MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by zkmon | 2025-05-25 07:58:05+00:00
Democracy is just a different arrangement of same malice that exists in all other earlier forms of the rule. It's zero sum game. You focus on a few things at the cost of the other things. Overall, there is no net gain. You don't need to look beyond the coalition politics of Europe, for example.

In non-democratic systems, people are assumed to be not having the expertise needed to choose the ruler. In a democracy with a large number of political parties, people's vote will be highly fragmented, leaving the decision to coalition politics, making the people's vote meaningless.

Also, the assumption that crowd is right about what policies should a government have, is also questionable. 100 monkeys, or the leader elected by them, can't make a better decision than a single subject matter expert.

Since non-democratic systems give far more power and duration to their leaders, a good leader in these systems provide a superior rule than a good leader in a democratic system, while bad leaders in non-democratic systems is worse than bad leader in democratic system. Over a long-term of multiple generations, both even out.
by interestoo | 2025-05-25 07:58:49+00:00
I was travelling to the US a few times during previous administration and each time somebody from the team was taken into little dark room for questioning, I was not travelling to the US much before so I was of opinion the way how US border treats travellers was weird to say the least, at least compared to other countries I was travelling to. Sometimes it was worse depending on particular border agent. Interestingly I travelled recently during new administration and did not notice much of a change.
by jxjnskkzxxhx | 2025-05-25 08:00:48+00:00
> In the UK, if you develop it in your free time it's yours, as long as you don't use company equipment.

I'm in the UK. My contract specifically says that anything I produce while employed for the company, even in my free time, is owned by the company. So is your claim that the contract is illegal/unenforceable?
by Farbklex | 2025-05-25 08:01:19+00:00
It's rather sad for this generation. We still host retro LAN parties regularly to play games we love. Flatout 2, Age of Empires 2, Warcraft 3, Half Life Deathmatch. Those games are about 20 years old and play just fine. We grew up with them, and they hold up to today standards amazingly well.

I kinda doubt that today's kids will be able to play Valorant, Apex Legends or Battlefield 2043 in 20 years when they host a "retro" LAN.
by inglor_cz | 2025-05-25 08:01:31+00:00
I write for living (albeit in Czech) and I don't think that PGs writing is bad. It is not artistically brilliant (unlike Douglas Adams'), but he gets his points clearly across, and uses a language that even foreigners with limited command of English can parse.

That's good in my opinion - in the same sense that hammer which drives down nails flawlessly is good. PG is not trying to write colorful fiction, he wants to communicate something, and he succeeds in doing so. It is still a hammer, not a statue of David, but there are good and bad hammers, and this is a good hammer. You wouldn't want to drive nails into boards with a statue of David anyway.
by loveparade | 2025-05-25 08:02:33+00:00
Just anecdotal experience, but this model seems more eager to write tests, create test scripts and call various tools than the previous one. Of course this results in more roundtrips and overall more tokens used and more money for the provider.

I had to stop the model going crazy with unnecessary tests several times, which isn't something I had to do previously. Can be fixed with a prompt but can't help but wonder if some providers explicitly train their models to be overly verbose.
by momocowcow | 2025-05-25 08:05:29+00:00
Read the quake pvs article linked to in this thread.

On top of my head as I remember it.. one of the reasons for Quake's use of a bsp was to allow back to front rendering of the world geometry without the use of a zbuffer. This was required to get decent performance with the software rasterizer.

I'm not 100% sure what's most commonly used these days, but for a large open world requiring data streaming, I could see the use for something like an octree and even portals.
by geraltofrivia | 2025-05-25 08:06:14+00:00
In 2015 a PhD scholar attending a security conference was sent back citing national security concerns. This was absurd as she was an Indian, studying in Montreal and has no past involvement in any untoward thing.

In 2017, a friend doing his PhD in artifical intelligence in Germany was made to undergo a thorough interview at the border to determine if he is a threat on account of his work. Again, this was absurd to say the least.

In this March, my SO (French) chose to not attend a tier 1 conference in AI where she was going to present her work. She, having the brains for both of us, was prescient enough to cancel her trip in Feb-March, a bit before the current border policies came into full force and europeans were detained.

I have never gone, nor will I ever go to the United States. Not for scientific purposes or leisure. For over a decade I have been voicing concerns about hosting conferences in a country which is inaccessible or hostile to a vast section of the scientific community. I am glad to see this shift.
by aabhay | 2025-05-25 08:07:32+00:00
Eagerness to tool call is an interesting observation. Certainly an MCP ecosystem would require a tool biased model.

