MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by CamperBob2 | 2025-04-28 18:23:08+00:00
Let's stick with the Chinese Room specifically for a moment.

1) The operator doesn't know math, but the Chinese books in the room presumably include math lessons.

2) The operator's instruction manual does not include anything about math, only instructions for translation using English and Chinese vocabulary and grammar.

3) Someone walks up and hands the operator the word problem in question, written in Chinese.

Does the operator succeed in returning the Chinese characters corresponding to the equation's roots? Remember, he doesn't even know he's working on a math problem, much less how to solve it himself.

As humans, you and I were capable of reading high-school math textbooks by the time we reached the third or fourth grade. Just being able to read the books, though, would not have taught us how to attack math problems that were well beyond our skill level at the time.

So much for grammar. How can a math problem be solved by someone who not only doesn't understand math, but the language the question is written in? Searle's proposal only addresses the latter: language can indeed be translated symbolically. Wow, yeah, thanks for that insight. Meanwhile, to arrive at the right answers, an understanding of the math must exist somewhere... but where?

My position is that no, the operator of the Room could not have arrived at the answer to the question that the LLM succeeded (more or less) at solving.
by boogieknite | 2025-04-28 18:23:09+00:00
the right cuts at the right heights while working down the tree from a specific max height of the tree to still produce viable board feet while maximizing boards per cut. in most places, unless youre pulping the entire tree, its quite a bit more complicated than cut as low as possible.

its surprising to me how little work is done to make the tools which do this accessible considering how much money and open data there is.

it gets less open and more complicated is when you consider certain mills only can make certain cuts, produce certain products, and accept certain logs. then factor in distance between mills and the products they can make, and also log lengths accepted by the trucks which can travel those routes.

its all solvable and should be, but its so niche and that i still think there isnt an accessible solution
by 93po | 2025-04-28 18:24:00+00:00
definition:

> nationalism, ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests.

if your highest priority is to the concept and ego of your country, rather than how that country serves its population, then your core values align with the interest of the political establishment and machine rather than with the interests of people. a political establishment's growth and maintenance is damaged by a population's ability to impact it, which means it's damaged by democracy, which means it's damaged by freedom.
by ajross | 2025-04-28 18:24:35+00:00
Characterizing those issues the way you do, instead of as considered and real efforts to do good stuff in the real world, is precisely the result of the echo chamber in question. It really doesn't occur to you to at least nod to the fact that some of us see things differently?

People can be wrong and not "woke" (which you're clearly using to connote "evil" or "enemy"). The slide from reasoned discussion into hyperbolic nonsense is precisely what the article is about. And specifically that the same thing happens to billionaire brains too.
by maxerickson | 2025-04-28 18:24:43+00:00
I don't think it's crass to separate the deaths that occurred from a novel disease from the impact it had in society. In the medium term, it's a blip, never mind the long term. There's a huge chunk of society that thinks there was a huge overreaction!

The chips shortage has been difficult, but it's also been little more than an inconvenience when you look at it in terms of goods being available to consumers or whatever.
by miek | 2025-04-28 18:24:56+00:00
Side hustles can be very fruitful! While not tech related, I side hustled with a friend into starting a specialty wet wipe manufacturing business that we ran for 4 years and sold. The side hustle phase was done on PTO and weekends. We worked with the machine maker to get samples that we took to restaurant/hospitality expos to gauge demand. We made a deal with the machine supplier to send finished goods until the machines arrived. Four years later we sold it and I went back to corporate life. It was worth 100x an MBA.
by jsbisviewtiful | 2025-04-28 18:25:27+00:00
Not saying this is true, but the amount of time and effort put into saying "no one is listening to you" could be attributed to the novel 1984, where the government is actively listening to its citizens. Enough people could associate the novel with government surveillance that it's what people interpret as the most likely surveillance happening - and enough people don't understand tech that it's lost on them that a) the tech to actively listen to millions of people constantly doesn't exist at the appropriate level to be effective b) there are significantly more and far more effective ways to monitor people with current tech than via microphone. It's truly unfortunate people don't understand tech to realize what's actually possible and what is actively happening vs what they imagine could be happening
by derekv123 | 2025-04-28 18:25:41+00:00
I’ve been working independently on a functional AGI blueprint, based on visual thought, modular reasoning, and explicit memory systems.

The design focuses on visual-driven cognitive processing, an active global workspace, and dynamic modular learning — intended to address scalability and alignment from first principles.

I’d appreciate any feedback or discussion, especially around areas where this approach differs from more transformer-based paradigms.

The system integrates visual thought simulation, contradiction detection, meta-cognitive feedback loops, symbolic visual memory, and motivational modeling into a unified cognitive engine.

