MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mlyle | 2025-05-22 22:03:23+00:00
> The Trump administration obeys the courts

We have multiple judges beginning contempt proceedings against the administration, so this is open to debate.

And, there's recent action in the budget bill to attempt to defang judges' contempt powers, seemingly in response.

"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued"
by randomor | 2025-05-22 22:03:28+00:00
That's indeed the bane of this category of apps. You save it but don't ever go back. Yet we all intuitively want to use it as we can never allocate the right mental space at the right time. Our brain usually are in the browsing mode when we are on social, and needs a slightly different mindset when we are ready to dive into a long read.

I believe there are path forward with this category of apps though. Capturing is just step 0. Self-organizing so retrieval is super easy is step 1. Condensing and summarizing information are also possible with local models or MCP.
by tick_tock_tick | 2025-05-22 22:04:23+00:00
> What do they need from Harvard to determine if an individual has violated their visa? Does the administration not have a list of students on a visa? (Surely they do, given that's their job.) Do they not have evidence of a crime? (Surely they do, otherwise there's no problem. But also apparently not, because they'd just use that.) What's missing?

None of that really matter Harvard is required to report this data to maintain good standing in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Failure to do so can result to removal from the program and as such the ability to bring people in on student visas. That is the path they are attacking. Harvard has also been very public about it's refusable to comply with the legal requirements of the program so it's a pretty slam dunk case.

I think Harvard just didn't think the administration would actually follow through.
by moogly | 2025-05-22 22:05:29+00:00
Just disagreeing that the sales performance is _solely_ about that.

Tesla yearly sales stopped growing in 2024. Also declining in China, where they don't care about what Musk is doing. Musk is still well-liked there, in fact.

Competition is heating up and Tesla have been focusing on stock pumping stratagems instead of their core product line, and continuing to dig their own grave, but Musk's megalomania surely has accelerated that a ton.
by mmmore | 2025-05-22 22:05:48+00:00
Sonnet with extended thinking solved it after 30s for me:

https://claude.ai/share/b974bd96-91f4-4d92-9aa8-7bad964e9c5a

Normal Opus solved it:

https://claude.ai/share/a1845cc3-bb5f-4875-b78b-ee7440dbf764

Opus with extended thinking solved it after 7s:

https://claude.ai/share/0cf567ab-9648-4c3a-abd0-3257ed4fbf59

Though it's a weird puzzle to use a benchmark because the answer is so formulaic.
by dmane11 | 2025-05-22 22:05:53+00:00
Really, thoughtful and balanced write up. Striking a balance between keeping skills like reviewing and writing well structured code and using the black box to do for it or help speed you up is to going to be hard to strike. Then again, we have gone through similar shifts before e.g. LSP, search engines, stack overflow, etc.

I don't know, I suppose that as things change, they tend to remain the same in a strange way. Definitely, a disorienting time to be a software engineer right now. Even more so for new grad devs.
by Hilift | 2025-05-22 22:06:17+00:00
> For example, getting things done with prestige connections, domestically and internationally. And the international diplomatic goodwill

What you describe is relatively recent development of US foreign policy. In 1959, John F. Kennedy purchased a copy of The Ugly American for all of his fellow US Senators. After Kennedy was elected, many foreign service programs were initiated to leverage soft power. That was JFK's legacy.

Prior to that, the US acted much in the same way as it is today. It came up with Bretton Woods, along with the UK. The people that ran the world were the Averill Harrimans and Prescott Bushes.

In 1956, the US basically told the UK it wasn't going to back the Prime Minister (Anthony Eden) with regards to the Suez Canal. That was probably a sobering indication that the UK was going to be a supplicant in the relationship. The US also returned Vietnam to France (as was policy after WW2), which of course precipitated 20 years of war in southeast asia.

