MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by rendall | 2025-04-05 17:25:43+00:00
Advocating for free speech does indeed mean defending the rights of people to say reprehensible things, including those who advocate for deeply offensive or dangerous ideas. But it's important to be clear-eyed about the historical record.

The Nazis did not rise because of an excess of free speech. During the Weimar Republic, there were hate speech laws and Nazi publications were censored or banned multiple times. Hitler himself was banned from public speaking in several German states in the 1920s. Despite that, the Nazi movement grew, driven not by open dialogue but by a mix of economic despair, nationalism, violent intimidation, and institutional weakness.

Far from championing free speech, the Nazis used paramilitary violence to silence opponents even before seizing power. Once in control, they moved quickly to eliminate all free expression, banning parties, censoring the press, imprisoning dissenters.

So if anything, the historical lesson is that censorship and suppression didn’t stop fascism, and that once authoritarians gain power, their first move is often to destroy free speech entirely.

Free speech is a super power. Strong free speech rights require defending the rights of terrible people to say terrible things. That doesn’t mean what they’re saying is good. It just means that it's easy to defend the rights of meaningless or popular speech, but your own right to truly speak your mind is only as strong as the rights of those you disagree with most. Someday, something you believe passionately might be seen as reprehensible by the majority.
by 5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV | 2025-04-05 17:27:48+00:00
From the post: All diagrams that look like the top image or the mermaid example after the complex one, could just be a list of steps.

For the complex one, maybe yes, it makes sense to have an overview and I think maintaining that vs text is also easier. However from what I've seen, most things can be boiled down to a list of 1, 2, 2.1, etc.
by pas | 2025-04-05 17:28:15+00:00
everyone is using kernel optimisations at that size. (because it's worth it, because there's a well known pattern of load, file/chunk sizes (so I/O in general) and metrics to shoot for)

nginx is a big state machine built around epoll, and there's not much to do with the raw kernel ABI anyway (of course using safer and more powerful tools helps with the general quality of the end result, but not really with speed). it took many years for the uring ABI to emerge (and even using it efficiently is not trivial).
by logicchains | 2025-04-05 17:28:39+00:00
It's hard to see where you're coming from. With o1 Pro or Gemini 2.5 Pro I can give a detailed text specification of a module I want to write to it and it'll write code to do exactly that, with fewer errors than I'd make on a first try. It'll also generate unit tests for it. Writing a text specification then reviewing some code for me is way, way faster than writing all that same code by scratch.

Are you working on code that's heavily coupled to other code, such that you rarely get to write independent logic components from scratch, and IP restrictions prevent you from handing large chunks of existing code to the LLM?
by hnlmorg | 2025-04-05 17:28:56+00:00
Artists don’t sample because they’re unable to perform elements of a track.

They sample because they hear an element of one track and go “that’s awesome, I want to use that creatively but in a different way”.

To that end, most of the samples you’ll hear are pretty simple to reproduce. And sometimes artists don’t get the license to use the sample so they are forced to reproduce (this happens a lot more with vocal samples from what I’m aware)
by vharuck | 2025-04-05 17:29:08+00:00
They do need protein. Nectar is an extra and easy source of energy. And my wife is the kind of person who wants to play with her pets, no matter the species. The Q-tip was the only thing I agreed to, because I didn't want to terrify the spider by picking it up. For sustenance, we gave them meal worms, crickets (their size or smaller), and sliced fruit. Not sure if they drank much fruit juice, but it kept the crickets happy.
by cyberax | 2025-04-05 17:29:38+00:00
> The claim that 'austerity' resulted in the Great Depression is nonsense

It literally did. Austerity (forced by the Gold Standard) was the only reason for the severity of the Great Depression. And it was ended by expansionist policies in the US and the Nazi Germany.

> The reality is, no matter if the German government had increased or decreased spending, the Great Depression was bigger then Germany and would have impacted Germany either way.

The UK did not do austerity, and the 1929 downturn did not affect them as strongly. They had a 5% GDP drop, compared to almost 30% in the US, and 16% in Germany.

