MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by scrollaway | 2025-04-20 09:28:01+00:00
As a figure skater and AI engineer, that venn diagram of my life doesn't often overlap.

That was an interesting paper but I'm confused as to what they actually tried to achieve. I'm also confused how they achieve any turning in a model that has infinite friction on one side and zero friction on the other. My brain is having trouble understanding how such a model could ever achieve anything other than a straight line.
by nebben64 | 2025-04-20 09:30:19+00:00
I like your take. Agree that we should label something as 'alive' when there are active biological processes happening; and 'dead' in the absence of any. Also, just get rid of the idea that you're not allowed to move between the 2 extremes; or even that you can't be on some spectrum between these 2 states; (e.g. zombies)
by mppm | 2025-04-20 09:30:48+00:00
Learned something new today, thank you!

If I understand correctly, the Hermite functions are the eigenfunctions of the Fourier Transform and thus all have this property -- with the Gaussian being a special case. But sech(x) is doubly interesting because it is not a Hermite function, though it can be represented as an infinite series thereof. Are there other well-behaved examples of this, or is sech(x) unique in that regard?
by ZeroGravitas | 2025-04-20 09:32:00+00:00
This could easily have been written in an exuberant tone.

Science! Rational decision making! Effective goverment! Maximum benefit for least cost! Teams of professionals working to evaluate and evolve the system forward.

Instead it's somewhat glum and gloomy.

Perhaps that's appropriate for a discussions about life and death matters (though again the evidence is that this is saving lives compared with alternative approaches, so yay!) but this thought was inspired by the "see also" headline of another story: "In praise of flag-shagging: To govern Britain, it helps to like it "

Maybe they need more "regulation shaggers" that appreciate effective government action by a country on the writing staff?
by zokier | 2025-04-20 09:32:11+00:00
Typestates were also notable feature in early Rust, albeit in a very different form. I do recall them mentioned often in presentations/talks/etc at the time.

Tbh it would make interesting blog post to compare modern typestate patterns to the historical built-in typestate mechanism.

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/2178
by vultour | 2025-04-20 09:32:30+00:00
I'm sorry but any charitability was lost after his first term, if you're still voting for him then yes, you are indeed stupid. His actions literally do not benefit anyone other than a few close "friends" that make billions on the massive swings he creates in the market. If you're a money hungry billionaire I understand why you vote for him, if you're the average Joe then you're dumb.

I find it really funny that even now, several months into his seconds term, you're still attempting to paint his supporters as regular level-headed people with "real concerns". Yea, that's why in every interview where they cry about lost jobs or crashed market it's "I thought he was going to hurt the others!". Real fine people he's got there.
by defrost | 2025-04-20 09:33:34+00:00
The issue is that across the movement of time and generations a "nuclear family" unit of parents and their offspring has all the stability and longevity of a pencil balanced on it's tip .. the clock is ticking on Hapsberg lips and the oddities of pharoahs.

Long lasting societies have a larger formal weave based on outworking and out breeding, formally moieties in the indigenous peoples of North America, Australia, Indonesia and elsewhere.

A single family unit alone is insufficient and historically cycles members in and out over half a generation through marriage and fortune seeking.

I've seen your other comments and they have that kind of first order depth expected of a simple thought and looking things up quickly on a phone.

Here's a very shallow introduction to a family of systems with many variations that lasted some 70 thousand years keeping bloodlines clean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moiety_(kinship)
by crq-yml | 2025-04-20 09:33:53+00:00
It's easier to appreciate math when you are disinterested in the results or applications, because the nature of academic topics near the core grouping of math/philosophy/empiricism is that they are discovered with a lot of meandering at first, and then sometime down the line they become repurposed into a direct application that can be learned by rote. School tends to instruct in some of the most directly applicable stuff first - the "three R"s" plus some civics and training aligned with national goals. And that means that school predominantly teaches associations between math and rote methods, to the disgruntlement of many mathematicians. The "meandering" part is left to self-selected professionals, so it doesn't get explored to much depth.

So I think a good motive for math study is really in games and puzzles, where the questions posed aren't about win/lose or right/wrong, but about exploring the scenario further and clarifying the constraints or finding an interesting new framing. Martin Gardner wrote a long-running column and a few books in this vein which are still highly regarded decades later.
by troupo | 2025-04-20 09:35:16+00:00
> Well you're free to bring this up to the various data privacy national organisations in the EU.

> But I see that we're moving goalposts.

We are not moving goalposts. You literally claimed that users give consent to data collection. No, they do not. They are tricked into giving this consent because that's the only way ad industry can obtain consent to livelong invasive tracking.

> Have you provided sources for any of your claims?

> One of many available links on Google:

> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016781162...

