MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by benrutter | 2025-04-15 17:21:35+00:00
I have a sort of recipe for openly discussing disagreements with someone:

1. Demonstrate that you understand their point, and concede ground where necessary (what you think is attractive about what they are saying, what it explains well, etc)

2. Explain (not tell) why it is that in spite of that, you don't hold the position they do (maybe it leads to some other conclusion, maybe there's another core principle at work)

3. Ask, with genuine curiosity, what they think about the problem you raised, how to they resolve it in their mind?

I don't think that'll necessarily make you more likely to change their mind, but you'll certainly be more likely to learn something.

And if they aren't actually interested in discussing, and are just engaging in some kind of show boating etc, it will become immediately clear because you are only leaving open the possibility of curious, open dialogue.
by JumpCrisscross | 2025-04-15 17:21:39+00:00
> I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds

Probably. But the solution almost certainly doesn't involve the federal government policing what is and isn't researched, discussed and taught. We had a system that worked. We're destroying the parts of it that worked, while retaining the parts that are novel. (Turning conservatives into a protected class, for instance--not even the CCP explicitly reserves seats for party members.)
by subjectsigma | 2025-04-15 17:21:40+00:00
If you go look at Andreas’ old videos from 5-6 years ago you can see early versions of Serenity had some sort of shortcut or app specifically for 4chan, with the clover icon and everything.

There’s actually a number of projects that started this way though I don’t know of any that grew up to be as charming and interesting as Serenity OS. Katawa Shoujo is one, though I could definitely see people complaining about the games content. The Tox encrypted messenger is one but I’m not sure that ever went anywhere.

I think most of them, like Andreas, dropped the association with 4chan pretty soon after the project started to gain real traction.
by nmilo | 2025-04-15 17:22:01+00:00
This is a distinctly western internet phenomenon. It’s decadence. There was a tweet or something that said these people 100 years ago would be chronicling every species of beetle in their local area or designing intricate alternate history about how roads would work in an anarcho-capitalist society. Now that’s autistic, but this is like on another level. Would this guy’s mom be proud he found the identity of the guy at some random party from 1921 who’s photo got stitched over with a picture of Jack Nicholson and included for a few frames at the end of the shining?
by alabastervlog | 2025-04-15 17:22:06+00:00
> In theory, that insurgent force could work against a tyrannical federal government. In practice, even if most of the people with the civilian firepower weren't supporting the tyranny I'm not sure it would work out. Conducting an insurgency against a foreign occupier is a lot different than conducting one against a domestic oppressor.

Yeah, precisely my personal take against the current "from utility" argument in the amendment's favor: it's very much not clear that they're especially useful for resisting oppressive governments, for one thing because those are often quite popular at first, and for another, because successful examples of that tend to involve a ton of foreign aid, making the role of private arms rather minor. Meanwhile, examples involving foreign invaders are extremely different (and also often involve lots of foreign aid).

Like, maybe the right deserves to stand anyway for other reasons (maybe it just ought to! Maybe it doesn't need a reason!) but I think that particular argument for it is really misguided, especially if one takes it seriously when forming one's opinions about the broader political landscape. IMO there is no meaningful safeguard against tyranny to be found in that amendment.
by bri3d | 2025-04-15 17:22:37+00:00
Oddly, it actually originates from the Ruby ecosystem - `pganalyze` initially created `libpg_query` to parse Postgres in Ruby. `libpg_query` in C does the "magic" of reformulating Postgres's query parser into an AST generator, and serializes the resulting AST into a Protobuf. Then, `pg_query` bridges that into Rust.
by Tuna-Fish | 2025-04-15 17:22:48+00:00
Animal husbandry did not start in Africa, though. It started in the fertile crescent and spread into Africa. This is very well attested in archaeological finds, and in the fact that the relevant animals were domesticated first there.

The surprising news is that the spread of animal husbandry didn't seem to accompany the spread of human genes -- the subsistence strategy was adopted by learning, not by people moving.