> The countries that left the gold standard early were more successful then those that left later.

Indeed. And the gold standard basically required the countries to practice the austerity.
by em-bee | 2025-04-05 17:29:45+00:00
for me traveling was always a means to get to specific places, or rather to meet specific people. when i was younger i traveled on a bike without a goal or with the goal to find interesting people in the places i went to, and sometimes the destination of the next day was defined by the people i met. being on a bike meant that i was slower and had less freedom to make detours, but i did manage to spend two weeks biking around in luxembourg, which is a rather small country that i could have crossed in a day.

as i got older i focused on places where i already had contacts or where i could find someone through couchsurfing websites ahead of time. i never considered going to places where i could not make these contacts. the goal was to stay in those places and learn about the life of the people. the scenery on the way in between was just a bonus.
by jjav | 2025-04-05 17:30:00+00:00
> I just don’t buy this argument as a reason people don’t want EVs.

These descriptions are unrealistic to our experience. We're on our third EV, so plenty of experience with this. It's always a pain to go anywhere outside a small area. Just this week my partner needed to go to a nearby city 2hrs away. Round trip too long for the EV. Luckily my office is halway there and has chargers, so stopped by for 2.5hrs to top up the batteries. That's a longer refueling stop than the whole trip. Faster chargers exist but they are few and far between, usually broken or taken, so finding one is an exercise in frustration.

> You can install a charger at home, even a very slow one that doesn’t need a special circuit, and always have a full battery in the morning.

It takes us three days to fill up the car at home if it gets really low, not having a special circuit. So if the car was used yesterday it won't be full this morning.

The only way this works at all is because my partner normally only needs to commute about 30 minutes and only twice a week.
by spacephysics | 2025-04-05 17:30:23+00:00
I think this is a bit of an unfair comparison

We could say better hair leads to better self expression, confidence, etc even if we say its purely an ego/vanity source (which i’d argue, isn’t necessarily the case but for sake of argument lets say it is)

Ad placement algorithms don’t lead to a person’s well being increasing, outside shareholders/business owners which is tied to monetary gain.

perhaps you could say better ad placement for XYZ ad that promotes ABC net positive outcome means the work is positive, but i don’t see the inverse case with hair growth research that has high a magnitude of net negative outcomes on society as ad placement may have beyond:

1. Everyone gets better hair, so a lack of hair means societal pressure to conform

2. The treatment/therapy is patented, and prohibitively expensive where only the elite income brackets can afford it

To say more concisely, theres much more potential for an ad placement algorithm that hyper performs to be net negative on society than a hair treatment that hyper performs to be a net negative on society
by rambojohnson | 2025-04-05 17:30:24+00:00
while I appreciate the spirit of optimism here, I think it's equally important to recognize that blind trust in human resilience has often left us flat-footed. we've all seen time and again that things we once thought unthinkable: mass surveillance, algorithmic manipulation, ecological collapse, genocide, wars, all these things can and do happen, often because we assumed our better natures would prevail.

optimism without vigilance isn't hope, it's complacency. imagination doesn't just need space to flourish; it needs friction, scrutiny, and an honest reckoning with the systems that quietly shape or suppress it, and some prompt on an image/music/poetry LLM isn't going to do that for you.
by sprkv5 | 2025-04-05 17:30:42+00:00
If you're a fan of both Daft Punk and the 80s City Pop genre and if you were around when City Pop was rising in 2019 then you could have listened to the mashup "Something about Plastic Love"[1]. Beautiful blend. The original got taken down - and second grade recreations remain.

Also Plastic Love is the best Pop song if you go by Vice[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOTlyCZmVa8 [2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/mariya-takeuchi-plastic-love...
by throw310822 | 2025-04-05 17:30:54+00:00
Pattern matching leads to compression- once you identified a pattern you can compress the original information by some amount by replacing it with the identified pattern. Patterns are symbols of the information that was there originally; so manipulating patterns is the same as manipulating symbols. Compressing information by finding hidden connections, then operating on abstract representations of the original information, reorganising this information according to other patterns... this sounds a lot like intelligence.
by glenstein | 2025-04-05 17:31:13+00:00
You're extrapolating from the Daisy incident to doubt of their previous reporting. And believe that the Daisy incident merits responding by holding TAL to a newly escalated standard for verification. From this most recent comment of yours, you seem comfortable with "doubting the reliability of earlier TAL stories" as a position you view to be not an over correction. I think you're underestimating how an extreme a position that is, and kind of equivocating between ordinary skepticism and doubting the veracity of their previous stories.

