MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Hercuros | 2025-06-20 18:57:41+00:00
How could you say that your views are aligned with those of Descartes and Kant if you have not seriously engaged with their works and what others have written about them?

All serious works in philosophy (Kant especially) are subject to interpretation. Whole research programmes exist around the works of major philosophers, interpreting and building on their works.

One cannot really do justice to e.g. the Critique of Pure Reason by discussing it based on a high level summary of the “main ideas” contained in it. These works have had a major impact on the history of Western philosophy and were groundbreaking at the time (and still are).
by bigyabai | 2025-06-20 18:58:05+00:00
Mojo gets pushed really hard on this site and elsewhere, but I'm still not really seeing it in production. Are there success stories that I'm just not coming to grips with yet? Am I missing out on anything in particular using C++ instead? The marketing feels reminiscent of Rust's early and patronizing "programming is hard, isn't it?" language, without any hard data that nerds actually want. Rust eventually transcended its reputation by actually putting up impressive numbers and eating its veg, but where is this effort on Mojo's behalf? The open source transition is taking its sweet time, and hearing all this superfluous corporate hoo-ha is not going to make me put chips on the table for Mojo. I don't want a comic, I want a whitepaper. I want to be treated like a member of the team, not a middle-manager with attention span issues.
by yzydserd | 2025-06-20 18:58:35+00:00
A co-author of the study you refer to was recently on the UK BBC podcast More or Less, debunking much of the press coverage of his study, specifically the headline of vast global underestimation. Rather, the study found rural distribution estimates may be inaccurate, not total population.

Link to the 9 minute episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0lgv5vf
by sokoloff | 2025-06-20 18:58:47+00:00
I think that depends on the motivations of the driver. You (and I) are probably thinking of a trip that is motivated solely by getting from A to B (or A to B to C to A). In that case, any pollution from idling is strictly additive.

But a taxicab working an 8 or 12 hour shift is about the only case where I think GP's math/logic applies. (And to be fair, there are a damn lot of yellow cabs in Manhattan.)
by vidarh | 2025-06-20 18:59:54+00:00
The protocol is trivially extensible, and have had plenty of extensions that has significant altered how it behaves. Fixing X in a step wise manner wod have been perfectly doable. The problem is that the Wayland proponents didn't just want to fix the things there was agreement was broken, but also wanted to actively break things that would cause an uproar.
by zahlman | 2025-06-20 18:59:58+00:00
Not just that, his approach to the politics of it is incredibly obnoxious. He comes across as everyone who disagrees with him with the same brush, railing against some sort of ideological complex that includes everything his "team" hates and insinuates that it's all somehow interrelated. Of course he doesn't say those things, but it surfaced really prominently for example in his April Fools' video where he played the role of a suburbanite obsessed with his new truck. Satire is one thing, but if you see enough of it (also content from Twitter and other social media) you get the sense that he really does take his perception of other people way too seriously.

Which is to say: his case studies examining the details of specific cities, evaluating transit system design etc. are great. But his analysis of why the bad things are bad (especially when he starts blaming people and ascribing motivations) is utterly insufferable.
by bitpush | 2025-06-20 19:00:06+00:00
We're comparing two different companies here. Netflix et al, are in the business of producing original content (good for them), while YouTube et al are in the business of serving user-generated content.

That's not a bug, but a feature. Its the same difference as a high end restaurant, and a hole in the wall restaurant. Both are serving food, yes, but they are doing business in different categories. You cant go to the second restaurant and be like, the food you served didn't come with a smile like this other restaurant here. They seem to have figured it out, why cant you.

Or similarly, you cant go to the high end restaurant and be like - you charge for water now? Why cant you be like this other hole-in-the-wall restaurant.
by leptons | 2025-06-20 19:00:18+00:00
If you don't currently wear glasses all day every day because you need them to see, I can assure you that wearing glasses all day every day is not the luxury you might think it is.

It tends to wear on the bridge of the nose after a while. And I'm sure these e-glasses are going to be heavier than normal glasses with a battery and electronics in addition to the normal things glasses have.
by sanderjd | 2025-06-20 19:00:52+00:00
> "damned if you do, damned if you don't"

This is right, but doesn't actually cover all the options. It's damned if you [write confidently about something and] do or don't [hedge with a probability or "epistemic status"].

But the other option, which is the one the vast majority of people choose, is to not write confidently about everything.

It's fine, there are far worse sins than writing persuasively about tons of stuff and inevitably getting lots of it wrong. But it's absolutely reasonable to criticize this choice, irregardless of the level of hedging.
by scoofy | 2025-06-20 19:00:58+00:00
I don't think building high-end housing will completely solve homelessness, no, but it is a non-trivial improvement especially when it comes to tax revenues that can be used to build public housing.