Let's see what the paper says:

--- start quote ---

Our simulation study reveals that more than 50% of audience segments (i.e., 23,407 out of 45,440 audience segments on the right-hand side of the dashed vertical line in Figure D2 in Online Appendix D) require a minimum increase in performance larger than 700% to be at least as profitable as no-targeting. ...we find that more than half of the audience segments require an increase in CTR0, CR0, and m0 larger than 100% to be at least as profitable as no-targeting.

Approximately half of the audience segments on Spotify require a higher increase in CTR0 for the advertiser, suggesting they might be less profitable than no-targeting.

--

By highlighting the questionable profitability of many audience segments, this paper aims to help advertisers decide whom to target.

We suggest using our model to calculate the break-even performance for many segments and then order these segments by break-even performance from smallest to largest.

... our findings also reveal that untargeted campaigns may yield higher profits.

Our proposed model has limitations, as it relies on inputs that may not be readily available to all advertisers

--- end quote ---

So. Questionable profitability, untargeted yield higher profits unless you ignificantly increase performance of targeted ads, a suggestion of an unproven model relying on data that may not be available to advertisers.

Yes, this truly is a paper that proves the amazing great efficiency of targeted advertisement, especially when offset against lifelong invasive tracking and wholesale trading of user data.

> Data collected has an expiration date. This is also part of GDPR compliance.

1. GDPR isn't available worldwide

2. Ad industry claims "legitimate uses" for a bunch of data and end up with "oh, we'll maintain your precise geolocation for 12 years" https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541

> If your targeting isn't competitive, your inventory will not be bought or at a lower price.

So what?

> This already happens for Safari and Firefox impressions.

Good.
by LiamPowell | 2025-04-20 09:35:39+00:00
> So, essentially, no company out there supports all these stores, and you just train users to bypass these warnings.

This just sounds like a problem with your company. The barrier for getting certs from a public CA is lower than ever now that Let's Encrypt and others exist. If you really must have a non-public CA then your company needs an IT team that can properly manage that.

This isn't an issue for normal users.
by ykonstant | 2025-04-20 09:36:06+00:00
That is unfortunately true; not only in the US, but all around the world. The particulars do depend on the instructor, and many if not most instructors try to be motivational, but the syllabus is perfectly clear: "this is a weed out class". And when it comes to test time, the syllabus wins.

The only thing I disagree with in your comment is about the instructors: they want to be employed, and they have to accept the syllabus and testing standards. It is not about passion and ability to teach (most, especially younger ones, are full of those); it is about meeting the departmental requirements.
by Epa095 | 2025-04-20 09:36:45+00:00
Traditionally what a 'independent MP' would do is create a new party. Usually it requires a certain number of signatures, not from people supporting them, just supporting their right to become a party. Then they need to have candidates for the ridings they want to be in.

One example is the Norwegian party 'Patient Focus' which

was formed in April 2021, as a support movement for an expansion of the hospital in the town of Alta in Alta Municipality in Finnmark county, Norway. In the 2021 parliamentary election, it won one of Finnmark's five seats in the Storting (Parlament).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Focus_(Norway)
by troupo | 2025-04-20 09:36:51+00:00
> May I remind you once more that the possibility to create this magical Internet world you guys live in

Ads don't require pervasive and invasive tracking

> but somehow nobody builds or uses it. Maybe there is a good reason for this?

Yes. Because unrestricted unlimited capitalism will always exploit any possible niche and avenue, and people will cheer it on until it's too late.
by djtango | 2025-04-20 09:37:42+00:00
I have been quite skeptical of using AI tools and my experiences using them have been frustrating for developing software but power tools usually come with a learning curve while "good product" with clean simplified interface often results in reduced capability.

VIM, Emacs and Excel are obvious power tools which may require you to think but often produce unrivalled productivity for power users

So I don't think the verdict that the product has a bad UI is fair. Natural language interfaces is such a step up from old school APIs with countless flags and parameters
by A_D_E_P_T | 2025-04-20 09:38:00+00:00
There was a public debate on this point last year, where the guy arguing the lab leak hypothesis put up $100k of his own money -- and lost it.

In light of this official White House position, I think it's worth another look:

> https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r...
by Svip | 2025-04-20 09:38:09+00:00
I cannot speak fully to the Swedish situation, but in Denmark, MPs are independent as defined in the constitution. Yes, elections are largely party-based, but once elected, MPs are allowed to vote as they want. Of course, if they chose to defy the party line, they risk "losing the whip" as they'd say in the UK, which basically amounts to being expelled from the party.

That being said, it does not take a lot of signatures to get on a ballot as a candidate outside the parties in Denmark (a few hundreds, I believe), though only two candidates have successfully managed to get elected that way. Conversely, Denmark has a high threshold for political parties (requiring signatures amounting to 1% of the vote of the last election, so usually around 21k), but the threshold to get into parliament is only 2% (which I believe is one of the lowest amongst countries that uses similar proportional representative systems).

