MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vitus | 2025-04-25 11:16:38+00:00
> Of course, the cost of a P.O. box over 40 years would have added up to thousands of dollars and that is less money for FSF advocacy. And time spent going to the post office to check the box would also have taken away from advocacy time.

To be fair, renting office space in downtown Boston also adds up to tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars, every year. By comparison, $500 dollars a year [0] for a medium PO Box (in the lobby of the building for their new office, no less!) is a steal.

[0] https://poboxes.usps.com/findBox.html?q=02196
by incangold | 2025-04-25 11:17:21+00:00
I agree with the broad point- as an industry we still fail to think of logging as a feature to be specified and tested like everything else. We use logging frameworks to indiscriminately and redundantly dump everything we can think of, instead of adopting a pattern of apps and libraries that produce thoughtful, structured event streams. It’s too easy to just chuck another log.info in; having to consider the type and information content of an event results in lower volumes and higher quality of observability data.

A small nit pick but having loads of data that “most likely no-one will look at ever again” is ok to an extent, for the data that are there to diagnose incidents. It’s not useful most of the time, until it’s really really useful. But it’s a matter of degree, and dumping the same information redundantly is pointless and infuriating.

This is one reason why it’s nice to create readable specs from telemetry, with traces/spans initiated from test drivers and passed through the stack (rather than trying to make natural language executable the way Cucumber does it- that’s a lot of work and complexity for non-production code). Then our observability data get looked at many times before there’s a production incident, in order to diagnose test failures. And hopefully the attributes we added to diagnose tests are also useful for similar diagnostics in prod.
by firesteelrain | 2025-04-25 11:17:57+00:00
I don’t know how you can access Signal without a public Internet connection. It isn’t like Signal is setup on Azure US Government (as far as I am aware) or Amazon equivalent. Does anyone know?

Signal uses HTTPS for contact discovery and account registration. Then, it switches to its own Signal protocol to provide end-to-end encryption.

There would have to be some egress rule to allow Signal access from Azure. Signal is a commercial app.

Even if access was allowed from Cloud or some other Defense network, it would still be considered “dirty” as the article says because it’s still going over the Public Internet to a commercial software provider.

Communications are encrypted barring some MiTM attack.

Not a good idea to discuss secret things on an app that isn’t approved for it but is this article reaching a bit?

I think the article is pointing out the obvious. The only way to access Signal is over the public Internet with HTTPS and end to end encryption provided by Signal.
by ferguess_k | 2025-04-25 11:18:26+00:00
To quote the venerable Sir Humphrey Appleby:

> Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it's worked so well?
by gcanyon | 2025-04-25 11:18:48+00:00
re: the GPS thing -- I have a very strong physical/arrangement sense/memory. Like, I remember where I sat in the theater, and where the theater was in the multiplex, as well as I remember the plot of the movie. In my twenties (pre-GPS) I could find my way back to anyplace I had ever driven.

And that driving skill in particular does not apply at all when I use GPS. On the one hand, I miss it. It was a fun super-power. On the other hand, I don't miss folding maps: I wouldn't go back for anything. I hope the change has freed up a portion of my brain to do something else, and that that something else is useful.
by shokk | 2025-04-25 11:18:53+00:00
Make things obvious by tying to core company values or how certain aspects might be against them. If you have security teams that take their job seriously, they can help draft policy. There are ways to approach this properly and still CYA.

Don’t forget, it’s the CEO’s job to choose whether or not to have you steer towards the iceberg. If he chooses to drive hard and fast right into it, maybe it was meant to be.
by Incipient | 2025-04-25 11:19:46+00:00
If China invaded the vast majority of countries (eg populations <50mil) I'd expect the country to give up after a few weeks of fighting if the US or a large number of allies didn't step in. I don't see how having every man/woman (hopefully not every child!) gunned down is viable for a country.

