MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by turtlebits | 2025-05-26 02:41:02+00:00
Sorry, this is an interesting but terrible idea.

If your crib is unsafe or undersized, the solution is to make it safe by adding guardrails or buying a safer/correct sized model. Or remove the hazard entirely by putting their bed on the floor.

Adding AI/tech to catch deficiencies is not the right way to go about it. You're willing to risk injury/death in case the AI is wrong, you don't hear the beep, or there are too many false positives and you end up ignoring it?

This is the same thing as self driving. It seems good enough to that it takes your attention away - until it doesn't. And it's AI, not a model specifically trained on catching the issue.
by ModernMech | 2025-05-26 02:41:12+00:00
"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?" "I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is." "But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!" howled Loonquawl. "Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?" A slow, stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other. "Well, you know, it's just everything... everything..." offered Phouchg weakly. "Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."
by analog31 | 2025-05-26 02:41:38+00:00
Here's a weird idea that has occurred me from time to time. What if your editor could recognize a binary float, display it in a readable format, and allow you to edit it, but leave it as binary when the file is saved.

Maybe it's discipline-specific, but with the reasonable care in handling floats that most people are taught, I've never had a consequential mishap.
by kevlened | 2025-05-26 02:43:33+00:00
> Also cookies are not cryptographically signed and thus easily forgeable by the client/browser

While it's true that you could avoid signing cookies, this isn't the default for any server library I'm aware of. If your library doesn't require a secret to use for signing, you should report it.

I'm also unaware of JWT libraries that default to "none" for the algorithm (some go against the spec and avoid it entirely), though it's possible to use JWTs insecurely.
by JimDabell | 2025-05-26 02:44:12+00:00
> AI companies are annoyed that customers are typing "please" in their prompts as it supposedly costs a small fortune

They aren’t annoyed. The only thing that happened was that somebody wondered how much it cost, and Sam Altman responded:

> tens of millions of dollars well spent--you never know

— https://x.com/sama/status/1912646035979239430

It was a throwaway comment that journalists desperate to write about AI leapt upon. It has as much meaning as when you see “Actor says new film is great!” articles on entertainment sites. People writing meaningless blather because they’ve got clicks to farm.

> yet they have system prompts that take 10 minutes for a human to read through.

The system prompts are cached, the endless variations on how people choose to be polite aren’t.
by csomar | 2025-05-26 02:44:29+00:00
We did not improve people's lifespans. At least not that much. What happened is that young people die less due to less hazardous conditions which improved the average age. Also the average age is not the problem. The problem is that social security was setup as a ponzi scheme (younger pays for older) instead of a saving scheme (each one build a nest for himself). A ponzi scheme will eventually implode but if you manipulate the parameters you can make it go further.
by ggm | 2025-05-26 02:45:06+00:00
Always a polarising figure, responses here bisect along several planes. I am sure some come armed to disagree because of his life long affinity to left world view, others to defend because of his centrality to theories of language.

I happen to agree with his view, so i came armed to agree and read this with a view in mind which I felt was reinforced. People are overstating the AGI qualities and misapplying the tool, sometimes the same people.

In particular, the lack of theory, and scientific method means both we're, not learning much, and we've rei-ified the machine.

I was disappointed nothing said of Norbert Weiner. A man who invented cybernetics and had the courage to stand up to the military industrial complex.
by csomar | 2025-05-26 02:47:24+00:00
> You've created an impossible situation which will never exist

It can and does, albeit in slower motion (ie Japan, South Korea)

> why taking care of the elderly, something humans have done since before recorded history, is flawed.

Humans took care of THEIR elderly. The system was made to take care of THE elderly. Pretty sure most people don't want to see old people begging for food on the street but also prefer not to pay much to have it resolved (varies by country and culture)
by jclulow | 2025-05-26 02:48:45+00:00
Yeah I agree with the positive part of the thesis; i.e., that it's alright to like things, and it's alright to pick things in part because you are a feeling sentient person and you should have nice things.

