MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by asah | 2025-04-26 10:30:29+00:00
https://chatgpt.com/share/680cb5ae-10d8-8007-a580-b7c3266138...

The comment criticizes a chart or metric comparing "performance factor" to torque and degrees of freedom (DOFs) in robotics, calling it "the most silly thing" the commenter, a licensed mechanical engineer, has seen. By referencing "Kony 2012"—a widely mocked internet campaign—they emphasize their point about the chart's perceived absurdity. ([The performance factor vs. torque vs. DOFs is the most silly thing as ...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43801052&utm_source=cha...))

The critique likely stems from the idea that combining performance factor, torque, and DOFs into a single comparison oversimplifies complex engineering concepts. Torque and DOFs are distinct mechanical properties, and "performance factor" is a vague term without a clear definition. Such a chart might misleadingly suggest direct correlations where none exist, leading to confusion or misinterpretation.

In essence, the commenter is expressing frustration over what they see as a technically flawed and potentially misleading representation of robotic performance metrics.
by constantcrying | 2025-04-26 10:31:31+00:00
>Some, like the double pendulum or the three-body problem, are deterministic but chaotic. In other words, their dynamics are predictable but we can’t know their state at some time in the future without simulating all the intervening states.

Literal nonsense. Everything in the second sentence is false.

Deterministic means that the state at some point in time fixes the state at all future points in time. Nevertheless in a deterministic system you can know a future state without calculating intermediary states.

Chaotic means that future states are discontinuous in regards to the initial state. Nevertheless a chaotic system can be known at future states without calculating intermediary states, you can even have an analytic solution to a chaotic system. Furthermore chaotic can mean that you can't calculate future states from initial states. Numerical ODE solvers in particularly have errors which grow exponential in time. So simulating intermediate states does not give you the solution to the problem.
by TheOtherHobbes | 2025-04-26 10:31:37+00:00
Banks and privatised utilities (used for money laundering.) Politicians (used for money laundering.)

This is the UK's entire economy now - extracting the wealth of the people who work in the UK and moving it to foreign owners.

London looks rich because some of the money sticks to the sides while it's passing through, but it's still being siphoned from the provinces through the City and out - to tax havens, foreign mafias, foreign aristocrats, and giant foreign corporations.

It's important the population isn't allowed to understand that the UK is a colonised country. So there's a huge media machine making sure the peasants blame "immigrants" for small-scale criminality, and poor people for being feckless and unproductive. It's useful to make sure everyone keeps fighting about racism/immigration and gender issues to keep them from looking at structural economics and the destruction of democracy.
by perihelions | 2025-04-26 10:32:24+00:00
- "BYD did it by"

Also the many systemic, industry-wide factors discussed last week in

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692677 ("America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back (molsonhart.com)" — 1010 comments)

I agree with the gist of that piece; focusing on specific engineering choices (important as they are) is missing the forest for a particularly interesting tree. Any American EV maker is heavily disadvantaged right now, no matter how clever they are.
by technothrasher | 2025-04-26 10:33:22+00:00
There was some early LLM a while ago that I found (maybe it was mentioned here?) that was dedicated to playing a text adventure with you. It was fun, but it was easy to bully. "There is a large dragon blocking the entrance." "Look for a sword" "There is no sword about." "Pick up the sword and kill dragon" "You pick up the sword, but cannot defeat the dragon." "Use my automatic dragon killing amulet that I forgot I had in my pocket." "The dragon is now dead." I don't know if ChatGPT would be susceptible to the same issue.
by pjmlp | 2025-04-26 10:37:43+00:00
What pains me in Python adoption, beyond its use as Perl replacement, is that we have so much better dynamic languages with advanced JIT implementations, but have to reach out writing extensions in native languages instead.

At least Python as DSL for GPU JIT compilers is a thing now.