I don't think relying on your allies makes you a vassal.
by Tepix | 2025-04-25 11:19:50+00:00
Well, he has zero experience in administrative positions.

Here's a quote by Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), who voted against his nomination:

"Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests," the senator said. "Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been."
by belorn | 2025-04-25 11:20:00+00:00
For a content platform it seems natural that a sharp reduction in content by 80% would reduce the number of visitors. I wonder how this would play out if spotify or youtube removed 80% of their catalogs.

I am reminded of how people said that spotify "won" over music piracy by simply being more convenient. Remove 80% of the music there, and my bet is that music piracy would see a massive upswing, together with legal competitors. 50% reduction in users do not sound unthinkable.
by InfinityByTen | 2025-04-25 11:20:34+00:00
I have to admit that consistency and clarity of thought are often not implied just by the choice of notation and have not seen many books and professors putting effort to emphasize on its importance or even introducing it formally. I've seen cases where people use fancy notation to document topics than how they think about it. It drives me nuts, because the way you tell the story, you hide a lot how you arrived there.

This is why I picked so well on the exposition by Terry Tao. It shows how much clarity of thought he has that he understands the importance of notation.
Show HN: Turbine – A scripting language for C/C++ with Markdown-like syntax
by tsubo164 | 2025-04-25 11:20:47+00:00
Hi HN,

I’ve been working on a small scripting language called Turbine, designed to be embedded in C and C++ applications with minimal overhead. Turbine uses a Markdown-inspired syntax, aiming to be readable and writable by both engineers and non-engineers. It comes with built-in container types like vec, set, and map, and a straightforward C API for integration.

Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback!
by sunshine-o | 2025-04-25 11:21:36+00:00
> - Political systems are not equipped to deal with subversive campaigns using unethical online entertainment platforms (let's not called them social media please) such as FB and they are definitely not equipped to deal with those campaigns when they boost their effectiveness with LLM at scale

Yes, and it seems to me that at least democracies haven't really figured out and evolved to deal with the Internet after 30 years.

So don't hold your breath !
by brookst | 2025-04-25 11:21:53+00:00
Any actual data you can share?

My understanding from friends in the payment industry is that the “high fraud rates” are just people lying to their credit card companies when their spouse / whoever questions the charge.

If someone has the ability to process fraudulent credit card charges, why in the world would they waste that opportunity buying $20 of digital porn rather than a physical good that can be sold?

I believe GP that the issue is just pressure from evangelicals resulting in a de facto boycott of the woke porn virus.
by namaria | 2025-04-25 11:23:14+00:00
Writing had existed for 3000 years by then, alphabetic writing in Greek had existed for several centuries. The quote about "the invention of writing" is Socrates telling a story where a mythical Egyptian king says that.

Socrates also says in this dialogue:

"Any one may see that there is no disgrace in the mere fact of writing."

The essence of his admonishment is that having access to written text is not enough to produce understanding, and I not only tend to agree, I think it is more relevant than ever now.
by potato3732842 | 2025-04-25 11:23:52+00:00
It's not 1999 anymore.

The only thing the payment processors really have to fear at this point is the government itself asking for a bigger pound of flesh than they already take or sticking its fingers in their business to increase its own power (perhaps at the behest of other interests) like the did with Backpage. The avenues by which the government would manufacture the political will for such action would likely be the tried and true "but the children", "terrorists", "trafficking" and the like, perhaps with a modern BS twist on it.

The "christian right" boogeyman basically doesn't a) exist in the volume that people like you pretend it does anymore b) care about adult content anymore seeing as the overwhelming majority of people in the western world don't really remember a time before internet adult content and just take it as a fact of life, this stuff just doesn't really move the needle for anybody anymore.
by Saigonautica | 2025-04-25 11:25:27+00:00
I think about this sometimes. In the context of AI, but also for other reasons.

One way I like to see things, is that I'm lucky enough to have this intersection between things that I like doing, and things that are considered "productive" in some way by other people. Coding is one example, but most of my interests are like this.

