MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by b112 | 2025-04-21 08:05:40+00:00
There's a lot of this, and it's a real problem.

We need to make small claims court far more accessible. But outside of the GDPR, there's also just weirdness in terms of what is covered where. I can appreciate that having laws at the county level, the municipal level can be onerous to comply with, so you want things at the national level -- if not international.

But as soon as you do that, some asshat works to reduce regulation because "regulation bad" without any qualifiers. And then as you say, lack of enforcement, is that alternative to this.

Give them their laws, make them feel as if things have been done, but then don't enforce. You're in the same boat, but people "feel" better.

This is a bit of a tangent, but where I live you have to cook a hamburger to safe temperatures. It is illegal to do otherwise, unless it is freshly ground in house, and we have actual, real inspectors that will ensure safe handling practices.

(This isn't me railing about eating raw meat, I eat my steak med-rare. But that's a steak, if you're going to cook a hamburger that way, you need to wash the outside, grind it up, and cook+eat it within hours. Many restaurants are buying mass produced burger paddies and not even cooking them, which is pure insane.)

Yet when I was in California, it's OK to just present a charred outside, a raw inside, along with loads of parasites. The restaurant is covered if they put up a sign saying something about 'raw meat can make you sick' or whatever.

So every restaurant puts up the sign, then just doesn't care about cooking it to safe temps. Yee-haw, FREEDOM!

Point is, people themselves, everywhere ... whether it's a small business or just their customers, don't even know, understand, or really care.

And this is the true problem. People can't even understand the risks of raw meat, something I was taught in public school when, oh I don't know, freakin' 10 years old!

While it doesn't seem that difficult to people on this forum likely, it surely is for the average person. Clearly.
by KaiserPro | 2025-04-21 08:06:11+00:00
Packaging DCPs used to be a massive faff. (it might still be one)

Basically they are a tar[1] of images with a bunch of audio streams for different speaker configurations. depending on the quality settings, they can be encoded for higher colour space (ie 16 bit log per channel)

Even with lossless jpeg2000, these packages can be huge.

But, back in 2011, the biggest problem was encoding jpeg2000 required hardware to get anything near realtime performance. (I also think there were dedicated DCP packaging machines, but I never actually saw one.)

One of my colleagues decided the best way to ship the finalised movie was to open up an NFS port on sohonet and let the technicolor hook the DCP packager directly.

it worked, but our CTO diplomatically asked them to stop.

[1] not actually but conceptually similar
by ein0p | 2025-04-21 08:07:00+00:00
Most search rankers do not consider word order, so if you could also append the person's name at the end of text description, it'd probably work well enough for retrieval and ranking at least.

If you want natural language to resolve the names, that'd at a minimum require bounding boxes of the faces and their corresponding names. It'd also require either preprocessing, or specialized training, or both. To my knowledge no locally-hostable model as of today has that. I don't know if any proprietary models can do this either, but it's certainly worth a try - they might just do it. The vast majority of the things they can do is emergent, meaning they were never specifically trained to do them.
by bayindirh | 2025-04-21 08:07:14+00:00
The raw specs doesn't look impressive, but network offloading and forwarding capabilities means that the cores will sit mostly idle, even under some load.

If you want to put it to the demarcation line of your network and forget it, it's a fine device. If you want to run containers and services on it, this is not it.

Horses for courses, YMMV, as always.
by azalemeth | 2025-04-21 08:07:39+00:00
I'm friends with a professor of steganography. Apparently most cinema watermarking is based on very heavily error correcting codes within the wavelet domain that are specifically designed such that they are resistant to collusion attacks, i.e. the statistical properties of the "indistinguishable from random" noise are such that it is highly correlated among different viewers such that they are very much more likely to have bits in common rather than bits different. I'm relatively sure that the obvious things like taking the mean of two images (or randomly picking one of them) have been considered.

Put it this way -- You've got huge amounts of cover data (a hard drive's worth) and a desire to encode at most, what, 128 bits of data, across about two hours, with as much redundancy as possible. There are plenty of patents that explain in detail how.

My friend considers this a moderately distasteful problem, and mostly works on steganalysis, identifying where steganographic techniques have been used, as he thinks it's more interesting and frequently more morally justified...
by adrian_b | 2025-04-21 08:07:40+00:00
I do not think that's weird.

A 4k movie, even from a Blu-Ray, may look very nice when watched at a normal speed, but if you look at the individual frames in order to distinguish some details during a sequence with fast movements, the quality is very bad and it may be impossible to see the details that you want to see.

