MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pc86 | 2025-04-21 15:19:42+00:00
The fact that you think there needs to be a criminal conviction in court makes me think you haven't the slightest idea what free speech means ideologically.

If police question you based on your speech alone, that itself is a violation. You should not have to answer to the state for voicing disagreement or for having an unpopular opinion.

Here's an example of half a dozen police officers coming to talk to parents for complaining about their school in a private WhatsApp group: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/29/parents-arre... (they were later arrested)

Here's a police officer saying on video that if you tell someone to speak English it "could be perceived as a hate crime:" https://x.com/PeterSweden7/status/1911348268346323047

This was a partially deaf person asking the person they were talking to to please speak clearly (no mention of language was made, not that it should matter). The only appropriate response to a police officer coming up to you to discuss the interaction is profanity.

Here's multiple arrests for protests after the death of the Queen: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62883713

These are ones I found with a Google search in under ten minutes. I'm sure there are dozens, hundreds more - one link I didn't open said there have been approximately 3,000 arrests based on social media posts. I'm sure some of those are justified, I'm sure a lot of them aren't.

A conviction does not need to happen for damage to be done or for speech to be chilled.
by alabastervlog | 2025-04-21 15:20:00+00:00
Had a long-time friend group explode last year over this. Years of behind-their-backs shit-stirring lies by a couple members of the group finally got figured out and called out, publicly, which lit the fuse. Exact same behavior that was called out was immediately employed to try to spin that and get these people's "enemies" pushed out of the group, which was the bomb going off. About half the group survived with some scarring, the rest just shattered.

Toxic people gonna toxic.

> There’s always going to be a shot caller or instigator behind it and everyone else who is weak willed will get on board with it.

Yeah, a major factor was lots of people putting up with some real bullshit for years to try to keep the peace. That, and the ones who did try to do something about it approached the problem-people one-on-one, which just led to them being lied to ("oh no, there's no problem between us") and then smeared even harder to others, and marginalized, having no idea why any of it was happening.
by _heimdall | 2025-04-21 15:20:27+00:00
> Sure, but in the old system people just starved to death when there were problems with their crops (Irish potato famine, dust bowl, etc.).

Sure, but then we're trading smaller, more frequent disruptions at the cost of risking less frequent, but much larger disruptions. More to my original point though (I may have rambled there and not been clear), the risk I'm raising is that we now make decisions based on only today's situation and are unaware of the context that got us here. That is fine most of the time, but incremental change isn't fool proof and sometimes the context of how you got here is extremely important in making the next decision.

> people who care can find out more than any farmer 100 years ago about food and source theirs accordingly.

There are a few risks there though, maybe they're worth it but still risks.

You don't know what you don't know, and in that case its hard or impossible to find it online. Plenty of historical knowledge also doesn't live online at all, its still hard to find research papers more than a few decades old - at best they're online as a PDF and likely not indexed or searchable.

We also can't expect those in charge to know much of anything when the scale of lost, unknown context grows too far and too fast. At best they outsource that knowledge to others, but those are likely experts only in one small piece of the puzzle. To me that seems like a very delicate balance that can work for a time bit would inevitably fail in ways we couldn't predict.

All that said, I'm also not trying to make the argument that we must know all the context and history of anything we deal with. Just the importance of at least recognizing what we don't know and where the risks are.
by saulpw | 2025-04-21 15:20:30+00:00
I tried it recently. I asked for videochat services like the one I use (WB) with 2 specific features that the most commonly used services don't have. It asked some clarifying questions and seemed to understand the mission, then went off for 10 minutes after which it returned 5 results in a table.

The first result was WB, which I gave to it as the first example and am already using. Results 2 and 3 were the mainstream services which it helpfully marked in the table as not having the features I need. Result 4 looked promising but was discontinued 3 years ago. Result 5 was an actual option which I'm trying out (but may not work for other reasons).

