MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by treyd | 2025-06-04 17:00:59+00:00
You didn't read the article. The thesis is that current "merely" multimodal approaches which project distinct kinds of inputs into the same latent space are insufficient for building a general world model that can be used for general internal reasoning. An example of this is this "Rs in strawberry" question, which requires them be trained on that information explicitly, since they don't have an experience of the characters in a word. It's an artifact of how LLMs don't learn how humans learn, which is by interacting with the world, instead of predicting text.

More elaborately, they don't have an natural understanding of pragmatics. Transformers are best at modelling syntax, and their semantic understanding seems to be through rote memorization and "manipulating symbols" rather than building general world models.
by jcranmer | 2025-06-04 17:01:35+00:00
The primitives of control flow in programming languages are sequencing, if, while, for, switch, return, and "early return" (goto restricted to exit a containing block). We might compile these into a form that represents everything using conditional jumps, unconditional jumps, and jump tables, but that's not how people think about it, definitely not at the level of programming languages (and even in the compiler IR phase, we're often mentally retranslating the conditional jump/unconditional jump model back into the high-level control flows).

And I could go on with other topics. High-level languages, even something like C, are just a completely different model of looking at the world from machine language, and truly understanding how machines work is actually quite an alien model. There's a reason that people try to pretend that C is portable assembler rather than actually trying to work with a true portable assembler language.

The relationship you're looking for is not arithmetic to calculus, but set theory to arithmetic. Yes, you can build the axioms of arithmetic on top of set theory as a purer basis. But people don't think about arithmetic in terms of set theory, and we certainly don't try to teach set theory before arithmetic.
by hbartab | 2025-06-04 17:01:46+00:00
> The former manager also believes there is an urgent need for alternative offers for digital payments "that are accepted and give citizens a more secure feeling".

Honest question: have there been actual European citizens who have security concerns about digital payments or is this just politicians yapping about sovereignty? It feels as if it deflects from the real reason but I am willing to plead ignorance here.
by porridgeraisin | 2025-06-04 17:02:11+00:00
Actually I don't care for any kind of organization for personal files. I just search.

I have my _really_ important files that are cumbersome to recreate like a <50kb jpg of my signature for those annoying forms, scans of my identity cards, etc, in ~/Documents/important

I have my to-read stuff in ~/Documents/books

All my other files are slammed together in ~/Downloads. I search through the folder using everything.exe (on windows) or fsearch(on linux).

That already covers the 90% case, and for the rest recoll maintains a search index that even stores file contents (including zip,pdf,xml-based stuff like office files). It works well. These days I hear everything.exe itself supports searching within files.

On the other hand, I'm really picky about properly hierarchically organizing code files in any SW project I do, and proper hierarchical organizing of the app folder of any app I make. As for tags, the only reason I see myself using them is for pictures. It can enable a deterministic version of Google photos search. But I'm happy with Google photos search for now.
Show HN: Decksh – a DSL for presentations and data visualizations
by ajstarks | 2025-06-04 17:02:11+00:00
decksh is a domain-specific language for presentations, information displays, and data visualizations. I built decksh as a way to have complete control over my presentations, and to have a portable, documented, long-lasting format for information.

decksh generates the deck[1] markup language which uses a percentage-based coordinate system, and may be rendered as PDF, SVG, or PNG. decksh is written in the Go programming language, and may be called as a library. The decksh object reference[2] describes the language.

decksh works with text in many orientations (left, centered, end, rotated) as well as text and code blocks, images (GIF, PNG, JPG), graphics (lines, curve, arc, circle, rectangle, square, ellipse, polygon, polylines), along with composite objects (lists, arrows, braces, brackets). Charts and graphs are also included: (bar, line, scatter, donut, dot, lego, proportional maps, fan, bowtie, slope, and radial charts).

decksh supports variables, color naming, (SVG names, rgb, hex rgb, and hsv), user-defined functions, loops, and conditionals.

Examples of decksh use are collected in the deckviz[3] repo, and may be seen on SpeakerDeck[4]. The Du Bois data visualization re-creations[5] were done with decksh.