The end of the WW2, and the discovery of the infiltration of Russian agents in the dead Roosevelt administration put Truman in panic mode. The iron curtain and cold war basically turned foreign policy into a huge power grab after the war to position against a perceived threat.

https://www.thehistoryreader.com/us-history/ugly-american-jf...
by aspenmayer | 2025-05-22 22:06:38+00:00
A moderation log is an example of how transparency into mod actions could work. In many ways, we already have the moderation log in the form of comment replies from mods. If you used a text box wrong, mods on HN seem pretty good about replying to you if they made a mod action. Maybe not in every case, but it seems intentional and probably an effort to make their impact visible and accountable to users.

However, we don’t have any logs of moderator interventions in the functioning of the site in other ways. I’ve heard Dang say that one of my posts was downranked because it was basically a bad look for the #1 post on HN to be a post about n, where the post about n happened to be my post, and was on-topic for HN.

Edit for clarity: the interaction was over email or on HN but I don’t recall which; that is, not in literal earshot, and was direct communication to me, not indirect etc.
by ethbr1 | 2025-05-22 22:06:39+00:00
There would have been a stronger one if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had retired at a time that supported a 5/4 ideological balance on the Supreme Court.

Instead of the hubris to hold onto the job until death and thereby subsequently undo many of the things she spent her life fighting for.

Finding a successor and handing over your power is one of the most important responsibilities of the powerful, when they have a say.
by benoau | 2025-05-22 22:06:39+00:00
The worst part is this appears to be by design...

> By default, Tailscale tries to account for domains on shared email providers (like gmail.com) where users will share a domain, but are unrelated and should not share a single tailnet.

> Since we were unaware of poczta.pl, it was treated as a company domain, which meant others with the domain ended up on your tailnet as they joined.
by multjoy | 2025-05-22 22:07:11+00:00
In the bill that has recently been passed, the republicans have inserted a clause that means no administration official can be found guilty of criminal contempt by the federal courts.

This will mean that the courts are literally powerless against the administration's malfeasance. The executive will be able to do what they like, and even if this bill doesn't pass the senate, SCOTUS will likely strike down as unconstitutional any appointment by the courts of a private attorney to prosecute criminal contempt because it has been stuffed with useful idiots.

This isn't sliding towards fascism, this is speed running 30's Germany.
by -__---____-ZXyw | 2025-05-22 22:07:19+00:00
Funny, I said something similar at that parenthetical remark. I thought to myself - oh, it was only a little remark, no-one will catch it! So I'm a bit thrilled, the careful readers are still out there.

Absolutely, to what you're saying, and I think it's another of those cases where often people know the "meme" (about the medium being the message), but then haven't the first idea what it means - unfortunately. For example, with smartphones, the message is humans as silent consuming spectators and fans - sitting silently, staring, swiping, scrolling, mildly stressed and agitated and worked up sometimes even but not wholly aware of it, maybe mumbling something to whoever is around every now and again.
by NoImmatureAdHom | 2025-05-22 22:08:02+00:00
Many people associated with the University are pretty happy about it getting smacked down.

Shameless, wrong, and overtly illegal discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and creed, suppression of free speech, even the compelling of speech have all been de rigeur for Harvard for the past decade.