We only build high-end housing in CA because it's wildly expensive to build housing at all. It's especially expensive exactly because the cost of the "affordable" (subsidized) housing that is required for most of these developments has to be passed to the home buyers, not the general public (who should be funding subsidized housing), which means the housing will be wildly expensive regardless.

Again, the idea that building "high end" (market rate) housing does nothing is just wrong. It's part of an approach that honestly deals with the problem of public housing funding, as will as market rates. The if we want the market to start producing housing for the middle class (and we should want that), we'll need to make it inexpensive and accessible to build so that normal people can redevelop their homes, we take the delta in property values, and use that money to fund public housing for those people most in need.
by canucker2016 | 2025-06-20 19:01:18+00:00
The "Tab in column 1" is a known bug.

from https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/20292/why... which references https://beebo.org/haycorn/2015-04-20_tabs-and-makefiles.html

So I gave up on being smart and just used a fixed pattern (^\t) to indicate rules. Within a few weeks of writing Make, I already had a dozen friends who were using it. So even though I knew that "tab in column 1" was a bad idea, I didn't want to disrupt my user base. So instead I wrought havoc on tens of millions. I have used that example in software engineering lectures. Side note: I was awarded the ACM Software Systems Award for Make a decade ago. In my one minute talk on stage, I began "I would like to apologize". The audience then split in two - half started laughing, the other half looked at the laughers.
by kevmo314 | 2025-06-20 19:01:39+00:00
I don't think they will but I also don't think abject squalor is the way to describe artisanal work.

On top of that, I agree that capitalists continue to eliminate jobs but I also think they create jobs in other sectors. The reason I don't buy into doomsday scenarios is I don't believe they will eliminate all the jobs at once.

I only happen to be a software engineer. If I was born 250 years ago, I'm sure I would've found a creative innovation outlet through another industry.
by scottyah | 2025-06-20 19:02:08+00:00
it's too late for free elections, we haven't had one since pre-Bush I think. Most votes are programmed into people and they don't really know it, and if they do they just don't care. I think very few people actually study and do unbiased research prior to voting. Everyone votes based on what people around them think, and whichever party's social media "brainwashing" has affected them most.
by Uehreka | 2025-06-20 19:02:16+00:00
For it to read as a joke I’d have to know the commenter and know that’s something they’d never say. Without that context it reads as sincere.

This is a website where people frequently say wild stuff unironically and people mostly don’t get to know each other by name/reputation (with a handful of exceptions like tptacek, etc). It’s not a good place to be sarcastic.
by airstrike | 2025-06-20 19:02:19+00:00
> According to a report published this week, Cybernews researchers have recently discovered 30 exposed datasets that each contain a vast amount of login information — amounting to a total of 16 billion compromised credentials. That includes user passwords for a range of popular platforms including Google, Facebook and Apple.

Can someone more knowledgeable than me explain how my passwords could have been leaked from Google or Apple? Or is this just bad reporting?

It is my understanding that neither Google nor Apple have my passwords stored, and any password service they have like the iCloud keychain would presumably be encrypted. What am I missing?
by jvanderbot | 2025-06-20 19:02:24+00:00
"We should use ROS to move fast"

<first stage prototyping done>

"As we grow we need to move off ROS"

<slippery market and customers require new hires and agility>

"ROS has this thing that can replace 1000 lines of your bespoke code, and it works pretty well"

Round and round and round we go. Seen it happen first hand, will see it again.
by rsingel | 2025-06-20 19:03:10+00:00
Yes, actually it was. Go actually read the lawsuit. It sought to ban federal agencies across the board, including CISA, from communicating at all with social platforms.

Gateway Pundit was one of the plaintiffs and he sued because Twitter banned him for repeated election disinfo (e.g. stolen elections) and he was mad that CISA contradicted him. So was Trump who fired Chris Krebs for having the audacity to say the election wasn't stolen.

The entire lawsuit was just a part of a right-wing grievance campaign against the idea of social platforms, NGOs, or federal agencies doing any work to moderate social platforms.

The world is stupider for that campaign largely suceeding and come the next pandemic, thousands or millions could die thanks to platforms being afraid to do even the most basic moderation.
by littlestymaar | 2025-06-20 19:04:05+00:00
Why would they not be there then? How is that supposed to even work if it doesn't affect consumers' behavior?!

This kind of argument reminds me of a French politician who defended a tax on sweet drinks as a way to fight against the obesity crisis looming (France performs better than most country in that regard, but the situation is still bad). She wanted a tax to deter the consumption of sweet drinks, but at the same time they wanted the tax to stay at “a level where it would not affect the purchasing power of people”.
by hosh | 2025-06-20 19:04:12+00:00
I used Typescript cdk8s, or tried to. Manipulating the objects were unwieldy.

I wrote https://github.com/matsuri-rb/matsuri ... I have not really promoted it. I tried cdk8s because the team I was working with used Typescript and not Ruby, and I thought cdk8s would have worked well, since it generates manifests instead of templates it.

