MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by sorcerer-mar | 2025-05-02 12:50:46+00:00
Anyone can read the emails themselves. They show people debating the origins, as you would expect.

The grant for the West African Emerging Infectious Disease Research Center was $1.8 million, not $8.9, and it was granted exactly on the schedule outlined in the RFA: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AI-19-028....

No, it is not surprising nor even suspicious that eminent infectious disease researchers both wrote a paper on the biggest infectious disease in a generation and also were given money to lead a research center on infectious disease.

> What they don't do is adduce any evidence that these theoretical natural pathways actually obtained, they don't systematically weigh their joint probability, and they don't seriously address the possibility of inadvertent lab adaptation and escape (they label the scenario as "improbable" in a single paragraph).

Sure, and if you've never seen how science is done you might think this raises eyebrows. But as I have mentioned elsewhere, science isn't conducted by each individual researcher remaining unconvinced and coldly calculating all possible explanations — however they may try. People buy into the theories they find most plausible (often mistakenly), they advocate for those theories, and other people do the same thing for their preferred theories and publish competing papers. As anyone was more than free to do.

> All of which is to say that it seems implausible that they themselves were actually convinced by their arguments. And if they weren't convinced by their arguments, then it seems likely they didn't actually change their view, just publicly voiced the opposite view

The emails to me clearly show people unconvinced of either side but genuinely leaning toward zoonotic. I agree their ultimate publication of it being "implausible" was a bit too strong. But I can think of another reason, which is the one they actually mention: the political system apparently foaming at the mouth looking for a reason to — it appeared — go to war with China. Given that the [lack of] evidence allowed for a very broad scope of interpretations, as they debated, it is completely understandable that in what they published they'd want to fall on the opposite side of that ambiguity.

It's all imperfect and totally human, as science always is, which is why it is other scientists' responsibility to publish their competing arguments.
by glenneroo | 2025-05-02 12:50:55+00:00
That sucks, I think I know your pain. I'm also extremely sensitive (weak "VR legs") even after 6 years of developing for various headsets. Sorry to go into unsolicited debug mode (feel free to ignore) but have you tried any mixed reality games? Personally I have no problems with games like Eleven table tennis in MR mode, which lets you place the table in your living room so you don't have to worry about crashing into furniture (as much) and more importantly > 50% of what you see is color passthrough camera footage so your brain doesn't have to fight (if that's your issue). Also did you play with the IPD settings on the headset? That can also cause nausea if they are set wrong.

I always get nauseous with games where I'm floating or that use fake movement e.g. running, flying, jumping, anything my body can't possibly be doing right now. I find teleporting to be the least bothersome, and vignetting sometimes workable (esp. if I look upwards more than at the floor as it's moving beneath me). I always check for games that they are labeled "comfortable"... there's been a ton of crazy indie stuff coming out lately using various creative forms of mixed reality/passthrough which are much easier on sensitive brains.
by eitland | 2025-05-02 12:51:04+00:00
> Would you rather contribute to MIT software where everyone can make proprietary fork?

In my case that is it.

I'm totally fine with people taking my MIT licensed code in a MIT licensed project and running with it.

However, working for free on someone elses code base knowing that they can always go commercial with it or do whatever they want while I and the rest of the community is stuck with AGPL, that is something I'd rather avoid, if possible.
by tenthirtyam | 2025-05-02 12:51:38+00:00
This brings to mind two stories: Exhalation by Ted Chiang (short story), and the Three Body Problem (specifically the human computer) by Cixin Liu (novel length).

Exhalation really gets me thinking about what it means to be sentient & self-aware. If the neurons in our brains could, even in theory, be simulated by logic gates then, equally in theory, a Turing machine could be sentient. I can even imagine a bunch of rocks being sentient: https://xkcd.com/505/
by jillesvangurp | 2025-05-02 12:52:37+00:00
The itunes store predates the iphone. The lack of native apps was resolved within a year of the iphone launch with the second generation. Probably they weren't ready for native developers and freezing APIs.

And in fairness, Safari was pretty capable on iphone. I remember regularly using the iphone optimized version of Google Reader on Symbian, which of course had its own webkit based browser. Worked pretty well in 2008. I was working in Nokia Research then. Lots of people experimenting with browser based UIs there at there. Also the S60 webkit port came out of one of the teams there around 2005 or so. Nokia had a full blown browser running on smart phones years before the iphone launched. Incredible how they dropped the ball. I'm pretty sure that influenced the thinking in Apple when they were designing the iphone. Because Webkit of course was their project.
by rbanffy | 2025-05-02 12:52:47+00:00
There is some controversy - you could actually use a TRS-80, an Apple II or a PET right after taking it out of the box.

