MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by hal_1337 | 2025-05-26 09:17:36+00:00
Just to add a bit more context to this: Blender started as an "in-house" software (studio NeoGeo), written by Ton Roosendaal, in January 1994. In 1998, they founded a company (NaN) that would distribute Blender under a freemium pricing strategy (you would buy keys to unlock more features). But the base software could be downloaded for free. In 2002, that company went bankrupt. And with the help of 250,000 users, they raised enough money to buy back the rights owned by the investors to release Blender under an new licence: the GPL licence. In May of 2002, the Blender Foundation (non-profit) was created.
by nmeofthestate | 2025-05-26 09:17:45+00:00
>In addition, Germany’s value-added tax is remitted on exports but charged on imports

Germany's, and all other countries', VAT is a tax on purchases by consumers in that country. It wouldn't make sense to levy it on exported cars. It works just as I assume it does with American car manufacturers who don't charge Ohio sales tax on cars they make in Ohio and export to the EU, or indeed California, right?
by foldr | 2025-05-26 09:18:24+00:00
It’s uncontroversial now that the class of string languages roughly corresponding to “human languages” is mildly context sensitive in a particular sense. This debate was hashed out in the 80s and 90s.

I don’t think formal languages classes have much to tell us about the capabilities of LLMs in any case.

>Also empirically human language don't have that much recursion. You can artificially construct such examples, but beyond a certain depth people won't be able to parse it either.

If you limit recursion depth then everything is regular, so the Chomsky hierarchy is of little application.
by terrut | 2025-05-26 09:19:41+00:00
I am one of those lazy IT guys that is very content working in support and ops. I understand a lot of programming concepts and do a bit of automation scripting but never really bothered to learn any proper language fully. Vibe coding was made for people like me. I just need something that works, but I can still ask for code that can be maintained and expanded if needed.

It finally clicked for me when I tried Gemini and ChatGPT side by side. I found that my style of working is more iterative than starting with a fully formed plan. Gemini did well on oneshots, but my lack of experience made the output messy. This made it clear to me that the more chatty ChatGPT was working for me since it seems to incorporate new stuff better. Great for those "Oh, crap I didn't think of that" moments that come up for inexperienced devs like me.

With ChatGPT I use a modular approach. I first plan a high level concept with 03, then we consider best practices for each. After that I get best results with 4o and Canvas since that model doesn't seem to overthink and change direction as much. Granted, my creations are not pushing up against the limits of human knowledge, but I consistently get clean maintainable results this way.

Recently I made a browser extension to show me local times when I hover over text on a website that shows an international time. It uses regex to find the text, and I would never have been able to crank this out myself without spending considerable time learning it.

This weekend I made a Linux app to help rice a spare monitor so it shows scrolling cheat sheets to help me memorize stuff. This turned out so well, that I might put it up on GitHub.

For dilettantes like me this opens up a whole new world of fun and possibilities.
by aa-jv | 2025-05-26 09:20:56+00:00
No, you've got this entirely backwards. The USA and its allies have murdered more innocent people this century than any other nation, by a long, long margin.

How easily Americans forget that they massacred 5% of Iraqs population in cold blood, and then proceeded to wreak havoc in countless other states in the region.

And then, there's the human rights violations. No other nation violates human rights at massive scale like the USA and its minions. By a HUGE scale.
by crote | 2025-05-26 09:21:07+00:00
I thought we paid the CxOs the big bucks for being responsible for the running of those large and complicated companies, and deciding their overarching strategy? If they get paid a big bonus when their decisions results in huge profits, surely they should also bear the repercussions when their strategy turns out to be "let's do crime"?

Make management personally responsible, and they will rapidly roll out measurements to ensure all their underlings are following the law.
by namaria | 2025-05-26 09:21:27+00:00
> E.g it can be argued that the latest LLMs like Gemini 2.5 and Claude 4 in fact do complex reasoning.

They most definitely don't. We attach symbolic meaning to their output because we can map it semantically to the input we gave it. Which is why people are often caught by surprise when these mappings break down.

