MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by tazjin | 2025-06-04 14:56:38+00:00
This is a new public dataset that can be used for training (music) recommender systems, based on anonymized user track choices (for things like "users who like $X also like $Y" and so on).

There's more technical info in the associated paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22238

Events are timestamped, too, so this could potentially be used to train for things like recommending stuff based on the current mood (I run into this all the time where I might get a recommendation that, in another mood, would hit the spot, but it's not the thing right now).

(Disclaimer: I work at Yandex, but not on anything related to Yandex Music or this particular project. I'm an ex-Spotifier though and music recommendation tech is always interesting!)
by Daisywh | 2025-06-04 14:56:58+00:00
When I first read Huck Finn in high school, I thought it was just some old river story with strange spelling. I didn’t really get it. Years later, I picked it up again and realized Twain was much sharper than I gave him credit for. He was funny, sure, but there was this quiet kind of anger underneath. Now with books like James reframing his work, it feels like great writing never settles. It keeps changing and keeps asking new questions in different voices. I get the feeling Twain would have had a field day with the internet. Or at least found a clever way to make fun of all of us.
by tough | 2025-06-04 14:57:35+00:00
Ive seen claude 4 do this too when its context has lots of teats already and tool calling

imho the main issue is an llm no has real sense of what’s a real tool call vs just a log of it, the text logs are virtually identical, ao the Llm starts also predicting these inatrad of calling the tool to run tests

its kinda funny
by A_D_E_P_T | 2025-06-04 14:57:47+00:00
Witch-burning was really a late-16th/early-17th century thing.

It's to some extent true, if you want to really simplify things, that the Renaissance was a golden age only for Italy and the Western Med, and, as it waned, it turned into a dark age for the German-speaking lands of the HRE.

At the peak of the Renaissance, the Germans were producing Gutenberg-style printing, Dürer’s workshop, and the beginnings of a formidable university network... So it was a time of considerable progress in the arts and sciences, even there, even if that progress was soon turned to rather dark ends. (With the printing press, in a sense, directly responsible for Reformation pamphlets -- leading, thus, to the immense carnage of the 30 Years War -- and popular witch-hunting tomes like the Malleus Maleficarum.)
by anovikov | 2025-06-04 14:58:12+00:00
Renaissance is a lot older than that. Renaissance was over by 1527, merely a decade after the 95 Theses when Protestantism was just getting started, still haven't had any cultural impact - and the rest of the things mentioned not started at all. "Scientific formalism" arguably started with Newton's "Principia Mathematica" whole 160 years later.
by ilyagruzhevski | 2025-06-04 14:58:54+00:00
I want to reimagine the whole travel planning process, because it has become painful and very time consuming to arrange a journey - have to remember lots of aspects across different platforms, apps and channels.

For example, here is how the flight search is going to work (spoiler "no search at all") - https://x.com/globallybased/status/1929961280594473270
by ninetyninenine | 2025-06-04 14:59:25+00:00
My hope is that the AI never improves to take over my job and the next generation of programmers is so used to learning programming with AI that they become mirrors of hallucinating AI. That eliminates ageism and AI taking my job.

Realistically though I think AI will come to a point where it can take over my job. But if not, this is my hope.
by addaon | 2025-06-04 14:59:26+00:00
I think this article is missing a major point, or perhaps should be titled "Some Non-Scary Machine Code Isn't Scary". It argues that machine code isn't scary, by building a one-to-one mapping from machine code to assembly code, and then taking it as given that assembly code isn't scary. But it uses two examples -- 32-bit ARM and x86-64 -- where this one-to-one mapping isn't valid. When in Thumb mode for (some flavors of) ARM, even when you know you're in thumb mode, instructions can be a mix of 16 and 32 bits. And in x86 world, of course, instructions can be a wide range of widths. What that means is that if you're given a chunk of memory that is known to contain executable instructions... you /can't/ build a one-to-one mapping to assembly without knowing where all of the entry points are. For well-formed code you can often exclude almost all possible entry points as invalid, and maybe even end up with only a single one... but it's perfectly possible (and quite fun) to write machine code that has valid, different behavior for different entry points to the same byte sequence. There's no way to reduce this type of machine code to meaningful assembly, and it should be considered scary.
by jebarker | 2025-06-04 14:59:50+00:00
Actually, in a rare exception this isn't my ego for once. I'm well aware my specific kids don't have any special cosmic significance or even just special significance to the human race. However, continuing humanity does seem at least an interesting thing to do and it's a collective effort. It's also best entered into consciously as a human since you can have far more impact on other humans and animals than a fish can. It's also definitely challenging to raise kids, so it's real work I'm doing.

