MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by benoau | 2025-04-23 23:46:53+00:00
Apple testified in court they do nothing for their 30%, that's why shit like this gets through. The judge admonished them for investing nothing in preventing shit like this getting through, considering their IAP fees turned out to be 75% profit margin.

> it’s been “slow either to adopt automated tools that could improve speed and accuracy or to hire more reviewers” for its app review process. “Apple’s slow innovation stems in part from its low investment in the App Store,” the ruling elaborates.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/12/22667694/epic-v-apple-tri...
by keeda | 2025-04-23 23:47:03+00:00
Sure a contract was signed, but as has been pointed out many times about Google's heavy-handed control over Android, it doesn't mean it was fair to all parties:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...

Given the recent judgements about Google's anticompetitive behavior in multiple other arenas, revisiting these licensing agreements seems justified.
by ziddoap | 2025-04-23 23:47:13+00:00
First it was logs weren't mentioned. Then it was, well, logs were mentioned, but only to be turned off for the account creation process. Now it is, well, it was someone else who requested it and everything is speculation.

>Try to apply your experience here and calm down a bit.

Had to get one more little jab in there, didn't you? Can't have just one comment without one.

We're not going to convince each other. Hope that in the future, for other people's sake, that you can tone down your condescension and insults. It's a really unpleasant experience trying to discuss important things with someone who can't make a point without belittling the person they are talking to.
by m4rtink | 2025-04-23 23:47:49+00:00
While habitats are definitely the way to go long term (planets are just sooo inefficient!), Mars still has some useful features: - while the atmosphere/graviti combination is a bit annyoing, the atmosphere still enables some nice propelantless manuevers (aerobraking, aerocapture, plane changes, etc.) - the gravity should enable reusable single-stage-to-orbit rockets with current technology, unlike on Earth - day length & atmosphere reduce the insane temperature swings you get on the moon (and no 14 day nights) and also makes the dust particles less sharp & thus safer - powered atmopsheric flight is possible (already demonstrated) - a lot of elements up for grabs bound in rocks & the atmosphere (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine, iron,...) - two ready to use asteroid moons already in low Mars orbit - another body that could host a space elevator built with current materials
by gnabgib | 2025-04-23 23:47:59+00:00
From the whistle blower.

> Within minutes after DOGE accessed the NLRB's systems, someone with an IP address in Russia started trying to log in, according to Berulis' disclosure.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-...
by orochimaaru | 2025-04-23 23:48:50+00:00
Not parent but it’s here - https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/whistleblower-doge-sipho...

DOGE is a complete clusterfuck. Fwiw I think there is hard to spot fraud in the govt that should be looked at (eg price inflation at the pentagon, VA, Medicaid/Medicare, SS). They should have done the hard work of uncovering that. Instead they just went for clickbait headlines.
by dredmorbius | 2025-04-23 23:49:00+00:00
Generally agreeing with you (date your work, peeps), checking the Wayback Machine often helps. First capture from 23 April 2025, which would be today:

<https://web.archive.org/web/20250423103309/https://minc.comm...>

There was a January 2024 HN submission requesting feedback by thingfish suggesting early work at roughly that time:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38951099>

Thingfish: Adding creation / last modified dates would be helpful.
by Reason077 | 2025-04-23 23:49:33+00:00
Yes, I found that very useful too! Although it was always pretty fragile. Minor changes on the underlying clipped website would often break the widget and you'd have to go back and clip it again. And occasionally WebKit would crash or act weird because of the clipped website and the whole Dashboard would freeze or crash.

My understanding is that the technical foundations of Webkit-based Dashboard were always a bit flaky and this is what did it in. But now that we have modern, native widgets, it's a shame that the excellent Dashboard UX hasn't been brought back. They threw the baby out with the bathwater!
by jameslk | 2025-04-23 23:49:40+00:00
> It feels pretty good to be alone. Maybe if I didn’t feel so good, I’d be less alone.