I don't think this is very shocking because the same thing seems to have happened elsewhere. While agriculture mostly spread by people moving, the culture that developed into all the pastoral cultures of the Eurasian steppe seem to have been hunter-gatherers living in close proximity to farmers.
by alganet | 2025-04-15 17:22:56+00:00
There are many kinds of arguments. Some arguments are psychological, not related to "winning" but understanding what makes the interlocutor tick.

The article is formulaic. It doesn't make it inherently bad.

The presenting of a persona interaction, followed by a recipe on how to deal with that, is one of those discussion tricks. Whoever answers must put itself in either the toddler's position or the adult position. Both positions are disfavorable (they're flat stereotypes)

The author is actually playing neither, it is acting as an "overseer" of silly toddlers and silly adults that engage in arguments all wrong.

It is a curious thing how far these things went.

Tantrums can happen for all kinds of reasons, and adults can engage in fruitless argument for all kinds of reasons too. It's a human thing. Sometimes, even in perfectly reasonable discussions, no one learns anything. That is also a human thing.

Changing one's point of view is something dramatic. To expect that in an argument is unreasonable, it's too high of a goal.

Just making the other part understand the subject is a lesser, more attainable objective. They don't need to agree. Sometimes I feel glad when I notice that the other part found the core of the discussion, even if they are in opposition to my view. It means that they understood the subject, which is something rare these days.
by dingnuts | 2025-04-15 17:23:02+00:00
>He comes from a music production background, so his focus is more practical and results-oriented

It's his art and his livelihood too, so it's also personal. These people want to steal his art and create a world full of soulless cheap muzak, while simultaneously putting him out of work.

Get 'em, Benn! I should go buy one of his albums.
by FloorEgg | 2025-04-15 17:23:15+00:00
Indulging in your blatant straw man argument for a moment, what if discussing these ideas and the downsides of them to society helped the world transition away from them faster and minimized the chance of backslide?

There is nothing wrong with discussing bad ideas, especially with students that aren't familiar with them, if done responsibly, with respect for the student, and facilitation of critical thinking.

This attitude that certain topics or ideas are taboo and shouldn't ever be acknowledged or discussed because they are bad is a big part of what is increasing extremism and pushing America to the brink. It's authoritarian, and it makes the nation more fragile, not stronger.
by hamburglar | 2025-04-15 17:23:17+00:00
It would be nice if they could go more into detail about how they decide whether a query is read or write. The casual mention of this makes it sound like they originally took a too-naive approach (looking at the first word) but even ignoring CTEs, you can still have an UPDATE within a SELECT subquery, which makes the problem very hard without parsing the whole query. Perhaps the C++ code extracted from pg handles this for them and returns some metadata that indicates whether there are any writes buried in the query?
by _bin_ | 2025-04-15 17:23:29+00:00
This is such a straw man. The motives behind extermination camps aren't, actually. The reasonable response to someone entering your country illegally is to remove him. This is proportionate and just. I think Trump is very much skirting the rules and figure courts will smack him over it, but it's about time we changed the system so illegals can be quickly removed without fifty thousand appeals. Otherwise the system does not work and we are conceding our borders to a flood of third-worlders, which is a bad idea.

It's also essential we alter our asylum system such that anybody who skips over another country to get here is automatically denied. If someone is fleeing guatemala and has to travel up through central America to get here, he should not be granted asylum. Stop in any one of those countries you passed along the way.

Note that legal status can be revoked for anyone besides a citizen. This is actually one of the less illegal moves trump's admin has made. I have a problem with what appears to be targeting based on support for palestine but not with the core concept: they all have to go back. Every single one of them.
by karaterobot | 2025-04-15 17:24:15+00:00
What's a different path to the solution of getting a kid to eat vegetables and go to bed? I'd say if you can get them to freely choose to do those, then you've won the argument. If it comes down to the equivalent of telling them "because I say so" in such a positive and constructive way that they don't freak out, you haven't won an argument. You have gotten what you wanted, but not by winning an argument, because the kid's opinion didn't change, just their response.

