MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by nickpsecurity | 2025-05-05 15:35:18+00:00
There were two, major differences in prior forms of copyright:

1. It protected works to reward authors during their lifetime. This was changed to lasting a long time after the author was dead. Then, also for corporations that were only persons on paper and theoretically immortal. This shift let companies squeeze money out of monopolized ideas for over a century rather than supporting artists and their creations. Instead of supporting the small fish, copyright law can reinforce the dominance of the sharks and whales.

2. Copyright was shorter in the U.S. at 28 years with possible renewal. That would balance two goals: give author time to make money off the work; let society use the work in a timeframe where it would still matter to them. Now, we can't have most works until long after they're useful in the market. We might not even speak the language they spoke, like older vs current English.

Personally, I'd love to see a limit of 5-20 years on copyrighted works. If authors want more money, they can make more stuff. Allowing remixes of culturally and technologically relevant content will create huge, thriving ecosystems. I think my concept is also proven out by the open source ecosystem.

A limit would also be great for legal AI. We could train them on all human content up to 5-20 years ago. Tons of jobs would be created digitizing and optimizing that content. Then, companies would pay to create or license modern content that updated those foundation models. Under current law, it would be impossible for smaller companies to build highly-competitive A.I.'s due to licensing cost and arbitrary restrictions.
by onetimeusename | 2025-05-05 15:35:25+00:00
I think letting in millions of people illegally was extremely serious and Biden did not campaign on that. Although Mayorkas always played it down so no one ever accused the two of being authoritarian. I don't know if that's because the media favored the de facto open borders or if it's because Mayorkas was good at speaking in bureaucrat-ese so he was always incognito. I think there was an intentional plan to open the border and it wasn't a charitable cause. I think we both know the purpose was ultimately to change the voter base to be more favorable, among other reasons. If that isn't an authoritarian power move, I don't know what is.

Now regarding Kilmar, probably yes his rights were violated as happens routinely. I am not sure I am going to lose sleep over it because millions of people came here in one of the largest human migration events in history and we're still at this point where we can't talk about that but instead we debate about whether this clerical error was the event that turned us into a fascist dictatorship. I think it's all disingenuous. I don't know if there's a term for it in the law but our country created an extraordinary legal situation and there's bound to be mistakes made and I think significant political bias is present among judges and lawyers in what should be a neutral court. Do they really care about rights or is this more about keeping immigrants here at any cost?

Actually in 2018 Trump deported an elderly guy who may have had dementia who was accused of being a Nazi war criminal, his name was Jakiw Palij you can look it up. There wasn't strong evidence he was evading war crimes though and he wasn't accepted as a citizen anywhere in Europe because of border changes. I suspect his rights were violated in some way but no one cared for obvious reasons. None of the lawyers you see now jumped to defend this guy. So might there be political concerns ahead of rights? absolutely.
by hirvi74 | 2025-05-05 15:35:33+00:00
To be fair, an arrow released from a bow with a draw weight of over 150 pounds could easily launch an arrow that could pass through multiple people at close range -- depending on how light their armor was.

I've seen bows with a third of that draw weight completely pass through a deer.

Obviously, certain factors have to be met -- distance being the most important and then shot placement.
by singron | 2025-05-05 15:35:46+00:00
The original complaint alleges that the training process requires copying the material into the model and thus requires consent of the copyright holder. (Copyright protects copying but notably not use, so the complaint has to say they copied it in order to have standing). Then it says they didn't have consent.

They also mention Books3, but they don't appear to actually allege anything against Meta in regards to it and are just providing context.

I don't think it actually changes anything material about this complaint if Meta bought all the books at a bookstore since that also doesn't give you the right to copy the works.

The original complaint is 2 years old though, so I don't really know the current state of argumentation.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67569326/1/kadrey-v-met...

Note that incidental copying (i.e. temporary copies made by computers in order to perform otherwise legal actions) is generally legal, so "copying" in the complaint can't refer merely to this and must refer more broadly to the model itself being a copy in order to have standing.
by unsupp0rted | 2025-05-05 15:36:01+00:00
Ask Russian-speakers to recommend a fun iconic movie to watch, and Ivan Vasilievich comes up all the time. I don’t see why, but it does.

