MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pcrh | 2025-05-30 18:07:21+00:00
You're not wrong.

It is about where the CEO was conceived and born. From the article's introduction:

>Our approach addresses these issues by exploiting prenatal exposure to pollution from Superfund sites as an exogenous source of variation in executive risk-taking behavior. [...] we control for a wide range of fixed effects, including firm, year, industry-year, CEO birth year, birth county, and headquarters state, ensuring that comparisons are made among otherwise similar CEOs. [...] we show that selection mechanisms in promotion can amplify behavioral traits shaped by early-life conditions, even when firms are unaware of those traits.

Personally, I think it sounds like hogwash -- "statistically significant" findings that have little bearing on reality.

More likely, those born in heavily industrial areas are more likely to have careers in industry.
by akkartik | 2025-05-30 18:07:33+00:00
"We did notice, and documented in our paper, instances when the DGM hacked its reward function.. To see if DGM could fix this issue.. We created a “tool use hallucination” reward function.. in some cases, it removed the markers we use in the reward function to detect hallucination (despite our explicit instruction not to do so), hacking our hallucination detection function to report false successes."

So, empirical evidence of theoretically postulated phenomena. Seems unsurprising.
by less_less | 2025-05-30 18:09:58+00:00
Neat, but if you're using this in cryptographic code (one of the main consumers of bignums), keep in mind that secret data reaching branches is usually a side-channel risk. Sure, it's only 1 time in 2^64 on random data, but if you're depending on that, then you have to consider whether an attacker can choose data that will make it happen more often.

If you can substitute a cmov without control flow then it's probably safer, e.g. c1 |= c0 & seq(s1,-1) or so, so long as you can make sure the compiler won't turn it into a branch.

It does add a data dependency though ...
by kttjoppl | 2025-05-30 18:10:00+00:00
I think Musk is a grifter but even I think those picks are unfair to him. Respectively that's a company with no significant accomplishments yet (it's only two years old so I don't think that's even a knock against it), a company he didn't found but purchased under shady circumstances and has had a lot of scandals, and a company he "founded" a lot like he "founded" Tesla.

If you want to showcase a company he unambiguously founded which is unambiguously successful, why wouldn't you pick SpaceX?
by AlexClickHouse | 2025-05-30 18:10:18+00:00
Thanks for creating this issue, it is worth investigating!

I see you also created similar issues in Polars: https://github.com/pola-rs/polars/issues/17932 and DuckDB: https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/issues/17066

ClickHouse has a built-in memory tracker, so even if there is not enough memory, it will stop the query and send an exception to the client, instead of crashing. It also allows fair sharing of memory between different workloads.

You need to provide more info on the issue for reproduction, e.g., how to fill the tables. 16 GB of memory should be enough even for a CROSS JOIN between a 10 billion-row and a 100-row table, because it is processed in a streaming fashion without accumulating a large amount of data in memory. The same should be true for a merge join.

However, there are places when a large buffer might be needed. For example, if you insert data into a table backed by S3 storage, it requires a buffer that can be in the order of 500 MB.

There is a possibility that your machine has 16 GB of memory, but most of it is consumed by Chrome, Slack, or Safari, and not much is left for ClickHouse server.
by trealira | 2025-05-30 18:10:41+00:00
> This is "the capture problem", and it is quite annoying. Generally to avoid this, we need to rename everything1 in our "substituted" term to names that are free (do not occur) in the "subsitutee" so nothing is accidentally captured. What if we could introduce a notation that avoids this?

I've heard of this problem, but I've never really gotten why the solution in lambda calculus is to rename variables in lower scopes with overlapping names so that everything has a globally unique name. The way that programming languages usually solve this is by keeping a stack of symbol tables for scopes, right? Why is that never presented as a possible solution?

Of course, De Bruijn notation seems to sidestep that completely, which is convenient. I guess I'm just commenting on lambda calculus implementations in general.
by SebastianKra | 2025-05-30 18:10:59+00:00
> Call it contrived, but maybe we want to add drawings to our tasks. With different brush colours

That's when you lift state up - either to the parent component, or put the value in local storage. Both as a user and as a developer, my mental model is that each item in the list has it's own form, rather than sharing one.