Returning to the towing the line (or rather lack thereof), the Danish parliament have a lot of independent MPs in parliament, because a lot find reason to quit their party after getting elected. Wikipedia has a fine table of MPs who has changed colours since the last election in November 2022:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Folketi...
by hilbert42 | 2025-04-20 09:39:05+00:00
"At school they keep trying to make them memorize useful phrases, like a tourist that goes to Paris…."

Like learning dozens of trig identities without any explanation about why one would need them. As I've mentioned elsewhere learning math for the sake of it isn't enough. For most of us math has to have relevance, and for that we have to link it to things in the real world.
by ZeroGravitas | 2025-04-20 09:40:02+00:00
A good novelty news account would be one that filters the news just for new lows in American politics.

They'd have been busy recently.

Not that all the standard corruption and inhuman cruelty isn't terrible, or that the second meme coin rug pull by the President is any better than the first, but it's an efficient use of time to track the descent and to be reminded that "this is not normal".
Show HN: @mcp-it/fastify – Auto-generate MCP tools from Fastify APIs
by Adir | 2025-04-20 09:41:36+00:00
Hi,

I wanted a straightforward way to expose my Fastify server APIs to AI assistants using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) without needing custom wrappers etc., and couldn't find an existing solution that did this automatically.

So I built `@mcp-it/fastify` – a plugin for Fastify that automatically discovers the API routes and exposes them as MCP tools, making them callable by clients like Cursor, Claude Desktop, etc.

It supports: * Automatic route discovery. * SSE and Streamable HTTP transports. * Per-route configuration (e.g., hiding internal routes, custom tool names).

The project is open-source and available on https://github.com/AdirAmsalem/mcp-it.

I'd love to get your feedback! Is this useful? Are there other frameworks you'd like to see supported (NestJS, Express, others)?

Thanks!
by OJFord | 2025-04-20 09:44:08+00:00
Not to mention the possibility of triggering a response that the trigger would help combat if you already exhibited the response. Or it simply being an uncommon side effect that it's made worse. Headaches and nausea are listed in possible side effects for just about everything, because if anyone reports it they have to list it since the possibility of causality hasn't been ruled out.
by foldr | 2025-04-20 09:44:52+00:00
>Just like how American English has black and white accents, you could make a better-than-chance guess at a modern Londoner's ethnicity from a recording of their voice. (See Multicultural London English).

The whole thing about MLE is that it's multicultural, i.e. not stratified along ethnic or racial lines. I do not think I would be able to judge the ethnicity of a Londoner aged under (say) 30 in this way.
by otabdeveloper4 | 2025-04-20 09:45:29+00:00
> there are no concrete uses cases that can have the definition of tools

There are some, but you won't like them. Three big examples:

a) Automating human interactions. (E.g., "write some birthday wishes for my coworker".)

b) Offensive jokes and memes.

c) Autogenerated NPC's for role-playing games.

So, generally things that don't require actual intelligence. (Weird that empathy is the first thing we managed to automate away with "AI".)
by Svip | 2025-04-20 09:46:33+00:00
> On the other hand, I suppose we do have primaries in the US. Sounds like that's not a thing in Scandinavia.

Whilst we do not have primary elections, you can vote for individual candidates on the ballots, moving them up on the party list. This strategy does actually work to get candidates further down on the list over other candidates that would have been selected first.
by nkrisc | 2025-04-20 09:46:49+00:00
> Nobody is threatening violence against you for playing your guitar sharp. I have no idea where violence even came into play here. It’s a registered trademark. A registered trademark is a legal designation that provides exclusive rights to a brand name, logo, or other distinctive symbol used to identify a specific product or service; they registered Spice Sound or whatever as a trademark.

And what happens to you if you don’t abide by the legal protections of the trademark? The government must ultimately use violence or the threat of violence to enforce its rules.
by MattPalmer1086 | 2025-04-20 09:47:26+00:00
It's about trust that the information is going to be up to date and reliable and available. This means we need trust in the organisation that manages this.

We've had no real updates to the existing CVEs for over a year now - lots of them just pending assessment. The communication about it has been misleading or non existent. Then the recent funding issue which threatened to close it down entirely, followed by maybe 11 more months of it? Who knows.

A huge number of infosec processes and tools depend on CVEs and the NVD as the main source of them.

So the trust is gone or rapidly going. We are all looking around in the infosec community and wondering what comes next.
by DiogenesKynikos | 2025-04-20 09:48:43+00:00
Some people said the answer was "no," and some said it was "yes." That's why there was a civil war about 80 years later.