After a certain amount of trying, you may eventually land on the conclusion that you are the problem and that’s why it feels so good. In this regard, I can totally relate.

Early adulthood is about finding out whether we can love and be loved, according to [0], so it feels like purgatory to not graduate with our peers.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson's_stages_of_psychosoci...
by arnaudsm | 2025-04-23 23:49:58+00:00
I'm surprised no one mentioned the obvious solution here:

Open-source software respects my will. It's a great feeling that many forgot existed. It's not trying to trick me all the time. When it's not perfect, I patch it.

I also love to write my own programs to solve my own problems. Like everyone used to do in the 70s. I'm having a great time and am productive than ever.
by ahartmetz | 2025-04-23 23:51:08+00:00
I've had some ideas about avoiding format validation in IPC receivers if the data is encoded by trusted code, which is also the only code that has rights to send the IPC data / to connect to the receiver. I can't really think of an important problem that it would solve, though. DBus always validates received data, but it's not really meant or very suitable for large amounts of data anyway.
by largbae | 2025-04-23 23:51:08+00:00
I am sure they demanded maximum access, but the logging activity phrasing sounds a little bit like spin...

I think if I wanted to describe an account with access to perform "sudo -s" as negatively as possible, I would say "an all-powerful admin account that is exempt from logging activity that would otherwise keep a detailed record of all actions taken by those accounts."
Show HN: Polaris – Go Framework for AI Function Calling and Orchestration
by octu0 | 2025-04-23 23:51:29+00:00
Hi HN, I'm Yusuke Hata. I built polaris (https://github.com/octu0/polaris), an open-source Go framework designed to help AI agents effectively use distributed Tool/Agent via Function Calling.

Managing function schemas gets messy fast.

polaris simplifies this with a central cluster: agents connect, dynamically fetch up-to-date function definitions, and are ready to call. No more manual schema wrangling for every agent/update. (Details in README).

More importantly, polaris provides the infrastructure to unlock AI's inherent ability to orchestrate distributed functions dynamically.

Here's how it differs from traditional RPC:

- No Manual Interface Definition Exchange: Agents get definitions directly from the polaris-registry cluster upon connection. - AI Chooses the Path: Instead of humans hard-coding how services interact, the AI agent itself analyzes the available Function Definitions from the cluster and decides which remote function to call based on the current context.

The goal is to make it practical for AI agents to autonomously leverage a wide array of distributed tools/services, moving beyond the rigid, human-defined connections of typical RPC.

I'd love your feedback on this approach. Ask me anything!
by matwood | 2025-04-23 23:52:00+00:00
> I would really like my tax money used more efficiently

Except by most accounts so far it was being used efficiently by the federal workforce. This whole debacle will end up costing the US tax payer more money. See cutting the IRS or USAID which will probably lead the US to bailing out farmers. And if they privatize, then it'll be even more expensive.
by Aeolun | 2025-04-23 23:52:47+00:00
> You avoid all unnecessary words and you often omit punctuation or leave misspellings unaddressed because it's not a big deal

There is nothing that pisses me off more than people that care little enough about their communication with me that they can’t be bothered to fix their ** punctuation and capitals.

Some people just can’t spell, and I don’t blame them, but if you are capable and not doing so is just a sign of how little you care.
by Braxton1980 | 2025-04-23 23:53:19+00:00
>I can say "Gee whiz $335M per F-22 seems a bit much!..specifics doesn't invalidate my opinion.

You shouldn't and it does invalidate your opinion.

You're an engineer and this is HN so shouldn't making a comparison or judgment be backed up by some factual information?

>The fact that I don't want to spend my time

You don't have to make the comment.

>. Random people will read random things into whatever random content they consume..

Don't you feel that a comment akin to "government be spending alot" is almost like spam considering how often it's mentioned? If you had some information that showed that for what we are talking about then that would be substantial.
by Dylan16807 | 2025-04-23 23:53:22+00:00
> A 100x100 thumbnail that was reduced from a 1000x1000 image might have pixels which are derived from 100 samples of the original image (e.g. a simple average of a 10x10 pixel block). Or other possibilities.