You're right that I believe TAL's stories are generally reliable, that I believe doubting them is an over-correction in the wrong direction.

I also don't think I agree that it's simply a matter of checking or not checking because I believe the vast body of work that's been free from error, although exposed to the same conditions of public scrutiny that could have revealed error in just the same way as with the Daisy story, is part of the body of evidence that actively testifies in favor of TAL. And I do think if there was more of a rocky track record, or if there proves to be more of one in the future, it absolutely could merit spot checking. And as I've said twice now already, I've given the example of Stephen Glass as a case where that skepticism was warranted.

You seem to be implying that I have a categorical opposition to spot checking which couldn't be further from the truth. I just don't think it's warranted in this instance, because it's not a reasonable extrapolation from what happened with the Daisy story.
by jonplackett | 2025-04-05 17:31:34+00:00
I’m not much of a puzzler, I like a crossword or a sudoku and that’s all really - but I didn’t understand what I was meant to do?

Edit; oh ok I get it now..

It could be fun but now I know what to do it’s not very challenging. The speed is more determined by the speed I can type that the words. Maybe one letter longer?
by SideburnsOfDoom | 2025-04-05 17:31:53+00:00
Hm,, doesn't mention Amdahl's Law applied to parallelisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law#Parallel_progra...

Which tl;dr is that if only 50% of the whole process can be parallelised, then even if you parallelise that portion as much as you can, you'll get a < 2x speedup. If only 10% can be parallelised, then you're limited to a 1.1x speedup by parallelising it.
by zkmon | 2025-04-05 17:32:00+00:00
Nature is exploring ways for next extinction. It tried nuke piles, but somehow they were just sitting there. Next, it is trying out AI. Nature tricks humans into advancing in ways that are not really needed for them and not compatible with their natural evolution. Nature is applying competition internal to a race that can produce things that are completely unnecessary for the survival of the race, but necessary for its extinction.

Goat: Hey human, why are you creating AI?

Human: Because I can. And I can boast of my greatness. I can use it for money. I can weaponize and us it to dominate and control other humans.

Goat: Why you need all that?

Human: If I don't do it, others will do it and they will dominate me and take away all my stuff. It is not fair.

Goat: So it looks like who-owns-what issue. Did you try not owning stuff?

Nature: Shut up goat. I'm trying to do a big reset here.
by syspec | 2025-04-05 17:34:55+00:00
> It would be a long time until Swift is even remotely ready for something like this and I don’t feel there is a burning need to have “yet another wasm platform”.

I mean, well, it actually already exists? It's been around for a long time and works pretty great, with multithreading, access to JS objects, etc. The author of the linked thread topic is the original author of it.

https://swiftwasm.org/
by ben_w | 2025-04-05 17:35:24+00:00
Trump put tariffs on everywhere, including an island with no humans separately to the country which owns that island.

And from previous statements, Trump's idea of "anti-US tariff" seems to include the EU's VAT, which is sales tax that everyone including local supplies pays.

So while some of that might be cherry picking, the reasoning overall is obvious nonsense, which is worse.
by xwowsersx | 2025-04-05 17:35:50+00:00
For those unfamiliar, this is similar to taking a codebase and processing it with a tool like gitingest, which transforms the entire repository into a format suitable for LLMs, eabling contextual convos and queries about the code. The additional component here is the integration of the MCP protocol, allowing any compliant model to interact with the provided MCP server and dynamically query the codebase to answer questions in real time.