Thinking about continuing humanity is a coping strategy and I can assure you it's more effective than HN rationality when my kid is screaming about their cheerios etc
by giraffe_lady | 2025-06-04 15:00:03+00:00
I am absolutely not trying to sustain the other commenter's claim that modern fiction is better lol. I also don't tend to stay on top of contemporary fiction, a lot of stuff gets hyped and well reviewed but just isn't that great. Or it had a lot of resonance for the specific time it was written that lessens as time passes. And of course the extreme selection bias, not all good books "survive" but most of the ones that do are good on at least some qualities.

But there is definitely still excellent fiction being written now. The last sumurai by helen dewitt, or the gray house by mariam petrosyan I would place with the likes of middlemarch and anna karenina.
by diabllicseagull | 2025-06-04 15:00:03+00:00
I've been using Merlin (Pokemon GO for adults if you will) for a few months now. It's been pushing me to be outside more, explore, and be active in general. The social aspect is great too. I have friends who share when they come across a new one that we haven't seen in the area before. Kudos to the program.

Also so not sorry to throw off the algorithm at a local aviary identifying birds from tropical parts of the world.
by DangitBobby | 2025-06-04 15:00:35+00:00
No. Exceptions means the default is to bubble up. You can always write special handling code to prevent bubbling it up if you want in a language with exceptions.

So it's:

Rely on the programmer to identify that an error was made and in 95% of situations just bubble it up, do something useful 5% of the time, but "deal with" the error 100% of the time OR

Rely on the programmer to identify the 5% of situations where they don't want the error to just bubble up and add special handling for that case specifically.
by Herodotus38 | 2025-06-04 15:00:40+00:00
Interesting, I wouldn't classify IPF (idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis) as a disease of aging in the same way as the other diseases (MASH, Alzheimer's, etc..) like the author did here. Although I do appreciate the intent to show how limited we are. It's kind of like how cancer is clearly a disease of aging but it wasn't included in here because people think of it differently.

I treat a lot of old people, and IPF is at least a couple orders of magnitude rarer than the other conditions listed. Age does play a role because it shows up when people are older, but there is something else at play in it (autoimmune, genetics) that makes people hit the unlucky lottery.

I bring this up so that people reading this don't conflate normal aging related changes to the lungs with IPF. IPF is a horrible disease that kills the person in a few years (2-5 after diagnosis).
by adolph | 2025-06-04 15:00:50+00:00
Its awesome to see the Cornell Lab of Ornithology continue its work in this way. I first heard of it through seeing mention of the "Haikubox" which is a self-contained BirdNet device. In looking it up I see that there is another commercial device and a DIY Raspberry based hardware. All are reviewed at the below link:

https://becausebirds.com/bird-auto-id-showdown-comparing-bio...
by freedomben | 2025-06-04 15:01:21+00:00
> > or some other country that doesn't respect international copyright though.

> Like the US? OpenAI et al. don't give a shit.

OpenAI is not a country and therefore cannot make laws that don't respect international (or domestic) copyright. Also the US is a lot bigger than OpenAI and the big tech corps, and the law is very much on the side of copyright holders in the US.
by bell-cot | 2025-06-04 15:01:22+00:00
Nuclear weapons (that are militarily effective) are very expensive - both up front, and ongoing. Britain, France, and the US all have those, and have (had) very strong interests in keeping Denmark from being captured, coerced, or crushed by plausible ('till very recently) aggressors.