And if a downsampling algorithm tries to approximate a point sample, it'll give you a massively increased chance of ugly moire patterns.

The audio equivalent is that you drop 3/4 of your samples and it reflects the higher frequencies down into the lower ones and hurts the quality. You need to do a low-pass filter first. And "point samples from a source where no frequencies exist above X, also you need to change X before doing certain operations" is very different and significantly more complicated than "point samples". Point samples are one leaky abstraction among many leaky abstractions, not the truth. Especially when an image has a hard edge with frequencies approaching infinity.
by mvdtnz | 2025-04-23 23:53:44+00:00
> In today's society you (seem to be) much more likely to be told to ^$*£ off rather than get an actual moment of connection with someone.

Is that true? I don't feel like it is, at least not where I live. I would be really very shocked if someone told me to fuck off if I interacted with them in a public space.
by tzs | 2025-04-23 23:54:08+00:00
Massachusetts might be partly due to economics. It has a combination of low gas prices and high electric prices that makes it the least favorable state for EVs.

Using statewide average gas and electricity prices as of a couple weeks ago or so (whenever I last grabbed the data) a pure ICE RAV4 has a lower energy cost per mile than a Tesla Model Y (the trim with the highest MPGs) there on the highway. The Tesla still wins in the city.

Change that Toyota to a RAV4 Hybrid (non-plug in) and then the RAV4 wins both highway and city.

Go for a Prius and then there are 8 states where the Prius beats the Tesla on both city and highway (Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont). There are two where the Prius wins highway but not city: California and New Jersey.

The states most favorable to EVs are Washington, Idaho, North Dakota, Utah, Nebraska, Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Missouri, South Dakota, Iowa, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

In those states gas prices would have to fall about 60% (Washington) to 35% (Oklahoma) for the Prius to win.

It's interesting that most of the states where energy prices most favor EVs are red states.

Note: the above was using residential electricity prices. For people that can't charge at home the Prius will win a lot more. Around here the best commercial charging is about twice what residential charging costs. If that holds elsewhere then I think only about 8 states would have the Tesla come out ahead of the Prius.
by alabastervlog | 2025-04-23 23:55:51+00:00
Gilgamesh went on a quest for immortality and lost it, the Pharaohs built grand monuments in their effort, which ended with their carefully-prepared bodies ground up in paint and medicine by Empire-building Brits and French.

Today the rich pray for the singularity and freeze their bodies. And want to colonize Mars I guess.

Vanitas.
by defrost | 2025-04-23 23:56:57+00:00
The obvious objection would be that I linked to a story of poor behaviour from Tongan evangelicals rather than Catholics ... the counter being there's no shortage of truly appalling tales of Catholics destroying culture while expanding their flocks .. they are better known for other atrocities hereabouts though, eg:

* https://kelsolawyers.com/au/paedophile_offenders/brother-kea...

* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-29/child-sex-abuse-royal...

* https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/final-report
by vindarel | 2025-04-23 23:56:58+00:00
for folks looking for libraries: https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl/

(I don't know for popularity but my personal opinion is that CL is still unmatched: this level of interactive development + good debugging tools + excellent implementation that compiles to fast machine code + fast startup for binaries + self-contained binaries + stable yet improving language, implementations and ecosystem + connect from a running program + commercial vendors if you need + … such a unique and productive set)

(re. the type system: https://github.com/coalton-lang/coalton/ for a Haskell on top of CL now)
by alnwlsn | 2025-04-23 23:57:30+00:00
Most of the things I work on are "make this fit onto that like this". There's not that much information contained in that sentence, it's contained in the 2 objects I was just handed. Sometimes we have drawings for that stuff, most of the time we don't. The "like this" part can be a conversation, but the rest of the info is missing and needs to be recreated.