I haven't seen enough instances of this problem that I think it would warrant a change to the core api's. Maybe you could demonstrate more real-world examples?

A pattern that I sometimes like, is an internal state that is set only if the input is dirty. This has the advantage of preventing external updates from interrupting the user while they're in the middle of typing.

function NumberInput({ value, setValue }) { const [tempValue, setTempValue] = useState(null) function submit() { const parsedValue = parseInt(tempValue) setTempName(null) if (parsedValue !== NaN) setItemName(tempName) } return <Input value={tempValue ?? value} onChange={setTempValue} onBlur={submit} /> }
by itishappy | 2025-05-30 18:11:09+00:00
> Many state of the art galaxy formation simulations use MHD...

> Generally [MOND] forms structure more quickly than standard cosmology.

Magnetohydrodynamics, not just hydrodynamics. It would need some type of restoring force similar to how the black hole simulation was found to behave when it included magnetic fields.

> People have run simulations with the more basic MOND models, to find it cannot form realistic structure.

Neither does ΛCDM though, right? It matches the CMB, sure, but it doesn't match the many of the observed properties of the universe either. The observed voids and over-densities are significantly larger than predicted, nor is the observed distribution of dark matter in galaxies what we predict.

> And note they have replaced invisible matter with an invisible matter-like field, it's not a simplification.

Great point, and I'm happy to admit I missed this.

But I'm not actually a proponent of MOND, nor even an opponent of ΛCDM. It's the best we got. I just feel it's not quite as accepted as current consensus seems to, so I'm glad there's people out here still trying to poke holes in it and find alternatives.
by kemotep | 2025-05-30 18:12:09+00:00
But someone did design a diamond block and a grass block and program their properties and model them and add them to the procedural generation system with rules on how they should be placed.

An LLM would from whole cloth create a block, how it works, and how it would be randomly generated. That’s why the current MinecraftGPT doesn’t have any consistency if you turn around in 360 degrees. Everything is being generated on the fly and how it works. Once you generate that Minecraft world, how it works and what it looks like is static and why it works the way it works was designed entirely by people.
by hoakiet98 | 2025-05-30 18:12:11+00:00
It's honestly not so much being mysterious as much as the UI is not usable on mobile. I don't think we'll support mobile for a while given the extra design constraints that it imposes.

> I personally loathe this trend of making us login after giving us a prompt box.

I do too, and am very aware of how HN/other engineers feel on this topic. It's mostly a way to get around abuse and access issues. We have a pattern moving forward for guest accounts, but couldn't prioritize it in time for this launch.

I think not needing to sign in is a good way to kick the tire which helps growth as well. So point taken to prioritize this higher. Thank you :)
by BenjiWiebe | 2025-05-30 18:12:15+00:00
Afaik, VoIP is just the easiest onramp to spoofing numbers.

Anyone with BGP-equivalent access to the phone network can spoof numbers, even if they're coming from a landline. Might even be able to when you have a business landline terminated in a PBX.

i.e. the phone network backend is built on trust.
by gosub100 | 2025-05-30 18:12:46+00:00
> also impossible to say for sure that a real video is not fake.

If you recall, when Epstein was arrested and awaiting trial, the media repeated the narrative that "deep fakes" were coming out now and some videos are completely fake.

It was never said in reference to Epstein specifically. But they were two independent stories at the same time. Almost as if it were a preparation for damage control should some compromising material be released.
by dtdynasty | 2025-05-30 18:12:49+00:00
Overall I agree with the point that people don't take the effort to change themselves and connect with another human being.

> The only way to establish relationships is to be real

Personally, I found emotional dissonance when people tell me this phrase. For a long time, acting like myself has ostracized me from other people and built shallow relationships. It's only when I didn't act like myself and faked it until it became a habit did I build deeper friendships.

It's emotionally difficult when your natural way of acting is not accepted.
by loudmax | 2025-05-30 18:13:08+00:00
When a news organization hires a journalist to file a report, they put their reputation on the line in the hands of the journalist.

