MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by cedilla | 2025-04-17 16:11:40+00:00
The distance completely changes the dynamic. If I tell you there's a crazy axe murderer in your house, you should be afraid. If I tell you there's a crazy axe murderer on Venus, how afraid are you?

And unless we are completely wrong about physics, the maximum speed of a weapon will be the same as it today - very close to 1c.
by keiferski | 2025-04-17 16:11:46+00:00
Does that mean you never engage in multi-question dialogues exploring / trying to solve a particular problem? In other words, every query you have is unrelated to all others?

If that’s the case, it mostly just seems like you’re not working on sufficiently complex problems to find the AI useful. Or are just keeping that complexity in your head, and just bringing in the AI “as a consultant,” as it were.

If that’s the case, I recommend trying to organize your project with the AI from the start. I’ve had a lot of productive benefits from treating ChatGPT folders as ongoing conversations about a particular project, questions I have on it, random ideas, etc. Memory is absolutely crucial for my use case.
by tmerc | 2025-04-17 16:12:05+00:00
Consumer Reports was not honest about their testing for the Suzuki Samurai back in the late 80s. https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-90s-scandal-consumer-report...

Summary, the samurai passed all their standard rollover tests and got great remarks from the test drivers about its handling and maneuverability. So they changed the test specifically to make it fail, and kept trying until it failed. Then they presented that failure as happening under normal conditions, singled out the samurai by name, and said it easily rolled in cornering despite their own testing showing it was actually quite difficult to make it roll.

As a result, Suzuki and Isuzu both left the usdm. Today, the Suzuki Jimny is one of the most popular SUVs in the world and America can't have it because consumer reports lied deliberately to American consumers.
by B1FF_PSUVM | 2025-04-17 16:12:05+00:00
'At 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) long, the subject of SuBastian's footage is definitely a juvenile. Colossal squid are "estimated to grow up to 7 meters (23 feet) in length and can weigh as much as 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds), making them the heaviest invertebrate on the planet," says SOI.'

Ah, well. A footlong appetizer, so to speak ...
by harrall | 2025-04-17 16:12:10+00:00
Screens can't often do full brightness on the whole screen so if you come across a video or image that is supposed to have a higher contrast ratio, the system will darken everything and then brighten up the pixels that are supposed to be brighter.

Yes, there are formats that able to store a higher contrast ratio so that's why it doesn't happen on non-HDR content but the actual brightening of a portal on your screen isn't because of the format but because of your hardware (and software) choosing to interpret the format that way.

For more a practical example, if you had an 8-bit HDR image, 255 on the red channel (after inputting this number through a math function like HLG[1] to "extract" a brightness number) might mean "make this pixel really bright red" whereas 255 on a SDR format would mean "just regular red." However, each red channel is still a number between 0 and 255 on both formats but your hardware decided to make it brighter on the HDR format.

(Although in reality, HDR formats are often 10-bit or higher because 256 values is not enough range to store both color and brightness so you would see banding[2]. Also, I have been using RGB for my example but you can store color/brightness number many other ways, such as with chroma subsampling[3], especially when you realize human eyes are more sensitive to some colors more than others so you could "devote fewer bits" to some colors.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_log%E2%80%93gamma

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_banding

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling
Show HN: Open-Source Conversational Analytics
by otterk10 | 2025-04-17 16:13:05+00:00
Over the past two years, I’ve developed a toolkit for helping dozens of clients improve their LLM-powered products, which I'm now open-sourcing.

First up: a library to bring product analytics to conversational AI.

One of the biggest challenges I see clients face is understanding how their assistants are performing in production. Evals are great for catching regressions, but they can’t surface the blind spots in your AI’s behavior.

This gets even more challenging for conversational AI products that don’t have a single “correct” answer. Different users cohorts want different experiences. That makes measurement tricky.

Coming from a product analytics background, my default instinct is always: “instrument the product!” However, tracking generic events like user_sent_message doesn’t tell you much.

What you really want are insights like:

- How frequently do users request to speak with a human when interacting with a customer support agent? - Which user journeys trigger self-reflection during a session with an AI therapist?

- What percentage of the time does an AI tutor's explanation leave the student confused?

This new library enables these types of insights through the following workflow:

Analyzes your conversation transcripts

Auto-generates a rich event schema

Tags each message with relevant events and event properties

Sends the events to your analytics tool (currently supports Amplitude and PostHog)

Any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated!
by potato3732842 | 2025-04-17 16:13:14+00:00
Their training data is "the stupid ones" who got caught.

Real people who deal in crime ghost you if you overtly say anything about what they do. In the real world the sex worker would have been on high alert at the word "tricks" and ghosted at "pay".