However, after having pretty deep experience with writing book (or novella) length system prompts, what you mentioned doesn’t feel like a “regime change” in model behavior. I.e it could do those things because its been asked to do those things.

The numbers presented in this paper were almost certainly after extensive system prompt ablations, and the fact that we’re within a tenth of a percent difference in some cases indicates less fundamental changes.
by Freak_NL | 2025-05-25 08:07:46+00:00
Smart Glasses 2: Revenge of the Glassholes

Will it take off as a general consumer product this time? Probably, for some (unfortunately).

It will create a whole new class of distracted people in traffic, that's for sure. Someone lost in a smartphone screen is at least visually recognisable (“Better look out for that smombie about to cross…”), but someone dutifully following Google Maps directions on one of these could actually look like they are aware of their surroundings, whilst their full attention is fixed on the little map widget.
by jxjnskkzxxhx | 2025-05-25 08:09:43+00:00
"CEO announced it would replace contractors with AI"

I keep seeing this type of headline, and I never understand the following. Even if this were a great idea, it's obvious people will be upset with it. So if it were a great idea, why not just not announce it and implement it anyway? Very slowly get rid of contractors, pretend it's unrelated to AI. Isn't this obviously less risky?
by inglor_cz | 2025-05-25 08:09:47+00:00
I thought about it as well.

My answer would be: "eloquence" may be a too-strong requirement, but if you can't express your ideas at least clearly, how can you be sure that they are the right ideas? Because without a detailed description that another human being can understand, this is really hard to judge. Maybe there is a lot of overlooked flaws in your flow.

I have a suspicion that there is a subset of geniuses who just intuitively "grok" some important ideas without being able to describe them to other people. Some of the autistic savants come to mind. But I am not sure if they can be induced to actually cooperate efficiently with the rest of humanity. Whatever happens in their minds, seems to be locked there.
by defrost | 2025-05-25 08:10:15+00:00
Not all bank vaults are in banks, here's the basement of a prog rock musician and his wife's house (a former bank(?)) .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM6iqwcyC1A

Physical security for digital credentials is the main point here, that doesn't always imply a regular bank, many modern banks lack the bank vaults of yore in any case.

Tangentially, avoid showing up unannounced at grandparents house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZZmFG07OVs
by pzo | 2025-05-25 08:10:49+00:00
This. Reinventing the wheel in business context IMOH should be only if:

- you can afford it (money)

- you have enough time or your customer can wait

- provide significant benefit to you or your customers (have nothing better to do)

- you don't have fierce competition in your domain

- you are pretty much retired (or could) and treating it more like art/craft/passion project

I compare it with building some custom made designer house and furniture. Many would want that, only some can afford it, even less will pay for it.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-05-25 08:11:18+00:00
> But towards the end he backs away from that claim, and makes the claim I described:

> "[W]hile we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true, it's usually safe to conclude the converse: something that seems clumsily written will usually have gotten the ideas wrong too."

What do you mean, backs away? Those aren't different claims. If writing that sounds bad is less likely to be right, it is necessarily the case that writing that doesn't sound bad is more likely to be right.
by Hackbraten | 2025-05-25 08:11:31+00:00
A 14-character extension might cause UX issues in desktop environments and file managers, where screen real estate per directory entry is usually very limited.

When under pixel pressure, a graphical file manager might choose to prioritize displaying the file extension and truncate only the base filename. This would help the user identify file formats. However, the longer the extension, the less space remains for the base name. So a low-entropy file extension with too many characters can contribute to poor UX.
by sureglymop | 2025-05-25 08:11:34+00:00
I only half understand CaMeL. Couldn't the prompt injection just happen at the stage where the P-LLM devises the plan for the other LLM such that it creates a different, malicious plan?

Or is it more about the user then having to confirm/verify certain actions and what is essentially a "permission system" for what the LLM can do?

My immediate thought is that that may be circumvented in a way where the user unknowingly thinks they are confirming something safe. Analogous to spam websites that show a fake "Allow Notifications" prompt that is rendered as part of the actual website body. If the P-LLM creates the plan it could make it arbitrarily complex and confusing for the user, allowing something malicious to happen.

Overall it's very good to see research in this area though (also seems very interesting and fun).
by wiether | 2025-05-25 08:11:37+00:00
> "LAN mode" is a related misnomer : a better term is the also used "Direct IP connect". Even after GameSpy shut down, you can still play these games online through this "LAN mode".