I think the corollary that people, when looking also at the data or at constraints, are acting irrationally or its sophistry or whatever is bunk, though. Plenty of people do actually engage in some amount of evaluation, and it's intellectually lazy to disregard that because they may have also made an aesthetic or otherwise personal decision on some level as well.

I use a bunch of niche software, and it's difficult or impossible to completely separate my aesthetic preferences from the concrete reasons I also have for doing so -- my aesthetic preferences and my joy in using certain things actually stem from those concrete benefits in some cases!
by MetaMalone | 2025-05-26 02:49:21+00:00
Should we feel happy solving our problems with our fancy tools? Are our tools and in-depth knowledge a distraction to inflate our egos, or a sign of self-respect and passion?

I’m inclined to believe the latter. Our fancy tools provide so much more utility beyond keeping us happy. Our tools teach us new things and stretch our curiosity and creativity. Our happiness stretches us to solve more problems and ask better questions.
by Duwensatzaj | 2025-05-26 02:49:26+00:00
What’s hilarious is how the “40 beheaded babies” claim is indeed propaganda - from Hamas apologists.

The original statement is that 40 infants were murdered during the Oct 7th massacre and infants were beheaded, no number given. This somehow mutated into the claim that all 40 murdered infants were beheaded so the claim could be ridiculed.
by godelski | 2025-05-26 02:51:55+00:00
> one, that the facility of LLMs is fantastic and useful

I didn't see where he was disagreeing with this.

I'm assuming this was the part you were saying he doesn't hold, because it is pretty clear he holds the second thought.

| is it likely that programs will be devised that surpass human capabilities? We have to be careful about the word “capabilities,” for reasons to which I’ll return. But if we take the term to refer to human performance, then the answer is: definitely yes.

I have a difficult time reading this as saying that LLMs aren't fantastic and useful.

| We can make a rough distinction between pure engineering and science. There is no sharp boundary, but it’s a useful first approximation. Pure engineering seeks to produce a product that may be of some use. Science seeks understanding.

This seems to be the core of his conversation. That he's talking about the side of science, not engineering.
by onetimeusename | 2025-05-26 02:51:57+00:00
It seems the issue was that a lower court tried to force DHS to enforce laws which Texas and other states argued he was not doing and a judge agreed. The SC struck that ruling down and said the states lacked standing and courts can't order the executive to enforce the law. To me that's kind of a weird outcome. I think that gets at what I am talking about. There's a letter and a spirit of the law. Under legalistic procedural reasoning it is totally normal and not illegal at all that at least 8 million people turned up and were able to claim asylum. However, it is authoritarian to make an administrative error that causes someone to not have exhaustive hearings.

I think that gets to my point here which is whether it's possible for lawyers to launder an agenda through legal procedures. Yes, Trump's admin violated rights but the overall big picture is that lawyers can create a system where 1 administrative error is a severe problem but 8 million parolees is not and they can stop a president from enforcing the law with excessive hearings. I don't think it's a policy problem. We don't really have policy anymore. Once a year we vote on a budget. We have something like judicial precedence and outcomes for things like immigration and immigrant rights are determined entirely by lawyers.
by schappim | 2025-05-26 02:52:19+00:00
I’m building https://ninja.ai/mcp/servers — an app store for AI assistants.

Most AI agents today are like smartphones without any apps. Ninja.ai makes it easy for anyone to install and use AI tools (MCP initially) that automate useful tasks, without needing to write code.

Think:

- One-click install for AI-powered tools (MCPs, Model Context Protocol servers) - Automatically share relevant context so tools know what you’re working on - “Recipes” that bundle multiple tools into workflows (e.g., check inbox → pull receipts → send summary to accountant)

We’re focused on everyday users and small teams who want to get things done with AI — not configure it.

Still early. Just launched our prototype. Bootstrapped so far, now fundraising.