Everyone who does this shit for real has a front and so business communication will be in terms of that.
by chrisweekly | 2025-04-17 16:14:03+00:00
I think you're implying that you could easily detect my sarcasm, but it wasn't sufficiently obvious sarcasm for the broader HN readership, thus risked being taken literally.

I disagree. It seemed blindingly obviously sarcastic to me -- and the rest of the comments it generated indicate the same.

EDIT: PS the peer comment by blindsight has a much more cogent critique
by ryan29 | 2025-04-17 16:14:09+00:00
> They can't target popular domains for discriminatory pricing.

That's not completely accurate. Section 2.10c of the base registry agreement says the following in relation to the uniform pricing obligations:

> The foregoing requirements of this Section 2.10(c) shall not apply for (i) purposes of determining Renewal Pricing if the registrar has provided Registry Operator with documentation that demonstrates that the applicable registrant expressly agreed in its registration agreement with registrar to higher Renewal Pricing at the time of the initial registration

Most registrars have blanket statements in their registration agreement that say premium domains may be subject to higher renewal pricing. For registry premium domains, there are no contractual limits on pricing or price discrimination. AFAIK, the registries can price premium domains however they want.
by nonethewiser | 2025-04-17 16:14:20+00:00
>I considered doing the same but in the end decided I don’t want to use a platform I have to fight against, while still letting them build brand recognition to my kid.

>So I downloaded a bunch of the videos on our desktop and blocked the site.

Downloading videos from youtube and blocking the site seems more like fighting against the platform (and more work) than turning on a whitelist mode. Seems like the end result is the same but with more work.
by jhp123 | 2025-04-17 16:14:32+00:00
> no amount of discussion is going to change their minds

It's a slow process. A MAGA extremist isn't going to read "LGBT rights are human rights!" and say "Ah, I didn't realize! Of course!" and become a liberal.

Maybe they argue with someone about how tariffs are going to be great for the country, and they don't change their mind. But a few months later their neighbor in trucking loses their job, and their friend in construction is talking about how hard it is now, and they start to have a few doubts. They think back to how the guy they were arguing with said this would happen.

And then they argue with someone that only illegal aliens are going to be deported, and they don't change their mind. But then when US citizens start being sent to the camps, they remember that they thought this wouldn't happen and even argued against it.

People do change their mind eventually. Even violent fanatics have changed their minds: the Maoist Red Guards lost steam, the IRA followed a peace process as did FARC in Colombia. If you love liberty, democracy, peace, and prosperity, then I think your best move is to persist in trying to convince MAGA extremists, while understanding that it will take a long time and potentially a lot of chaos and conflict.
by 542354234235 | 2025-04-17 16:14:34+00:00
It isn’t about the specific mode of distraction, but that most people can’t go without it for any length of time. The ability to just “be bored” and allow your thoughts and observations of things around you to ebb and flow, without some sort of instant gratification, is a skill or discipline that is eroded by content stimulation. In the same way the discipline of a balanced healthy diet is eroded by empty calories and super caloric food that messes with your reward centers. If I say I am the only one that can avoid grabbing a donut when they are brought into the office, it isn’t about donuts specifically but an illustration of the broader problem with food.
by YetAnotherNick | 2025-04-17 16:14:38+00:00
Except this is not the case. If someone whom half of the country thinks is the best person to become their president could get "cancelled" and blocked from twitter, it is hard to argue that he got cancelled the pre internet way where no one wants to listen to him.

Cancel culture today for both parties is not form of not listening or even social exclusion, but kind of active shaming.
by throwanem | 2025-04-17 16:14:43+00:00
Eh, I would say yes and no, for a couple of reasons.

First, it definitely isn't just miltech, though you are absolutely correct it is heavily that. That was top of mind for me today, but I would say there is also, for example, "light side" and "dark side" machining/mechanical content. Abom79 and Blondihacks are pure "light side". Zip Ties and Bias Plies was "dark side," though as a fellow Borderer-descended redneck asshole, I am sure that as with many former "Canadian American Patriots," he has smartened up pretty damn fast in recent months. (I wouldn't know; I got fed up with his ignorant, drunk, belligerent, impertinent comments on my government quite a long time ago.) AvE started out light side, lost his way for a while, and lately is with genuinely admirable sheepishness comporting himself so as to suggest embarrassed recognition of his prior excesses. And there are lots I just "don't recommend channel"/"not interested" as soon as I see it. I also see the same for gaming - I like some classic Doom mods that some fascist infants also have strongly stupid opinions about, for example - and from this I conclude that there is something in essentially any genre that could be pressed to support this sort of subtext-to-text transition in at least some stage. I doubt I would observe the same in makeup tutorials, for example, but the days when eyeliner improved my looks lie decades behind me now. And who knows anyway? I haven't actually checked. For all I know, half an hour of that, maybe I start hearing about "DID sfw agere unalived" and the trans-flavored "stranger danger" moral panic of the moment.