Now, what you're talking about is an extremely valuable skill—much more valuable than trying to argue with toddlers—but it's not the same thing in my opinion.
by lgas | 2025-04-15 17:24:16+00:00
> I doubt you recall being 2yrs old vividly. Or even 3.

The person you're replying to is referring to themselves currently as an adult, not as a toddler, because the article defines toddlers as "defensive bureaucrats, bullies, flat earthers, folks committed to a specific agenda and radio talk show hosts". So there are no actual toddlers under discussion here.
by PathOfEclipse | 2025-04-15 17:24:41+00:00
> An argument, though, is an exchange of ideas that ought to surface insight and lead to a conclusion.

That's one definition, I suppose, but it's not the definition you'll find in any dictionary I've seen. The author here seems to be assuming that the only valid reason to argue is to learn. People argue for many reasons other than that.

> If you’re regularly having arguments with well-informed people of goodwill, you will probably ‘lose’ half of them–changing your mind based on what you’ve learned

Again, the author's unspoken presupposition begs to be questioned. Why do most people actually argue in the public sphere? For instance, why do we have presidential debates? The candidates certainly aren't there to learn. They are not even trying to persuade their debate partner. They are arguing to convince or persuade their viewers of something. These could be undecided viewers, or they could be viewers who have already made up their mind but may either feel strengthened about their beliefs or weakened after listening.

Similarly, if I'm debating someone online, it's often less to convince that person and more to convince anyone else who might be reading. I have heard of people in real life who have read debates I've engaged in and expressed both gratitude for my willingness to do so and that they were strengthened in their beliefs on the subject.
by 9rx | 2025-04-15 17:24:46+00:00
> By definition, any update of beliefs is changing one's mind. My mind changes often...

So would you say changing one's mind is a case where one seeks a different religion (where beliefs are thrown around freely)?

I can't imagine believing in something unless it is essentially irrefutable (e.g. 1+1=2). And where I have beliefs, I'm not going to argue them. What purpose would that serve? I have already established the utmost possible confidence in that belief for it become one. I have no remaining compulsion to keep trying to see what more can be learned when I am certain there is nothing more to learn. To continue to want to learn more about something you are certain can be learned about no more must be the definition of insanity.

If we want to lean on definitions, the dictionary is equally clear that a belief hinges on acceptance. "I am 60% confident that recursion is the best method for this algorithm." means that I don't know. "I don't know" is not a state of acceptance. That is not a belief.
by mahjongmen | 2025-04-15 17:25:07+00:00
Hey Simon,

Elliott here from Cohere.

We benchmarked against Nomic's models on our consortium of datasets ranging from text-only, image-only, and mixed modalities. Without publishing additional benchmarks, I am confident in saying that our model is more performant.

At Cohere, for our embed models, we have not deprecated any of our embedding models since we started (I know because I've been there that long) and if we were to start doing so, I would take into account the worry of ensuring our users have a way of accessing our models.

One aspect here that isn't factored is also efficiency. Yes there might be strong open weight models but if you're punching at the 7bn+ weight class your serving requirements are vastly different from a throughput efficiency perspective (also your query-inference speed).

All food for thought. That being said, if for your use-case, Nomic Embed Vision 1.5 is better than Embed-v4.0, happy to hop on a call to discuss where the differential may be.
by subjectsigma | 2025-04-15 17:25:12+00:00
I might be giving 4chan too much credit but I think in your analogy it’s more akin to 80’s punk (broad subculture) than slam dancing (specific cultural phenomenon).

The way I see it, I lost interest in 4chan because I grew up and became an adult, and so did most of the Internet. We can look back and appreciate our childhood overall while also cringing at the embarrassing parts. 4chan has a lot of both good and bad memories for me and I think the broader Internet as well.
by mdp2021 | 2025-04-15 17:25:12+00:00
> Do you mean

I mean also taking care of monitoring posts and trying to steer towards and objective of discussion towards assessment, as opposed to visceral reactions, through replies.