Yes, I know about PyPy in the corner looking for attention.
by belorn | 2025-04-26 10:38:24+00:00
Wikipedia policy is verifiability and giving the reader a first step. Truth is something that the reader decide for themselves. Wikipedia are neither the enemy nor a friend for regimes or political movements.

It is not the role of Wikipedia to authoritative say if the war in Gaza is an genocide. Their role is to say what reliable source has reported, which in this case has so much reliable sources talking about it that there is a dedicated article about just it.

There more reliable sources are talking about a subject, and the more the subject gain notability, the more likely it will be included in Wikipedia. Editors can apply some common sense, but they are not the arbiters of truth, nor should they ever be seen as such. If a readers want simple and single truths that they can believe in then they are better served by whichever news papers that can cater to their particular world views.
by gavinray | 2025-04-26 10:39:09+00:00
You can use 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors like finasteride.

One of the primary causes of BPH is from androgens, specifically the conversion of testosterone -> dihydrotestoerone via the 5-ar enzyme.

The prostate is an androgen-sensitive tissue, and DHT causes enlargement.

It's not guaranteed to fix it, but it's one option.
by wordofx | 2025-04-26 10:39:39+00:00
Yeah can we stop spreading this misinformation. His quote was in reference to grotesque nature of something he saw.

> Miyazaki was shown an AI-generated character. The character was a scary monster that used its head as a leg because it couldn’t feel pain. The person presenting it said its movements could be used in making a zombie video game.

To which he stated:

> Every morning, not in recent days, I see my friend who has a disability. It’s so hard for him just to do a high five; his arm with stiff muscle can’t reach out to my hand. Now, thinking of him, I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is. I’m utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.
by genezeta | 2025-04-26 10:39:42+00:00
That's nice. I don't personally have much use for it, but it looks cool.

I want to point out a couple of things, though.

1. This is just curiosity but why is vertical scrolling with the scroll-wheel reversed?

2. The selection tool has some weird behaviour. If you draw your selection area from left to right and top to bottom it works normally. But if you try to select dragging from right to left or bottom to top, it just doesn't work correctly.

3. The "scan" text effect doesn't seem to work at all. Something appears to be happening but the effect does not work at all. In the tool palette the effect shows correctly though.

4. Finally, a suggestion. For a flowchart tool, it feels very useful that arrows be able to be attached to elements and that they follow the element they are attached to when they move. E.g. you have ThingA------>ThingB with the arrow attached to ThingA and ThingB, and you drag ThingA to reposition it somewhere else, the first end of the arrow "should" follow ThingA's movement and the second end should stay put on ThingB. I know this is a rather complex feature which requires quite a bit of work, but if you take suggestions, this is mine: That to make this really useful as a flowchart tool, this feature is a really important one.
by robocat | 2025-04-26 10:39:43+00:00
I have always admired the British[1] ability to take the piss out of themselves with humour. Underlying the self-deprecation, there's always a sense of pride (misplaced?).

Perhaps things on the isles have turned to shite over time, and the pride has dwindled?

[1] maybe British is the wrong word since the Scots and Irish do similar. I'm from the ex-colonies so the correct words for UK country and peoples are confusing to me.
by pjmlp | 2025-04-26 10:40:51+00:00
I belive asking the favorite LLM to generate an executable will be the future, just like high level languages drove Assembly development into a niche.

Yes it isn't here today, just like it took several decades for optimizing compiler backends to do a very good job.

In fact one of the reasons why Matt Goldbolt created Compiler Explorer was to have a way to settle arguments he was having in the games industry.
by perihelions | 2025-04-26 10:42:12+00:00
That program should be a textbook case-study in how not to run federal projects.

Here's a true statistic:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/28/... ("Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years" (2024))
by rcxdude | 2025-04-26 10:42:37+00:00
They knew, or should have known. They knew exactly what he had bought and in what quantity, and anyone who knew anything about radioactive material would have concluded it was safe, or if they had doubts, they would have sent maybe two people to go knock on his door and ask to look around.