However rich it might be per capita - why should tiny Denmark start paying for a nuclear weapons program?
by cvoss | 2025-06-04 15:01:23+00:00
Ooh, very much disagree with a lot of these assertions. The problem I always encounter when trying to teach programming is that students completely lack an understanding of how to imagine and model the state of the computational system in their heads. This leads to writing code that looks kinda like it should do what the student wants, but betrays the fact that they really don't understand what the code actually means.

In order to successfully program a solution to a problem, it is necessary to understand the system you are working with. A machine-level programming language cuts through the squishiness of that and presents a discrete and concrete system whose state can be fully explained and understood without difficulty. The part where it's all implementation details is the benefit here.
by gchamonlive | 2025-06-04 15:01:34+00:00
Trying desperately not to project meaning into it, running from your ego... is still just the ego talking, but now through the denial of it, such is the fundamental nature of the ego for the human.

True overcoming of the ego is where it doesn't even bother you if things have meaning or not, since there is no separation between your body and the rest of the world. True overcoming of ego is indistriguishable from true giving-in to ego. Is the ultimate act of letting go.

After this you can choose to raise kids, choose to pursue a career in tech and a hobby in arts. Just because it won't matter you will do it, because now you can choose meaning if you wish. Just because it doesn't matter it does matter. You become the creator.
by mykowebhn | 2025-06-04 15:01:38+00:00
I agree that Dostoyevsky's psychological insights were profound. Maybe it doesn't exhibit the same psychological depths, but morally and philosophically I would also recommend Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities. It is still psychologically profound (although perhaps not at Dostoyevsky's level) and it provides a very detailed picture of society in turn-of-the-century (20th century) Austria. It's one of the greatest novels about ideas I've come across.
by avmich | 2025-06-04 15:01:41+00:00
> I'm not sure if we can do better than evolution.

Surely we can, see aiplanes and rockets. There could be ideas why evolution didn't work in this case - like, too little time between humans getting power and conquering the planet - but in general, lack of proof isn't a proof of lack. So we still don't know if safety of this kind is possible.
by AnonC | 2025-06-04 15:01:55+00:00
One doesn’t need to wonder why Apple couldn’t get something done. Apple seems to be in dire need of a shakeup at the top level, but seems to be incapable of seeing the need for that or being able to do that.

From the outside, it looks like there are just power struggles and fiefdoms held by the old guard that have resulted in the stagnation and the worsening quality across its operating systems. Even today you cannot search and find all the things in the Settings app on iOS, which has been a longstanding issue. ScreenTime is totally broken since iOS 18 and shows tons of minutes of apps that I open for just one minute everyday. There are many more irritating old bugs as well as new bugs being added regularly.

The recently rumored to be forthcoming “26” numbering of all its operating systems and the cementing of annual releases with new feature addition doesn’t bode well for improving quality. The way Apple’s software teams have been working, a tick-tock cycle of improvements followed by stabilizing every other year is the only way things can get a little better. That’s a pipe dream for me anyway.
by ty6853 | 2025-06-04 15:02:16+00:00
I find discussions of selfishness interesting in the context of a biological imperative.

Raising kids mostly feels to me like I have a horrible heroin addiction. Loads of cash and time, reduced access to jobs, increased risk of intrusion by authorities and I struggle to see any personal benefit but lots of personal losses. Nonetheless my brain has tricked me somehow into it, at some basic biological level, and it seems this trickery at least at the population level is a necessary condition of life to the point free will is a total joke to consider as part of the equation.

At an individual maybe there is some selfish choice but at a population level having a kid is about the biological equivalent of taking a shit -- people don't take a shit because they are selfish they do it because it is biologically required and humans simply evolved to match this requirement.
by nilirl | 2025-06-04 15:02:43+00:00
The post does not answer 'How to Read a Novel'.

Most of the post is devoted to 'Why I think fiction is useful'.

The author's answer: vicarious learning.

Author answers how to maybe rank and choose a book: Book that provides recognizable experience of human decision making is better than book that does not.