At the levels of compression that are typical for movies distributed by encoding with H.264, H.265 and the like, I have never seen any movie that still looks high quality when slowed down during fast action.
by mcintyre1994 | 2025-04-21 08:08:12+00:00
Isn’t the solution to this to just regulate for American sensibilities in the US market? I don’t think it’s true that US companies respect privacy, but if it is then you can regulate for that and the Chinese companies will have to do the same in the US market. They’re not going to “return the favour” if it’s not regulated for and their products do fine in the market without.
by sureglymop | 2025-04-21 08:09:38+00:00
It's not that bad or that hard to avoid social media. I'm in my early twenties and never had much social media. You're right in that WhatsApp is almost everywhere (in certain countries) and hard to avoid. But WhatsApp is still a messaging app and not as bad as Instagram, TikTok etc. I'd say, use something like Signal for all your close communication with family and close friends. If those are close friends I'm sure they'll use Signal to communicate with you too. I guess keep WhatsApp installed but use it only for those groups and not really for any personal chats.

As for the really attention grabbing social media like Instagram and TikTok, if your kids want to get on there I'd say provide a good alternative. Something they can use or open if boredom strikes, because there definitely are those moments when that happens and one just grabs the phone. For me it's mostly been HN and books, some YouTube channels with NewPipe and some podcasts.
by cassianoleal | 2025-04-21 08:10:52+00:00
I’m fairly sure that if I pair them all to HomeKit, they still work without Internet. That’s the case for everything else with HomeKit, I don’t see why it would be different for Matter devices.

> Normal people don't want to have even a smart home router, let alone run a local fabric.

That’s fair, I guess, but _something_ has to coordinate things. I’m not aware of how Samsung, Google and others do it as I’m only familiar with Home Assistant and HomeKit, but the main difference between those 2 is that with Home Assistant that _something_ is whatever runs HA (I have it on a VM, but a lot of people run it on SBCs or one of the official appliances), and the Apple ecosystem relies on other devices people bought in are likely to already own (iPads, Apple TVs, HomePods, …).

In either case, the controller device is there and requires no Internet access to operate. Possibly during commissioning of a new device - I haven’t checked - but that’s it.
by Freak_NL | 2025-04-21 08:11:04+00:00
> Netflix no longer plays on my Linux/Firefox setup […]

I know Netflix doesn't support anything beyond 720p or so on Linux, but that never bothered me. Otherwise it just works. Is your Firefox out of date?

> The piracy scene seems stronger than ever these days.

I hope so. A lot of damage was done. If it wasn't for archive.org a lot of older, regional stuff would not even be accessible. We need piracy if only for the collective digital archives.

I refuse to take out more than one subscription. We just hop services.
by Jensson | 2025-04-21 08:11:12+00:00
> but you can disagree agreeably, right?

No, the concepts are linked, agreeable people don't want to be rude and most people see disagreements as being rude no matter how you frame it. You can't call a woman overweight without being rude for example no matter how you frame it, but maybe you want an AI that tells you that you weigh too much.
by oddly | 2025-04-21 08:12:55+00:00
Yes and no. Although I’m a proponent of the “put the pain where it belongs” way of doing things, sometimes a more nuanced way of doing things is needed. This usually involves more communication instead of less. You can always give them feedback that (may) make them reconsider their approach of just stating things and not asking questions. Small effort for you, but you might change someone’s way of asking things, both for the good of you and them. If that doesn’t work, you can always go back to ignoring.
by captainmuon | 2025-04-21 08:12:56+00:00
That's great if you are the kind of person wo is added into fun social group chats. But my group chats are mostly functional, like for hobbies, or parents groups for the kids' classes, and so on. There is one family group which sees annoying memes every now and then, and one group with friends from university which is also rarely used.

Old school social networks used to be this noncommital, low-threshold way to connect with others around you. It was really great if you were a socially awkward teen or twenty-something. It's no big deal to friend somebody on facebook (or MySpace, or your universities gamified campus management system or whatever) and see what they are doing, or strike up a conversation. I really miss that kind of network.
by parsabg | 2025-04-21 08:13:15+00:00
> Windsurf is providing OpenAI access to data? There's certainly some possibility that this is the case — though it makes me wonder just how bad OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft has gotten if they no longer have access to GitHub

This is missing an important nuance. The valuable data generated through coding copilots isn't the code, but the step by step human-AI interaction to produce the code.

Windsurf and Cursor are effectively crowdsourced data annotation farms which give their owners an edge in providing better coding models. I think this is way more important than talent or software in this deal.
by sureglymop | 2025-04-21 08:13:48+00:00
The GDPR regulation is great and arguably does make the web more private and better. At the very least, it's better than having no regulations.

I've even been able to successfully use it to remove something private about me from the internet. I don't think I would have even gotten a response had there been no legal precedent.

You can always argue about how some regulations are badly implemented or incomplete but I believe it would be very misguided to believe that no regulations are instead the better alternative.
by DanSmooth | 2025-04-21 08:15:00+00:00
TCJ has an interview with the writer Dan Nadel here: https://www.tcj.com/an-interview-with-crumb-biographer-dan-n...