Second, miltech and history content on YT does not remotely for the most part constitute "reasonable documentaries," unless you refer to forgotten VHS and DVD transfers that are nearly never surfaced anywhere unless you search for them by name, and when you do, they spin for a glacial age before playback can begin. Not to indict modern "creators" (screenwriters, actors, directors, artists etc) en masse, of course. But few today even strive for the standard that older stuff, made before mere record-high count of eyeballs was taken as the only end, reached as a matter of course.

People do as good a quality of work today as ever, of course. It becomes available for streaming over the web only by accident and happenstance, and if that sounds like what a conspiracist would say, keep reading: sure, you'll find a million people on YT talking about the stupid Nazi UFO sex fantasy, and what the hell good is any of them? No one there will help you decide whether you think, if Lee Atwater didn't die of that damned brain tumor, we could've never ended up with Trump in the White House at all. Few I suspect could even appreciate the question.
by Braxton1980 | 2025-04-17 16:14:47+00:00
>Even many of his supporters have buyer’s remorse and didn’t expect many of the things we’ve seen from this 2nd iteration.

This is true for Elon Musk. At least in a few polls I saw a while back. Trump approval rating however is extremely high among Republicans. Of course there are always a few but this is a discussion of the masses.

I'll consider myself wrong based on the midterm election results but if Republicans keep voting Republican then any talk of disapproval or buyer's remorse is just talk
by ifyoubuildit | 2025-04-17 16:14:54+00:00
> Drinking soda has almost nothing to do with rotting teeth.

This is the first I've heard anyone say this. Got any sources to share?

> Should we take away Gatorade too?

First of all, it's not taking away, rather it's not providing. And yes, probably. Gatorade has almost as much added sugar as coke.

The guiding principle is "don't provide things that are 1) going to promote illness, and 2) cause you to have to now provide more things to deal with the problems you've caused.
by hyeonwho4 | 2025-04-17 16:15:52+00:00
When I was a child, my parents had me work on a lot of puzzles. They saw this as a way to build attention span, ability to focus, and persistence to achieve long term goals (not to mention that we had the coolest, most intricate puzzles). I would probably work with my children work on something a bit more constructive and realistic, but the point is that as children we build intellectual habits and attention span from what we do, and being unable to focus on highly addictive stimuli for more than five minutes is a symptom of a strong deficit. One might even consider it an intellectual disability.
by ezst | 2025-04-17 16:16:08+00:00
Of course it has everything to do with antitrust.

Imagine for a second that, instead of 1 Google, there are tens of thousands of alternatives. Offering good customer support becomes once again a competitive advantage. No sane customer thinks "yep, I want no recourse at all in case of problem so google's profit margins are bigger for the sake of their stakeholders".

Moreover, the cost of doing customer support grows less than linearly thanks to economies of scale, from which Google benefits disproportionally, and here again Google chose profits over quality at the expense of the consumer.
by bitbuilder | 2025-04-17 16:16:09+00:00
Yes, thank you. It feels like whenever this topic is brought up everyone argues between some false dichotomy of letting the kid binge on algorithmic slop or personally engaging with them in some wholesome activity.

Meanwhile a couple generations of us grew up with two working parents who were happy to just throw us in front of the TV or our lego sets when they needed a break. And that seemed to work fine?

Our daughter is only 2, but she's still absolutely thrilled whenever we let her zone out to some Disney movie on the TV, and has yet to even hold a tablet (that we know of, at least). I know things will probably change for us as she gets older, so I try to withold too much judgement from the parents I see happily plopping a tablet with YouTube in front of their kid. But for now, it's just hard for me to even imagine doing that.

I'm sure many would ask "whats the difference between a movie on TV amd YouTube on a tablet?" Well, tons, just from my personal experience. But her pediatrician, early child development professional we work with, and research I've read, all seem to indicate there's a pretty big difference.
by mnky9800n | 2025-04-17 16:16:20+00:00
I had to go to community college while having a job and paying for everything and doing it around my schedule. This was before most places had online options and those that did were like, university of phoenix where it seemed like it would limit you because it wasn't considered the same as a non-profit university. I don't really buy this argument that people need some kind of online experience or otherwise they would be cut out (excluding people with some kind of disability that prevents them from going places). Plenty of people were able to complete college educations by showing up to night classes prior to online classes being a thing.