I just wish they would use a scalpel rather than a sledge hammer.
by stefan_ | 2025-05-22 22:08:16+00:00
It's not important what it is. Pocket was bought overpriced by Mozillas incompetent officers on a project to diversify their income by playing VC. They then decided to piss all over their Firefox browser users by forcefully integrating it with the browser. It was a terrible decision, a terrible business, and now way past its best by date its finally taken out to pasture. Sadly the incompetent officers continue their tenure and soon we'll write this obituary for Mozilla, as their C-level compensation inevitably outstrips what Google is willing to pay for a 1% market share and declining browser.
by pdfernhout | 2025-05-22 22:08:16+00:00
Retrotopia by John Michael Greer has an aspect similar to different technology levels. Except that in the novel they are essentially taxation zones relating to infrastructure. If you want to live in a zone with, say, publicly maintained roads, then you have to pay taxes for it. Otherwise you could live in a zone without them. Same for other public amenities. More details here: https://theworthyhouse.com/2021/01/01/retrotopia-john-michae... "To maintain autarky, and for practical and philosophical reasons we will turn to in a minute, Lakeland rejects public funding of any technology past 1940, and imposes cultural strictures discouraging much private use of such technology. Even 1940s technology is not necessarily the standard; each county chooses to implement public infrastructure in one of five technological tiers, going back to 1820. The more retro, the lower the taxes. Family farming is apparently the main activity for the population, usually with horses and oxen (petroleum is nearly non-existent and the few motor vehicles run on heavily-taxed biodiesel). Towns and cities have been rebuilt in solid 1940s style; they are powered by modest amounts of central electricity, generated by manure, supplemented by point-source hot-water solar and wind. There is no internet, much less metanet, and no satellite access (portrayed as ubiquitously critical to the outside world’s functioning). Business is conducted at a 1940s level, as is all physical culture. Clothes are throwbacks—made of high quality, long-lasting materials, rather than the disposable “bioplastic” found in the outside world. Economically, Lakeland is somewhere on the continuum to distributism—the Grange is back in action, concentrations of wealth with disproportionate power are forbidden, and associations and other intermediary institutions are ubiquitous. Subsidiarity, rather than concentration, is the rule; banks are individual and tied to the community, for example. Automation is rejected as costing a society more than it provides, if properly accounted. ..."
by ImPostingOnHN | 2025-05-22 22:08:18+00:00
the usa is seeing the state employ that monopoly right now:

- against opposing members of the legislative branch (lamonica mciver)

- against opposing members of the judicial branch (hannah dugan)

- against opposing members of the executive branch (ras baraka, andrew cuomo)

- against opposing private organizations (harvard, institute for peace)

- against opposing private individuals (chris krebs)

- against defenders of opponents (multiple lawfirms)

- not to mention rewarding private individuals who employed private violence against political enemies -- we saw this during duterte (ashli babbitt, the rest of the insurrectionists)

if there is no monopoly on violence in the usa, who else exactly is the monopolist permitting to use it?
by anonymars | 2025-05-22 22:09:01+00:00
I'm not sure what you're rebutting. This is roughly the thread as I understand it:

1. "Extending your logic, I have a CCIE, so if I ever state I'm a CCIE, I'm an employee of Cisco? [other examples follow]"

2. "All your examples are not things that commonly are job titles, so you are not 'extending logic'."

3. "They are the same class"

4. "No they aren't, those are not job titles, thus they don't imply employment"

...

#. "those weren't attempts to argue the title isnt confusing."

I don't know what you're reading but #1 is doing just that; roughly translated: "Why would 'Microsoft Regional Director' imply he works for Microsoft? If I have a CCIE does that mean I'm an employee of Cisco?"
by pge | 2025-05-22 22:09:25+00:00
The administration’s letter to Harvard (which they later claimed to have sent in error) made it clear that their intent is to root out what they perceive as liberal ideological bias at Harvard - nothing really to do with Israel, that was just an excuse. Whether there is a liberal bias is something I will leave others to debate (and if there is, whether that provides grounds for federal action, given the freedoms afforded by the first amendmemt), but I think the Administration’s actions had more to do with throwing red meat to the base than it did with an factual inquiry
by const_cast | 2025-05-22 22:09:59+00:00
This type of stuff makes me feel so uneasy with our entire economy. I mean, is anything real or are we just making stuff up and then making more stuff up to justify why it's okay?

How can a company's valuation have seemingly no tie at all to how they're doing as a company? Just on the surface that seems absurd. But that's not even my concern - my concern is that this happens and nobody seems to care. As if there's very real exploits in our financial markets and nobody seems to bat an eye.

Just the fact Tesla has somehow managed to do this should be making us uneasy! But then again, I don't understand the stock market, and nobody understands the economy, so I guess it's fine.
by raincole | 2025-05-22 22:10:30+00:00
Yeah, that's obvious. It's even worse for blog posts. Pro-LLM posts usually come with the whole working toy apps and the prompts that were used to generate them. Anti-LLM posts are usually some logical puzzles with twists.