So, 1/5 usable results. That was mildly helpful I guess, but it appeared a lot more helpful on the surface than it was. And I don't seem to have the ability to say "nice try but dig deeper".
by camillomiller | 2025-04-21 15:20:36+00:00
While I appreciate the story, I am honestly confused by The Verge's editorial choices in running a series of articles like this one. I understand it's been 50 years after the end of the American War in Vietnam, but what does it remotely have to do with tech?

Why are they publishing this story/these stories? How is it on-brand? Again don't get me wrong. It's great that someone's doing it but... It just feels... wrong from an editorial product management perspective.
by mrkeen | 2025-04-21 15:20:45+00:00
When in doubt, measure!

Your code didn't show a quadratic blowup in the timing:

main = print . sum $ take 1000000 ints ints = 1 : map (+1) ints 500000500000 real 0m0.022s user 0m0.021s sys 0m0.000s
by fefe23 | 2025-04-21 15:20:57+00:00
So, let me get this straight. You published your software under a free license that stipulates they can't remove the license and are otherwise free to do as they please.

They took you by your word and did exactly that.

What did you think a license is for? For artistic expression? It's a contract. If you want to get paid, put that in your license.

I recommend AGPL 3. Then nobody will rip you off. And if they do, you can drag them to court over it.
by Trixter | 2025-04-21 15:20:58+00:00
> Painting out these movie mistakes as part of a restoration is wrong.

As part of a restoration, yes. As part of a remaster, no.

If the remaster is overseen by the primary creative (such as everything done to the Aliens UHD 4k release, which was overseen and approved by Cameron), then it's official -- and as an audience member, you have to examine how you feel about that. For example, some enthusiasts lament the removal of film grain in Aliens, but Cameron has said in interviews that he hated the grain in Aliens because he was forced to use a particular film stock and didn't like the result. So it was never the director's vision to have excessive grain in that movie, and the audience should accept the 4k UHD release as canonical and authorized.

These debates are colored (no pun intended) by nostalgia, much like the vinyl vs. digital debates.
by pdimitar | 2025-04-21 15:21:10+00:00
I don't disagree. In fact I also subscribe under the same philosophy.

I was commenting on what I'm observing in most people I've met. But yeah, I'll agree I'm venturing into the clouds now and the discussion will become strictly theoretical and thus fruitless. Fair enough.

Thanks for indulging. :) Was interesting to hear takes so very different than mine.
by ty6853 | 2025-04-21 15:21:23+00:00
I was abused at this same port of entry, including being jailed as a USC.

Prior at this same port, a woman was warrantlessly vaginally "searched" via manual manipulation at the direction of CBP. She lost. And I contacted her attorneys with my own case, they said I would lose too.

But this was under Biden, so no one gave a shit. They don't give a shit unless it suits their political agenda.
by zephyrfalcon | 2025-04-21 15:21:52+00:00
You don't have to go through all the globals, you just have to get the caller's namespace, which is fairly simple. See e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/a/6618825/27426

For this reason, I think it's not true that this absolutely had to be a language feature rather than a library. A template class written in pure Python could have done the same lookup in its __init__.
by MyOutfitIsVague | 2025-04-21 15:22:23+00:00
MIT license requires attribution, not "a copyright header". It's not concerned when headers, or with sources being pristine, but with people being credited. If I release my software MIT-licenced, but don't have copyright headers, you are not free to copy files without crediting me.

And no, their note in the readme is not an attribution. It's thanking them for "sharing their insights", which in no way is code attribution.

Microsoft violated copyright here, bar none. There is no other reasonable interpretation.
by luckylion | 2025-04-21 15:22:25+00:00
Wow, that had passed me by completely, thanks for sharing!

Very similar indeed. The attacks I witnessed where easy to block once you identified the patterns (referrer was visible and they used predictable ?_=... query parameters to try and bypass caches), but very effective otherwise.