To me "LAN mode" always referred to hosting a server on your own machine while having a self-discovery mechanism on the LAN and no exposure over the WAN, which means you launched the LAN mode and computers on your LAN can see you and join, but not computers outside.
by Aeolun | 2025-05-25 08:11:38+00:00
I think they didn’t have anywhere to go after 3.7 but 4. They already did 3.5 and 3.7. People were getting a bit cranky 4 was nowhere to be seen.

I’m fine with a v4 that is marginally better since the price is still the same. 3.7 was already pretty good, so as long as they don’t regress it’s all a win to me.
by entuno | 2025-05-25 08:11:58+00:00
Why do they have to follow Chrome and Edge in hiding parts of the URL? I want the URL bar to show me the exact URL of the page I'm on, not a redaxcted version or the history of how I got to this page, which seems like the opposite of "transparency".

Given they're claiming to give "real user choice", I very much hope this can be disabled and won't end up being forced.
by cbg0 | 2025-05-25 08:12:18+00:00
I've always felt that the business model is nickel & diming for things like storage/bandwidth and locking in customers with value-add black box services that you can't easily replace with open source solutions.

Just took a random server: https://instances.vantage.sh/aws/ec2/m5d.8xlarge?duration=mo... - to get a decent price on it you need to commit to three years at $570 per month(no storage or bandwidth included). Over the course of 3 years that's $20520 for a server that's ~10K to buy outright, and even with colo costs over the same time frame you'll spend a lot less, so not exactly crushing those margins to dust.
by scotty79 | 2025-05-25 08:12:27+00:00
Custom solutions while initially potentially less complex gradually grow in complexity. There might be a time when you it's worth it to throw out your custom solution and replace it with more general dependency. There's still a benefit because dependency introduced at this stage is used way more thoughtfully because you know the problem it solves inside out.

It might also change your psychological relationship with the dependecy. Instead of being disugsted by yet another external dependecy bringing poorly understood complexity into your project you are thankful that there exists a piece of code maintained and tested by someone else that does the thing you know you need done and lets you remove whole mess of complexity you yourself constructed.
by woolion | 2025-05-25 08:14:12+00:00
It's interesting because the main trend in game-design is to 'streamline' and 'simplify'. The result is basically that they did the opposite of what we want to achieve in software design: modern game systems are shallow and complicated rather than deep and complex. One reason is that the older games that are still successful have emergent gameplay -- strategies that weren't planned by the developers but could be found by exploring the space. If it's so simple to make this analysis, why are these games affected by this problem? Because of business decisions. The games need to make players jump to new installments. To do this, they need a compelling reason other than 'we need you to pay full price again', so they introduce new mechanics. After 20 years of bloat where developers are afraid of abandoning the mechanics from previous generations a lot of systems became both too complex and too complicated, so they simplified by planning out the viable strategies, which generally collapse the hierarchy of strategy layers player could adopt. This homogenizing force is also greatly driven by e-sports/streaming, where games are designed to be enjoyed as a spectator. E-sports players want homogeneous strategies as it simplifies greatly adapting to the meta.

Tl;dr: it's a business problem of carrying the whole history of the genre to gather existing players. To simplify would mean take greater, explicit risk, and the industry has become risk-averse because of how much they've generally mismanaged themselves.

If you take Street Fighter 2, the game that laid the blueprint for all mainstream fighting game, there are a few important rules you want to know, like Dragon Punch having startup invincibility. Even then, if you don't want to learn, the game is instinctively approachable. The Street Fighter series introduced 'supers' that need meter to be used, and then systems to have options in how to spend that meter, which introduce some balance issues needing to have more options available in defense. So, in Street Fighter 6 they thus introduced "Drive Rush" with the explicit design concept of "1-button attack". So now you have 2 gauges, the gauge gauge and the drive gauge. But as the concept lays out, Drive Rush is extremely powerful, so you can't hop in without understanding how it works at a basic level. How much effort does it need to have that basic level? Just see [0].

[0] https://wiki.supercombo.gg/w/Street_Fighter_6/Gauges
by M95D | 2025-05-25 08:14:31+00:00
We can't have that. The banks insist on trusted*1 platforms for their apps and their apps are increasingly mandatory. I expect that not only cash use will be restricted*2 as it happend in many other parts of the world, but bank cards will be obsolete soon too, replaced by the unavoidable user-tracking app.

*1 by them

*2 in my country, it is illegal to pay more than ~2000 euro in cash to a company as a natural person, or more than ~1000 euro in cash between two companies. Allegedly, it's to prevent tax fraud, but the transactions data is oh-so-very-good at profiling people!
by hyperman1 | 2025-05-25 08:14:47+00:00
The first 2 Thief games ate interesting:. They still have a relatively active community, but the executable is hard to run. Then most of the source code leaked, and new releases started from that.