I think that, if we define a personal computer as a machine that is designed for a single interactive user, the LGP-30 would be a good candidate. It was not, however, a home computer.

For me, a personal computer needs more than switches and LEDs as its UI. With a serial port, a terminal, and a monitor program in ROM, the Altair would qualify.
by deeThrow94 | 2025-05-02 12:52:51+00:00
I enjoyed this article.

I am confused though how this was a difficult problem to begin with, particularly with the internet. It is not exactly hard to find intellectually stimulating concepts if that's what gets you off.

I also find "philosophy" to be a pretty miserable and unrewarding topic to think about, and I tend to run quickly away from those who want to talk about it. I find it very curious that the author finds it to be a natural place for your focus to land. I think this is a red herring: the secret to long-term contentment is not thinking at all if it's not strictly necessary. Aristotle got "contemplation is the greatest good" dead wrong.
by bsenftner | 2025-05-02 12:52:52+00:00
It is like this with expert humans too. Which is why, no matter what, we will continue to require expert humans not just "in the loop" but as the critical cogs that are the loop itself, just as it as always been. However, this time around those people will have AI augmentation, and be intellectually athletes of a nature our civilization has never seen.
by palata | 2025-05-02 12:52:59+00:00
As I said before, I believe that using permissive licences is a bad idea. I have seen multiple projects choosing a permissive licence as a way to compete against an already established copyleft project, just because it's easier to get adopted by companies. I find it unfair but also a bit stupid: by using a permissive licence, they allow anyone to compete with them with a proprietary fork.

Still, there is an antitrust question (that is slightly orthogonal): if TooBigTech can offer a similar product at a loss (e.g. for free) until they capture the market, then that's a problem. And they can only do it because they are too big, and that is an antitrust issue IMO.
by zdragnar | 2025-05-02 12:53:11+00:00
> how hard the manufacturers themselves are complaining

China is facing an economic situation similar to the COVID lockdowns. The export economy is collapsing, and factories are engaged in "suicidal price wars" just to get a little bit of money from their stock.

https://www.rfa.org/english/china/2025/04/29/china-us-tariff...
by hshdhdhj4444 | 2025-05-02 12:53:14+00:00
So your concern appears to be that the current system doesn’t allow a U.S. retail middle man to take their cut?

I didn’t realize there was so much sympathy for non value providing middle men in the U.S.

I do actually agree with the de-minimus issue and that the system needed to be redone, but not because I think more Americans should be spending their lives being middle men leeching money off the American user, but because the de-minimus exemption was distorting the markets leading to highly inefficient individual packages instead of bulk packages being shipped.

But the problem isn’t the elimination of de-minimus. If that had been eliminated a year ago, a $1000 import from AliExpress would see a $100-$200 additional cost which while not ideal would have been reasonable.

The problem is the raising of tariffs to extremely high levels that mean that the $1000 goods now carry a $1100-$1500 duty on top.
by fkyoureadthedoc | 2025-05-02 12:54:21+00:00
My personal opinion makes no sense? I don't really care if an app only has subscriptions or purchases through their website, I'm just saying that I wouldn't use it when there's an easier and more convenient alternative available.

Adopting the language of the abused to describe being inconvenienced by the company that makes your phone is uhh, something.
Show HN: Frecenfile – Instantly rank Git files by edit activity
by kantord | 2025-05-02 12:54:24+00:00
frecenfile is a tiny CLI tool written in Rust that analyzes your Git commit history in order to identify "hot" or "trending" files using a frecency score that incorporates both the frequency and recency of edits.

It is fast enough to get an instant response in most repositories, and you will get a reasonably fast response in practically any repository.

It can be useful for getting a list of "recent"/important files when Git history is the only "usage" history you have available.
by shakna | 2025-05-02 12:54:34+00:00
I was completely distracted by the magazine cover. The calculator being advertised there, and the wording, caught my attention.

The magazine issued is available here [0].

Apparently, it really was wiring up an entire calculator.

> ... Start assembly by installing and soldering into place the fixed resistors. Then proceed to installing the three electrolytic capacitors, the diodes, and the transistors, taking care to observe proper polarity and basing. Mount the transistors close to the board’s surface...

[0] https://archive.org/details/197501PopularElectronics
by andrewfromx | 2025-05-02 12:54:49+00:00
I like it. Here's how I see the marketplace:

Quick demonstrations & development: ngrok

Low-resource environments (IoT, embedded): rathole

Privacy-focused deployments: connet

Production with active community: FRP

Self-hosting with direct connections: connet

https://gist.github.com/andrewarrow/d0e41dd954485a8574b9ea74...
by hombre_fatal | 2025-05-02 12:54:52+00:00
On the other hand, I wonder why insurance companies haven't led to the ubiquity of dashcams. I thought by now every vehicle sold would have one built in.

