MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by A_D_E_P_T | 2025-04-11 20:00:28+00:00
"AI Safety" in that particular context is easy: Keep humans in the loop and don't give AIs access to sensitive systems. With certain small antipersonnel drones excepted, this is already the policy of all serious militaries.

Besides, that's simply not what the LW crowd is talking about. They're talking about, e.g., hypercompetent AIs developing novel undetectable biological weapons that kill all humans on purpose. (This is the "AI 2027" scenario.)

Yet, as far as I'm aware, there's not a single important discovery or invention made by AI. No new drugs, no new solar panel materials, no new polymers, etc. And not for want of trying!

They know what humans know. They're no more competent than any human; they're as competent as low-level expert humans, just with superhuman speed and memory. It's not clear that they'll ever be able to move beyond what humans know and develop hypercompetence.
by seydor | 2025-04-11 20:01:28+00:00
Facebook's boss has repeatedly shown that he's an amoral hypocrite , most blatantly after Trumps election. I m not particularly sympathetic to palestinians but what's going on here. Its not just Israel, facebook has succumbed to authoritarian governments like Turkey in the past. The ubiquity of facebook and its monopolies are directly contradicting the spirit of democratic Constitutions worldwide. What's the point of guaranteeing freedom of expression when a single entity/person controls the attention of billions and billions of people.

I think we need a rethink of freedom of press laws in the age of international monopolies.
by umachin | 2025-04-11 20:01:52+00:00
VMware has also had a patent on live VM cloning (called it VMfork) for quite a few years now. I worked on the team that built related features. Feature itself was in the desktop product. https://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2016/02/horizon-7-view-instant-...

Live migration had some very cool demos. They would have an intensive workload such as a game playing and cause a crash and the VM would resume with 0 buffering.
by anon7000 | 2025-04-11 20:01:58+00:00
> I also don't see how this is significantly different from their "dear colleague" letters which seem to be simply distributed on their website. I would not call this page a "better platform" for this information:

That page is public and accessible by anyone on the internet without an account. Not the case with Twitter.

Share posts on any social media forums, sure, but a data-driven decision would not put information EXCLUSIVELY on a private, shared, for-provite platform owned by an unelected government official. That's just corruption. It's pretty fucking simple.

A data-driven outcome would be "hey, we support hundreds of millions of people with different preferences and abilities, so we should probably use multiple platforms and ensure our information is as easy to access as possible." Which, btw, is not costly to do.
by fc417fc802 | 2025-04-11 20:02:21+00:00
It's worth considering how remarkably broken that system is. The end result is detention or deportation of a highly skilled professional with ongoing employment in the US. That's not someone who would typically be considered a flight risk or an overstay risk.

Requiring one to return home to reapply also never made any sense for student visas, at least when it comes to graduate level research. Academics at state funded institutions who are paid off of government grants aren't generally people you need to worry about sticking around if their visa is denied. Neither is it clear why you would ever want to deny a visa to such a person to begin with.
by layer8 | 2025-04-11 20:02:54+00:00
From this article and others, it’s still unclear to me what the state-handling and state-sharing model of Erlang is. Presumably, the granularity of the crashing/restarting sequential processes is also the granularity of in-memory state sharing. But what about external state, like databases, queues, file systems? For example, if a process has taken an item off a queue and then crashes before having fully processed it, how is that accounted for? Or you might not even know from the outside if it has been fully, partially, or not at all processed yet. This is an example where correct error handling or not crashing is crucial, in my experience. Or what about processing pipelines where a component in the middle crashes. Is there something like that in Erlang? Is there an article explaining Erlang from that perspective?
by Spivak | 2025-04-11 20:03:13+00:00
That's no fun. Instead let's play a game. One of these logos was made by a professional design firm and cost over $1,000,000. The other two I just generated. The gap between well-known national brands with millions of dollars to hire the best and what normal companies actually get is massive.