It is engineered to be fully implementable today using existing tools such as Unity, ROS, LLMs, and TPUs, and represents a major step toward building reflective, autonomous cognitive agents with internal models of the world.

This blueprint is released freely for research, development, and public use. There are no intellectual property claims or restrictions.
by Gerardo1 | 2025-04-28 18:25:46+00:00
> In almost every company the usage of AI is becoming more and more valuable.

It's certainly becoming more common, and there are lots of people who want it to be valuable, and indeed believe it's valuable.

Personally, I find it about as valuable as a really, really good intellisense. Which is certainly valuable, but I feel like that's way off from the type/quality/quantity of value you're suggesting.
by bayeslaw | 2025-04-28 18:25:59+00:00
We have validated thousands of ideas from this and other bootstrapper / indie hacker communities over the last month. While we cannot share stats on the private ideas (i.e. ideas that our users wanted to keep to themselves), there's ample evidence in our public library that most ideas are terrible, i.e. end up in the swamp category.

These ideas are called swamp in our framework because they will drain your energy, time and motivation and get you no where.. Here are a few real examples, submitted by fellow bootsrappers. They seem totally legit or even great on the surface:

Simple and intuitive inventory managment software for small ecommerce sites owners with integration to major platforms such as woocommerce and shopify

A music/sound platform that host AI generated music to keep people focused in productivity work.

A habit tracker, but concentrated on fighting unhealthy habits instead of building positive ones.

Restaurant discovery app as a marketing platform for businesses and 2for1 coupons for customers

a historical forex data api for developers, that returns clean data from central banks

But these are all ideas where we have many similar products with zero or very low engagement, meaning people have tried and tried but no one really cares.

Without validating your idea it's extremely easy to end up chasing one of these swamp ideas and wasting months or even a year of your life in the process.

Remember, everything has an opportunity cost and shitty ideas have a huge one

The same energy that got you to build an MVP nobody cares about, might have given you an MVP that is generating revenue already.
by edanm | 2025-04-28 18:26:09+00:00
> If you forced me to put a number on how much more productive having copilot makes me I think I would say < 5%, so I'm struggling to see how anyone can just assert that "the rational argument right now" is that I can be 200% more productive.

If you're thinking about Copilot, you're simply not talking about the same thing that most people who claim a 200% speedup are talking about. They're talking about either using chat-oriented workflows, where you're asking Claude or similar to wholesale generate code, often using an IDE like Cursor. Or even possibly talking about Coding Agents like Claude Code, which can be even more productive.

You might still be right! They might still be wrong! But your talking about Copilot makes it seem like you're nowhere near the cutting edge use of AI, so you don't have a well-formed opinion about it.

(Personally, I'm not 200% productive with Coding Agents, for various reasons, but given the number of people I admire who are, I believe this is something that will change, and soon.)
by shagie | 2025-04-28 18:26:47+00:00
Capacitor circuit network warning for alarm for "main grid is drawing on this bank - bad things may happen if capacity is not increased."

Another "trick" is those burner inserters are black start capable. They can pick up fuel and feed themselves to keep running without an electrical network.

I also tend to put Schmitt triggers in low priority areas. They've got a battery on the main grid next to them and if the battery drops below 50% power they remain off until it goes back above 75% power.
by griffzhowl | 2025-04-28 18:26:53+00:00
We didn't build this world though. If anything it built us. And everywhere we look there's depth to it, whether we contemplate the stars, the worlds inside ourselves, or mundane earth events like a glance over clinked glasses when you fell in love...

Here's some Borges:

"Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual.
by toomuchtodo | 2025-04-28 18:27:04+00:00
Feels like there should be the equivalent of Matt Levine's "Certificate of Dumb Investment" for this scenario. ~90% of startups fail. Your equity is statistically likely to be worth $0. You will likely grind for years with nothing to show for it except the experience, your network, and whatever cash comp you collected. Proceed accordingly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24285305

(edit: totally fine to still jump into a startup role if you're not optimizing for quality of life and economics; I did because I enjoyed the work and the team)
by skrebbel | 2025-04-28 18:27:39+00:00
Seriously, this opening!

> people are babbling about the "AI revolution" as the sky rains blood and crevices open in the Earth, dragging houses and cars and domesticated animals into their maws. Things are astronomically fucked outside,

It took me 20+ ranty paragraphs to realise that this guy is not, actually, an AI doomer. Dear tech writers, there's camps and sides here, and they're all very deeply convinced of being right. Please make clear which one you're on before going down the deep end in anger.
by ekarabeg | 2025-04-28 18:27:59+00:00
Thanks! The main difference between Sim Studio and other open-source AI agent workflow builders is the level of abstraction used when creating agents.