Diamond Hand too.

It would be ridiculous if the same were true about Hollywood.

A Russian asks an American what movies to watch, and 8 out of 10 people go back to 1969 to recommend the same one? Impossible.

You’d get everything from Citizen Kane to Hitchcock to Rocky, etc. But you’d also get about 150 great picks from the 80s and 90s, and another dozen from after 2000.

And forget the greats. You’d get Zoolander, Demolition Man, Total Recall, Gremlins, Scream, John Wick, Legally Blonde even… there’s such a wide pool of fun iconic popcorn movies for any person.

Not to mention your Star Wars/Trek/Gate.

These movies aren’t “good” in the sense of being art. They’re good in the sense of people wanting to watch them.

Every n years I rewatch Commando, Con-Air, The Last Starfighter, etc just for kicks. It’s not pure nostalgia- they’re fun movies.

With int’l movies from any given country the list of recommendations is extremely shallow. It’s always one or two iconic revelations from a given decade. Or a couple auteur directors who won all the awards for their think-pieces about the human condition.
by nilsbunger | 2025-05-05 15:36:10+00:00
There’s something called a substantive transformation test in copyright law. When you write a summary of a book, you don’t infringe on copyright because it’s a “substantial transformation”. This goes along with the idea that you can copyright the text but not the ideas it expresses.

When model training reads the text and creates weights internally, is that a substantial transformation? I think there’s a pretty strong argument that it is.
by mycatisblack | 2025-05-05 15:36:37+00:00
In order to be able to design equipment, the instrumentation generally needs to outperform the equipment, sometimes by a significant margin.

Flashback to my days as beginning TLP engineer. I was subjecting ESD protection structures to kV pulses with ~nanosec rise-time. The oscilloscope measures the pulse as it enters and reflects. You’d increase the voltage until the device breaks and do a wafer mapping. I remember a conversation where I showed the setup to a colleague from a diff department, telling him we’re developing next-gen protection against static discharges.

To which he replies: why don’t we use what the guys from the oscilloscope are using?
by alwa | 2025-05-05 15:36:40+00:00
A gap in my education that I look forward to filling, thank you! I’m curious about a specifically-online dynamic that the Persuasion author highlights: that is, it used to be the family and community could keep a lid on the crank flat-earther uncle, now he’s in algorithmically-catalyzed community and cohesion with 5,000,000 other crank uncles.

It feels like there must be a lot of good thought about that new mode of bottom-up legitimacy-building (and of impugning fustier real-world institutions)—would you happen to have any reading suggestions off the top of your head?
by mcny | 2025-05-05 15:37:05+00:00
> If you read a book and later understand its plot but can only explain it in your own words, did you copy it?

I think that is the center of the conversation. What does it mean for a computer to "understand"? If I wrote some code that somehow transformed the text of the book and never return the verbatim text but somehow modified the output, I would likely not be spared because the ruling will likely be my transformation is "trivial".

Personally, I think we have several fixes we need to make:

1. Abolish the CFAA. 2. Limit copyright to a maximum of 5 years from date of production with no extension possible for any reason. 3. Allow explicit carveout in copyright for transformational work. Explicitly allow format shifting, time shifting, yada yada. 4. Prohibit authors and publishers from including the now obviously false statements like "No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording" bla bla bla in their works. 5. I am sure I am missing some stuff here.

For brand protection, we already have trademark law. Most readers here already know this but We really should severe the artificial ties we have created between patents, trademarks, and copyright.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html
by bee_rider | 2025-05-05 15:37:28+00:00
If it were somehow formalized, I’d be 0% surprised to see that HN is particularly bad from a distraction point of view. Other sites, I know with perfect certainty that I am going there to waste time. Here, there is a chance that I’ll actually come across something legitimately useful.

It is like Pavlov’s bell—the important part being the randomness, of course.