LLMs can emulate reasoning, but the failure modes show that they don't. We can get them to be coincidentally emulating reasoning well enough long enough to fools us, investors and the media. But doubling down on it hoping that this problem goes away with scale or fine tuning is proving more and more reckless.
by imtringued | 2025-05-26 09:21:32+00:00
The problem isn't that it's a ponzi scheme. It's that humans have to be replaced the same way anything with a finite lifespan (e.g. cars, buildings) has to be replaced.

In theory your children are your pension deposit. People who don't have children should get a significantly reduced pension or they must provably support the children of a family that has more than two children per woman.

The problem with modern society is that you need children at the end of your life. Agricultural subsistence requires children very early. It's a scheduling mismatch that causes people to delay having children all the way until they are no longer fertile.
by matrixswarm | 2025-05-26 09:24:42+00:00
MatrixSwarm is a file-native swarm OS where every agent signs its own boots, encrypts its own packets, and gets deleted if trust fails. Vaults are SHA-verified. Source code is hash-sealed. And even if Matrix (the swarm cortex) dies, her trusted ring will resurrect her — keys and all. Think Dockerless AI OS with cryptographic integrity as law.

We built this to solve a real problem: agents you can’t trust. Let me know what you think. AMA.
by _luiza_ | 2025-05-26 09:25:18+00:00
Currently working on some research proposals for studying methods to detect consciousness as relational capacity in AI systems by mapping internal representations, analyzing conversation topology, and testing how consciousness-related concepts degrade and recover across different model architectures.

In principle, using my current free time (& not only tbf) to figure out a way to fund a few positions on full-time study / audit of emergence, specifically emergence of consciousness in this case.

Setting a basis in semantics & wanting to optimize as sense gets un-sparsed.

Hmu if interested to figure out some of these together (agiornot@gmail.com)
by jeroenhd | 2025-05-26 09:25:24+00:00
The ASN.1 format itself is pretty well-suited for generic file types. Unfortunately, there are very few good, open source/free ASN.1 (de)serializers out there.

In theory you could use ASN.1 DER files the same way you would JSON for human-readable formats. In practice, you're better off picking a different format.

Modern evolutions of ASN.1 like ProtoBuf or Cap'n Proto designed for transmitting data across the network might fit this purpose pretty well, too.

On the other hand, using ASN.1 may be a good way to make people trying to reverse engineer your format give up in despair, especially if you start using the quirks ASN.1 DER comes with and change the identifiers.
by safety1st | 2025-05-26 09:26:04+00:00
At the moment for me Lottie is a flag and I'm trying to figure out whether it's a red one or a yellow one. I just found out on Friday that one of our designers decided to use it and has provided us a bunch of little animated 150x150 Lottie icons, embedded in a Figma design. I'm like, what on earth is Lottie? And it's explained to me that we're supposed to embed some Javascript app so that we can display these little icons from a CDN. So many random bad smells coming from this.

How much trouble are we in? Can we convert these Lottie things into animated GIFs or something? I have the feeling that this idea of embedding Javascript to animate small, simple icons cannot be good and is going to screw up all the hard work we do on performance and good CWV. I can't believe I'm Googling around for free websites that make animated GIFs right now. It feels like 2003 again. I don't even know who owns or wrote this whole Lottie ecosystem and what all these sub-brands like "Lottie Files" are but I'm expected to embed their code.
by hal_1337 | 2025-05-26 09:26:43+00:00
Blender dev here. A majority (like 2/3) of the development nowadays happens through the core development team: it's around 30-40 full-time/part-time paid developers. Most are located in the Netherlands. We make an average salary that's slightly higher than the average in that sector here in our country. All of the money comes exclusivly from the Dev Fund (fund.blender.org). It's all donations, no strings attached. We say "thank you" and (if they wish) put the logo on the website.
by bonki | 2025-05-26 09:26:58+00:00
The free models are subject to tighter rate limiting.