I think a big reason I can have a not-unpleasant job, is because I've gotten reasonably good at the things I like doing. This means that for every employer that wants to pay me to do a thing I hate, there exists an employer that is willing to pay me more to do something I like, because I'm more valuable in that role. Sometimes, I'm bad at efficiently finding that person, but such is life :D

Moreover, I tend to get reasonably good at things I like doing, in highly specific ways. Sometimes these cause me to have unconventional solutions to problems. Generally these are worse (if I'm being honest), but a few times it's been a novel and optimal algorithm that made its way into a product.

I'm very hesitant to change the core process that results in the above: I express whatever natural curiosity I have by trying to build things myself. This is how I stay sharp and able to do interesting things, avoiding atrophy.

I find AI fascinating, and it's neat to see it write code! It's also cool to see some people get a lot done with it. However, mostly I find it about as useful as buying a robot to do weightlifting for me. I guess if AI muscles me out of coding, I'll shrug and learn to do some other fun thing.
by concats | 2025-04-25 11:25:46+00:00
I agree, the story behind the work is part of how we humans view a creation and cannot be dismissed.

I think we're a long way away from 100% algorithmically created content. This far all I've seen is content that is created based on human inputs and ideas. I'm not aware of the Instagram incident you mentioned, but it too seems like the brain child of a human if I'm not mistaken.

There have been trending AI generated videos floating around lately for example. Which I found surprising at first. But they still had a human script writer (prompt writer?), director and a human editor. Someone who had a vision of what they wanted to create and share. My prediction is that this human-directed tool-like usage will be the standard for a long time, so I'm not particularly worried about humans getting removed from the process.
by schwartzworld | 2025-04-25 11:26:27+00:00
> like the laws of physics that influence the cord patterns we use in music.

So much of what we think of as law in music is just being used to the conventions. Lots of amazing music would have been considered noise if created in an earlier time.

> The issue with programming is that it isn't like music or really any other skill where you get feedback right away and operate in a well understood environment.

Funny, I feel the opposite about programming. The feedback comes in milliseconds. Ok the build didn’t break, ok the ui is working, now check if the change I made is right, now run the tests, etc. and the environment is fully documented, depending on your tooling of choice and the quality of its docs.
by _nalply | 2025-04-25 11:27:23+00:00
Perhaps unsigned could help here with understanding.

unsigned means, don't use of an integer MSB as sign bit. __nonstring means, the byte array might not be terminated with a NUL byte.

So what happens if you use integers instead of byte arrays? I mean cast away unsigned or add unsigned. Of course these two areas are different, but one could try to design such features that they behave in similar ways where it makes sense.

I am unsure but it seems, if you cast to a different type you lose the conditions of the previous type. And "should this be legal", you can cast away a lot of things and it's legal. That's C.

But whatever because it's not implemented. This all is hypothetical. I understand GCC that they took the easier way. Type strictness is not C's forte.
by myrmidon | 2025-04-25 11:28:13+00:00
Sure. But even if this would be a full tradeoff between product performance and energy use (which it really isn't, you can typically eliminate a lot of power consumption without impacting performance at all in domestic appliances), than that would be already an improvement:

Without any energy labeling, the manufacturer has basically no incentive to provide any comparable information on energy use (especially if his device is subpar at it), and it's impossible for consumers to make informed decisions when buying (and very easy for extremely wasteful trash-products to get sold).

It also would be very appealing to just waste a ton of electricity for marginally better performance, because wasted electricity costs the device manufacturer nothing.
by afpx | 2025-04-25 11:28:18+00:00
Wouldn't MiTM be relatively easy for a state actor or even well-coordinated non-state actors? At least, if I was a state, I'd have backdoors in as many open source projects as I could and agents in the orginzations in the supply chain.

It's a crazy world when the person in charge of the US military is more paranoid about their own government than random people they don't even know.