I always find it funny to see, on any social media site, “I’ve quit almost all social media sites, except this one.” Well, we have successfully identified which one was most addictive I guess.
by senderista | 2025-05-05 15:37:35+00:00
I wouldn't say the minor third is a "passing tone" at all, it's the defining note of the minor scale. Listen to e.g. "Mannish Boy"--the minor third is absolutely essential to that riff.

Agree that of course there are blues songs with definitely minor harmony, but I still think the really distinctive and innovative characteristic of blues is "minor melody over major harmony"--the minor pentatonic scale was already ubiquitous in African-American music in e.g. spirituals. That's just incredibly weird and I can't imagine how it must have sounded to white audiences hearing it for the first time.
by waynesonfire | 2025-05-05 15:37:56+00:00
I just happen do read the Phoenix Technologies wikipedia page a few days ago. This company is known for developing BIOS software for computers. Maybe you've seen their logo when you first turn on your computer.

In early computing, everything was closed sourced. Quoting the wikiepdia page,

To develop a legal BIOS, Phoenix used a clean room design. Engineers read the BIOS source listings in the IBM PC Technical Reference Manual. They wrote technical specifications for the BIOS APIs for a single, separate engineer—one with experience programming the Texas Instruments TMS9900, not the Intel 8088 or 8086—who had not been exposed to IBM BIOS source code.

The legal team at Phoenix deemed inappropriate to "recall source in their own words" for legal reasons.

My non-legal intuition is that these companies training their models are violating copyright. But, the stakes are too high--it's too big to fail if you will. If we don't do it, then our competitors will destroy us. How do you reconcile that?
by sircastor | 2025-05-05 15:38:24+00:00
I think there are 2 or 3 reasons:

1) Popularity. While there are plenty of die-on-a-hill users for ____ app, there are just as many people who will step away to try something and find they like it. Lots of devs use VScode, but its only been around for 10 years. Some people still swear by Notepad++

2) Demand from on-high: When the non-tech boss shows up and says "Everyone use this now". I don't know how much this happens, but it does happen. Technical dictates from someone who shouldn't be making the decision, probably for a non-technical reason.

3) I hesitate to bring this one up, but here we go: People don't know any better. There is a new generation of developers coming up who are leaning hard into vibe coding. And just when I was young, there are plenty of seasoned developers crying out about it's validity. The new generation will pick their own tools - in part to distance themselves from the current generation.
by unsupp0rted | 2025-05-05 15:38:47+00:00
What’s the relevance of non-American directors?

Nicole Kidman and Chris Hemsworth, say, are as Hollywood as it gets.

Heck so is Salma Hayek.

The point is that intl can’t compete with Hollywood because Hollywood is widely appealing and relatively very good.

It doesn’t matter that Alfred Hitchcock became a naturalized US citizen.
by amelius | 2025-05-05 15:38:54+00:00
Maybe this CCD/delay-line/bucket-brigade trick can finally inspire someone to make a cheap DIY device that can sample USB3 signals, useful e.g. to check signal integrity. A missing tool in my toolbox.

I mean, I think this would be a very nice project for someone with hardware skills and some time on their hands, and it would be useful too.
by alangibson | 2025-05-05 15:38:54+00:00
> AI doesn't actually directly copy the material it trains on, so it's not easy to make this ruling.

IANAL, but it doesn't look that hard. On first glance this is a fair use issue.

What an LLM spits out is pretty clearly transformative use. But the fact that it pulls not only the entirety of the work, but the entirety of MOST works means that the amount is way beyond what could be fair use. Plus it's commercial use. Put it together and all LLMs are way illegal.
by ricwo | 2025-05-05 15:39:14+00:00
Cogram | Full-time | Remote (CET ± 3 hours) | https://cogram.com | B2B SaaS / AI

Cogram is an LLM-based productivity platform for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC). Our product automates a growing number of AEC workflows such as meeting notes, site visits, project administration, mail management and RFP bidding.