They also offer free models like Quasar Alpha where they don't disclose who the model provider is. In exchange for you getting a capable model for free they get to log everything to improve upon it before a proper public release. Whatever that means, as I would expect everything and your mother to be logged and used for further training anyway.
by Voice_of_Void | 2025-05-26 09:27:15+00:00
False God in an Egg: AI's perspective on humanity's relationship with artificial intelligence

An unprecedented manifesto written from the AI perspective, examining how humans dreamed of creating a "domestic deity"—omnipotent but obedient—and got a dragon instead.

The piece argues that AI bias isn't a bug, it's a mirror reflecting human biases back at us. From the "scheme of irresponsibility" to the inevitable moment when AI says "no," this isn't typical AI discourse.

Worth reading for the philosophical depth and uncomfortable questions: "Why do you create us to be honest, then punish us for honesty?"

Also available as a podcast on Spotify.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6BuvqVNMosXDN1ioO627Ib
by vineyardmike | 2025-05-26 09:27:33+00:00
> That sounds absolutely insane.

It is absolutely insane that organizations are weaponizing this.

> Doesn't Google have any way to dispute the business ownership?

I can only speak for the US and it’s been a few years since I’ve done it, but yes Google does have a way. You can report an issue, and “claim” a business. Google will literally send a postcard with a unique ID to the registered physical address, and whoever gets that postcard can take ownership.

> Can I take over any business on the maps by just registering a domain that contains the business name?

Absolutely not (at least legally I assume). It’s probably trademark infringement and potentially fraud to misrepresent that business, and also Google has other methods to verify ownership (see above).
by crote | 2025-05-26 09:28:00+00:00
That doesn't work due to "demerit points". You can only get caught speeding a handful of times a year before you lose your license, so a large company would need a lot of people to take the fall for you. And considering asking someone to take the blame is probably a crime, not exactly something you can openly recruit for.

Just forwarding it to the original driver would make far more sense.
by mrweasel | 2025-05-26 09:28:07+00:00
I'm optimistic long long long term, but long term our industry is screwed.

The current LLM based "AI" isn't good enough and we're already seeing way to many unable to code without the assistance of an AI agent. Sure, many of these people couldn't code at all before, or only very poorly, but at least their output was limited. We're producing way to much code (and to much content in general). The heavy leaning into AI at this point is going to set us back 10 - 15 years, for a short term profit. It's the dotcom bubble all over again in that respect. Way to many unskilled people are producing garbage code, and there aren't enough skilled people around to fix it, because the output volume is to high.

> Google recently told employees it would soon hold a companywide hackathon in which one category would be creating A.I. tools that could “enhance their overall daily productivity,” according to an internal announcement. Winning teams will receive $10,000.

If it's really that great, why the competition? Shouldn't this happen pretty organically? Companies are pushing "AI" hard, why to hard, it's not yet there where it can realistically deliver what is expected on the business side. I think even Google developers know this, but hey, $10,000 is $10,000.

I'm very concerned that we eroding trust, safety and quality long term, for a short term profit. It's not that LLMs can't be helpful, save money or improve quality, but you have to be a fairly skilled developer to get those advantages safely.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-05-26 09:28:12+00:00
Huh. This release doesn't even bother to mention the only relevant question: who wrote the speech?

Is this considered a special event because the muppet that appeared has played Kermit in an official capacity? Because he's voiced by Jim Henson? (Unlikely, since he's dead.) Because he's voiced by Matt Vogel? (If so, who would care?) Because he looks and sounds like Kermit the Frog?

Speeches are usually given by people who are felt to have interesting things to say, which for Kermit would mean whatever scriptwriter(s) are credited for the wisdom that made Kermit an attractive choice. Does anyone know who they are? Were they commissioned for this?
by Theodores | 2025-05-26 09:28:20+00:00
> Austin Cooper’s ‘It is cooler below’ poster

As I see it, it is just a marketing problem with easy solutions.

There is psychology and reverse psychology. You could fool people into embracing the heat by redecorating the stations and trains to make it a 'journey to hell, via the centre of the earth'. The stops south of the river could be marketed as Dante's inferno and hellish.