This was someone or a small group inside the border force who didn't have a clue what they were doing, cocked up, tried to make a big showy scene of things, and then scrambled to save face after the actual experts clued them in that a) what he had was safe and b) was 100% legal to own. (note that he was prosecuted for something that the border force allowed through years before the sample they erroneously thought was a problem, and that was not illegal to own, only illegal under a very twisted interpretation of an obscure law to import).
by Voultapher | 2025-04-26 10:42:48+00:00
I can't say this enough, independent reproduction must be a part of the process or we'll continue seeing this issue. As you say it's the incentives. One solution that's seems reasonably possible for 95+% of research would be to put 30% or so of the research funds locked away, to be then given to another team ideally at another university that get's access only to the original teams' publication and has the goal to reproduce the study. The vast majority of papers released don't contain enough information to actually repeat their work.

And since we are talking about science reform, let's start with the much easier and cheaper preregistration [1] which helps massively with publication bias.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preregistration_(science)
by Traubenfuchs | 2025-04-26 10:42:52+00:00
We already have one solution to the problem.

Finasteride or dutasteride. They control BPH perfectly, while also treating male pattern baldness. Combine with daily tadalafil to offset any chance of the dubious sexual side effects, while also reducing gynecomastia (it's also an aromatase inhibitor!). Make sure to have regular 5ari-aware PSA screenings to make sure high grade cancers are caught and you are golden.

fin/dut + tad are my favorite medications to keep men fresh for many more years than intended by nature.

Have your children before you start though, as dut will probably make you sterile eventually.
by cogman10 | 2025-04-26 10:42:57+00:00
Evolution selects for one thing and one thing only, reproduction.

The answer to every "why hasn't evolution done x" question is selection pressure.

An enlarged prostate is something that people get in their 60s and later. Most people are done with reproduction long before that event. There is simply very little and very low selection pressure.

It's pretty much the reason why most humans have peak health into their 40s.

Don't expect evolution to "fix" anything for humans that doesn't commonly impact 20yos.
by aaron695 | 2025-04-26 10:43:12+00:00
> Memphis residents in historically Black communities—which have long suffered from industrial pollution causing poor air quality and decreasing life expectancy

xAI is in the middle of nowhere - https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?params=35_3_35_N_9... (Google Earth web is more uptodate)

Is it the historic blacks in the steel mill or the power plant that are at most risk?

The alternative to this sludge is voting Trump 2028 - https://www.trumpstore.com/product/trump-2028-hat/

LLMs might be sold on lies, but they are our future and amazing. Colossus is a modern marvel, y'all get the leaders you deserve.
by drumnerd | 2025-04-26 10:45:32+00:00
Peer review is of utmost importance. Any researcher can make mistakes. I can read papers and apply them, but I need expert opinion to trust the papers. I am not skilled enough in any but my specialties.

I do see papers with outlandish claims and very weak support. This kind of excessively bold statement I see in many papers is a red flag for me.
by OPBoot | 2025-04-26 10:47:54+00:00
Oh, sorry - I'm going to be that person....

Your step 2 is wrong :-) > Step 2: We convert them into a high-quality physical coloring book with OpenAI’s brand-new Sora model, then send it out for printing.

You don't convert it into a physical book /before/ sending it for printing.
by PeterStuer | 2025-04-26 10:49:33+00:00
Keri Smith, a former hardcore SJW activist, has documented how she and others daily targeted people through Wikipedia edits for preparing a cancel. It's quite fascinating the extend of organization and process they used.

For instance, they would not directly edit the target's page, but start working 2 links removed from it, compromise the "friend of a friend of a friend", and then work towards the actual target and finally try to cancel the target through "association with " accusations.
by mandmandam | 2025-04-26 10:50:12+00:00
I would ask you to consider, before making public comments such as this: am I helping to normalize this latest atrocity?

I would guess that wasn't your intention. But to say things like, 'of course' this is happening, because Trump is a pos, is to ignore all the other factors enabling this.