Not sold on MCP being the right paradigm (we'll see), but had a lot of fun building an MCP server recently using https://github.com/tadata-org/fastapi_mcp to quickly get up and running and be able to call to it from Cursor.
Show HN: An open source tool to generate contour map landscapes in real-time
by getToTheChopin | 2025-04-05 17:36:47+00:00
This is a free web tool to create procedural terrain textures in real-time in the browser.

How this works: a bunch of 3D spheres (meta-balls) are drawn on the canvas. They float around and combine with others based on distance. Then, 2D cross-sections are drawn using a Marching Squares algorithm. This ends up producing a terrain contour aesthtetic.

Use the controls at the top-right to set animation speed, size, level of complexity, rotation, colours, and more.

Use the buttons at the bottom-right to randomize the output, and export as image or mp4 video.

This tool is completely free and open source (MIT license). You're welcome to use it however you wish!

This project is coded using vanilla Javascript, HTML5 canvas, and CSS.

Github repo: https://github.com/collidingScopes/curious-contours

Any suggestions, feedback, or pull requests would be much appreciated!

I hope the game dev / procedural generation community finds this useful in some way :)
by latexr | 2025-04-05 17:36:59+00:00
Except differences run much deeper than that. For example, the amount of characters supported. Many fonts don’t support anything other than ASCII, some support both Latin and CJK. Ligatures, how many weights it has, there are a myriad of technical reasons to pick one font over another.

There is no perfect font, just like there is no perfect framework. You pick what suits you or makes sense for your project. Sometimes you don’t understand your requirements until you try to use something.

> I don't need or want my everyday use font to "affect" me, or to "make impact"

And being aware of the details is the best way to avoid that.
by throw0101d | 2025-04-05 17:37:32+00:00
> The position I have taken is, I have already seen reports of countries that are willing to negotiate, and it's a good guess that Trump will ask them to buy more American stuff, and some of them will be able to.

And those that cannot? That are too poor to 'correct' the 'problem' of trade imbalances? Sucks to be them?
by wvenable | 2025-04-05 17:37:37+00:00
You: Vague over-exaggerated unsubstantiated claims without even being able to say what decade you're referring to.

Also you: "Why are you making stuff up."

I lived through this entire time. You're right you don't work for me but if you're going to make wild claims you should back them up or not continue to post misinformation as fact.

I guarantee to you that there was never any government action (or even proposed action) against Microsoft for Office.
by irishloop | 2025-04-05 17:38:22+00:00
> I think we exist to bring new things into existence. If you ask me, to the extent there is a meaning of life, that’s it. We exist to create. It lights us up in a way nothing else does, putting something new into our world—and in doing so, fundamentally changing it, in whatever way, however big or small.

I find this a rather strange, limited way of looking at our existence.

I believe there is joy in creating. I believe there is joy in just spending time with the people you love. I believe there is joy in exploring new places, people, ideas. I believe there is joy in being still and present.

We are always looking for some singular, defining thing in our lives. What does it all mean. It has to be for something.

But I disagree. It doesn't have to be for anything. It's enough to just do what brings you joy, to evolve and change, to treat others in kindness. The rest is just personal preferences.
by angry_moose | 2025-04-05 17:38:31+00:00
As they're the name of US professional sports teams, that's the official name of the teams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Hawks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Lions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_Spurs

Previous puzzles don't have many plurals, but its the correct choice for this puzzle.
by odyssey7 | 2025-04-05 17:39:00+00:00
I'm reminded of the multiple projects to restore the American Chestnut.

Unlike the mammoth, people generally seem to agree that it's a good idea to bring these majestic wonders back to their range, but with multiple options available after decades of work, last I checked stakeholders couldn't agree on the best way to do it.

This hybridization approach seemingly would draw the same sorts of debates, even if the more obvious ethical ramifications weren't there. We're talking about a human-created species that is neither mammoth nor elephant, but something in-between, with trade-offs comprising value judgements and other details that are not fully understood.
by 0xCE0 | 2025-04-05 17:39:55+00:00
The obvious answer of course is that to be "cybersecurity specialist/expert", you have to be a hardcore hacker in its original meaning: to be a person who understands what things actually are (behave), not what people say they are (behave).