When I submit something I try to take some relative responsibility towards the submission - through participation. When I submit something that has undesirable sides (as in, we wish this was not news), I take further responsibility in trying to make the discussion work.

> airs

We are not children. ;) By the way, you are obliged at least by the guidelines to assume we are not, whenever a doubt arises. And in general, it is more hygienic for you if you avoid going around with lowly traits painted on your glasses.
by delusional | 2025-04-15 17:25:25+00:00
I'm glad I elaborated. A complete dismissal of all IP-rights is a very fringe very radical position. Most people have a more nuanced IP-rights view about which IP-rights ought to be protected and for how long.

You'll find many more people of the opinion that authors life+70 years is too long, than you will dismissing it entirely.
by dragonwriter | 2025-04-15 17:25:29+00:00
> Do you think the legal specifics change how we view the regret over those camps today?

I think whether or not, and how, it was tied to the Alien Enemies Act is more than a little relevant to considering what purpose it can serve in discussing the Alien Enemies Act.

How we view the regret over the camps is, outside of that, mostly irrelevant to the context in which the issue was raised in this discussion.
by dylan604 | 2025-04-15 17:25:30+00:00
How is that any different than when you actually use an IRC client? You leave the chat, you leave the chat. If you're at a social gather or kick back or whatevs, if you leave the convo, the rest of the people in the group do not enter a freeze state until your return. The conversation keeps going. There's no history or log for you to scroll to catch up. You just re-enter the conversation. How you handle yourself at that point easily shows if you're nice or an asshole. Just like in IRC.
by mikepurvis | 2025-04-15 17:25:35+00:00
> and I often view such attempts as a bit patronizing or insincere

It shows up as well in modern parenting guidance, including long term studies claiming that parents who prioritize validation over correction produce children who end up not just more mature, confident, and self-assured, but also with much better adult relationships to those parents.

That said, as a parent myself, I can't help feeling some skepticism that there's a little reporting bias going on with this type of thing— that happy and successful adults report their parents affirmed and loved them unconditionally, and bitter and frustrated adults report resentment and dissatisfaction with how they were raised.

There's no question that kids need emotional safety at home, but it's also clear even in the relatively short term that allowing them the freedom to do whatever they want and then telling them afterward that none of the consequences are actually their fault and they can at any time walk away from anything that makes them feel sad or scared or overwhelmed is not the way either. Even things that should be non-negotiables like going to school have become subject to the whims of a child's day to day emotional state— are the teens who now take a "mental health day" for "self care" every time they oversleep going to eventually turn that around and be able to commit to a desk job? Or are they carrying those expectations into adulthood with them?
by steveklabnik | 2025-04-15 17:25:56+00:00
The history here is very interesting, Rust went through a bunch of design iteration early, and then it just kinda sat around for a long time, and then made other choices that made modifying earlier choices harder. And then we did manage to have some significant change (for the good) in Rust 2018.

Rust's users find the module system even more difficult than the borrow checker. I've tried to figure out why, and figure out how to explain it better, for years now. Never really cracked that nut. The modules chapter of TRPL is historically the least liked, even though I re-wrote it many times. I wonder if they've tried again lately, I should look into that.

> Another example is the trait object (dyn Trait), which allows the client of a trait to decide whether dynamic dispatch is necessary, instead of baking it into the specification of the type with virtual functions.

Here I'd disagree: this is separating the two features cleanly. Baking it into the type means you only get one choice. This is also how you can implement traits on foreign types so easily, which matters a lot.
by layer8 | 2025-04-15 17:26:02+00:00
Nested threading for long-running threads only really makes sense when you can manage the “read” status per post (as in Usenet and mailing lists). Otherwise, new “leaves” or subthreads in the thread tree are all over the place, and you don’t know which you’ve already seen/read and which you haven’t. Web forums generally only track a single “water mark” per thread for how far you’ve already read, which more or less implies that only chronological order makes sense. You still have hyperlinked indications of which post is replying to which other post, via quotes.
Show HN: Templar – Declaring Dependencies in Go Templates
by flashgordon | 2025-04-15 17:26:12+00:00
I've been working with Go's templating libraries for a while and kept running into the same issue: managing dependencies between templates.