For instance, n8n has a "memory" parameter, which is not an inherent parameter of LLMs. You can inject your agent's memories into the agent message history (or system prompt) - which is the most common scenario - but we give you control over that. We want to provide visibility, so everything that's exposed on the workflow canvas is exactly what's being executed in the background. Also, we think it's faster and more intuitive to get your workflow up and running in Sim Studio. I'd love your feedback, though! What do you think?
by gruez | 2025-04-28 18:29:31+00:00
>and couldn't be used to either bolster or discredit this particular issue

Why not? You're making the argument that north korean lying about where they're from is fine because they're "just doing the job description". However, if you think that chinese goods should be properly labeled, even if they're effectively the same as non-chinese goods, it stands to reason that north korean labor should be properly labeled, even if they're effectively the same thing. Failure to address this inconsistency makes your reasoning seem capricious and unpersuasive.
by aresant | 2025-04-28 18:29:32+00:00
"Flurry of activity for everything other than acquiring customers"

In 16 years on HN this is one of the best pieces of startup advice I've seen.

Default should be 10% of time on MVP and landing page, 90% on distribution until you smell PMF.

Fight violently against any suggestion you invest more heavily in product until somebody is in tears about keeping up with demand for your MVP.
by bathtub365 | 2025-04-28 18:29:47+00:00
Over about 10 years I moved from mid level developer to director (through senior, team lead, engineering manager, sr engineering manager) at the same company. It was a small company that grew and the founders/high level engineers actually saw the value in retaining and growing people and had interesting enough work to keep people from getting bored, so we had high retention.

Many of these promotions were out of cycle (because there was no cycle) and now that I’m at a bigger company I see how this would be much more difficult. There seems to be little interest in really retaining and growing engineering talent and all promotions are at the mercy of an entrenched HR org that doesn’t understand the work that anyone is doing. On top of that budgets are generally much tighter now than I’ve ever seen during my career.

It may still be possible to do this at smaller companies, with the obvious caveat that there’s always the danger of title inflation, though now that I’m at a bigger company I feel like I see more title inflation around me than I ever did at the smaller company. There are also entrenched structures of power that are obviously working against the success of the company and are causing good people to leave.

I do wonder if more companies embraced promotions it would lead to a healthier organizational culture in general since you’d have more people around who were involved in creating it.
by RowanH | 2025-04-28 18:29:55+00:00
> Something about the side hustle continues to lure people into thinking it’s a way out, until they burn themselves out and sabotage their day job while doing it.

Sample size of 1

- Side hustle #1 funded my toy habit for a long time and gave me the confidence "I can build & support something from start to finish".

- Got to C Level working for 'the man' (aka the board). But regardless of level you're never in control of your destiny, especially with the eventuality of PE. For some that's okay, for others that's not...

- Which lead to Side Hustle #2. Left my day job 3 years ago....

Now have some of the best in our wee niche using our product, a number of team members, gradually growing it in bootstrapped fashion.

No investors, no funding rounds, no chasing growth targets. As "pure" as it can get - adding features, capturing more market, getting positive word of mouth, picking up new countries, finding new edge cases, adding new package upgrades. I think we're around 40% of new clients are referrals/word of mouth.....

In the first 6 months of turning billing on you're going "what the heck am I doing...." now I'm "oh I wouldn't give this up..." immensely rewarding bringing other new people into the business, and seeing that flow through to the finished product for our clients.

At least in NZ, side hustles are the genesis of a lot of tech companies.
by Amezarak | 2025-04-28 18:30:13+00:00
The UK on a per capita GDP PPP basis is as poor, or poorer, than the poorest US state, Mississippi. [1] Immigration, trade policy, privatization, and financialization have cut the working class population off at the knees. It's an economically miserable country temporarily sustained only by the continued extraction of wealth in London, activity that continues only through inertia. This should be shocking given the starting point.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/britain-mi...

Even side from that, I think the view that a country's good is defined by GDP is entirely wrong.

Re: your migration comments, immigration is a matter of public policy. It is not possible unless the state encourages and allows it. It isn’t something that just happens because other people want to come.
by CamperBob2 | 2025-04-28 18:30:27+00:00
Who, exactly, said that reasoning requires introspection? The proof of reasoning is in the result. If you don't understand the math, you won't come anywhere near the correct answer.

That's kind of the idea behind math: you can't bullshit your way through a math exam. Therefore, it is nonsensical to continue to insist that LLMs are incapable of genuine understanding. They understand math well enough to solve novel math problems without cheating, even if they can't tell you how they understand it. That part will presumably happen soon enough.

Edit: for values of "soon enough" equal to "right now": https://chatgpt.com/share/680fcdd0-d7ec-800b-b8f5-83ed8c0d0f... All the paper you cited proves is that if you ask a crappy model, you get a crappy answer.
by zdw | 2025-04-28 18:32:02+00:00
I'd like to see this same thing done with Apple laptops.