If you go back far enough in the Twitter archives, you can see where Jack Dorsey basically tells everyone to switch to Signal to communicate with him. Was that the point when they all started colluding on Signal?
by aniviacat | 2025-04-25 11:28:49+00:00
If 60% of people don't care about the artist's image/culture/story, and 40% do, then 100% of artists are gonna try to make their image/culture/story look good.

Hence, I don't consider the popularity of such artists to be a counter-argument to my statement.

However, my statement is based solely on anecdotal evidence, so I won't claim to have solid pro-arguments either; hence why I put a question mark after the "most".
by crispyambulance | 2025-04-25 11:28:52+00:00
I frequently experience "diminished memory" and failure of retention especially when coming up to speed on something that I am unfamiliar with or revisiting stuff I rarely do.

It's often possible if the AI has been trained enough, to inquire about why something is the way it is, to ask about why the thing you had expected is not right. If you can handle your interaction with a dialectical mindset, it seems to help a lot as far as retention goes.

If API, language and systems designers put more effort into making their stuff sane, cogent, less tedious, and more ergonomic, overreliance on AI wouldn't be so much of a problem. On the other hand, maybe better design would do even more to accelerate "vibe coding" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
by n4r9 | 2025-04-25 11:29:28+00:00
> there are a lot of other historical figures whose existence is cast into doubt

Is that so bad? For example, I'm also not sure that Pythagoras existed - much less sure than I am for Socrates and Aristotle. I can appreciate the legendary figure of Pythagoras without that certainty. It feels more honest to say "actually my belief in their existence is around 60%".
by aitchnyu | 2025-04-25 11:29:54+00:00
Jetbrains AI runs on a "discount LLM" and their ratings were below 2 stars. I tried two others, which played games with me to reduce context and use cheaper models. I then switched to Aider which leads me to believe a moderate Claude user may need to spend 30$ a month, but I use Gemini models and I didnt exceed 5$.
by xattt | 2025-04-25 11:30:10+00:00
It’s tempting to assume that older technology is more reliable technology. Right now, that argument is being made for good reason to keep AM receivers in cars.

Floppy discs are older, but are still complicated beasts. It’s not like you would be able to repair a broken unit with basic tools.

Hard drives or whatever storage tech you can think of are similar, and you should use what is at hand. I would imagine that a flash drive, or an external SSD, remains more appropriate given the absence of mechanical parts.

At the end of the day, information is information, and you’re better off transcribing it onto paper for true 100% reliability.
by frklem | 2025-04-25 11:31:30+00:00
True, for each of the points discussed, there is an explicit mention on why it is desirable. But those are technical solutions, to technical problems. There is nothing wrong with that. The issue is, that the whole article is about technicalities because of technicalities, hence the 'engineering for the cause of engineering' (which is different from '.. for the sake of...'). It is at this point that the 'idea of rebuilding Kafka' becomes a pure technical one, detached from the intention of having something like Kafka. Other commenters in the thread also pointed out to the fact of Kafka not having a clear intention. I agree that a lot of software nowadays suffer from the same problem.
by myaccountonhn | 2025-04-25 11:31:34+00:00
Every now and then I give LLMs a try, because I think it's important to stay up to date with technology. Sometimes there have been specs that I find particularly hard to parse in domains I am a bit unfamiliar in where I thought the AI could help. At first the solutions seemed correct but then on further inspection, no they were far more convoluted than needed, even if they worked.
by rerdavies | 2025-04-25 11:31:49+00:00
I'm a veteran professional programmer with 40+ years of experience. So far, I'm finding coding with an AI to be pure sweetness and light.

I cannot imagine why you cannot find flow using an AI assistant. I am definitely somebody who finds bliss in programming; and in my experience, AI assistants increase my bliss. My ideas are expressed in code much more efficiently. I spend less time in miserable documentation sets. I find myself fearlessly adding functionality that I would not have added if I weren't using an AI. And I have not a shadow of a doubt that my productivity has gone up dramatically. If anything, I find that AI assistants keep me in flow sate, particularly in cases where I would previously have had to wade through pages of ancient crusty Unix API documentation.