In my opinion, cybersec/infosec expertise/mindset should be always-on on everybody at 2025. Starting from scammers calling/messaging, to malware/spyware on devices, social engineering, physical security, people security/trustworthyness, trust/auth/integrity/encryption/backups/certs/audit-trail etc... Everything. One needs to know if one is hacked already ("Reflections on Trusting Trust.pdf"), and one needs to know when one is hacked (tripwire). And knowing what is/are your weakest link(s), because it usually defines the strength of your defences.
by kragen | 2025-04-05 17:40:03+00:00
Oh, maybe he was talking about having multiple CPUs on the same piece of silicon? That seems like a more plausible explanation for the dates (which are still somewhat wrong, as you point out), but its connection to software optimization strategies seems tenuous at best. The software can't really find out if the other CPU is on a separate die unless the hardware chooses to tell it.
by no_wizard | 2025-04-05 17:40:03+00:00
I can find oddities like this in all languages. Arguably C and C++ have more warts, particularly C++ where I always hear people talk about how it’s only reasonable to use a small subset of the language. Also how C/C++ compilers don’t all support the same features of the purported language they compile.

I won’t argue that JS doesn’t have warts - it does and if it wasn’t for backward compatibility I imagine they’d have been removed from the language - but the entries on that website are quite small compared to others - like C and C++ - that I can think of
by powerawq103846 | 2025-04-05 17:40:26+00:00
We just launched stable support for local LLM models with Ollama in Agent today - our Computer-use agent framework on macOS. Repo here: https://github.com/trycua/cua

Run models like Gemma3, Phi4, Qwen2.5, Llama3.1 & more supported by Ollama, keeping your data completely private - no cloud required.

Agent with local LLMs combines UI grounding with pixel-detection for accurate computer control with Pyautogen OmniParser - all in Cua's sandboxed environment for security.

Privacy-conscious? Local models through Ollama run entirely on your machine while maintaining the same powerful agent capabilities backed by MPS on Apple Silicon.

Simple to set up: just `pip install "cua-agent[all]"` and connect to your local Ollama models. Check out our examples on our repo: https://github.com/trycua/cua
by yencabulator | 2025-04-05 17:40:31+00:00
AI apologists need to decide whether they are claiming LLMs are almost-AGI, or not.

This backlash of pointing out LLM failures is a reaction to the overblown hype. We don't expect a statistical-language-processing-gadget to do math well, but then people need to stop claiming they're something other than statistical-language-processing-gadgets.
by bigyabai | 2025-04-05 17:40:35+00:00
I'd buy one if I knew I could use it. The old Intel Macs shipped with UEFI and a fairly open architecture, even Apple couldn't control when the chipset was fully depreciated. When MacOS cut off 32-bit support suddenly, hardcore software aficionados could still use Bootcamp to run the software they bought. When Apple "vintage"-ized old iMacs and Macbooks, they could still install other OSes and live on. Apple doesn't have to support their hardware forever... but their lack of a serious depreciation model means that I have to trust MacOS wholeheartedly.

And MacOS isn't worth my trust as a user. Big Sur feels like Mac by way of Windows 8 - it's stepping deeper into a service-integrated product that won't respect my time or money. If Apple published their driver code or at least documented their hardware as a gesture of good faith, I'd trust them a lot more. But Asahi is on the ropes right now (who'da thunk) and Apple isn't stepping in to heroically save anyone. Like the Halloween papers, with teeth this time.

It's all so tiring. I like my Magic Trackpad on GNOME, but I don't think modern Mac hardware is worth locking myself in with Dr. Tim Strangelove and learning to love his software.
by jjav | 2025-04-05 17:41:21+00:00
> I've seen so many posts of $.30 per kwh or even more, as high as $.36.

It is way more than that! Here are my PG&E prices from a recent bill (numbers are transmission + generation):

peak: 53.0 + 18.3 = 71.3 c/kWh

partpeak: 51.3 + 11.1 = 62.4 c/kWh

offpeak: 34.4 + 09.8 = 44.2 c/kWh