Back when I was supporting a fleet of those in the days of the nVidia-caused laptop GPU overheating fiasco (which was the "never again nVidia" moment for Apple), the failure rate on laptops was about 40% higher for everyone who insisted on clamshell mode instead of putting the laptop on a stand and getting a free second monitor on the build in display.
by rorylaitila | 2025-04-28 18:32:19+00:00
I've always been a relationship seller. I agree that a lot of the AI hype surrounding outbound is going to be short lived. When everyone can do infinite outbound, no one will be able to break through. The AI arms race to get a slight edge on response rates is going to destroy that channel.

I've been working on https://humancrm.io to scratch my own itch. A CRM that helps me stay focused on relationships. I'm explicitly not adding any AI or automation to it.
by Aurornis | 2025-04-28 18:32:36+00:00
> The side hustle phase was done on PTO and weekends.

Having a physical business and operating it on PTO and weekends is the cleanest way to keep it separate from work.

The tech side hustle mistake is to get a tech job, then think you'll do some more tech work as a side hustle. Some people can keep a clean separation, but more commonly people slide into blurring the lines between day job and side job. Trying to build a startup MVP while working a consulting job is basically doing two tech jobs at the same time, with predictable outcomes for both.
Building a Successful Web Dev Career (and Podcast) with Wes Bos
by iliashad | 2025-04-28 18:33:09+00:00
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Wes Bos about his journey in creating impactful online courses for web developers, building and acquiring Syntax.fm by Sentry, and his insights on integrating AI tools into the development workflow.

Some key takeaways from our conversation include:

Course Creation: Wes emphasized the importance of project-based learning, sharing how his teaching style got people to buy his online courses.

AI Integration: We discussed how you can leverage AI tools to help and assist you as a developer, and they're developing so fast

Syntax.Fm: The back story of how Wes and Scott built Syntax.fm podcast

I'm curious to hear your thoughts: How have you approached creating educational content for developers? What challenges and successes have you experienced?

For those interested, here's the full conversation: https://youtu.be/wqKk4TsVY8M
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-04-28 18:33:29+00:00
Pitch: It's a replacement for Blockbuster. But instead of going and getting instant gratification and getting to watch the movie you want to watch tonight, you create a wishlist and we send you 3 titles off that list (normally the 3 least popular), which may or may not be what you want to watch right now, and add the convenience of injecting the United States Post Office into the process.
by lurk2 | 2025-04-28 18:33:36+00:00
> This is one of the best use cases for LLMs by the way - they can often explain contracts to you, or find flaws in contracts.

I respectfully disagree. Just hire a lawyer. You don’t want your understanding of your contract colored by the opinions of an LLM. The lawyer carries liability insurance if he gives you bad advice. If you don’t have a few hundred dollars to spend on independent legal advice, you might want to reconsider if you are in a position to be starting a business in the first place. The amount of money you could potentially save is nothing compared to what it could cost you in the future if something goes wrong.
by neom | 2025-04-28 18:33:36+00:00
I've been doing GTM for I dunno... 20+ years now, I'm told I'm excellent at it. Never liked outbound, I've never found it's a good part of a GTM, and tbh it's always something I've considered mostly belongs with the folks who think "growth hacking" is a thing...I strongly believe in the pillars of traditional, early 1900s GTM... that is, build real trust, have a credible brand story, get word of mouth going by consistently exceeding expectations, and let your delighted customers become your most effective marketing channel. If you're going to do outbound, go to events or find places real customers might be hanging out and not annoyed by you talking to them. Inbound marketing and community-driven growth strategies have always seemed significantly more durable to me. When people genuinely need and seek out your product, when the recommendation comes from trusted peers rather than relentless cold emails or hyper personalized spam, your sales become robust, resilient, and scalable in a sustainable way, the problems with sales is they're always chasing the next lead. Maybe outbound might yield short term wins...but personally I've always thought... if you want lasting competitive advantage, invest your energy in creating a brand people truly want to share, that's how I've always thought about it anyway, and people have always seemed to enjoy my brands.

Outbound will never die, but fingers crossed lazy-ass sales and marketing does!
by vel0city | 2025-04-28 18:33:47+00:00
> Probably lots of false alarms, but if it an outage is particularly bad for you, good to know as soon as the system operators do.

When the phase gets pulled down hard like what nearly happened in Texas and what probably happened here, it'll go from looking like the background noise of phase changes to catastrophic in just a few seconds. It isn't like you'll get warning an hour ahead of time. You'll probably notice your computer monitor going dark before your grafana graph refreshes.