https://imgur.com/a/5En58cl
by rgbrgb | 2025-04-11 20:03:15+00:00
neat idea. random tiny piece of site feedback: make the hero backgrounds dark so that the text is legible as the image loads in.

more constructively, this is the kind of code ai is great at writing in my codebase and once it’s there locally as a library, it’s free. it’s not clear to me why I’d want it behind an api instead, at least as a solo-ish dev. I’d recommend looking at the similar openrouter that seems to have some traction and think about why users are using them. You might also think about deeper agent or eval stuff you could add that are beyond the scope of the little backend switching lib I could have Claude write. Anyway, good luck and thanks for sharing!
by axegon_ | 2025-04-11 20:03:24+00:00
True but the mass adoption and flooding social media was far more gradual compared to the US still - all the big social media came out of the US really, so did all the massively centralized services. Computers in general have a steep learning curve so they are at large useless for remote rural areas in the US(in Europe you are never too far from a large city with universities and all the modern day creature comforts). Smartphones on the other hand are basic commodity with no entry barrier. 200 bucks and you have access to infinite and unfiltered information, which is what ultimately seems to have caused the issue: Across Europe(like mentioned before) we were all(and sadly still are) collectively playing catch up. And again - Nordics are all too familiar with how russia operates, whereas the US is still far from figuring it out. Hence the reason Europe is far more immune to it, although many are still falling victim. Europe also knows how to protest, which is still at large something the US has no clue about. Imagine if the leader of any large European country shamelessly pulls a pump and dump the way Trump did (twice as a matter of fact) this week. People in Europe pull out their pitchforks for infinitely less.
by EA-3167 | 2025-04-11 20:03:28+00:00
Of all the things going on now, a slip of the tongue seems pretty benign, doubly so compared to the CONTENT of the message in question which is somewhat alarming (albeit inevitable). George W. Bush would crank out far more nonsensical phrases on a weekly basis, Reagan was a mumbling goon, Nixon was a lunatic.

People who think that we just woke up to find that politics was messy and full of incompetence baffle me. It's possible to believe that Trump is a disaster and still keep a measure of objectivity.
by dang | 2025-04-11 20:03:57+00:00
Thanks! Macroexpanded:

In the Calls of Bonobos, Scientists Hear Hints of Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43601682 - April 2025 (2 comments)

Bonobos' calls may be the closest thing to animal language we've seen - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43575088 - April 2025 (12 comments)
by zzrrt | 2025-04-11 20:04:16+00:00
> Do you have examples of the executive doing this to citizens

Feels like moving the goalposts. First they were going to clear out "illegals" by any means, now the line includes any non-citizens. Granted maybe you personally didn't say both though.

> Have you considered how allowing non-citizens to spread discontent within a country could be abused?

Is it meaningfully different from allowing citizens to "spread discontent"? Why not just start taking everybody's 1st amendment rights, by the same logic? I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure there's long precedent that non-citizens are granted most of the same rights, including freedom of speech and assembly.

If non-citizens are being supported, instructed, etc by their government in spreading discontent, there are probably laws like espionage for that; you don't have to take away everybody else's freedom to stop them.
by Wowfunhappy | 2025-04-11 20:04:55+00:00
> I don't think it's about expense, it's more about hiding the fact that their catalogue is actually really small.

I agree with you for Netflix.

However, Youtube's catalog is almost certainly larger today than it was a decade ago. Even if you could somehow weight by quality, I think it would be hard to argue that Youtube's content catalog has gotten worse. Maybe average quality per video has gone down, but there is so much content on Youtube nowadays, assuming you're able to find it.

I'm not sure about Spotify.
by anon7000 | 2025-04-11 20:05:19+00:00
Government bureaucrat (Elon) owns a massive, private Social Media company. He has power to fire basically anyone, seemingly. Exclusivity agreements with private companies have NO FUCKING PLACE in public governments. If the owner of said platform is actually part of the government, it's pure corruption.