The standard libraries (text/template and html/template) are great, but they lack built-in declaralation for dependencies and you have to resort to code to carefully curate and load your templates in a particular order.

So I wrote a little library that acts as a preprocessor (with a few loader utilities to kick it off) to manage dependencies at the point of authoring so context is all now local. The goal of this is to just provide some basic building blocks for declaring and resolving dependencies. Goal is NOT to be a full fledged templating library or anything like that (Pongo and Templ do a lot here). I just did not want to stray from - at-least what I felt was - a pretty solid Go's stdlib and templating syntax.

Would love to get feedback (and contributors/help ofcourse). Would this be something y'all would find useful?
by KennyBlanken | 2025-04-15 17:26:20+00:00
Well, there is the small matter of a number of right-wing politicians in the US using musician's works without permission, not to mention those musicians not agreeing with said politician's extremist views.

What's particularly funny is when that extremist politician is too stupid to understand the meaning of the song they're playing. I think the most famous example would be a certain somebody who kept playing Fortunate Son at his rallies, both him and the crowd oblivious to the fact that nearly every verse's criticism directly applies to him. A rich kid who got out of serving in Vietnam, cheated on his taxes at every opportunity, and is screaming about how great the country is while vilifying a demographic that has always been one of the strengths of our society.

I'd say that "respecting the property rights of the creative class" is very much indeed a 'left wing' perspective, too. Not just on a moral issue of "stealing their work is wrong" but also because artists very often mock or satirize right-wing personalities and platforms - punching up. Right wing artists tend to just punch down at society's weakest.
by _bin_ | 2025-04-15 17:26:28+00:00
Are we just pretending that calls for political violence aren't more or less de rigueur in today's political climate? Years of "fiery but mostly peaceful" protests, of people celebrating the multiple assassination attempts on Trump, etc. I'm "both sidesing" this not out of a pathological compulsion to defend right-wingers but because pretending this is unique to the right wing means we'll misidentify the underlying cause and fail to fix it.
by pomarie | 2025-04-15 17:26:37+00:00
Yeah, that's a totally legit point!

The good news with mrge is that it works just like any other AI code reviewer out there (CodeRabbit, Copilot for PRs, etc.). All AI-generated review comments sync directly back to GitHub, and interacting with the platform itself is entirely optional. In fact, several people in this thread mentioned they switched from Copilot or CodeRabbit because they found mrge's reviews more accurate.

If you prefer, you never need to leave GitHub at all.
by Imnimo | 2025-04-15 17:26:42+00:00
Any new "defense" that claims to use adversarial perturbations to undermine GenAI training should have to explain why this paper does not apply to their technique: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.12027

The answer is, almost unfailingly, "this paper applies perfectly to our technique because we are just rehashing the same ideas on new modalities". If you believe it's unethical for GenAI models to train on people's music, isn't is also unethical to trick those people into posting their music online with a fake "defense" that won't actually protect them?
by aminoche | 2025-04-15 17:26:48+00:00
I’ve been deep in the Bitcoin vs Monero debate for years—but the deeper I go, the more I see this isn’t a rivalry. It’s a false binary.

Bitcoin’s transparency made it credible—but also legible to power. Monero’s privacy made it resistant—but also institutionally sidelined.

The post argues that Bitcoin is the best vault humanity’s ever built—and Monero is the best disguise. One is how you store sovereignty. The other is how you move without being mapped.

Together, they form a complete personal monetary stack.

Would love to hear what HN thinks: can privacy and auditability coexist—or are we locked into choosing between legitimacy and liberty?