I suppose in the event of a hot war, the Internet will be cut quickly to defend against things like the "Great Cannon".
by bmurphy1976 | 2025-04-21 15:22:28+00:00
You can go crazy with the plugins for sure, but I found three to be particularly useful:

1. Google Calendar - this is a pain to set up, but once it's set up you can pull your agenda into a note.

2. Tasks - This allows you to write a query which you can use to consolidate multiple TODO lists into a single note.

3. Homepage - Always keep one note open as a pinned home page.

Combine the 3 and I have a nice dashboard that shows my agenda for the day and all the various TODOs I have peppered through my vault.
by armsaw | 2025-04-21 15:23:46+00:00
I was using this for a while and really loving it, however the dev just recently decided to undertake a rewrite into Lua which breaks all existing scripts, and changed how the online/offline paradigm works, which made me feel a bit skittish about whether it is going to be a stable long-term solution. I am really rooting for Zef here though and hope it settles into a good place soon!
by ygjb | 2025-04-21 15:23:52+00:00
Your argument is fairly asinine. When you fork an open source project under the MIT license you have an obligation to include the original license in all copies or substantial copies of the code. The author of the fork may also sublicense, which allows them to add new terms to the license, but not remove the original license.

Forking and/or copying files from the Spegel code base into the Peerd code base is permitted, but since the Spegel code base had a single license file covering the entire repo, then the onus is on Microsofts engineers to update the code they copied and include the original license terms, for example, by including something like:

// Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.

// Licensed under the MIT License.

// Some code Copyright (c) 2024 The Spegel Authors, under MIT license

If your argument is that they aren't required to do this because the original code didn't have a license header in the file, then it would follow that you are arguing that the MIT license doesn't apply to the code that was copied, in which case Microsoft is using unlicensed code stolen from an open source project.

While I haven't worked at MS specifically, I would assume that like every other tech company I have worked at, they have a team or working group that specializes in adherence to open source licenses specifically to avoid both the legal implications and the bad PR implications of misusing open source software.
by jandrewrogers | 2025-04-21 15:23:56+00:00
GPL code does not exist in a vacuum. To be maximally useful, GPL code must coexist with source code subject to different legal, regulatory, and licensing regimes. GPL use is only “not restricted” if you completely ignore that compliance with GPL can unavoidably result in civil and criminal liability. Sure, those potential users are not required to avoid civil and criminal liability but that is not a serious argument.

Permissive licenses generally allow source code to coexist within almost any legal scenario into which source code may be placed. This is why I only use permissive licenses both for my own open source and for the open source I use.
by WorldMaker | 2025-04-21 15:24:31+00:00
db.execute(t"Select Count(1) from someTable")

It's one extra letter to "force" for an unparameterized query over a "raw string". The t-string itself works just fine without parameters.

There's definitely a backwards compatibility hurdle of switching to a template-only API, but a template-only API doesn't look that much "less friendly" with inputs, when the only difference is a `t` before every string, regardless of number of parameters.
by Nemo_bis | 2025-04-21 15:24:50+00:00
I don't disagree with the general point but in this case we're looking at what (seems to be) a blatant copyright violation. It would not be any more or less of a violation if the infringed license had been a more or less permissive one, because the license has not been followed.

Sure, the MIT is very permissive so it's very easy for Microsoft to correct their repository so that it's in compliance for the future, but they cannot correct the past. (Unless the original authors allow for it.) The MIT license, being so short, does not have a provision about curing infringements.

So Microsoft seems to be ok with the risk of being sued for infringement etc. That's not something you can correct with your personal decisions as author.
by gwern | 2025-04-21 15:25:08+00:00
> What I can't figure out is why you seem so confident that the OP didn't verify the LLM output and/or would have published anything written by the model, whether it was faulty or not (which again, in this case it wasn't).