The result is a zombie game. The fans won't let it die, but the copyright limbo won't let it live.

Transport tycoon had a bit of the same, but managed to grow out of it by piece by piece replacement, with ttdpatch, openttd and fully new graphics as important phases. So it is possible to slowly escape this fate if the fanbase is interested enough. But it is a hard, multi decade effort.
by hnlmorg | 2025-05-25 08:15:20+00:00
Google et al are already stealing their identities by using their content as part of the ML training data.

By the way, I wasn’t suggesting that YouTube would replace real content creators with AI copies of their originals. I was just making the point that YouTube doesn’t make its money from content creators; it makes it from advertising. So we shouldn’t assume that Google will defend the rights of those creators.
by whatshisface | 2025-05-25 08:16:48+00:00
The system in the US is capable of running on nothing but hope because of the availability of lending and investment. "Unfortunately" that means the average person won't receive an impossible to ignore signal that something is going bad until bankers and investors lose hope. By that point, something would have had to have happened that can't be fixed in the short term by a reversal or a sudden period of sobriety.

For a concrete example, the stock market is going up and down every time the tariff threats change tone, but the layoffs that the tariffs will make inevitable won't be done until companies run out of financiers who can be convinced the setbacks are only temporary.
by evidencetamper | 2025-05-25 08:17:34+00:00
Different from your comment, that comes from your insight from your lived experiences in this community, the quote is a whole bunch of nothing.

Maybe the nothingness is because LLM can't reason. Maybe it's because it was trained a bit too much in marketing speak and corporate speak.

The thing is, while LLMs can replicate this or that style, they can't actually express opinions. LLM can never not be fluff. Maybe different types of AI can make use of LLM as part of their components, but while we keep putting all of our tokens in LLMs, we will forever get slop.
by astrobe_ | 2025-05-25 08:18:05+00:00
Yes, as TFA alludes to, this expression is actually a bit wrong because the wheel has often been reinvented since ~4500 BCE. The latest "reinventions" are as recent as 19-20th century with the continuous track, monowheel, "hubless" wheel and mecanum wheel [1] [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubless_wheel

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel
by brazzy | 2025-05-25 08:18:16+00:00
And you really think that people who routinely use torture to extract information, and for whom claims that "I don't know it!" is basically the standard obstacle to overcome, will just believe him without even trying, because it's "math" and therefore true?

The reality is, in the xkcd Rubberhose cryptanalysis scenario, being actually unable to give up the information is a MUCH WORSE situation to be be in than having a key to give up before they permanently maim/kill you. It might be better for a third party who benefits from the information remaining secret, but not for the person unable to divulge it.

But thinking you're safe because the attackers will read, understand, and believe your claims of uncompromisable cryptographic security is dangerously naive.
by hnlmorg | 2025-05-25 08:19:17+00:00
I’ve actually worked on GenAI in Hollywood so I have some insights here.

GenAI is making inroads there but only as tools. Like Avid plugins that enhance productivity rather than replacing the actors themselves.

However Hollywood is a very very very different industry to the likes of YouTube. You cannot discuss the two industries like they’re equivalent. The stuff that would be banned in Hollywood would be perfect acceptable on YouTube. And visa verse too.
by bamboozled | 2025-05-25 08:22:12+00:00
I have friends and colleagues based in South America, when conferences are held in the USA, they never can attend, or want to. When they're held in Europe, they just appear with little hassle, it's quit perplexing to me how hard the USA makes it for them.

It's been this way forever, according to them, they're never going to even bother now.
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by syketdas | 2025-05-25 08:22:23+00:00
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by wvbdmp | 2025-05-25 08:22:58+00:00
I used to love PSP back in the day. Is it still any good? I don’t much like Affinity Photo and unfortunately Adobe is completely insufferable.

Another, more current, example is the audio workstation Reaper. After the generous 60-day trial it keeps showing a message about it on every startup that cannot be dismissed for 5 seconds or so, but otherwise remains fully functional.

It’s great and one should totally buy it, of course. Doesn’t break the bank either.
by florbnit | 2025-05-25 08:28:12+00:00
I feel like you missed the context of my comment. Someone suggested AI would do experiments, someone responded with “lmfao” as a dismissal. I answered that we already have computers running experimental series even without AI. I’m not dismissing AI I’m saying that we are already in a post computer run experimentation world. People not in an industry using that would obviously not know.