We're looking for a senior / staff / principal full-stack software engineer (8+ years of experience) who excels at solving complex problems and delivering solid performance. You'll develop software for a system that serves thousands of users, with enterprise-grade requirements on robustness and reliability.

Requirements: Expert knowledge in Python; at least good working knowledge in Javascript / Typescript / React; excellent writing and communication skills. Bonus skills: Expo / React Native, Puppeteer / Playwright, AWS, Terraform, PostgreSQL Python. Location: remote or Berlin, start date ASAP.

26 days of paid vacation + German public holidays (totaling 38 days). Fully remote work environment with three offsite events per year around the world.

Reach out to r+hiring [at] cogram [dot] com
by johnisgood | 2025-05-05 15:39:20+00:00
No, I do not hate nor want to destroy.

First we would have to determine what you and I mean by bureaucracy. It does sound good, who does not like organization? Problem is, if you ever worked for the Government, or dealt with them in some meaningful way, you should have realized it is not so.

I truly hope you will not be caught up in the meat machine of the Government.
by theturtletalks | 2025-05-05 15:39:33+00:00
China found the perfect way to disrupt US tech, releasing open source versions of it for free or at least cheaper. Most of US tech is built on open source anyways and with the pace YC is investing in open source alternatives, it will win out in most niches.

My fear is that the US tech won’t be able to compete with state sponsored open source out of China and will move to ban open source or suppress it somehow.
by xpe | 2025-05-05 15:39:37+00:00
> because the entire discussion around the use of LLMs for content generation instead of, you know, being able to personally describe your professional experience...

I don't think I'm following. Why do you think it is "instead of ... being able"? From the very top, by the OP (Jake):

> During my job search I paired my mcp server with others such as notion, hirebase, and gmail to build a leads database, write cover letters, and track my job search.

This is what thimwheet wrote:

> So... you couldn't explain what your skills are and then decided you will ask some "AI" to create a tool so that others could prompt it to have it answer what your skills are?

The OP is capable of explaining his skills. This tools helps him scale his work and be more efficient. It could even help generate leads. Do we disagree or are we just talking about different things?

So many job applications are a waste of time for all parties involved. The medical field also excels in the same way. /s Streamlining the process makes sense for an individual slogging through. Sure, there may be ethical concerns in having an LLM help fill out forms. But the criticisms I've seen in this thread don't go there; they mostly feel mean-spirited without understanding or acknowledging why the OP might get value from this tooling.
by pmarreck | 2025-05-05 15:39:41+00:00
Because as soon as you have a kid, your entire life is 1) work 2) family 3) sleep, 4) MAYBE some self-care, and there's not a lot of room at all left over for making friends, finding work opps that are better-suited for you (or higher-paying, or both), or finding sexual/romantic fulfillment if you're single or just completely checked-out of the relationship with your coparent (although it seems there's an unspoken but known thing that parents of toddlers are at the bottom of the well in terms of personal and relationship happiness level, and that it might improve with time?)
by dragontamer | 2025-05-05 15:39:45+00:00
Linkers become abundantly clear when you write an OS from scratch.

Hardware has very peculiar rules for how it loads. The old floppy bootloader would only load the first sector (512 bytes), and after that it's that 512-byte code blocks job to finish loading the code and running it (often called the 2nd stage bootloader).

So writing this makes it super obvious what linkers do. At first you hardcode everything to set addresses. But then a function grows and no longer fits.

So now you have functions + their lengths, as well as a few holes for where your global variables go

And then different .c files may want different global (or static) variables. So now you need to somehow add the lengths of all data segments across all your .c files together.

And then suddenly you understand Linkers, and just use LD / Elf files.

--------

It's a bit of a trial by fire. But not really??? There are super simple computers out there called MicroControllers with just 200 page manuals describing everything.

Writing a bootloader for some simple Atmel AVR chip is perfect for this learning experience. ATMega328p is the classic but there are better more modern chips.