Because I routinely catch people, often very intelligent and educated people, confidently posting LLM materials that they have not factchecked and which are wrong (such as, say, about history, where they might make an argument about human evolution based on cave-dwelling where 4o was merely off by a few hundred thousand years), and I still find confabulations in my own use of even frontier models like o1-pro or Gemini-2.5-pro (leaving aside o3's infamous level of crimes, which I think is probably unrepresentative of reasoning models and idiosyncratic to it).

And in this case, the prompt looks like it was very low quality. The author had plenty of chances to put in details from his own real experience as an actual Iranian - any intelligent, observant college undergrad routinely buying coffee ought to have plenty to say - and instead, it's super-vague waffle that... well... an LLM could have written about just about any country, swapping out a few clauses. ("Why drinking coffee in America has become so complicated")

> You're clearly allergic to basic LLM-style

This is not a 'basic' LLM style. It is a very specific, recent chatbot style. (Note that visarga was able to instantly tell it was the recent 4o, because that style is so distinct compared to the previous 4o - never mind Claude-3, Gemini, Llama, Grok etc.)

Further, there should be no single 'LLM-style'; it makes me sad how much LLM writing capability has been collapsed and degraded by RLHF tuning. Even my char-RNN outputs from 2015, never mind GPT-3-base in 2020, showed more occasional sparks of flair than a 2023 ChatGPT did.

> or at least the masquerading of LLM text as human, so I'm curious what you'd consider worse: 1. LLM-generated text reflecting an accurate prompt/input, or 2. genuine human BS wanting to be taken seriously? (e.g. The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman if it wasn't in jest)

#1 is worse (if unedited/factchecked/improved etc and just dumped out raw), because there will be much more of it and the intermingling of fact and fiction makes it harder to factcheck, harder to screen out of future training corpuses, and overall more insidious. Human BS serves as costly proof-of-work and because it is costly, once you recognize you are reading BS from someone like Elon Musk or Sam Altman, you can switch modes and ignore the factual content and ask, 'why is he writing this? what purpose does this BS serve? who is the audience here and how are they using it?' and get something quite useful out of it. I have learned a lot from statements by humans where little or none of it was factually true. Whereas a LLM output may mean nothing more than 'some unattended code spent $0.0001 to spam social media with outputs from a canned prompt', if even that.
by TomMasz | 2025-04-21 15:25:09+00:00
Specieism in science goes way back. The funny thing is, people who live closer to nature and birds and animals have known about animal intelligence for millennia. But they were "primitives" who couldn't possibly have more knowledge than learned white people.

And crows? Humans have been battling crows since the beginning of agriculture. It takes some serious effort to crow-proof everything on a farm.
by haberman | 2025-04-21 15:25:27+00:00
TL;DR: like f-strings, all {foo} expressions in the t-string are evaluated immediately, but instead of immediately concatenating everything into a single result string, the t-string evaluation returns a Template object that keeps the interpolation results and the surrounding strings separate. This lets subsequent logic decide whether the interpolation results need any special escaping before concatenating them with the strings around them.

In other words, t-strings are basically f-strings where the final concatenation is delayed. And indeed, you can trivially implement f-strings using t-strings by performing a simple, non-escaped concatenation step: https://peps.python.org/pep-0750/#example-implementing-f-str...

f'...' -> str t'...' -> Template foo(t: Template) -> str
by brudgers | 2025-04-21 15:25:47+00:00
The running pictures are awesome work. For a lot of families your pictures might be the only pictures they have of the runners running.

My comment was about how NBA “press pool” level photographs are made (and big time college hoops). They use flash but the flashes are big, wireless and up in the rafters (i.e. indirect). Basically, the press pool has access to studio lighting and can shoot at low iso and narrow apertures…and of course they have access to great shooting positions.

Luck is always a factor…the photographer in Liefer’s iconic photo is just looking at the backside of Ali’s big white trunks…

https://neilleifer.com/collections/muhammad-ali?srsltid=AfmB...