And my suspicion is that insurance companies don't push for you to get one because it prevents them from fighting claims that they would've won had there been no evidence.

Maybe it's similar for self-driving or whatever we're talking about here (sensors?).
by hshdhdhj4444 | 2025-05-02 12:55:48+00:00
It’s a “loophole” because the system didn’t anticipate that consumers could basically place all their orders directly from suppliers halfway across the world, and that shipping would become inefficient that individual goods could be delivered for pennies.

The exemption existed for stuff like samples, initial batches, one-off items, etc. not so the entire industry could run off these exemptions.
by nozzlegear | 2025-05-02 12:55:51+00:00
Am I crazy or was this not already possible in the US? When I tried to sign up for Disney Plus to watch the new season of Andor, Disney told me I had to complete the signup outside of the app. Then I got a big warning from Apple saying I was no longer transacting with Apple and wouldn't be able to cancel the subscription or get refunds via the App Store if I continued. Am I misunderstanding what this trial was about?

https://imgur.com/a/zmDEx7v
by Aaargh20318 | 2025-05-02 12:55:56+00:00
> Oof, I don't envy app developers who have to tolerate this bullshit

You're confusing developers with publishers. Developers love this shit, one simple API that's built in to the OS and you can support payments worldwide instead of having to integrate with dozens of payment providers all with their own quirky APIs.

Now for publishers, who want to maximise their profit margins and who don't have to actually write the code to do all those integrations, that's a different story. But I don't think there is a single developer in the world who enjoys integrating with 3rd party payment services.
by SOLAR_FIELDS | 2025-05-02 12:56:06+00:00
> Besides the five-year price guarantee, there's at least one more notable pricing detail. T-Mobile's previous plans had "taxes and fees included," meaning the advertised price was inclusive of taxes and fees. With the new Experience plans, taxes and fees will be in addition to the advertised price.

One of my least favorite things about the States is how this continues to be legal. Hiding the true cost of a product from consumers is anti capitalist and violates free market principles. And no, this isn’t “too difficult” to achieve. Basically every other developed nation roll taxes into the listed price and businesses still manage to operate in those nations.
by palata | 2025-05-02 12:56:18+00:00
> No, it is irrelevant.

Yes, it is relevant.

Try to think about it for a second: multiple problems can exist in parallel:

1. Some company uses a permissive licence, sees a competitor making a proprietary product from their base, and starts whining. Too bad, they should have used a copyleft licence from the beginning on.

2. Some company makes a nice product. TooBigTech sees it and builds an alternative (be it a fork or from scratch, I don't care). TooBigTech offers it for free (because they can, because they are too big) and capture the market. The original smaller company dies, because they can't offer their product for free. Now TooBigTech can start enshittifying because they own the market, again.

> Do you believe you now have the right to retroactively pull the license on a whim?

If you own the copyright to the whole codebase, of course you can. All those contributors who signed a CLA and are now whining should think about that.
by _mlbt | 2025-05-02 12:56:19+00:00
> I live here more than 20 years and can't find any information about genocide

China’s persecution of the Uyghur people is considered by many to cross the line into genocide…

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/china-guilty-genocide-cri...

https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china/ch...
by AnimalMuppet | 2025-05-02 12:56:24+00:00
I question whether Trump has the legitimate legal authority to decide the taxable status of specific institutions. If he wants to change the rules about what qualifies for tax-exempt status, that takes an act of Congress (which he can probably get, eventually).

What he can do is tell the IRS to go through the existing rules and find a reason why Harvard doesn't qualify for tax-exempt status. The problems will be that, first, whatever the reason given will be, it will head for a court case, and second, it will be almost impossible to interpret the rules so that the new interpretation hits Harvard only (and not, say, the other Ivy League schools).
by mschuster91 | 2025-05-02 12:56:43+00:00
I get where Apple is coming from, though, and it's not just the revenue stream. They want to make sure that if you spent money on something in the Apple ecosystem, you can enjoy that for as long as you got a working device with that app installed. Allowing third-party services like license keys introduce a dependency on the vendor to keep their servers up and running.
by jstummbillig | 2025-05-02 12:57:15+00:00
"Lost" is a somewhat silly word in this context. All comparisons fall flat but: How much money did the Manhattan Project "lose"?