Matsuri takes advantage of language features in Ruby not found in Typescript (and probably not Python) that allows for being able to compose things together. Instead of trying to model objects, it is based around constructing a hash that is then converted to JSON. It uses fine-grained method overloading to allow for (1) mixins, and (2) configuration from default values. The result is that with very little ceremony, I can get something to construct the manifest I needed. There were a lot of extra ceremony and boiler plate needed to do anything in the Typescript cdk8s.

While I can use class inheritance with Matsuri, over the years, I had moved away from it because it was not as robust as mixins (compositions). It was quite the shock to try to work with Typescript cdk8s and the limitations of that approach.

The main reason I had not promoted Matsuri is because this tool is really made for people who know Ruby well ... but that might have been a career mistake not to try. Instead of having 10 years to slowly get enough support behind it, people want something better supported such as cdk8s or Helmfiles.
by specialist | 2025-06-20 19:04:21+00:00
Thanks. I'll check those out.

Hadn't heard the red- vs blue-ocean distinction before. Thanks. The bullet points are similar to Thiel's zero to one thesis. (Right?)

FWIW, I'm currently most excited by efforts addressing climate crisis. Like advanced geothermal, better heat pumps, improving the grid, etc.

If I understand, most would be considered blue-ocean.

Most definitely face the chicken & egg challenge. As in the merit and benefits are apparent. But someone has to underwrite lofting a new market(s) from scratch.

Cheers, Jason
by InvisibleUp | 2025-06-20 19:04:58+00:00
It wasn’t that bad. It cut a few scenes but most of the movie is still there perfectly intact. It even won film festival awards. The movie mostly flopped in the US market on account it being distributed on a very low budget limited release against Rambo and The Goonies. SpaceHunterM on YouTube made a good video explaining a lot of misconceptions, if you want to check that out.
by rafram | 2025-06-20 19:05:18+00:00
Of course. Faux-news outlets peddling disinformation will always be happy to let you read their work for free. Serious journalists rely on your subscription for their paycheck, not Iranian state media, like the author of the OP link [1].

And paywalled links are allowed on HN [2].

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzon...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10179596
by kordlessagain | 2025-06-20 19:05:24+00:00
Looking at the paper, the consistency function c(xi, yi, xj, yj) is frustratingly under-specified. The authors give only two concrete examples:

Math problems: Two solutions to the same problem can't both be "True" if they have different final answers

Comparisons: "A > B" and "B > A" can't both be "True" (asymmetry constraint)

The function returns 1 for inconsistencies, 0 for consistent pairs. But the paper doesn't explain how to detect "same math problem" or implement the asymmetry check in practice. From the implementation hints, it seems they use simple pattern matching - probably checking if question text is identical for math problems, and detecting comparison pairs through linguistic patterns. The authors explicitly say they use "simple and general logical constraints" rather than fine-grained consistency checking.

This is one of those critical implementation details that makes reproduction difficult. You'd likely need to implement domain-specific heuristics: exact string matching for duplicate problems, regex patterns for comparisons, maybe basic semantic similarity for near-duplicates. The function seems designed to prevent obvious degenerate solutions (labeling everything the same) rather than enforce comprehensive logical consistency.

It's a significant gap in an otherwise interesting paper - the consistency term appears crucial for preventing the algorithm from gaming the mutual predictability objective, but they don't give enough detail to actually implement it reliably.

def generate_consistency_tests(examples, task_description): prompt = f""" Given this task: {task_description} And these example pairs: {examples[:5]} Write Python functions to detect when two examples should have: 1. The same label (duplicates, equivalent problems) 2. Different labels (contradictions, opposites) 3. Asymmetric constraints (A>B excludes B>A) Return executable code for consistency_check(xi, yi, xj, yj). """ generated_code = llm.generate(prompt) return compile_and_validate(generated_code)
by jajko | 2025-06-20 19:06:02+00:00
Apple goggles which only work in apple ecosystem, on purpose degrade themselves if anything else is used, and privacy... well thats a lengthy topic with apple. No, thank you.

In Switzerland we have a nice law that forbids people filming others without their consent. And law is actually enforceable here, fines are juicy and repeatable offenses punished harshly. I personally wouldn't outright punch in the face a person wearing such glasses but asked them to stop wearing them around me and my kids, and where it goes further depends on them.

Also, why is the design in those so weird? They look like kids glasses for 2 bucks, all photos seem like they are not sitting on the face well, zuck including.
by HaZeust | 2025-06-20 19:06:07+00:00
Peter Thiel's 20-year pursuit of ensuring technology companies, and their accompanied data, are used as a highly-efficient machine for surveillance - and plutocratic-endorsed authoritarianism - is almost actualized.