Anyway that's the Internet for you. People will say LLM has been plateaued since 2022 with a straight face.
by Sesse__ | 2025-05-22 22:11:18+00:00
The very good reason is that there's simply not a lot of heap allocations going on. It's easy to check; run perf against e.g. ffmpeg decoding a big file to /dev/null, and observe the distinct lack of malloc high up in the profile.

There's a heck of a lot of distance from “not a lot” to “zero”, though.
by alwillis | 2025-05-22 22:11:32+00:00
> Or is Firefox trailing even mobile Safari here?

Short answer: yes.

Here are some web platform features Chrome and Safari (desktop and mobile) are shipping but not Firefox:

* Container Style queries: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...

* @scope: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...

* Picture in Picture: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...

* View Transitions: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...

* Cross-document view transitions: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...
by vicentesteve | 2025-05-22 22:11:35+00:00
Hola a tothom, he escrit aquest article preprint per intentar crear un protocol que asseguri les comunicacions entre clients clàssics i servidors quàntics al núvol.

Publico aquí a Hacker News no per fer publicitat de l'article, sinó per obtenir ressenyes de la comunitat sobre la idea i el desenvolupament formal que he fet.

Si us plau, absteniu-vos de comentar si no heu llegit l'article i si només voleu fer opinions destructives. Totes les ressenyes o opinions constructives seran considerades. Si teniu preguntes sobre conceptes o coses que no estan ben definides, podeu comentar-les i intentaré respondre-les i millorar la redacció de l'article.

Us faig saber ara que probablement la redacció i la formalitat no són perfectes, podeu dir-me què he de millorar si voleu.
by theropost | 2025-05-22 22:11:45+00:00
Honestly, I’ve been thinking about this whole AGI timeline talk—like, people saying we’re going to hit some major point by 2027 where AI just changes everything. And to me, it feels less like a purely tech-driven prediction and more like something being pushed. Like there’s an agenda behind it, probably coming from certain elites or people in power, especially in the West, who see the current system and think it needs a serious reset.

What’s really happening, in my view, is a forced economic shift. We’re heading into a kind of engineered recession—huge layoffs, lots of instability—where millions of service and admin-type jobs are going to disappear. Not because the tech is ready in a full AGI sense, but because those roles are the easiest to replace with automation and AI agents. They’re not core to the economy, and a lot of them are wrapped in red tape anyway.

So in the next couple years, I think we’ll see AI being used to clear out that mental bureaucracy—forms, paperwork, pointless approvals, inefficient systems. AI isn’t replacing deep creativity or physical labor yet, but it is filling in the cracks and acting like a smart band-aid. It’ll seem useful and “intelligent,” but it’s really just a transition tool.

And once that’s done, the next step is workforce reallocation—pushing people into real-world industries where hands-on labor still matters. Building, manufacturing, infrastructure, things that can’t be automated yet. It’s like the short-term goal is to use AI to wipe out all the mindless middle-layers of the system, and the longer-term vision is full automation—including robotics and real-world systems—maybe 10 or 20 years out.

But right now? This all looks like a top-down move to shift the population out of the “mind” industries and into something else. It’s not just AI progressing—it’s a strategic reset, wrapped in the language of innovation.
by OzFreedom | 2025-05-22 22:12:05+00:00
This raises the questions:

1. How would an AI model answer the question "Who are you?" without being told who or what it is? 2. How would an AI model answer the question "What is your goal?" without being provided a goal?

I guess initial answer is either "I don't know" or an average of the training data. But models now seem to have capabilities of researching and testing to verify their answers or find answers to things they do not know.