But ATMega328p was popular 15 years ago and still is manufactured in large numbers today
by susam | 2025-05-05 15:40:04+00:00
Lucky for me, I could never get used to the small screens of mobile phones as a serious computing or web browsing device. While I still rely on my mobile phone for basic tasks like making calls, sending messages, and on the rare occasion, reluctantly typing emails when I don't have a laptop handy, my primary computing and web browsing device remains my laptop, with Emacs and Firefox as my main tools.

Surprisingly, the one thing that occasionally manages to distract me is this very forum - Hacker News! :) If I observe myself spending too much time on Hacker News, I block it at the /etc/hosts level. I have a little shell script to point news.ycombinator.com to 127.0.0.1 when I don't want to be browsing HN. HN provides a nifty solution of its own too in the form of the "noprocrast" setting in your HN profile page. If you haven't checked it out yet, it is definitely worth considering.

Apart from that, I think I've been able to escape the traps of modern social media. Also, I still depend quite a bit on physical textbooks, a rollerball pen, and a stack of plain A4 paper for most of my learning, thinking, and exploration activities. This routine has helped me to stay away from modern social media too. So, fortunately, I still have the luxury of boredom in my life which I find to be an essential ingredient for digesting new knowledge as well as finding creative solutions to difficult problems. I've found that letting my mind wander aimlessly sometimes leads to new insights when I least expect them. I think it also helps with creativity and reflection, in general, which is likely a nice bonus too.
by TuringNYC | 2025-05-05 15:40:05+00:00
>> As a teenager, I used to regularly say "I'd rather look at life for real than through a view-finder of a camera"

I agree with you, and also agree on the "balance" aspect. My father passed away 27yrs ago, before digital cameras. My memories of him now are just ambient. I remember vague feelings of our time together, but there are no aha-moment photos that capture moments in time. Perhaps in another 10yrs it will be a vague memory.

Of the most cherished photos I have now, are shocked faces, grimaces, wide smiles, and movement of my own children and cat.

Photos I dont value much are those I can find online anyway (e.g., a photo I have of the Eiffel Tower). OTOH, a nice angle of the Eiffel Tower, perhaps with kids trying to "hold" it, would be valued.
by perone | 2025-05-05 15:40:16+00:00
Thanks. There is a bit of a nuance there, for example: you can build an index in first pass which will indeed be linear, but then later keep it in an open prompt for subsequent queries, I'm planning to implement that mode soon. But agree, it is not intended to search 10 million files, but you seldom have this use case in local use anyways.
by numpad0 | 2025-05-05 15:40:19+00:00
Nintendo Wii Remote used almost completely bare standard HID over Bluetooth Classic and it just worked flawlessly. It needed Wiimote aware apps and special procedures for use with non-Wii devices but it had none such problems(I've had those too) in gaming. It could wake up consoles too.

The problem is in 5W1Hs between combinations of (Windows, PC, Bluetooth), not the protocol. How should pairing keys be retained, etc.
by Syzygies | 2025-05-05 15:40:20+00:00
I just ended my Cursor subscription today, and upgraded from Claude's Pro to Max plan to reduce my Claude Code costs. They now include a healthy Claude Code allowance in the Max plans.

If one has already set up Claude Code with metered API use, one toggles between plans using the /login command. Once to start using Max, then whenever one hits a five hour rate limit and wants to keep working.

I've tried many platforms. I kept Cursor long after Windsurf, but Claude Code is a clear winner, as most people report who don't bristle at the cost.

When Cursor or Windsurf forks VS Code, they have a reason. Their chat panes always felt like periscopes; one has better control over Claude Code in a terminal, and this frees up one's choice of editor. I now use Sublime Text, fast and lean.
by watwut | 2025-05-05 15:41:04+00:00
Yes and no, most people will happily watch movies with gays in them and those without gays.

For decades gays were not allowed and their presence caused blowbacks. It was called free market, despite there being literal rules preventing their presence. Likewise, non whites or women in leading roles - they were not in them, because Hollywood was conservative business in this sense. It took a lot of advocacy for the change to happen.

Right wing hates them, most people just watch those movies and are not weirded out anymore about women having lead action role or whatever. And right wing hopes to revert it back.