The American Revoltion actually sparked a first round of antislavery laws and court cases, which eliminated slavery in the northern states within a generation. Even in parts of the South, there was increasing questioning of slavery. The US banned the international slave trade. Virginia made it legal (for the first time) to free slaves, and there was a small wave of manumissions. People like Thomas Jefferson admitted that there was something wrong with slavery, even if they were so financially dependent on it that they didn't free their own slaves. Jefferson even drafted a new constitution for Virginia that would have freed anyone born after 1800, but shelved it when he decided it wouldn't have enough support to pass.

Vehement proslavery ideology really developed a few decades after the revoltion.
by Epa095 | 2025-04-20 09:49:39+00:00
In the Norwegian parlament it's actually quite common that only part of the parlament is gathered for votes when it's clear who would win a complete vote. So in that sense it's actually very close to your 8 members.

It still matters who you vote on though, but mostly from the representatives ability to influence what gets discussed. And there is a lot of 'day-to-day' politics where the details gets formed by the representatives, while the 'big lines' are set by the party.

Finaly I can't help but notice that the American political culture is significantly less diverse than the Scandinavian one. Yes, you have the odd representative crossing party lines, but in practice it seems like all this possibility for diverse opinions ends up being lost when they get squashed into two big tents.
by kstenerud | 2025-04-20 09:51:21+00:00
My parents forced me to play piano, right up until I told them that I'll destroy our piano if they don't lay off, and any consequences they could think of would not stop me (I was normally an obedient child, but enough was enough).

That got their attention.

30 years later I picked up classical guitar and loved it! Do I thank my parents for forcing the piano on me? Hell no.
by rerdavies | 2025-04-20 09:51:56+00:00
The really important thing is to teach kids to find their joy.

At the end of my second year of piano lessons, my teacher took me into her living room, and we listened to Glen Miller records for most of the hour. And then we had a cup of tea, and she told me, "this is the music that I love. I play piano because I love that music, and I want to be able to play it myself. What kind of music do you like?" I didn't really have an answer. So she told me that we should stop doing lessons, but once I found music that I loved, she'd be happy to teach me how to play it.

In my early teens, I discovered Miles Davis. Once I had found my passion, all the hard work became play. I actually ended up learning to play jazz guitar, not piano. Even the heavy lifting was pure joy, because it had purpose and meaning.

I didn't become great at mathematics until I discovered the joy in mathematics (another brilliant teacher handed me a stack of old math contests, and said here, you might find these fun. I placed 4th among 20,000 students).

I didn't learn to write well until I discovered the joy in writings. (An absolutely brilliant English teacher who made us assign ourselves our own grades, but broke his promise in the end by upgrading all my papers to A+'s).

And I gave my kids the room to find their joy as well.
by MattPalmer1086 | 2025-04-20 09:54:27+00:00
This is an unfortunate truth of a lot of security people and processes. A blind checkbox-oriented "CVE reported so must fix" approach.

I just had one where we were asked to remove a management client for an internal server that had a DOS vulnerability reported (which could not be triggered by the management client). I pointed out that removing the client does not mitigate the DOS issue - and we would be effectively causing a denial of service on ourselves! No dice. Scan shows vulnerable version, must make number of reported vulns go down. Zero thought, huge effort.

It does huge damage to security and the business to take this kind of approach, but it's depressingly common.
by aleph_minus_one | 2025-04-20 09:54:31+00:00
> Mathematicians and computer programmers use abstraction to opposite ends

I claim to be qualified in both disciplines. With this background, I disagree.

If you are very certain what you want to model, abstractions are often very useful to shed light on "what really happens in the system" (both in mathematics and computer science, but also in physics).

The problem with applying abstractions in computer programs (in this way) lies somewhere else: in business, users/customers are often very "volatile" what they want from the computer program, instead of pondering deeply about this question (even though this would be a very good idea). Thus (certain kinds of) abstractions in computer code make it much harder to adjust the program if new, very different requirements come up.
by Galanwe | 2025-04-20 09:55:33+00:00
> This just sounds like a problem with your company.

I have seen that pattern in enough companies to be convinced this is widespread.

> The barrier for getting certs from a public CA is lower than ever now that Let's Encrypt and others exist

I don't think you understood what I'm talking about. Public certificates are cute for your public website, but any sizeable company is _also_ hundreds of internal websites and services, especially for the non IT departments. Think legal, compliance, accounting, HR, etc.

Most companies use a private CA for these, and that makes sense:

- You want subsigning CAs for your VPN, contractor services, websites, teams, etc.

- You want private DNS to private IPs (lots of ISPs won't even serve your private IPs through their DNS caches)

- etc

> If you really must have a non-public CA then your company needs an IT team that can properly manage that.

On the contrary, managing private CAs is what most companies do _well_. What they don't (and honestly nobody can) do well is distribute CA certs to user devices. This is often not done right on work devices, but BYOD made it even worst. No company can distribute its CA certs on the hundreds of different stores that one could think of, so after 2 years, some benign change of default corporate browser for users ends up with them learning to auto bypass certificate warnings.