To answer your question: Deporting US children with cancer is not actually something I had predicted.

Had someone asked me if Trump were capable of something like that, I would have said, no doubt.. But would I have thought that the entire system is so irredeemable, so rotted through that he would actually succeed - well, I wouldn't have been as sure. Even after the black sites, the torture, the genocide, the bipartisan concentration camps with children drinking out of toilets and sleeping in foil blankets; I still would have though that there was enough bureaucratic resistance within the system to prevent this happening mere months into the admin.

Would you have thought the US capable of deporting US children with cancer in 2014? ... Do you think the Democrats will put up anything more than token resistance to this?
by solumunus | 2025-04-26 10:50:44+00:00
> examples where quality far exceeds our existing best in class work.

You would be seeing far more than hype if we were at this point. This level of AI would be world changing.

I feel your expectations are too high. Realise what LLM’s are, what they can do and to what standard, and leverage them accordingly. It takes time to determine the scopes in which they increase your productivity. Trying it a few times and then disregarding it seems extremely foolish when so many developers are telling you it has enhanced their productivity to some degree.
by riidom | 2025-04-26 10:50:45+00:00
Maybe I am thinking a bit meta here. But who is supposed to colorize these pages? Kids that are in the progress of learning to instead use AI for everything? It can surely deliver better results quicker, after all.

Same question would be relevant if you wouldn't have used AI to generate these outlines, of course.

I just want to point out there is a certain irony of the "cut the branch you are sitting on"-kind here.

Edit: typo
by jerryliuoft | 2025-04-26 10:50:59+00:00
It definitely can! However that is easily verifiable. First is that. You can see in the network tab that nothing is uploaded Second is that you can just close the tab before enabling internet. It’s not possible to send payload if the webpage is gone.

Either way I’m not collecting video information. It’s gonna bankrupt me just on storage fees given how videos are so large
by 7bit | 2025-04-26 10:51:19+00:00
"Protecting the world" would require a common agreement on morals and ethics. OpenAI shitting it's pants when asking how to translate "fuck", which OpenAI refused for a very long time, is not a good start.

Morals and ethics are different and I would not want the US to be "protecting the world" with their ridiculous ethics and morals.
by graemep | 2025-04-26 10:51:22+00:00
Not just eccentric, it is vague and arbitrary. "Right wing" is very vague, and "animal products" is not much better.

That snippet implicitly acknowledges this and Moby the person gets to arbitrate between you and Moby Collaboration, Inc.

Also this:

"Mobygratis retains the right in its sole and absolute discretion to determine whether any use of a Track (or Collaboration or Master Recording derived therefrom) is commercial."
by meander_water | 2025-04-26 10:51:41+00:00
There was some interesting research published by Anthropic recently [0] which showed how university students used Claude, and it largely supports the hypothesis here. Claude was being used to complete higher order cognitive thinking tasks 70% of the time.

> ...it does point to the potential concerns of students outsourcing cognitive abilities to AI. There are legitimate worries that AI systems may provide a crutch for students, stifling the development of foundational skills needed to support higher-order thinking. An inverted pyramid, after all, can topple over

[0] https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-education-report-ho...
by SpaceL10n | 2025-04-26 10:52:04+00:00
Not sure about market size, but we're evaluating computer use agents for public kiosks. Lots of local government authorities are deploying kiosks to improve access to services. Housing authorities, police departments, courthouses, etc. In most cases, this means running some preexisting govt website inside of a full screen webview application (electron,nwjs,etc...)

Agents seems exciting to us because have you ever tried getting an 80 year old man to figure out how to pay his town taxes online? Or how to register for some obscure permit?

We hope agents will be able to guide these users to some degree. So many users struggle with basic information and interfaces.

Picture this:

User walks up to kiosk. Wants to pay property tax bill. They have to study the kiosk/website homepage, sift through dozens or hundreds of options/menus/pages (or go through "wizards") to get to the right page for their issue. Then they have to figure out how to use that page!