As a consumer of news, you put your trust in the institution to have a reasonable vetting process, and also a process to retract a story if it's later shown to be false.

None of this is completely foolproof. It relies on institutions taking a long term view, and people working out which individuals and institutions are worthy of their trust. This isn't like the the blockchain where you have mathematical proof of veracity that's as strong as your encryption algorithm. I don't see how that level of proof is achievable in the real world.
by fredoralive | 2025-05-30 18:13:14+00:00
M&S tried that, Amazon used to run the website:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/apr/19/business....

But they eventually took control back, so it clearly didn't work for them:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/18/marks-spenc...

M&S orders still use the same ###-#######-####### order number format as Amazon, so I'm not sure if it's still some sort of fork of whatever white-label Amazon technology they were using back then.

I'm not sure if getting Amazon to run your own ecomerce website is really the greatest idea in the long term (Amazon kinda want your customers to use Amazon, not your website), but M&S using them isn't as mad as that bit in the early 2000's where Waterstone's website was just a subsection of Amazon.co.uk.
by snapplebobapple | 2025-05-30 18:13:30+00:00
why wouldn't it be reduced by R&D costs that happened elsewhere? if the German flew to wherever the R&D costs were incurred they would certainly be charged and net profit would be figured out accounting for those costs. if a German distributor bought whatever the product was and imported it to Germany they would be charged for those R&D costs and they would show an arms length transaction proving their profit was less by said R&D costs and if the government charged them tax as if they weren't charged for those R&D costs they would go out of business because they would not be profitable/have to spend so much estimating what portion of what they were charged was R&D (because they don't know and can't know for sure).
by teleforce | 2025-05-30 18:14:09+00:00
This is an excellent example of local LLM application [1].

It's an AI-driven chat system designed to support students in the Introduction to Computing course (ECE 120) at UIUC, offering assistance with course content, homework, or troubleshooting common problems.

It serves as an educational aid integrated into the course’s learning environment using UIUC Illinois Chat system [2].

Personally I've found it's really useful that it provides the details portions of course study materials for examples slides that's directly related to the discussions so the students can check the sources veracity of the answers provided by the LLM.

It seems to me that RAG is the killer feature for local LLM [3]. It directly addressed the main pain point of LLM hallucinations and help LLMs stick to the facts.

[1] Introduction to Computing course (ECE 120) Chatbot:

https://www.uiuc.chat/ece120/chat

[2] UIUC Illinois Chat:

https://uiuc.chat/

[3] Retrieval-augmented generation [RAG]:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrieval-augmented_generation
by pcrh | 2025-05-30 18:14:29+00:00
I scanned the article. Oddly enough, it is about the toxins in the environment where a CEO was born. From the article's conclusion:

>Superfund CEOs—those born in counties later designated as Superfund sites—excel in internally focused management domains where risk-taking remains adjustable and containable, yet struggle with externally focused policies where risks are immediately exposed to market consequences. [...] Superfund sites represent some of the most hazardous contaminated areas in the U.S., and our sample primarily includes executives born before industrial chemicals were widely recognized as developmental toxicants. [...] This historical setting provides a unique opportunity to examine how early-life conditions interact with career selection mechanisms that systematically filter executives based on risk-taking outcomes.
by MentatOnMelange | 2025-05-30 18:14:37+00:00
I'm curious to see if she later sells them for a profit. From what I understand, the portfolios of extremely popular artists are increasingly being purchased as a long-term investment. The royalties for music thats already popular cross-generation add up, and people will probably be listening to her music in 50 years the same way people still listen to Queen or The Beatles.

Not knocking her for it to be clear, I'd rather artists have control of their own music and that includes their right to sell it.
Ask HN: New Economics of Software Development Lifecycle
by breckenedge | 2025-05-30 18:14:47+00:00
Been thinking lately: developing software is arguably faster now with LLMs and agents. (Yes I’m aware of the caveats in making this statement, it’s a premise I ask you to accept for this discussion.)

