsored the developer and development of an open source project. This should be the way.
by bell-cot | 2025-04-21 18:49:44+00:00
<sigh/>

What, exactly, is the abuse case which motivates Uber to disallow sending any message to the driver you just rode with?

Few customers would care if such messages had to fit some simple template: "I may have left my [phone|wallet|groceries|dog|cosmetics|handgun|other] in your car, please check". And it'd all be in Uber's system, so they could notice abusers or just customers with memory issues.
by xyzzy123 | 2025-04-21 18:50:00+00:00
> Once the data structures are set the coding is easy.

I don't always find this, because there's a lot of "inside baseball" and accidental complexity in modern frameworks and languages. AI assist has been very helpful for me.

I'm fairly polyglot and do maintenance on a lot of codebases. I'm comfortable with several languages and have been programming for 20 years but drop me in say, a Java Spring codebase and I can get the job done but I'm slow. Similarly, I'm fast with TypeScript/CDK or Terraform but slow with cfndsl because I skipped learning Ruby because I already knew Python. I know Javascript and the DOM and the principles of React but mostly I'm backend. So it hurts to dive into a React project X versions behind current and try to freshen it up because in practice you need reasonably deep knowledge of not just version X of these projects but also an understanding of how they have evolved over time.

So I'm often in a situation where I know exactly what I want to do, but I don't know the idiomatic way to do it in a particular language or framework. I find for Java in particular there is enormous surface area and lots of baggage that has accumulated over the years which experienced Java devs know but I don't, e.g. all the gotchas when you upgrade from Spring 2.x to 3.x, or what versions of ByteBuddy work with blah maven plugin, etc.

I used to often experience something like a 2x or 3x hit vs a specialised dev but with AI I am delivering close to parity for routine work. For complex stuff I would still try to pair with an expert.
by pseudalopex | 2025-04-21 18:50:48+00:00
Adam Smith sponsored the last bill. He said the issue being tied to immigration hindered the bill according to NPR.[1]

A National Korean American Service and Education Consortium representative said some Congress members don’t want to touch an immigration bill unless it is about border security according to AsAmNews.[2]

Over 200 House Republicans did not sponsor the last bill. Do we need a source for some Republicans not supporting citizenship for people with criminal records?

How are adoptive parents' politics relevant?

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/19/g-s1-60166/trump-immigration-...

[2] https://asamnews.com/2024/08/21/adoptees-face-deportation-un...
by rayiner | 2025-04-21 18:51:29+00:00
Don’t you think it’s a rather large coincidence that western countries just so happened to discover these “human things” and insofar as these ideas were adopted in Asia, it was after extensive intervention by western countries? In the case of south korea, for example, after military occupation by the U.S.?

Heliocentrism is an observable fact about the universe. Can you show me democracy and freedom of speech in a telescope or microscope?
by archerx | 2025-04-21 18:51:57+00:00
Llamafile is great and love it. I run all my models using it and it’s super portable, I have tested it on windows and linux, on a powerful PC and SBC. It worked great without too my issues.

It takes about a month for the features from llama.cpp to trickle in. Also figuring the best mix of context length size to vram size to desired speed takes a while before it gets intuitive.