If you’re excited about agents, app ecosystems, or making AI useful to normal people, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
by detourdog | 2025-05-26 02:53:18+00:00
Apple has always been a design company and if Ives wasn't there someone else would have filled the void.

From my memory

David Kelley and IDEO designed the original Macintosh Hermutt Esslinger and Frog Design did I think the SE's and Macintosh II and II CI. Robert Bruner and Lunar Design did the Quadra's Robert Bruner also Hired Ives.
by agentultra | 2025-05-26 02:54:09+00:00
My new favourite genre of schadenfreude are solo-preneur SaaS vibe-coders.

They burn a pile of money. Maybe it’s their life savings, their parents’ money or their friends or some unlucky investors. But they go in thinking they’re going to join the privileged labourers without putting any of the time to develop the skills and without paying for that labour. GenAI the whole thing. And they post about it on socials like they’re special or something.

Then boom. A month later. “Can everyone stop hacking me already, I can’t make this stop. Why is this happening?”

Mostly I feel sorry for the people who get duped into paying for this crap and have their data stolen.

There’s like almost zero liability for messing around like this.
by wglb | 2025-05-26 02:54:25+00:00
Commonly true, but in my five years of engineering school, in my summer after my freshman year, I was already employed in computer programming. The rest of my school had co-op periods during which I had summer stints in computer-programming-related jobs including at Bonneville Power Administration with a team working on computer monitoring of the system, with the idea that was to lead to control of that system; a stint as a co-op student at Wayerhauser Plup Bleach plant, working on a program to model the flow of pulp through a tower measuring the dose of chlorine-based bleach, working at a medical lab with odd jobs including generating a plot of a sensor measuring tremor in a patient's hand; working at an IBM sales office writing a program to measure the proper fill of a tanker truck based on the day's projected temperature, and finally as the first full-time employee of a company producing the first computer-based commercial electrocardiogram analysis service, all before graduation.

My first job, of course, was prior to all that, driving various vehicles on my Dad's dryland wheat farm in northern Montana.

So I feel that I was particularly lucky about finding good co-op positions, as many of my colleagues were at less interesting gigs at Motorolla, sorting resistors by color code.

(Some of these are documented at https://ciex-software.com/)

Coming from a very small town, University was a bigger uptick than likely for kids growing up in the Big City.
by gugagore | 2025-05-26 02:54:48+00:00
I think you're describing "gradual typing", which had lots of promise and attention, but arguably achieves the worst of both worlds: https://www.ncameron.org/blog/a-response-to-a-decade-of-deve...

What it comes down to is a reconciliation between these two views: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/intrinsic+and+extrinsic+views+...

I think the "reliability" you mentioned is "type safety". And I think the dynamicism I sometimes miss in a language with static types is, in a bizarre way, the lack of runtime type errors. If you load a configuration file, necessarily at runtime, but the configuration file has the wrong format, an error should occur. What kind of error? In essence, a type error...

Reusing the type checking machinery at runtime is a benefit to some. At the same time, the possibility of type errors (type unsafety) is a threat to the reliability of programs.

I have trouble wrapping my head around it, but I ultimately want the bikeshed with both windows.
by stickfigure | 2025-05-26 02:54:54+00:00
Then these different pools can be separate singletons. You still don't want to instantiate multiple identical pools.

You can use the type system to your advantage. Cut a new type and inject a ReadOnlyDataSource or a SecondDatabaseDataSource or whatnot. Figure out what should only have one instance in your app, wrap a type around it, put it in the singleton scope, and inject that.
by const_cast | 2025-05-26 02:55:15+00:00
A lot (most?) people have good in them for themselves. We've done a pretty good job at making sure the best thing for you also happens to be a pretty good thing for humanity as a whole. For the ultra-wealthy, this is almost never the case.