Elon: divest from your private assets or get the fuck out of the government. Otherwise you're a corrupt official.
by scott_w | 2025-04-11 20:05:49+00:00
There’s a school of thought in management where you get your team to lean into their strengths and find ways to mitigate their weaknesses, rather than spend much time on them. The idea is, if you’re a person who moves quickly vs going super deep on every possible use case, you’ll always be shit at going super deep (I know I am), so you’re better off getting even faster and pairing with a deep investigator to cover your blind spot. And vice versa, of course.
by BrenBarn | 2025-04-11 20:06:17+00:00
> None of these topics (calculus, complex analysis, and trigonometry) require prior knowledge about specifically, so why bring it up using compound interest?

This seems like kind of a silly question. The reason is that e is usually introduced before you learn about calculus. You might learn about complex numbers before e, but not in any way that would make "e^i*pi = -1" understandable or even interesting. And you'll certainly learn about e before learning what it means for a function to be periodic in the complex plane.

The reason to start with compound interest isn't that these other topics require prior knowledge of e, it's that they require prior knowledge of those topics. The compound interest explanation doesn't require prior knowledge of anything, because you can build it from the ground up in explaining the concept of compound interest and exponential growth. It's also an explanation with obvious practical relevance. There's still a bit of a leap of faith in assuming anyone will find it interesting that that limit converges to this one particular number, but it's a smaller leap than is required to get people to care about anything involving complex numbers.
by Capricorn2481 | 2025-04-11 20:06:56+00:00
"The abundant evidence of genocide is just Iran tricking you" is not the take I thought I'd see, but here we are.

We are in a thread about how pro-Palestinian posts are being suppressed. You seem to be under some illusion that people who disagree with you are unaware of how content affects them. But what you're proposing is being a contrarian. I am not going to drink lead paint because the social media tells me not to.

That Israel gave another state perfect ammunition to demonize them does not make what Israel's doing any less real. That's just a dumb mistake they made. I can monitor what content is making its way to me, because I don't trust Iran either. I am aware that things will be exaggerated and misreported. But I am going to evaluate evidence, not throw everything out the window.
by s1artibartfast | 2025-04-11 20:07:20+00:00
I don't know enough details about to say how long is reasonable to collect facts and develop a plan. If I had to guess, it would be possible.

It is an extraordinary and unprecedented situation, and I'm not sure what the SCOTUS decision requires because the situation is such a mix of diplomacy and DOJ actions.

Does the head of ICE just call the president of el salvador? Does the order require DJT to do it? What if Bukele says "no"?

Either way, from a constitutional perspective there is a big difference between the executive saying they can't do something and flat out refusing.
by MayeulC | 2025-04-11 20:07:25+00:00
I am not a Lisp expert by any stretch, but let's clarify a few things:

1. Just for the sake of other readers, we agree that the code you quoted does not compile, right?

2. `let` is analogous to a scope in other languages (an extra set of {} in C), I like using it to keep my variables in the local scope.

3. `let` is structured much like other function calls. Here the first argument is a list of assignments, hence the first double parenthesis (you can declare without assigning,in which case the double parenthesis disappears since it's a list of variables, or `(variable value)` pairs).

4. The rest of the `let` arguments can be seen as the body of the scope, you can put any number of statements there. Usually these are function calls, so (func args) and it is parenthesis time again.

I get that the parenthesis can get confusing, especially at first. One adjusts quickly though, using proper indentation helps.

I mostly know lisp trough guix, and... SKILL, which is a proprietary derivative from Cadence, they added a few things like inline math, SI suffixes (I like that one), and... C "calling convention", which I just find weird: the compiler interprets foo(something) as (foo something). As I understand it, this just moves the opening parenthesis before the preceding word prior to evaluation, if there is no space before it.