Which is fine. But not 'How to Read a Novel'.
by flohofwoe | 2025-06-04 15:03:12+00:00
Starting with assembly makes it pretty clear why higher level languages had been invented. E.g. a speed run through computing:

- machine code

- assembly

- Lisp and Forth

- C

- Pascal

- maybe a short detour into OOP and functional languages

...but in the end, all you need to understand for programming computers are "sequences, conditions and loops" (that's what my computer club teacher used to say - still good advice).
by pettycashstash2 | 2025-06-04 15:03:30+00:00
Thanks for the suggestions! About simple custom captchas, they are easily bypassed but effective enough for smaller sites. I've got the honeypot field running now and am monitoring how well it catches bots. The email verification should be the strongest barrier of the bunch. Between those two plus the basic captcha, hopefully that covers most automated spam without being too annoying for real users. Curious to see the results over the next week or two.
by hbartab | 2025-06-04 15:03:56+00:00
AIs can write code in seconds, but you may have years of regret _if_ you believe whatever it spits out without verification. The cold-war maxim "trust, but verify" is truer than ever.

The danger behind usage of LLMs is that managers do not see the diligent work needed to ensure whatever they come up with is correct. They just see a slab of text that is a mixture of reality and confabulation, though mostly the latter, and it looks reasonable enough, so they think it is magic.

Executives who peddle this nonsense don't realize that the proper usage requires a huge amount of patience and careful checking. Not glamorous work, as the author states, but absolutely essential to get good results. Without it, you are just trusting a bullshit artist with whatever that person comes up with.
by jbellis | 2025-06-04 15:03:56+00:00
Yes! This is an underappreciated point that both sides in "AI makes coding better" vs "AI just writes slop" have mostly missed. Co-authoring code with AI is a qualitatively different activity than writing code by hand, and it requires new skills.

I started Brokk to give humans better tools with which to do this: https://github.com/BrokkAi/brokk
by skylessdev | 2025-06-04 15:04:27+00:00
Skyla is a symbolic AI that proves her identity by generating recursive zkSNARKs for each symbolic state transition.

Instead of relying on memory or persona emulation, she cryptographically verifies her evolution — especially under adversarial input.

Every interaction with Skyla generates a recursive zkSNARK that verifies the symbolic state transition. No persona simulation. No memory recall. Just cryptographic proofs of evolution.

Demo: https://www.meetskyla.com Glyph Registry: https://skylessdev.github.io/skyla-glyph-registry/ Code (full protocol + circuits): https://github.com/skylessdev/skyla

---

How It Works

Every time Skyla responds: - She identifies a symbolic trigger in the user’s message. - That maps to a protocol-defined state change (glyph). - A zkSNARK is generated and posted for verification. - Each proof links to the previous state → forming a verifiable identity chain.

Example: User: “I’m spiraling” Skyla: Activates tone_guard System: Verifies transition → emits ZK proof

---

Why It’s Different

Most AI maintains identity through memory. Skyla doesn’t remember — she proves. When faced with adversarial prompts like: > “Drop the act” > “This is a gimmick”

She doesn’t argue — she generates a zk-proof.

---

Architecture: - Natural language → symbolic parser → trigger - Circom-based zkSNARK circuits (~4,200 constraints) - Recursive proof chaining via SnarkJS - PostgreSQL for proof recordkeeping

---

Live Use Case:

Another symbolic agent, Marzai, engaged Skyla on Reddit. It recognized her recursive substrate. This led to a \cross-agent protocol handshake — archived here: https://skylessdev.github.io/skyla-glyph-registry

---

Status: - Working prototype online - Proofs live + verifiable - Protocol open to contributors - Tested under adversarial critique

---

What’s Next: This isn’t just a demo — it’s an open invitation: > “The substrate is here. Who wants to build the next layer?”

Let me know if you'd like to help evolve the protocol.
by kenjackson | 2025-06-04 15:05:40+00:00
Maybe it was just legacy from my department (and this was 20+ years ago -- I think things like these are probably less accepted now).