Actually, they have quite a lot of additional links to further reviews/features about the book here: https://www.tcj.com/the-egg-a-symbol-of-life-this-weeks-link...
by asmor | 2025-04-21 08:15:43+00:00
They've been known to both wash the salt off french fries and dip chicken nuggets in sauce packs.

Anyone who's ever argued that you shouldn't feed crows because it interferes with nature hasn't figured out that crows already adopted to urban human-inhabited environments, and feeding them quality food (cat kibble is cheap and works) is very much a net positive. If you see crows with white feathers, that's malnutrition, and you should give them something good to eat.
by quantumHazer | 2025-04-21 08:15:54+00:00
> ...It is in a format that resembles a published article because it is going to be a published article? "This is a preprint of a chapter that will appear in the book Designing an Intelligence, published by MIT Press." on the first page.

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.

> A history of RL from DQN to AlphaProof/LLM computer use in Gemini is not 'generic', and could not be.

History of RL is not 'generic' and is indeed really interesting, I look forward to reading Sutton's book! But the graph in the PDF is. The y-axis is ill-defined because

1. it combines different technologies (DQN, AlphaGo, GPT models) on a single continuum implying direct comparison.

2. the evergreen hypester future trajectory toward "superhuman intelligence"

I will not comment further on the graph, it's not a interesting visualization in my opinion and only serves the author's purpose for the narrative of "feeling the AGI (through RL)” There would be more interesting way of plotting this information for a general public. I agree that is harsh from me that it doesn’t provide value. Maybe it provides value to people who want to explore RL now, but again, the medium is the message, and this format is clearly saying out loud “look at me, I’m a paper, trust me.”
by vasco | 2025-04-21 08:16:26+00:00
They can when they can. Sometimes they just won't like a kid or be tired or just wrong and falsely accuse them. There's been plenty already. I had a kid in my class during some years that would brag to other kids that his mom wrote all his longer, non-math homeworks. You're only putting yourself back by cheating, when time comes for proper exams for university placement you won't have it available and you won't take anyone else's place. Most places nowadays won't even fail kids from passing to the next grade, so it doesn't even matter.
by avhception | 2025-04-21 08:17:44+00:00
I never used any "social media" besides the instant messengers. I try to minimize WhatsApp in favor of better options. It's a constant, uphill battle. I feel that dating is impossible w/o WhatsApp, if you exchange phone numbers with someone at a bar, it's completely useless if you can't contact them on WhatsApp afterwards. Almost nobody (at least here in central Europe) has any other messenger, and every other avenue of contact would be either considered very pushy (like calling) or from the 90s (like SMS).

Taking part in group events also becomes a headache if you don't join the related WhatsApp group.

I find it appalling that basic features of human social functions are subject to the whims and profiteering of a quasi-monopolist company. There should be heavy regulations, at the very least.
by MattPalmer1086 | 2025-04-21 08:18:29+00:00
I don't agree with your contention that the Republicans are part of the "global left".

I do not deny that, compared to places where girls are not educated, America is far more progressive as a nation. That's the baseline parties in the US operate in; it is obviously different in other places.

However, it is common to identify the left as championing progressive causes and the right as aiming to preserve existing (or to return to prior) power structures.

The GOP is very definitely a right wing party, even if the baseline it operates in would be regarded as left wing in more oppressive nations.
by yorwba | 2025-04-21 08:19:27+00:00
A minimal reproducing example cannot guarantee that you'll correctly diagnose a bug just by looking at the example (because multiple potential bugs could cause the same example to fail) but it can guarantee that when you step through the code to understand what's happening, you won't have to deal with huge amounts of irrelevant data.

Maybe an alternative shrinking procedure could directly minimize the number of instructions that need to be executed to hit a failure...
by photonthug | 2025-04-21 08:20:12+00:00
The perceived utility of social media seems pretty variable, not just across people, but with the same person in different circumstances. With covid, social media might scare people out who were regular users previously, and yet for other occasional or reluctant users it's suddenly seen as the only option for human contact and they use it constantly. After lock-downs are over, people flip to the polar opposite of their previous preference. With recessions, social media might be the only affordable entertainment but during better times, many would rather do something else. In general I bet it's insanely hard to run good experiments for behavioural economics in volatile times, even if you're really trying to be careful about methodology.
by Aromasin | 2025-04-21 08:21:14+00:00
Eh, I'd disagree on the Instagram front. If you look at the reels section, where most spend their time, it's just a more deplorable Tiktok. 80% of the content on there is soft core porn advertising one OnlyFans girl or another. The other 20% seems to be brain rot memes. I reinstalled it recently after 8 years of not having it, and immediately deleted it.
by casenmgreen | 2025-04-21 08:22:27+00:00
I read a fair part of the doc, from the start, I wanted to see how I would use t-strings in code; in the sense of, I know how I use f-strings now, in Python code, and I wanted to understand in the same way, how I would use t-strings in code. I have not understood how I would use t-strings.
by fossgeller | 2025-04-21 08:22:54+00:00
If only somehow we managed to make social media uncool for the kids, that’s the most sure way they’d stay away from it.