For years, we’ve been managing projects as if development is the slowest part of the process. Simplified: PMs handoff to Design handoff to Development. Been that way for years in my career basically since Figma took over. But now the Development could be much faster than the Design step. And as often as I’ve been bottlenecked waiting on Design to finalize their work, why not just let the AI+dev come up with the first version of the UI and then replace it when/if an “official” design arrives?
by internetter | 2025-05-30 18:15:26+00:00
"invisible mode" in CAPTCHAs are great for login forms. In the background the captcha runs. If it passes, the user doesn't need to be bothered with it. If it doesn't, the user is presented the standard captcha.

I agree I hate the CF captcha popups, but I think this is a result of AI scraping. GET requests can be expensive on dynamic sites with infinite paths — like a git host.
by qingcharles | 2025-05-30 18:16:01+00:00
Most of us on here have an acutely-tuned spidey-sense when it comes to detecting AI videos, but several times recently I've found myself completely unable to tell if a video is real or fake. The issue is: if it's real, then you can spend a ton of time trying to determine it's fake, when it's not, and still not be sure.

Either way, we're cooked.
by wongarsu | 2025-05-30 18:16:38+00:00
Powerful entities have always been able to hire VFX artists. Preferably fresh out of film school for 20% above industry wage and a sense of purpose. For the rest of us there's Fiverr. Some guy in Indonesia is unlikely to investigate whether he's editing part of a prank video or fabricating evidence.

Fabricating video absolutely became easier. But it's not so much about your video skills, you can buy those. It's about your organization and planning skills. Even a hilariously incompetent and unorganized entity with a lack of foresight can now fabricate reasonably convincing video
by internetter | 2025-05-30 18:17:39+00:00
> @cap.js/solver is a standalone library that can be used to solve Cap challenges from the server. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of Cap? Not really. Server-side solving is a core use case of proof-of-work CAPTCHAs like Cap or altcha. It's about proving effort, not necessarily involving a human.

I like this. Allows for reasonable bots like IA without the mindless wasteful AI scrappers.
by mmsc | 2025-05-30 18:18:27+00:00
I don't think anybody will build a browser over the "released" source code either, if it was officially opensourced by Opera. There were some people from CIS countries doing something with that leaked code, not sure if they still provide updates for it though. There's also https://github.com/PrestoXen/openopera-patches

fd: i used to work for the big O
by wahern | 2025-05-30 18:18:42+00:00
I only recently learned what this is actually referring to, after scouring archive.org for Spanish, French, and German language versions of Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. Twain is being perfectly literal, though these days we'd narrow the debate to typeface as people rarely handwrite these days. Example: https://archive.org/details/erstesdeutsches00wormgoog/page/n... When first opening that book, I was like, "what kind of inanity is this!?" The same author wrote Spanish and French versions of that book, but both were printed using a perfectly familiar Latin typeface. After reading about the issue, I can sort of appreciate why that typeface was chosen, though it definitely steepens the learning curve.

There was a centuries long debate in Germany (and Germanic lands) over this issue. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_disput... for info about the debate over typeface specifically. TL;DR: The Nazis resolved the dispute by fiat, in an odd twist of history settling on the Latin typeface.

(For typeface enthusiasts, I apologize for any poor use of terminology.)
by mozanunal | 2025-05-30 18:18:43+00:00
Hi HN, Ozan here.

I've been fascinated by the "islands of interactivity" architecture popularized by tools like Astro, but wanted to see if we could achieve a similar DX and performance benefit without a build step or a Node.js server for rendering.

This post, "No-Build Client Islands," explores exactly that: bringing the island concept fully to the client side. We use native ES modules, Preact + HTM for component rendering, and Page.js for client-side routing.

The core idea is that your "static site" (the shell and routes) is rendered by the client after the initial HTML load, and then specific "islands" of interactivity are mounted on demand, much like Astro or Fresh – but all within the browser. This means:

- Zero build tools: No npm, Vite, Webpack. Just ES modules.

- Truly backend-agnostic: Serve static files from anywhere your heart desires (Go, Rust, Python, Java, or just a CDN).