I don't particularly like it, as that messes with my C instincts, respectively when it comes to spotting the scope. I find the syntax more convoluted with it, so harder to parse (not everything is a function, so parenthesis placement becomes arbitrary):

let( (bar-x(bar(x)) quux-y(quux(y))) foo(bar-x quux-y z) )
by AIPedant | 2025-04-11 20:07:32+00:00
No, because "bad dancer" is used to illustrate meaning changing in a complex way; it is a person who is bad at dancing, not a bad person who is dancing. Whereas "bad banana" is a bad banana; "bad" operates the same way as "yellow" on "banana", but "bad" and "blonde" operate differently on "dancer."

Really seems like you're trying to enforce your own form of political correctness here - "PC" is associated with certain progressives, but the problem is policing language and picking fights over trivial nonsense.
by cmurf | 2025-04-11 20:07:50+00:00
Presumption of regularity with the DOJ is collapsing and an inquisitorial system doesn't scale.

The government has consistently failed to provide any evidence of its assertions in this case. And fired one of its lawyers in this case, and his manager, for telling the court the truth.

I expect the DOJ intends to disobey the lower court until the end. And will eventually claim Garcia has died in order to render the case moot.

If the government can't be compelled to produce Garcia on U.S. soil while alive, why trust whatever evidence it provides that he has died?

The government admits to an aggregiously derelict mistake in this case, itself ignoring the order of a lower court. And now claim they can't or won't ask the autocracy they're paying to run prisons abroad for basic information on the whereabouts of a prisoner the government transferred there.
by seba_dos1 | 2025-04-11 20:08:18+00:00
Selling something with a markup is how business works. It's up to consumer to decide whether the added value is worth the markup. Seems like it's not for you.

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread already, while the Librem 5 is becoming dated, there's still no upgrade path on the market. You need to switch to a completely different category of devices in order to get something more performant than that. I hope that'll change soon, regardless of whether it will be Purism coming up with L5v2 or someone else with their own thing.
by BoingBoomTschak | 2025-04-11 20:08:40+00:00
Nothing misunderstood here. Only someone seriously naïve or disingenuous would arrive at the conclusion that money is the main drive of such people who have already so much that they don't know what to do with it. Especially without proofs, as a "this can only be it!" position.

I'd rather believe wanting power for power's sake than this cartoon idea of an old duck diving into a pool of well-polished coins.

Truth is that beyond a few truly neurotic exceptions, the obscenely rich do use their money. Just not all in supercars and yachts, but also to influence what they can.
by breppp | 2025-04-11 20:08:57+00:00
HRW is a "complicated" organization. It took money from Saudis in return for not advocating for LGBT rights in the middle east [1]. It agreed to take money from the Qatari government, a government that also supports Hamas [2][3] and is involved in corruption cases and buying of politicians all over the world.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/03/02/human-rights-watch-took-...

[2] https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/1700763578-human-...

[3] https://www.memri.org/reports/raven-project-leaks-alleged-qa...
by dwedge | 2025-04-11 20:09:04+00:00
I fear old reddit is going to be killed off this year. They're getting rid of the red envelope for messages/replies, they've pushed the notification and chat with red icons into old reddit and more and more content seems to "accidentally" link to new reddit.

They left it alone for years but now they're converging them, looks like it's only a matter of time
by philsnow | 2025-04-11 20:09:46+00:00
> Why, oh why, must the love stories fail?

Well, Julia's (and then Charles's) love for God prevails, in the end.

On the face of it, it's not a story where the guy gets the girl, as such. However, there is a sense where Jesus is the bridegroom of the Church, and thus it is that kind of story, just not the way that readers expect (well, as Oliver points out, until they read the title of the section "The Twitch on the Thread").
by parsimo2010 | 2025-04-11 20:10:34+00:00
> why is compound interest divided linearly even though the growth is exponential?