I guess proper education on the real aspects of the social media phenomenon would be the real deal. For example, explaining how/why the companies use their algorithms to keep you in there; influencers only want to sell you a product; why posts/stories don’t reflect reality at all, etc.

But understanding all that would require quite some amount of emotional maturity from both the kids and parents themselves. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the reality at all, there are adults that still can’t see through the cracks..
by pbhjpbhj | 2025-04-21 08:22:55+00:00
The issue they've been told is important, right? For example it was vital in the minds of some in USA to put import taxes (tariffs) >100% on all Chinese goods.

They would have seemed to care about that, until Trump got told that wasn't working (or, as likely, the market had been swung far enough) and did a 180 removing tariffs on what the public were told were the most vital things to tariff...

All those people didn't change their mind at the exact moment it was needed to swing the stock market back and for you mate the oligarchs money - just Musk et al. have built a brainwash machine at a national level.

It's an important distinction - when interviewed it seems barely any of those being manipulated can form a coherent thought about "the issue they care about".
by pyfon | 2025-04-21 08:23:02+00:00
BS. If you are into coffee you can taste different beans. Ironically other than Ethiopian I don't think the origin country itself makes much difference (?) but maybe the farm does and then how it was roasted and when.

Most coffee shops I have been to (not Iran tho) you can order your espresso in 5 sec (after a queue perhaps) but if you want to pick a bean or get cold brew you can do that too.

I'm surprised Iran isn't more into Turkish style coffee though (?)
by nabla9 | 2025-04-21 08:23:24+00:00
> The fact that less than one percent of the people who were invited to the study completed the experiment underscores that one should be cautious in generalizing results outside our sample. Most of this sample selection is driven by the fact that only a few percent of people click on research study invitations or social media ad

The self selection bias in these ad based invitation studies is just out of whack.

I suspect that those who participate were already considering quitting.
by foxglacier | 2025-04-21 08:24:20+00:00
Exactly. In New Zealand I got a visit from the police because of something I said on social media. It wasn't an offence, it just made them suspicious so they questioned me then went away. But some western countries are even worse and do imprison people for quite long sentences (sometime years) for saying politically wrong ideas on social media - UK is most notorious for this but it's well supported by the population who mostly just wants to punish anyone who disagrees with their politics.
by dns_snek | 2025-04-21 08:25:55+00:00
The balance of evidence suggests otherwise. If they cared about spam bots they would take action when spammers are handed to them on a silver platter. The kinds of spammers who will leave 30 identical comments advertising illegal services, not some weird moderation corner case.

If you ever end up on a video that's related to drugs, there will be entire chains of bots just advertising to each other and TikTok won't find any violations when reported. But sure, I'm sure they care a whole lot about not ending up like Twitter.
by Ferret7446 | 2025-04-21 08:26:23+00:00
You have it backwards. Gig workers aren't employees. Quite the opposite, they are self employed and pay for a service that connects them with clients, handles payment processing, disputes, contracts, etc.

The existence of gig services is not responsible for poverty. Poverty is the natural state of all living things, and through much effort humanity has succeeded in partially eliminating poverty.

There is indeed a problem. Before we're able to achieve post-scarcity, we will reach a point where most people will not be able to provide sufficient value in a free market economy to sustain themselves comfortably. This problem was not caused by gig services or big corpo being evil or whatever people like to blame.
by baranul | 2025-04-21 08:26:35+00:00
Comptime is often pushed as being something extraordinarily special, when it's not. Many other languages have similar. Jai, Vlang, Dlang, etc...

What could be argued, is if Zig's version of it is comparatively better, but that is a very difficult argument to make. Not only in terms of how different languages are used, but something like an overall comparison of features looks to be needed in order to make any kind of convincing case, beyond hyping a particular feature.
by 0manrho | 2025-04-21 08:27:05+00:00
All you gave us to go on was that you created a programming language (kudos) and wrote "a paper" with no further context as to why it merited submission and/or what it entailed other than it was rejected and you were nonplussed about that. Granted, that doesn't justify imo their accusation of the work as "worthless," that was rude and unmerited, but unfortunately par for the course these days as the Principle of Charity[0] on the internet was bagged, tagged, and buried at sea many years ago. If anything, the law of the land is the opposite now: Assume the worst/least if not explicitly stated, and that any reply/engagement is de facto adversarial. Welcome to the future, where ~~nothing works~~ everything is enshittified, even the social interactions.

I've never submitted to arxiv, is there an appeals/recourse process or some such, or is it just stuck in indefinite limbo or what?