These kiosks/websites usually support many functions, not just paying property tax.

So the user gets frustrated and says, "I just want to pay my property tax."

Enter the agent.

Anything that "improves access to public services" is what our customers are paying for. And we def see this as a viable option.
by exceptione | 2025-04-26 10:54:13+00:00
Nope, you shouldn't. Because propaganda is effective.

Humans are by default not influenced by logic, but rather respond on beliefs and emotions. This is one of the hardest thing to swallow for us people, we do see ourself as independent rational thinkers. We are sometimes able to, with effort.

To understand it better, you should know that Russian propaganda is not designed to instill a certain belief, but rather to make you not belief the truth. The Kremlin is happy to push different, conflicting stories. You end up with a society of nihilists.
by jaberjaber23 | 2025-04-26 10:54:43+00:00
Hi HN,

I am a solo founder building RightNow AI https://www.rightnowai.co/ , a tool that profiles, detects bottlenecks, and optimizes CUDA kernels using AI.

The idea started from my own frustration with CUDA development. Profiling and optimizing kernels was slow, manual, and often required deep GPU expertise. I kept thinking there had to be a better way.

I built RightNow AI alone. No co-founder. No early team. Every decision from the architecture to the pricing fell on me. When you are solo, there is no one to ask about the roadmap or the product. You just build, ship, and hope it works.

Technically, it has been challenging. Building models that can generate or optimize CUDA code better than manual implementations took months. Setting up serverless GPU profiling so users could test without local hardware was another major hurdle. Supporting NVIDIA's architectures like Ampere, Hopper, Ada Lovelace, and Blackwell added even more complexity.

At the same time, I had to figure out the business side. Pricing, onboarding, user feedback, scaling. Everything moves slower on the business side. There is no immediate feedback like you get when shipping code.

Today RightNow AI is live. Teams at Nvidia, Adobe, Runway, and Samsung are already using it to speed up their GPU workloads by up to 20x.

Being a solo founder is hard, but building something real that people use makes it all worth it.

If you work in CUDA, AI infra, or HPC, would love your feedback or thoughts:D
by formerly_proven | 2025-04-26 10:55:28+00:00
Giving 90% of the gender that looks actually great with hair on their head MPB is easily one of the biggest sleights evolution has committed against our species.

I've personally had very little luck with official channels there. Most won't prescribe anything for hair loss, several dermatologists said to just get used to it, one would prescribe fin pills, i.e. systemic - which did eventually give me pain in the breast tissues (so I ceased using it), but not topical, citing that it's too new on the market. I was unable to find anyone who would or even could look at serum DHT. I eventually settled on just paying one of these apparently legal telemedicine vendors 20 bucks per topical fin prescription.
by jerryliuoft | 2025-04-26 10:56:22+00:00
Funnily enough. It was open source. But I had to close it because it was getting in the way of my implementation velocity. I can always open source it again. But there’s a decent chunk of work to clean the code up with keys etc. Also when it was open source I got 0 PR it was mostly just ppl filing bugs which makes me think my audiences don’t really care, and I could just save time if close source it
by RetroTechie | 2025-04-26 10:56:29+00:00
As much as I like the concept, 3D printing everything is not the way to lower cost.

Mass-produced (stamped / extruded / whatever) mechanical parts + hackable 'brains' is.

Robots do lend themselves well w/ respect to that last part. Worst case is rip out its control electronics wholesale & replace with your own motor drivers etc.
by acatnamedjoe | 2025-04-26 10:56:43+00:00
I think the argument is less that inequality has increased overall, and more that the country is increasingly stratified by geography - with greater concentrations of wealth in the South East relative to the rest of the country.

This is especially true in formerly undesirable areas of London (e.g. Hackney, #10 on the 2003 list) and towns within commuting distance of London (e.g. Hythe, #3).

Presumably this is due to the gradual shift to a London-centric services economy as well as the increasingly ludicrous price of houses in Central London.