I wonder if a model that is unaware of itself being an AI might think its goals include eating, sleeping etc.
by dontdoxurself2 | 2025-05-22 22:14:12+00:00
The fund-raising email the President of Harvard sent us after the gov pulled federal funding begins: "Dear Alumni and Friends,

In recent weeks, thousands of you have sent encouraging messages, asked thoughtful questions, provided candid feedback, and made generous new gifts to the University. Many of you also shared deeply moving stories of how Harvard changed and shaped your lives. Your outpouring of appreciation and support reinforces the importance of our institution and what it represents. Thank you for your commitment to the University and its ideals." It goes in at length, and as the international recipient of a full-ride scholarship you can bet I was happy join in and double my annual gift. Just as trump was able to raise money from his various trials, so to Harvard draws sympathy from this: and while trumps's supporters are many, Harvard's supporters are rich, so it comes out in a wash and is effectively just melodrama to wind us all up with. The Harvard network is wide and varied so while I am sure there are some like your "big Harvard alum" who are cheering attacks on a major source of their own and their country's prestige, but in my circle of conservative alumni friends I have heard exactly the opposite reaction: even those who were still card-carrying Republicans were already apoplectic about the tariff debacle's impact on their net worth so all this petty virtue-signaling against the alma-mater that launched them on their successful careers hasn't done anything to heal the growing rift...
by orochimaaru | 2025-05-22 22:14:56+00:00
Well, it’s not the popular vote but the electoral college. There may be plenty of people in blue states who voted for Trump because they were fed up with democrats having foisted an unelected candidate on them. They would for the most part know that the vote kinda doesn’t count - e.g. if you live in CA or IL. In this case you’re mostly voting to make a point.

So with the current system, that varies. If it’s a popular vote, then I’d say you have a point.
by onetimeusename | 2025-05-22 22:15:22+00:00
Harvard is not an old money university anymore, none of those schools really are. Old money in the sense you are thinking of it is a liability for Harvard especially since the SFFA lawsuit. There isn't a record that tracks that sort of thing so I would point to admissions statistics generally. You may find old money there but there is no backdoor to let them in easily and that's not the vast majority of students so I would not refer to those schools that way.
by joshstrange | 2025-05-22 22:15:26+00:00
That was my best guess, a comment on how helpless we are if a corp locks our account. I guess the "Green Fist" story line just didn't make sense to me especially with the "red pill"-ing aspect of the first part of the video (alpha male bs). I was just doing a lot of different things and I couldn't find a clean through-line.
by alaxhn | 2025-05-22 22:17:54+00:00
To a gun advocate the point of a concealed carry would be self defense which is a reality of living in certain areas rather than a political or ideological matter. Nevertheless it is ok for a political parties to have opinions about whether concealed carry is right or wrong and some would say that "civilized" countries have made gun ownership very difficult because the pros may outweigh the cons.

Likewise the right does not agree with you that the diversity statement is a positive and non-ideological contribution to the hiring process and if your response is going to be "this is not up for discussion because it is not a political or ideological matter" well... they are going to disagree with you and if they are in charge might respond by cutting funding and support for your institution. That's just a reality of living in a democracy.
by talkingtab | 2025-05-22 22:18:09+00:00
What is fermentation really? It is a process whereby bacteria et al. process a food source, breaking it down. And the same process goes on inside your gut. Ouch, now there is spoilage for you!

There is at least some research that says fermented foods have some benefits including reducing inflammation. My personal guess based on subjecting myself to more and more fermenting foods is that much of the obesity and many of the common health issues have to do with not eating enough fermenting foods. Just a guess based on a sample of one.
by recursivecaveat | 2025-05-22 22:18:28+00:00
To some extent it is required that all serious work by a computer be the kind of repititious thing that can be at least partially addressed by a lookup table.

If you take the example of a game, drawing sprites say. Drawing a single preloaded sprite of reasonable size is always cheap, so a slow frame must have an excessive number. It's very hard to construct a practical scenario of a large number of truly distinct sprites though. A level has a finite tile palette, a finite cast of characters, abilities, etc. It's hard to logistically get them all into a scene together, and even then it won't be that many. So the only scenario left where sprite drawing will be slow is drawing the same handful of sprites over and over again. By contrast that's super common: just spam a persistent projectile, tap the analog stick to generate dust particles, etc.