But for what it is worth, when I was shooting a lot of high school soccer, better action shots came from “skating to where the puck is going.” And turning off spray and pray because there’s only one best moment to click the shutter and mechanical sympathy is the best way to get close.

And fewer photos meant less grunt work later…modulo pleasing an editor or the mother of the bride. It was a pure hobby, not a jobby.

When that phase of my life passed, I shifted toward tilt-shifts and movements and doubled down on one shot at a time.
Show HN: Nova – AI that facilitates serendipitous Silicon Valley-style connects
by weslymichel | 2025-04-21 15:26:41+00:00
When I lived in Silicon Valley, the most valuable experiences were small garage gatherings where someone's research would completely shift my perspective.

For the past few months, I've been building Nova to scale this experience. Nova is an AI catalyst that engages users in meaningful conversations, identifies their unique growth patterns, and connects them with people who can transform their trajectory.

Unlike typical networking tools that match based on stated interests, Nova focuses on identifying complementary cognitive approaches and growth trajectories - connections that wouldn't happen elsewhere but could lead to breakthrough insights.

I'm looking for 100 early users. If you're interested or have questions about the approach, I'd appreciate your feedback.

https://www.arranged.ai/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=so...
by rundmc | 2025-04-21 15:26:51+00:00
Ahead of the launch of the first Tontine company in over 100 years, we have heard similar comments from many parents and for that reason have now created the Tontine Trust Fund.

The regular Tontine Trust is for parents that want to avoid the risking of running out of money in old age and becoming a financial burden on their children.

The Tontine Trust Fund is for parents that want to set aside an inheritance for their spouse or children now which they can configure to start paying the child a monthly income for the rest of their life starting at age X. This reduces the concern of parents that they will pass on a chunk of the inheritance to children that will 'blow the money' instead of making it last them for life.

Also, FYI: a) Research from the insurance industry indicates that tontiners/annuitants spend double what they would without having a lifetime income, thereby enabling a better quality of life in retirement. b) The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, alma mater of Einstein and 28 other Nobel Prize Winners, has produced research showing that a retirees pension wealth is enhanced by 87% with zero added risk upon moving their savings into a Tontine, indicating that the gain is not 'marginal'.

All in all, the Tontine enables you to save a little less yet still spend more.
by MyOutfitIsVague | 2025-04-21 15:26:57+00:00
Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I refuse to believe that Microsoft doesn't understand how attribution, copyright, or open source licenses work, though. I believe this is a mistake, but it's a very egregious one that showcases a lack of respect for the communities that Microsoft is exploiting. This mistake should not be possible from an entity like Microsoft.
by gwern | 2025-04-21 15:27:30+00:00
> It doesn't make any difference and doesn't invalidate my critique. It appears to be a science communication book, so it could easily be a web page. Even if it was a LaTeXish PDF there were multiple ways to not making it a PDF that resembles a scientific article, there's a precise choice being made about how to communicate. The medium is the message.

If this is really your response, I agree with your original comment about you being burned-out.
by skydhash | 2025-04-21 15:27:50+00:00
> Traditionally, coding involves three distinct “time buckets”:

> Why am I doing this? Understanding the business problem and value

> What do I need to do? Designing the solution conceptually

> How am I going to do it? Actually writing the code

> For decades, that last bucket consumed enormous amounts of our time. We’d spend hours, days or weeks writing, debugging, and refining. With Claude, that time cost has plummeted to nearly zero.

That last part is actually the easiest, and if you're spending inordinate amount of time there, that usually means the first two were not done well or you're not familiar with the tooling (language, library, IDE, test runner,...).

There's some drudgery involved in manual code editing (renaming variable, extracting functions,...) but those are already solved in many languages with IDEs and indexers that automate them. And so many editors have programmable snippets support. I can genuinely say in all of my programming projects, I spent more time understanding the problem than writing code. I even spent more time reading libraries code than writing my own.

The few roadblocks I have when writing code was solved by configuring my editor.