It's R&D. At the very least, the stuff that you learn guides other stuff that you do. It's of course necessary to do book keeping, but let's at least be honest about what can not be captured by that.
by Eliezer | 2025-05-02 12:57:35+00:00
Doubling the productivity of 20% of workers, in cases where a lower price doesn't increase demand, can shift prices in the whole system as unemployed artists compete with other artists for wages. AI won't take your job, someone else unemployed by AI will take your job. (NGDPLT partially solves this but that's a higher competence level than civilization has.)
by ip26 | 2025-05-02 12:57:44+00:00
We start talking about carve-outs and credits as loopholes when the use begins to violate the spirit. No one has figured out how to capture the electric car tax credit without meeting the spirit, so it’s not a loophole yet.

As an example if you ship a $3196 product in four packages, each valued at $799, you are following the letter of the law but not the spirit.
by hypeatei | 2025-05-02 12:58:39+00:00
> is why we are where we are

Which is where? A country outpacing everyone else in growth and recovery after COVID?

This assumption that globalism = bad because we don't have people assembling electronics for $10/hour is strange. Does some of that need to be reshored for national security? Definitely, and that's why we have the CHIPS act but Trump is trying to kill it so I'm not really sure what these tariffs are trying to accomplish and I don't think this administration does either.
by deeThrow94 | 2025-05-02 12:59:21+00:00
I had thought the clear need for anti-trust had tickled down to the plebs on here. Unfortunate to see that people still casually refer to free markets as if it's a meaningful concept.

If you really truly think that regulation is dragging down some market, it's easy to talk about in specific terms. It is only possible to employ "free markets" in bad faith.
by margorczynski | 2025-05-02 12:59:31+00:00
The thing about Meta and other "Big Tech" companies is that even after two decades of being on the market the expectation from them is still to deliver constant growth and revenue avenues.

Meta had a stockpile of cash and Zuck took the bet with VR to be the "next big thing" and drive hype from investors. If it did pan out it would free him from Apple's and Google's grasp on iOS and Android.
by guywithahat | 2025-05-02 12:59:57+00:00
The bell curve is not debunked, it basically follows the NYLS, which is a multi decade, highly respected study. The book is one of the most respected surveys of the field.

There are people who claim the whole field of intelligence research is “debunked”, but we give them the same level of respect as people who claim the moon landing has been “debunked”.
by xpe | 2025-05-02 13:00:00+00:00
I wouldn’t phrase it as a matter of “validity”. I would phrase it as a question of transparency.

Putting a model out in public without clearly explaining how it works doesn’t meet my bar for a proper scientific exchange of knowledge. Perhaps they are being intentionally vague for competitive reasons.

RL is a generic term that can be mixed and matched with various other methods. In the context of LLMs, often some variation of RLHF is used.

But the authors don’t even say “RLHF”, much less explain their methodology. Understanding this isn’t just a matter of academic interest; it has implications for understanding and using this work.

I’m often concerned by the writing quality of ML/AI papers but this strikes me as particularly disappointing.

It is increasingly important to have confidence that the creators of AI systems are thoughtful and thorough. I want to see their reasoning. I want to understand the trade-offs they make and why.
by palata | 2025-05-02 13:00:27+00:00
> It's this idea that a corporation can arbitrarily change licensing terms already granted to end-users to extort them.

If contributors refused to sign CLAs, then corporations would either not get contributions or not be able to arbitrarily change the licence. It's also the contributor's fault if they contribute to a permissive project and give up their copyright. Is it extortion if they agreed to it?

And then those contributors come whining because the corporation does whatever they want. Too bad, don't sign a CLA. And don't contribute to permissively-licenced projects if you don't want your code to end in proprietary products.
by everforward | 2025-05-02 13:00:36+00:00
This sounds like naivety to me. I would bet most people here have committed a secret, even if it was later caught in a code review. If this wasn’t a common issue, all those tools that scan repos for secrets wouldn’t exist.

I once put secrets on a wiki page because I copied log snippets and a third party library naively dumped HTTP headers into the logs without filtering out their own API key. I shouldn’t have assumed the logs were secret free, but it’s also not an unreasonable assumption.
by coldcode | 2025-05-02 13:00:41+00:00
At the risk of not piling on to the Apple dislike here, if you use a non-Apple payment system, and you have an issue, you now need to go to the specific company and payment system, you can no longer demand your money back by dealing with a single company. I presume even more scam apps will take your money and ignore your complaints; imagine trying to sue a company in some foreign country to try to get your money back if they stole it. When Apple controlled the payment system, Apple could be sued in your home country. Of course this happens on the web too, but apps on your phone very different from web apps.
by fkyoureadthedoc | 2025-05-02 13:01:17+00:00
Probably.

Though you could make the argument that it would be more complex than it's worth. There's regional issues, like can I redeem your gift code from cdkeys.ru in the US. Can I return the app afterward if I don't want it for a 160 rubles credit? They might already need to handle that stuff for gift cards though.
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