Maybe you should try a different AI. I found the ChatGPT AIs totally unhelpful, and counter-productive; but would recommend Claude Sonnet 3.7 without hesitation. I'm still working my way through other AIs. Others may be better at present, but so far I haven't found any that are dramatically better. It's hard to keep up with the furious pace of innovation.

It might also take a while to find your fu. I found the benefits to using an AI pretty much immediately; but I'm still discovering new and interesting ways to use my AI assistant.
by gchamonlive | 2025-04-25 11:33:18+00:00
I don't think so. It's the same thing with photography: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Photography

If you trust symbols blindly, sure it's a hazard. But if you treat it as a plausible answer then it's all good. It's still your job to do the heavy lifting of understanding the domain of the latent search space, curate the answers and verify the information generated

There is no free lunch. LLMs isn't made to make your life easier. It's made for you to focus on what matters which is the creation of meaning.
by concats | 2025-04-25 11:34:57+00:00
Great take. A mixtape can be greater than the sum of its parts!

I believe that a lot of the judgement is also connected to the quality of the works. "Slop", while doubtlessly accurate for today, may be a rather weird description in a couple of year if the rate of progress continues to accelerate like it has.

Although I've already heard people starting to refer to DeviantArt and the like as full of "human slop" so perhaps this is just modern language that's evolving and completely unrelated to AI.
by crispyambulance | 2025-04-25 11:35:21+00:00
I can't understand how someone like that got into such a position.

It was deliberate. President Stable Genius wants a loyal "yes man" in that critical position. The Fox new host was it. Competence and continuity are not important for what the administration is doing.

If Hegseth gets cut-out, someone equally ridiculous will be chosen to fill that role.
by gunnarmorling | 2025-04-25 11:35:42+00:00
> why is there no in-memory kafka server that I can use for simple testing purposes.

Take a look at Debezium's KafkaCluster, which is exactly that: https://github.com/debezium/debezium/blob/main/debezium-core....

It's used within Debezium's test suite. Check out the test for this class itself to see how it's being used: https://github.com/debezium/debezium/blob/main/debezium-core...
by pornel | 2025-04-25 11:36:11+00:00
CPUs are not good at branchy code either. Branch mispredictions cause costly pipeline stalls, so you have to make branches either predictable or use conditional moves. Trivially predictable branches are fast — but so are non-diverging warps on GPUs. Conditional moves and masked SIMD work pretty much exactly like on a GPU.

Even if you have a branchy divide-and-conquer problem ideal for diverging threads, you'll get hit by a relatively high overhead of distributing work across threads, false sharing, and stalls from cache misses.

My hot take is that GPUs will get more features to work better on traditionally-CPU-problems (e.g. AMD Shader Call proposal that helps processing unbalanced tree-structured data), and CPUs will be downgraded to being just a coprocessor for bootstrapping the GPU drivers.
by namaria | 2025-04-25 11:36:47+00:00
I sympathize, but I feel like this is hopeless.

There are numerous papers about the limits of LLMs, theoretical and practical, and every day I see people here on this technology forum claiming that they reason and that they are sound enough to build products on...

It feels disheartening. I have been very involved in debating this for the past couple of weeks, which led me to read lots of papers and that's cool, but also feels like a losing battle. Every day I see more bombastic posts, breathless praise, projects based on LLMs etc.
by aqme28 | 2025-04-25 11:37:22+00:00
I'm not following your logic here. He is not allowed to use Signal for his work. It sounds like there were some measures in place to block lots of "normal internet" (for any number of good reasons), which would include Signal. He then deliberately circumvented those measures so he could use Signal.

Deliberately circumventing security and policy protocols is a bad thing in itself.