I said this below, but most of the mechanical people I've met are good at talking with their hands. "take this thing like this, turn it like that, mount it like this, drill a hole here, look down there" and so on. We still don't have a good analog for this in computers. VR is the closest we have and it's still leagues behind the Human Hand mk. 1. Video is good too, but you have to put in a bit more attention to camerawork and lighting than taking a selfie.
by oarsinsync | 2025-04-23 23:58:31+00:00
> I don't really know anyone who joined Spotify because that's "where their friends were." The social features consist primarily of playlists (which can be viewed without an account)

Former Apple Music user here. I switched because of Spotify’s collaborative playlists. Technically, I could have used a sync solution to sync changes between platforms. In reality, it was just cheaper all around to switch to Spotify instead, and be on the same platform as my partner and friends. Being able to open Spotify links being sent to me without having to run it though some translation shortcut was wonderful.

Apple deleting all my playlists immediately after my subs lapsed was the icing on the cake to never return.
by whatshisface | 2025-04-23 23:58:45+00:00
Here's how it might work, by analogy to the workflow for image generation:

"An aerodynamically curved plastic enclosure for a form-over-function guitar amp."

Then you get something with the basic shapes and bevels in place, and adjust it in CAD to fit your actual design goals. Then,

"Given this shape, make it easy to injection mold."

Then it would smooth out some things a little too much, and you'd fix it in CAD. Then, finally,

"Making only very small changes and no changes at all to the surfaces I've marked as mounting-related in CAD, unify my additions visually with the overall design of the curved shell."

Then you'd have to fix a couple other things, and you'd be finished.
by synapsomorphy | 2025-04-24 00:00:58+00:00
When a model reads "dog" it associates the patterns it gleaned from the text and images about dogs - its past 'experiences'. What is the difference in kind between that and animal understanding?

LLMs do have language-agnostic understandings in their latent space. "Dog" and "Perro" have largely the same representation (depending on the model. I believe more advanced ones show this more strongly?) as does a picture of a dog. I'm not sure if that's exactly the form of understanding you're referring to?

I agree the human text/images corpus is very small compared to evolution's millions of years of learnings from interacting with the environment, which is why I'm excited for RLing LLMs because it opens up the same data trove.
by neilv | 2025-04-24 00:01:26+00:00
> Berulis said he went public after higher-ups at the agency told him not to report the matter to the US-CERT, as they’d previously agreed.

If the allegation is true, what would be the motivation of the higher-ups to keep this secret from US-CERT?

It appears to be a severe compromise, and the context suggests that much of the rest of the federal government is imminently vulnerable to the same tactics by the same threat actor.

Where the higher-ups reporting the security crisis through better channels?

Or were they trying to keep it quiet entirely, so might be complicit in something bad?
by randunel | 2025-04-24 00:02:58+00:00
Antitrust doesn't mean monopoly, but monopoly is a part of antitrust. Monopoly also doesn't mean you're the only one, but you're the one capable of fixing prices, or doing something else anti competitive.

It's a complex thing in practice, don't take the linguistic definition of the word itself as the sole interpretation of the law.
by socalgal2 | 2025-04-24 00:03:14+00:00
TIL: font designs are not copyrightable in the USA. Font files are but the design itself is not. It seems you are free to copy the design, but not the file. Not sure how that plays out in practice. Is it common to copy a font design or is it just more common to be inspired by a font design but make a new font that's in the same general design space? Like say Arial seems inspired by Helvetica but is not the same.
by petekoomen | 2025-04-24 00:03:14+00:00
Smarter models aren't going to somehow magically understand what is important to you. If you took a random smart person you'd never met and asked them to summarize your inbox without any further instructions they would do a terrible job too.

You'd be surprised at how effective current-gen LLMs are at summarizing text when you explain how to do it in a thoughtful system prompt.
by Uehreka | 2025-04-24 00:03:18+00:00
I’m not sure where you get this impression of AOC. From her Wikipedia article:

> After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx and took a job as a bartender and waitress to help her mother—a house cleaner and school bus driver—fight foreclosure of their home.