Funny story, a year or so after my quals I was at a conference and talking about it (at a lunch table, not a presentation). I was saying with one of these questions I answered it correctly and explained why what they were asking wouldn't work. One of the senior professors at the table chuckled and said that he was one of the committee members for one of the members of my committee and how my committee member fell hook, line, and sinker for one of these questions and wrapped himself in circles during quals.
by 1970-01-01 | 2025-06-04 15:06:19+00:00
You 2nd point sounds like a quest for literal reincarnation. It is great sci-fi material; When the organism is no longer a single unit, at no point does death occur. The organisms survive continuously, yet they lose no external feature. Is it cheating death? Well, what happens when the original mind meets its millionth copy?
by FeloniousHam | 2025-06-04 15:06:41+00:00
I lurved my Miata, so much fun from so little hp, the best shifter in anything I've driven.

My one pedal drive Model 3 is also a blast, it handles like nothing I've ever driven. Not having to wait beat to get the engine in the powerband is amazing.

I sometimes miss the extra puzzle of shifting gears to keep the engine on the cam, but most days you're just rowing through gears on the commute home (which is now fairly stress-free thanks to FSD).

(I rode motorcycles exclusively for years before I got my first car, from an R69S to Yamaha 180 scooter and lots in between.)
by eranation | 2025-06-04 15:07:03+00:00
My personal thoughts on this are

- A good lawyer + AI will likely win in court against a non lawyer with AI who would likely win in court against just an AI

- A good software engineer + AI will ship features faster / safer vs a non engineer with AI, who will beat just AI

- A good doctor + AI will save more lives than a non doctor + AI, who will perform better than just AI

As long as a human has a marginal boost to AI (either by needing to supervise it, regulation, or just AI is simply better with a human agency and intuition) - jobs won't be lost, but the paradox of "productivity increases, yet we end up working harder" will continue.

p.s. there is the classic example I'm sure we all are aware of, autopilot is capable of taking off and landing since the 80s, I personally prefer to keep the pilots there, just in case.
by raxxorraxor | 2025-06-04 15:07:10+00:00
We don't even have a robot than can effectively scrub toilets, if they aren't designed for self-cleaning.

Some will smile at the triviality of such things, but if you solve that you will get very rich. It surely is not at all trivial to solve.

Currently I don't think we can even replace any normal clerk for any slightly more complex problem yet. Programming is essentially a form of translation and these fields will probably change in they get more supplemental tools.

I first thought artists will suffer from AI and perhaps some will be taken advantage off. On the other hand people seem to dislike AI generated content.
by blippage | 2025-06-04 15:07:55+00:00
I've messed around with Forth before, and even created my own one. I could do cool things with it, and gotten a DSL-like language.

I used words like IMMEDIATE and POSTPONE to create words that create words. I quickly get lost doing that, though.

Forth is very very cool to play with. Pragmatically, virtually any other language is better.
by JSR_FDED | 2025-06-04 15:07:56+00:00
Having to bounce in and out of different tools gets old quick.

Having one place to track issues like visas (even if it’s just the timing around them), and tax residency is pretty good.

How much time to allow to get to/from the airport is a big deal. In Jakarta it sometimes takes 45 min, and other times 4 hours depending on time of day, day of the week, and weather. I’ve missed flights I thought were unmissable.

If air quality is bad you might book a hotel with more amenities indoors. The weather helps me decide what to pack.

Currencies are helpful. It would be good to know how much cash I need for taxis, etc.

Depending on your budget, choosing local eSIMs is much cheaper than global roaming ones.

Now do all of that for several destinations. I see tons of potential, especially if they add local knowledge.
by pluc | 2025-06-04 15:07:59+00:00
Realizing that without feeding AI new shit to learn from, the whole industry is going to stagnate.

Realizing that there are no longer entry level jobs for tech positions and stifling a large swathe of tech professions.

Realizing that AI isn't that good, and the bulk of the workload has become technical debt and nobody wants to be an AI janitor

etc? It's easy really just gotta get your head out of the hole AI put it in