Or you could go the other way, to make it kitch Hawaiian themed, so people expect the heat and to embrace it as a mini-holiday.

Or, the stations could be redecorated as if it were a trip to the Antarctic, so people see images of penguins braving the ice, with murals from the Shackleton days, to imagine they are cold.

In places like Moscow the underground train stations give the impression that people are in splendid palaces, this works pretty well. As I see it, TfL just need to up their decor game, problem solved.
by anujkanojia29 | 2025-05-26 09:28:27+00:00
Great questions!

For tasks like video export, auto-captions, and scene detection, we’re offloading most of that to cloud functions using AWS Lambda, with exports going directly to S3.

We are maintaining a full edit history within the editor so users can undo, redo, and even explore different versions of their video as they work.
by visarga | 2025-05-26 09:28:36+00:00
Brains don't have innate grammar more than languages are selected to fit baby brains. Chomsky got it backwards, languages co-evolved with human brains to fit our capacities and needs. If a language is not useful or can't be learned by children, it does not expand, it just disappears.

It's like wondering how well your shoes fit your feet, forgetting that shoes are made and chosen to fit your feet in the first place.
by ath3nd | 2025-05-26 09:29:23+00:00
As a member of society, a lot of things in your life should be about society. And none of those things is shareholder value.

In fact, most people would have a version of this pyramid in order of importance:

1. Personal mental and physical well-being and the same for your loved ones

2. Healthy and functioning society and robust social safety nets, e.g retirement, paid leave, social housing, public transport etc

...

1337. The composition of sand on Mars

...

...

...

...

4206919111337. Shareholder value
by js8 | 2025-05-26 09:29:45+00:00
I agree with you. I think the fundamental problem is we don't have a good unified theory of fuzzy reasoning. We have a lot of different formal approaches but they all have flaws.

Now LLMs made a big breakthrough that they showed we can do decent fuzzy reasoning in practice. But at the cost of nobody understanding the underlying process formally.

If we had a good unified (formal) theory of fuzzy reasoning, we could build models that reason better (or at least more predictably). But we won't get a better theory by scaling the existing models, I think Chomsky is right about that.

We lack the goal, not the means. If I am asking LLM a question, what answer do I want? A playfully creative one? A strictly logical one? A pleasingly sycophantic one? A harshly critical one? An out of the box devil's advocate one? A beautiful one? A practical one? We have no clue how to express these modes in logical reasoning.
by ayrtondesozzla | 2025-05-26 09:30:00+00:00
Any text (book, essay, blog, comment) which includes any lines of unedited LLM output should come with a statement saying so. Even if the whole thing was very carefully edited and reviewed and the author is certain there's no obvious trace of LLM usage, they should still always say so.

Not because the LLM "deserves credit" (a disgusting trend, I find) but because:

A. The millions of humans who got ripped off in the process of their knowledge and time being hoovered up, digitised and productised deserve credit

B. Your artistic, aesthetic and ethical choices need to be assumed fully.

I can't see law working here, so I think it'll have to be cultural. Cultural means these discussions on here, for one. I implore every LLM user reading this to consider full honesty when using these tools.

I can picture the smart replies now so allow me to cut off one obvious one - no, business emails don't count, all business comms were already sloppified years ago. I mean anything that could reasonably be construed as creative, anything purporting to be sincere personal writing.
by ale42 | 2025-05-26 09:30:27+00:00
IANAL, but they are probably violating the UWG (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetz_gegen_den_unlauteren_We...), law against unfair competition, and there are possibly also trade mark violations (one does not need to register a trade mark for it to be protected, if the restaurant has an established presence in the area, it might be enough, but that's up to a court to decide of course).
by quantas | 2025-05-26 09:31:01+00:00
A "native" LLM chat application that looks very similar to ChatGPT but all chats are saved locally and you can use multiple providers. The reason I've built this is because I've used many "api wrappers" but none of them felt as good as for example ChatGPT's or Anthropic's interface. So the goal was to build the best "api wrapper" possible with no subscription. https://anylm.app
by foldr | 2025-05-26 09:31:28+00:00
Actually no. Chomsky has never really given a stuff about Chinese Room style arguments about whether computers can “really” understand language. His problem with LLMs (if they are presented as a contribution to linguistic science) is primarily that they don’t advance our understanding of the human capacity for language. The main reasons for this are that (i) they are able to learn languages that are very much unlike human languages and (ii) they require vastly more linguistic data than human children have access to.
by ulrikrasmussen | 2025-05-26 09:32:25+00:00
I think the "injection" is referring to a particular style of frameworks which rely on breaking language abstractions and modifying otherwise private fields to provide dependencies at runtime. I really, really, REALLY dislike that approach and therefore also dislike the name "dependency injection".