That sounds pretty “real Bronx” to me.

As for her campaign:

> Ocasio-Cortez began her campaign in April 2017 while waiting tables and tending bar at Flats Fix, a taqueria in New York City's Union Square. "For 80 percent of this campaign, I operated out of a paper grocery bag hidden behind that bar,"

I don’t think there’s an age when you are “ripe” to become a politician. I think that in order to be good at it, you have to maintain contact with ordinary people and listen to their concerns. Elon sucks at it not because he’s 55 but because he thinks he knows all the answers and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.
by WheelsAtLarge | 2025-04-24 00:03:30+00:00
It seems like noise, but there is the real possibility that people will start to lose the notion of politeness towards fellow human beings in general. Probably not adults, but kids will over time. So, no, it's not useless.

We humans tend to be very prone to getting offended simply because we can't really know what others are thinking, and we use defined manners to reduce unintended insults. We have seen this with email; over time, we are defining ways to reduce offending others by using emojis and other means. Manners are super important to help us work together so losing manners is a real problem.
by xg15 | 2025-04-24 00:03:36+00:00
I think there is still a widespread confusion between two slightly different concepts that the author also tripped over.

If you ask an LLM a question, then get the answer and then ask how it got to that answer, it will make stuff up - because it literally can't do otherwise: There is no hidden memory space in which the LLM could do its calculations, and also record which calculations it did, that it could then consult to answer the second question. All there is are the tokens.

However if you tell the model to "think step by step", I.e. first make a number of small inferences, then use those to derive the final answer, you should (at least in theory) get a high-level description of the actual reasoning process, because the model will use the tokens of its intermediate results to generate the features for the final result.

So "explain how you did it" will give you bullshit, but "think step by step" should work.

And as far as my understanding goes, the "reasoning models" are essentially just heavily fine tuned for step-by-step reasoning.
by ilrwbwrkhv | 2025-04-24 00:03:37+00:00
> Google’s actual UI & UX design is terrible

Absolutely. I have long mentioned that Google got lucky that the initial search was a textbox on a white screen and nothing else.

If they had tried to do a portal or something like Yahoo! they would have failed miserably.

Till today, I haven't seen a good design from Google for anything complicated. Just look at what a mess Gmail is for instance.

Great engineers, horrible product and design folks.
by johnea | 2025-04-24 00:03:53+00:00
And Zeroly, there's absolutely 0 reason for people to go to Mars, AT ALL.

This whole idea is the stupidest thing I've heard people seriously discuss.

What would be the point?

If you want to experience "life on Mars", bury a cargo container in your back yard, and live in it for a year.

If there's some burning need to go live underground, as you would on Mars, why not just do it in Nevada? The grocery store is a lot closer.

The post at the top of this thread is correct in saying the logistics of supporting a colony on Mars would take decades, and cost billions (at least).

I'm an advocate of exploration and science, and in the modern world we have effective automation. There is NO need to send people to Mars, absolutely not in any large number.

> there's no reason the trip can't be one-way

If the crew includes elon, I am actually in favor of this...
by KiannaTorres | 2025-04-24 00:04:22+00:00
Hi, I'll be launching a hiring platform for startups in May. The idea is to completely eradicate the resume aspect from hiring by offering applicants role-specific testing. I am doing this for individuals who know they're capable of succeeding in a role but can't seem to compete with others during resume assessments. This kind of hiring is already utilized by some companies, but I want to make a central platform for easy participation. Let me know if you'd be interested in placing some jobs on the platform during its rudimentary phase. For $75, you'll be able to post as many as you'd like for the rest of the year to test it out. This money will allow me to build a more complex and capable site. Startups from around the U.S. are being invited to participate in this phase which will last until the end of August, at the latest. I have been doing my due diligence of gathering interest on the applicant side as well, and that's going over pretty well. With that being said, you can email me at kiannaofsanfrancisco@gmail.com or message me through my linkedin linkedin.com/in/djobdotcom. Thanks, hope to hear from you guys.