If I chose to be evil, right now, my life would implode. Now that's not the only thing keeping me from going evil, but it certainly helps. The same is not true for people with the world's biggest safety net and infinite get out of jail free cards.
by bicx | 2025-05-26 02:56:51+00:00
I think there are definitely objective reasons why you would pick certain stacks for specific projects. They all have strengths and weaknesses. You can technically achieve a lot of the same tasks regardless of your stack choice, but the timeframe, elegance, available ecosystem, cost, and ability to hire for your stack may vary quite a bit.

That said, if I’m not spending someone else’s money, I’ll pick the stack I enjoy or feel most productive in. I use Elixir for my own projects, but it’s generally a bad option for the startups I work for. Tough to hire for, limited ecosystem, unusual and sometimes polarizing concepts. It’s a business risk compared to, say, TypeScript or Go. Great concurrency model and cool pipeline capabilities though. :)
by Spooky23 | 2025-05-26 02:57:10+00:00
Not at all true. You just adopted the wrong model to partner with it. Think of yourself as an old school analyst vs a programmer.

Throw a big context window model like Gemini at it to document the architecture unless good documentation exists. Then use modify that document to drive development of new or modified code.

Many big waterfall projects already have a process for this - use the AI instead of marginally capable offshore developers.
Show HN: A tool to post-process MVT vector tiles quickly
by sleepy_keita | 2025-05-26 02:58:10+00:00
I'm a big fan of Protomaps' OSM vector tiles [0], but I wanted to tweak them just a bit (removing features and tags based on some conditions). Instead of regenerating the tiles from scratch using Planetiler, I made a tool that takes an input PMTiles archive and a filter GeoJSON, and spits out the filtered tiles. Filtering is performed by a mapbox/maplibre style spec-inspired filter language in the properties of each GeoJSON feature, so you can apply different rules for different regions.

Eventually, I'll probably add some features like adding new features, but for now, this is good for 90% of what I need the tiles to do.

[0] https://protomaps.com/
by monsieurpng | 2025-05-26 03:00:26+00:00
I’m working on LearnMathsToday, a mobile app that helps students learn math in a fun and engaging way. It’s self-paced, with AI-generated questions that adapt to each student’s level. One unique feature is AI-powered marking, which gives instant feedback on written answers. I’ve also added gamification—points, levels, and a storyline—to keep students motivated. Right now, the app is based on the Singapore syllabus, since I’m based in Singapore.

Feel free to download here: https://learnmathstoday.com/2025/03/02/learnmathstoday-app-i...
by johnQdeveloper | 2025-05-26 03:01:10+00:00
Well, the basic issue (in my experience) is that self-taught tends to be written off and ends at the individual contributor senior role level.

> I make north of $200k/year cash plus the equity and perks at an early stage startup. I’ve been through two exits so far. Nothing outrageous but I’m rich by most peoples standards. It doesn’t feel like lack of schooling has impacted me financially.

I know people who have 8 figures and a large part of the reason they went the route they did was their education. These things are just not a one size fits all prescription but I've literally gotten "You have no degree, why are you applying?" e-mails that clearly was them thinking they were chastizing me for wasting their time.

Keep in mind I've been employed this whole time but I don't make north of $200k/year but that is more of a health thing than anything else. I have to be careful and manage my interactions with people because in the US you are 100% unprotected and I learned that the hard way if its not blindingly obvious to everyone you are disabled but rather something you and your doctor discussed if its worth disclosing and the answer was "eh, probably not" despite the fact my European colleagues that I know on a personal level are amazed I have to work at all, let alone without any disability protections.
by JimDabell | 2025-05-26 03:01:34+00:00
Are they measuring conformance to the system prompt for reinforcement?

It seems to me that you could break this system prompt down statement by statement and use a cheap LLM to compare responses to each one in turn. So if the system prompt includes:

> Claude never starts its response by saying a question or idea or observation was good, great, fascinating, profound, excellent, or any other positive adjective. It skips the flattery and responds directly.

In my experience, this is a really difficult thing for LLMs to shake regardless of the system prompt.