- Tiny runtime: The core libraries (Preact, HTM, Page.js) are very small.

- Client-Side Rendering & Routing: Unlike Astro which does build-time generation for static parts, here the client handles the initial page structure and routing, then hydrates interactive islands.

Think of it as taking the best parts of the islands model (component-level interactivity, selective hydration) and applying them to a purely client-rendered SPA, aiming for maximum simplicity, stability, and longevity.

You can read the full post here: https://mozanunal.com/2025/05/client-islands/

I'm keen to hear your thoughts on this client-side take on islands, how it compares to server-centric/build-time approaches for your use cases, and any potential pitfalls or advantages you see!
by rafaelmn | 2025-05-30 18:18:59+00:00
That's a tangential problem.

HN tends to push up grifter hype slop, and there are a lot of those people around cause VC, but you can still see comments pushing back.

Reading reddit reminds me of highschool forum arguments I've had 20 years ago, but lower quality because of population selection. It's just too mainstream at this point and shows you what the middle of the bell curve looks like.
by SunlitCat | 2025-05-30 18:20:19+00:00
Well, take me. I joined facebook two years ago after avoiding it for years not (just) because of the reasons you mentioned but also because i was very privacy focused.

The only thing i found out, after connecting with a few people i know around me and scrolling through their history on facebook...the big party is over and i am too late.

Facebook isn't what it was anymore and people don't use it that much to connect with others.
by hwayne | 2025-05-30 18:20:54+00:00
This is a quick demo of TLA+ I like: https://gist.github.com/hwayne/39782de71f14dc9addb75f3bec515...

It models N threads non-atomically incrementing a shared counter, with the property "the counter eventually equals the number of threads in the model". When checked in TLA+, it finds a race condition where one threads overwrites another value. I've written implementations of the buggy design and on my computer, they race on less than 0.1% of executions, so testing for it directly would be very hard.

Most TLA+ specs are for significantly more complex systems than this, but this is a good demo because the error is relatively simple.
by Freedom2 | 2025-05-30 18:21:16+00:00
This sites commenters attempt to apply technical solutions to social problems, then pats itself on the back despite their comments being entirely inappropriate to the problem space.

There's also no actual constructive discussion when it comes to future looking tech. The Cybertruck, Vision Pro, LLMs are some of the most recent items that were absolutely inaccurately called by the most popular comments. And their reasoning for their prediction had no actual substance in their comments.
by lxgr | 2025-05-30 18:21:36+00:00
> With most of my assets in crypto and assuming decent opsec, they would be inaccessible to the guardian.

The flip side of this is that there’s also a decent chance of your assets becoming completely inaccessible to anyone, including you or any of your successors (if applicable), unless you’ve made careful preparations involving time locked contracts or similar.

And yes, you’re probably safer against the enforcement of court rulings you might disagree with, but you are extremely vulnerable to blackmail or cyberattacks compared to traditional bank accounts.
by appcypher | 2025-05-30 18:22:13+00:00
> 1. each one should have it's own network config, eg so i can use wireguard or a vpn

This is possible right now but the networking is not where I want it to be yet. It uses libkrun's default TSI impl; performant and simplifies setup but can be inflexible. I plan to implement an alternative user-space networking stack soon.

> 2. gui pass-through to the host, eg wayland, for trusted tools, eg firefox, zoom or citrix

We don't have GUI passthrough. VNC?

> 3. needs to be lightweight. eg gnome-boxes is dead simple to setup and run and it works, but the resource usage was noticeably higher than native

It is lightweight in the sense that it is not a full vm

> 4. optional - more security is better (ie, i might run semi-untrusted software in one of them, eg from a github repo or npm), but i'm not expecting miracles and accept that escape is possible

The security guarantees are similar to what typical VMs support. It is hardware-virtualized so I would say you should be fine.

> 5. optional - sharing disk with the host via COW would be nice, so i'd only need to install the env-specific packages, not the full OS

Yeah. It uses virtio-fs and has overlayfs on top of that for COW.