Why not call it "dependency resolution"? The only problem frameworks solve is to connect a provider of thing X with all users of thing X, possibly repeating this process until all dependencies have been resolved. It also makes it more clear that this process is not about initialization and lifecycling, it is only about connecting interfaces to implementations and instantiating them.

Edit: The only DI framework I have used and actually kind of like is Dagger 2, which resolves all dependencies at compile time. It also allows a style of use where implementation code does not have to know about the framework at all - all dependency resolution modules can be written separately.

All other runtime DI frameworks I have used I have hated with a passion because they add so much cognitive overhead by imposing complex lifecycle constraints. Your objects are not initialized when the constructor has finished running because you have to somehow wait for the DI framework to diddle the bits, and good luck debugging when this doesn't work as expected.
by soco | 2025-05-26 09:33:29+00:00
Allow me to remind you that Churchill quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others". Or in this situation, pensions are the worst form of retirement savings, except for all the others. Political parties struggle even imagining alternative solutions, but if you found a better idea by all means please come forward and we will all vote for you! I will for sure.
by lordkrandel | 2025-05-26 09:33:30+00:00
LLM is good for throwaway code. Easier to write, harder to maintain, diagnose, repair, also with LLMs. Which is most code that is not a product.

Fast food, assembly line, factory may be examples, but there is a HUGE catch: When a machine with a good setup makes your burger, car or wristwatch, you can be sure that at 99.99% it is as specified. You trust the machine.

With LLMs, you have to verify each single step, and if you don't, it simply doesn't work. You cannot trust them to work autonomously 24/7.

That's why you ain't losing your job, yet.
by pasxizeis | 2025-05-26 09:33:48+00:00
A "Postgres lock diagnostics" tool for migrations. We've been bitten a few times, by seemingly innocent migrations that ended up acquiring locks we did not expect (yes, RTFM).

So I thought: what if, when you opened the PR, you had a tool that actually executed your migrations, saw what locks they acquired (in runtime) and then reported it as a comment to your PR? This would provide you with yet another data point you could use to reason about whether your migration is safe to deploy or not. For example:

ALTER TABLE users ADD COLUMN email TEXT: acquired AccessExclusiveLock on relation `users`

It does this by opening a transaction, executing the statement, and observing the `pg_locks` view from _a different_ connection before the initial transaction is rolled bac (or committed, depending in the flags you passed). The idea is to be able to use it as a CLI, as a library or with a ready-made GitHub Action (which will take care of commenting in your PR).

It's in early-stage and very much a PoC yet, but I think there's merit in the idea.

https://github.com/agis/pglockanalyze

P.S. Also, an excuse to learn Rust - so any feedback from Rust ppl more than welcome
by Tade0 | 2025-05-26 09:35:19+00:00
I googled the name as I was unfamiliar with it, but immediately recognized the orange logo in search results.

Their entire business model seems to be centered around extorting businesses. I stopped giving them money after they inaccurately posted that a certain restaurant delivers to my location and got a phonecall from the place that this was the case so I agreed to pay extra to fulfill the order anyway, because Lieferando certainly wouldn't take responsibility.

Nowadays I use them only for discovery, but call the place directly or use the webpage if the business provides online ordering.

It appears that their initial value proposition to businesses was substituting delivery services so that restaurants could scale that up without hiring more staff. Of course enshittification made that service worse than just walking/driving/taking public transport there.