I guess creating an ecosystem of these products in the form of having most of them come from the same venture capital company WAS the answer, and he was doing it so well - that even In-Q-Tel gave up on their efforts to compete with that strategy.

But Thiel said it best in that regard; "competition is for losers".
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-06-20 19:06:35+00:00
> That is true, but only in the uninteresting sense that I can never completely eliminate the possibility that I am living in the Matrix. [...] But if objective reality is itself an illusion, it's a sufficiently compelling illusion that I'm not going to go far wrong by acting as if it were real.

That seems squishy, as what constitutes "going far wrong" is not meaningful under skeptical assumptions.

A better stance is one of cognitive optimism that avoids the irrationality of skepticism. Skepticism is irrational, because it leads to incoherence, and because there is no rational warrant to categorically doubt the senses. For doubt to be rational, there must be a reason for it. To doubt without reason is not to be rational, but to be willful, and willful beliefs cannot be reasoned with; they are not the product of evidence or inference — and they certainly aren't self-evident — but rather the product of arbitrary choice. The logical possibility of living in the Matrix is no reason for doubting the senses, just as the logical possibility of there being poison in your sandwich is no reason for doubting you'll survive eating it.

The difference between our positions is that I begin from a position of natural trust toward the senses and toward reason as the only rational possibility and default. I have no choice but to reason well or to reason poorly. I recognize that my senses and my inferences can err, but it does not follow that they always err. Indeed, the very claim that they can err presumes I can tell when they do.

So, if my inferences lead me to a position that undermines their own coherence, then I must conclude that my inferences are wrong (including those that led me to adopt a certain interpretation of, say, scientific measurements).

> Because that is the best explanation for what I observe.

But if your explanation involves contradiction of what you observe, then that is not only not the best explanation, but no explanation at all! An explanation cannot deny the thing it seeks to explain. Thus, by denying the objective reality of what you perceive, you are barred from inferring that denial.
by sethhochberg | 2025-06-20 19:06:36+00:00
Regrettably the only source I can find hosting this video is a reddit post, but you might find the remarks by the MTA chair interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/nycrail/comments/1iyve4d/mta_buildi...

In short: for decades they’ve been allergic to doing any design or project management in house, which meant brand new teams of consultants and contractors spun up for every single project. Lucrative for the consultants, not an efficient way to use funds for a big organization that is constantly doing design and construction.

Seems like the MTA is finally starting to invest in building internal expertise again so they can stop farming everything out
by ryandv | 2025-06-20 19:06:39+00:00
The people want to be surveilled. This is their choice, which has been revealed billions of times since the dawn of the modern social media era. As a result I have zero pity, and the public can reap what it has sown.

Privacy advocates, cypherpunks, hackers, et cetera have been sounding the alarm bells since Room 641A, if not earlier. Not only has the Internet at large failed to heed these warnings, some of those "conscientious objectors" who refused to willingly submit their information to these systems of surveillance capitalism were actively demonized and hunted.

After all, if you are not willingly signing up for these services, social media, and voluntarily forfeiting your data to these systems, then there is something wrong with you and you should probably just sign up for that Meta account already.

You are the ones who have kept these systems running by voluntarily feeding them your time, attention, and/or data. Now the beast has reached maturity and it is too late to do anything about it.
by awongh | 2025-06-20 19:07:07+00:00
I don't like the idea of letting the LLM run wild and categorize things directly, but in a tab-organizing view it would be useful to add more semantic sorting of the tabs- maybe it would enable something like multiple tab-view control panel: Show all the AI tabs. Show all the image diffusion tabs. Show all the LLM tabs. (so overlapping views of sets of tabs)

This would of course apply to not just open tabs but tabs I used to have open, where the LLM knows about my browsing history.

But I think I would want a non-chat interface for this. (of course at any time I could chat/ask a question as well)
by edwardbernays | 2025-06-20 19:07:46+00:00
It's grim but understandable in a way. I was writing quickly but I can expound more on any point if you want. I don't think we're locked into it yet, but if you read into Curtis Yarvin then you will see he was extremely prescient in the 2010s era. I refer to this brand of technofascist monarchism, self-branded as The Dark Enlightenment, as Yarvinism.

He is not the only one, but he is the most prominent. I've been considering starting a website to track things like The New Apostolic Reformation, The Seven Mountains Mandate, Curtis Yarvin, the two billionaires trying to get rid of the separation of church and State in Texas, and others.

There is a right-wing christofascist movement attempting to bulldoze democracy via technology. Peter Thiel is basically running the surveillance tech of our government. Look into what he's said about bulldozing government with technology. He knows his ideas are so unpalatable that he has to subvert democracy to get his ideas implemented.

This is the most prominent threat to our secular, freedom-loving, democratic way of life. It unfortunately receives very little air time.

EDIT: also look into this account's namesake, Edward Bernays, aka the father of modern propaganda.