Because calculus (with real numbers) is usually covered before complex numbers are introduced in a standard course of study, and the default now is to introduce e and trig functions early so we can talk about their derivatives as soon as we cover the concept of a derivative (this is called "early transcendentals"). So students have covered limits and summation fairly early in their post-graduate education, and complex numbers come later (or not at all, depending on their major). So it is easiest to introduce e as the concept of a limit. Sums are much easier to calculate with uniform interval widths. In real life we also do this- we update bank accounts with updates occurring regularly in time (like a batch job running at midnight every night, or at the end of every week, etc.). So the concept of dividing this update inteval into ever-smaller pieces but keeping the intervals uniformly spaced, is directly applicable to how this is applied in this real-world application.

The fact that compounded interest is the most common illustration is because it is one of the few things that almost every college student will come across in real life, so it is a good example. Even if many students don't care about the value of e, it is a great practical lesson that if you are comparing interest rates you need to use a common time base or you might be misled, which is why we require banks to tell you the APY.

Hardly anyone except mathematicians, physicists, and electrical engineers will care about complex exponentials. They are beautiful but not intuitive to many young students. As a side note, there is a style of education that introduces transcendental functions after the fundamental calculus has been covered (and therefore might be appropriate for defining e as the number satisfying d/dx e^x = e^x). This is not standard in the USA anymore, but the "late transcendentals" is a pedagogical approach that is used in some parts of the world.
by bawolff | 2025-04-11 20:11:16+00:00
The missing part of this article: are the requests valid? Are they actually incitements to terrorism and violence or is it just a clamp down on criticism? The headline of the article implies the latter but the body does not provide any evidence for that.

Like there is a war going on, a pretty nasty one at that. I would expect there to be quite a lot of incitement to violence related to that. I would expect the israeli government to be mostly concerned with incitements of violence against its citizens. In the context of this conflict i would expect such incitements to be mostly be made by the demographics cited in the article due to the nature of the conflict. The article seems like it could be entirely consistent with take downs being used appropriately. It needs more then this to prove its headline.

Heck, from this post we dont even know relative numbers. How does this compare against take down requests from other groups?
by mrguyorama | 2025-04-11 20:11:23+00:00
>If there's a continuity of experience from your present day life to your virtual life

There cannot be. There isn't even a continuity of experience for when you go to sleep.

It doesn't matter at all how perfect the copy is, because I STILL AM ME.

Brain uploading has never made sense because, well, I can't fit in the wires.

It doesn't matter that some digital simulation of my brain activity happens, and that the simulation feels like it was me and now is an immortal simulation, because I still die. My consciousness cannot be transported to software.
by Mister_Snuggles | 2025-04-11 20:11:36+00:00
The section on the author's background could have almost been written by me. I'm also a PeopleSoft developer, and the ability to build fully-functional CRUD apps without needing to know about HTML, JavaScript, Browsers, etc, is severely underappreciated. For very simple CRUD pages, no code is required. For developing line-of-business apps it's actually an incredible toolset.
by fragmede | 2025-04-11 20:11:39+00:00
> After playing the game for 10+ hours

You paid $30 for it. Did you get $30 worth of entertainment from it? $3/hr sounds pretty good, and if all it did was not live up to your expectations because of what other people been saying, I'd say that's still money well spent, just you gotta adjust how much stock you put into what those particular people say as relates to good you enjoy something.
I think I know why Collatz does that thing it does
by stuartriffle | 2025-04-11 20:11:59+00:00
The normal term for this is "manic delusion of grandeur", so please help me out:

3n walks congruence classes +1 steps each one out of alignment /2 never changes that fact

Accumulating co-primeness is the "memory" that stops n from repeating. This is invariant under 2^k, which allows it to make forward progress through the chaos. Exhausting congruence classes mod 3 forces n to a power of 2; game over.

I asked AI to prove those things, and it did. I assume.

The only question then would be if 1.5n can grow the residue vector quickly enough to outrun the exhaustive walk. I asked AI that too, and got back a one page p-word. I'm not even going to type it.

I can sweet-talk AI into agreeing with damned near anything, so I'm stuck. This is the only forum I know with consistently thoughtful conversation, and I can't think my way out of this one, and I have real work to do.

Is there a mathematician in the house?