After that, I worked at GaTech where one of my responsibilities was helping to build the physics portion of the masters program that you are currently in (i don't think the physics portion ever turned into a master program like OSMCS, i left around the time OSMCS started offering degrees). When building these courses we tried to implement the best information from cognitive science and education, we tried to build the best exercises, we had super active involvement in course forums, etc. We did everything right, and we still felt that something was missing from the experience from the teaching side and we did not find that students in the online side participated in the same ways, or learned the same information, as those on-campus. I still believe that most people would benefit more from in person educational experiences. I think your experience in the gatech program is a valuable one and I have heard many positive things about this program since I left to go and do other stuff. However, I still believe that there is something valuable from most educational programs being offered in person only.
by fidotron | 2025-04-17 16:16:24+00:00
In fairness to Google on this (and I cannot believe I just wrote that) it's common practice to be on both sides like this, and even to have some external exchange in the middle that you have a deal with just so you can claim it's obviously fair.

That entire industry is a horrifying shitshow of sociopathy, at the expense of absolutely everyone else, both viewers (supply side) and advertisers (demand side).
by Workaccount2 | 2025-04-17 16:16:28+00:00
The takeaway is that you can be a useful pawn while being totally unaware of it.

Kim Jung Un had his brother assassinated by local actors who were hired to star in a prank video series in Malaysia. They killed someone while being totally oblivious. An extreme example, but these entities are way smarter than the average "I never see propaganda" tiktok user. It's totally idiotic to trust them, especially authoritarian governments.
by donohoe | 2025-04-17 16:17:39+00:00
I used (abused) HDR in an editorial project last year. We were working with an amazing illustrator doing a take on series of stories exploring the intersection of faith, storytelling, and technology.

As the early versions of the images emerged we thought we could used HDR to provide more or a aura to some elements. We tried to make it subtle and not overwhelm.

This example is my favorite:

https://restofworld.org/2024/divinity-altered-reality-muslim...

I think it worked well - and this technique would have been useful. We tried something similar but could not get it to work.

Our method was to use a stretched HDR video in the background.

Here are the steps I used:

In Photoshop create white image to proportions required. Save as MP4:

File > Export > Render Video

Save as "sample.mp4"

With the MP4, generate a HDR version in WEBM:

ffmpeg -i sample.mp4 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -color_primaries 9 -color_trc 16 -colorspace 9 -color_range 1 -profile:v 2 -vcodec libvpx-vp9 sample.webm

With the plain MP4, generate the HDR version:

ffmpeg -i sample.mp4 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -color_primaries 9 -color_trc 16 -colorspace 9 -color_range 1 -profile:v high10 -vcodec libx264 sample.mp4
by griffzhowl | 2025-04-17 16:17:45+00:00
I think by the time we get to modern humans it would only be a matter of time for technology to develop to something like the current stage. The main evidence I can think of is the independent development of agriculture in about 4-5 regions, and the independent development of large complex civilizations in the Americas and Eurasia.

Humans are cultural learners, so this allowed cumulative cultural evolution from at least as far back as the transition from Olowan to Acheulean stone technologies with Homo erectus ~2-3 million years ago. By the time we get to Homo sapiens and Neanderthal this capacity for cultural learning seems much increased. Some paleoarchaeologists (e.g. Dietrich Stout) argue that technological development has been exponential as far back as H. erectus, just that the early stages of the exponential curve look flat for a long time.
by kadushka | 2025-04-17 16:18:13+00:00
I'm having trouble understanding, or perhaps, accepting, your point of view. When you say "It’s physical properties would be emulated in software", what really happens is still electrical signals flowing between transistors. "Software" is a concept - it does not exist in a physical world - it's our interpretation of the physical processes that happen when we apply voltage to transistors. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that consciousness might similarly be a concept - "our" interpretation of what is going on between our biological neurons. Note I put "our" in quotes, because it's self-referential here, and that's why I'm not 100% sure. But if we get back to my 3 neuron scenario, the third neuron which is emulated by the external system has not disappeared into the "software". It's still a physical device, which functions in a physical world, and is part of the original brain, despite the fact that it is now physically different from the original biological neuron it has replaced. It still produces (relays) the same signals towards the original two neurons, but it does not compute those signals. Both the inputs and outputs of this new proxy neuron are different, because it has to communicate with the external system. The two original neurons still communicate with a physical device, not with some abstract software entity.

However, if we look at consciousness differently - as something that is purely in the signals and not in the physical devices carrying the signals, then it changes the perspective. In that case it's harder for me to imagine the effect of extending computational signals into the cloud, because I'm not sure if the external signals become an extension of the original consciousness, or if they become more like sensory inputs to the local brain - but then the local brain becomes smaller? It's hard for me to comprehend this perspective.
by quasse | 2025-04-17 16:18:20+00:00
> The American right wing simply just doesn't have the cultural cachet in major institutions such as academia, Hollywood, publishing houses, and generally in major US cities to enforce their cancellation attempts.

The part of this you should be worried about is that they've realized they now have enough hard power to use violence against ideological enemies instead of rhetoric.

They're being completely open that they plan to extend this treatment to native born U.S. citizens too [1].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5366178/trump-deport-ja...