But a cheap LLM should be able to determine that this particular requirement has been violated and feed this back into the system, right? Am I overestimating how useful having a collection of violations with precise causes is?
by Noumenon72 | 2025-05-26 03:01:38+00:00
As someone who used to be in the actual working class (plastic factory), it's not the same at all. Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) covers the autonomy and good treatment the working class can't have. Plus just talk to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93manageria...
by const_cast | 2025-05-26 03:01:47+00:00
The way you do it is covertly and from afar. You need the people to think they wanted their own revolution. It's what we do today and in the past across Africa. Soft-colonialism just works better.

Turns out, if you come in with guns and start making demands the people will hate you. And you need the people. The people aren't just the dudes living in a country - they are the country.
by papaver-somnamb | 2025-05-26 03:01:56+00:00
There was an interesting debate where Chomsky took a position on intelligence being rooted in symbolic reasoning and Asimov asserted a statistical foundation (ah, that was not intentional ;).

LLM designs to date are purely statistical models. A pile, a morass of floating point numbers and their weighted relationships, along with the software and hardware that animates them and the user input and output that makes them valuable to us. An index of the data fed into them, different from a Lucene or SQL DB index made from compsci algorithms & data structure primitives. Recognizable to Azimov's definition.

And these LLMs feature no symbolic reasoning whatsoever within their computational substrate. What they do feature is a simple recursive model: Given the input so far, what is the next token? And they are thus enabled after training on huge amounts of input material. No inherent reasoning capabilities, no primordial ability to apply logic, or even infer basic axioms of logic, reasoning, thought. And therefore unrecognizable to Chomsky's definition.

So our LLMs are a mere parlor trick. A one-trick pony. But the trick they do is oh-so vastly complicated, and very appealing to us, of practical application and real value. It harkens back to the question: What is the nature of intelligence? And how to define it?

And I say this while thinking of the marked contrast of apparent intelligence between an LLM and say a 2-year age child.
by jhbadger | 2025-05-26 03:02:19+00:00
>In a way, this is not much different from foundational understandings in human–robot interactions, strengthening the claim in many humanities and environmental fields that humans should analytically be considered an animal

That seems a bit reversed to me. As a biologist, I fully agree that humans are animals and a lot of our behavior is evolved instinct not very different from other animals, but the traditional humanities way of thinking is that biology is irrelevant to understanding humans who are thought to be completely influenced by their culture and not their genes.
by shmerl | 2025-05-26 03:02:29+00:00
> They choose obscure tech as a form of sympathetic magic, like the guy who uses NetBSD on a ThinkPad to feel like a William Gibson protagonist.

Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7 for the win.

Though I'd say using Rust would feel more like Gibson's character, since it's more futuristic contrasted to those who go out of the way to look for bogus arguments not to use it.
by m-schuetz | 2025-05-26 03:02:59+00:00
You save for a state pension the same way you save for state health care - not at all. The current working people pay for the current retired people, and this only works so long as there are significantly more working than retired people. Advantage of this system: You dont need to be afraid of not having saved enough money if you end up living too long. Disadtvantage: Thid only works if there are substantially more working people than retired people, which is no longer the case, so pensions have to be reduced.
by francislavoie | 2025-05-26 03:04:37+00:00
Watch the talk at the bottom of the page. JWT/JOSE are chock full of dangerous footguns that aren't just theoretical, they have repeatedly been shown to be poorly designed and too risky to implement correctly as written. Using fewer, known secure cryptographic primitives as part of the spec ensures it's impossible to get the security wrong, can't be misused.
by cyberax | 2025-05-26 03:04:39+00:00
Not quite. Baby boomers are mostly explained by delayed births due to the Great Depression, and then by greatly improved living condition in the newly settled suburbs: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/the-baby-boom-saw-a...

But the current drop below the replacement rate is all due to increased density. If you look at the stats, the urbanization percent stayed flat. However, more and more people are moving into a smaller and smaller set of large cities.