[1] https://github.com/ajstarks/deck [2] https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/decksh-object-reference [3] https://github.com/ajstarks/deckviz [4] https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks [5] https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/recreating-the-dubois-data-...
by culi | 2025-06-04 17:02:18+00:00
Would it be possible to do something on a much smaller scale? In addition to workspaces they also have community drop off points. With some concerted effort and education you could likely get a few communities to commit to such a project and bring their cleaned and sorted plastics

There might even already be a drop off point near you https://community.preciousplastic.com/map
by jakecodes | 2025-06-04 17:02:30+00:00
Appreciate the thoughtful response! I’m actually right in the ICP you described — I’ve run my own VMs in the past and recently switched to Cloud Run to simplify ops and take advantage of scale-to-zero. In my case, I was running a few inference jobs and expected a ~$100 bill. But due to the instance-based behavior, it stayed up the whole time, and I ended up with a $1,000 charge for relatively little usage.

I’m fairly experienced with GCP, but even then, the billing model here caught me off guard. When you’re dealing with machines that can run up to $64K/month, small missteps get expensive quickly. Predictability is key, and I’d love to see more safeguards or clearer cost modeling tooling around these types of workloads.
by Sean-Der | 2025-06-04 17:02:45+00:00
Currently only the sending part!

WHIP is 'pushing media via WebRTC' - https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-wish-whip-01.html

WHEP is 'pulling media via WebRTC' - https://github.com/wish-wg/webrtc-http-egress-protocol/blob/...

WHEP isn't standardized/still changing a bit. After it lands I will try and get it into OBS/FFmpeg (and more)
by aanet | 2025-06-04 17:03:00+00:00
This is not a comment on the original article per se (it was in Financial Times), but rather on the headline itself.

Can we please stop calling them "Godfathers" of AI??

Not for any politically-correct reasons as such (though that it is), but it is infuriating to see the same old 3-4 people named in this category (yes, all male, all white) equated to the head of organized crime syndicates.

Here are 10-20 terms that will do just fine:

Trailblazers Pioneers Architects Foundational architects Visionaries Pathfinders Catalysts Innovators Early architects Groundbreakers
by zahlman | 2025-06-04 17:03:10+00:00
> I agree with you that learning assembly can be a good way to teach people how computers work on a low level, but that has nothing to do with whether it is useful as a skill to learn.

I don't understand the distinction you're trying to make. The post I was replying to specifically discussed "learning assembly language". My entire point is that "learning assembly language" has purposes other than creating practical real-world programs in assembly.
by ZeWaka | 2025-06-04 17:03:10+00:00
Very interesting, there's a carveout for video game consoles:

> Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require any original manufacturer or authorized repair provider to make available any parts, tools, or documentation required for the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of a video game console and its components and peripherals.

Wonder if Valve/Xbox/Nintendo asked for that, this being Washington State.
by daft_pink | 2025-06-04 17:03:16+00:00
It’s really sad that people are giving up high quality reasonably priced electric vehicles over politics. I’ve driven a Prius for years, because it’s obviously to me that sending money to shady petro states all over the world is just a bad idea and the volatility of oil prices isn’t worth it and the overall maintenance and reliability of my hybrid vehicle is incredible.

I probably will replace it with a Tesla, but I’m hoping they release a 3 row with a reasonable 3rd row seat that would be great for my family and there’s no rush because I don’t really drive too much.

That being said, I think Tesla’s are obviously incredible engineering feats that everyone should want. Politics aside.
by pjdesno | 2025-06-04 17:03:18+00:00
Kind of relevant to this is the NTSB analysis of a self-driving crash in 2017:

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/accidentreports/reports/...

Basically a truck was backing up into an alley - it was at an angle when the self-driving vehicle approached, but a little kid would have been able to figure out that it needed to straighten before it finished backing in. The self-driving vehicle didn't understand this, and stopped at a "safe distance" which happened to be within the arc that the truck cab had to sweep in order to finish its maneuver.

It's quite possible that LLM-like models could learn things like this, but we don't have vast amounts of easily accessible training data, because everyone just knows this sort of shit, and we don't have good vocabulary for it - we just say "look at that" or the equivalent. (I'll add that I'm sure a lot of knowledge like this is encoded in the physics engines of various games, but I doubt we have a good way to link that sort of procedural code knowledge to the symbolic knowledge in LLMs)
by hnlmorg | 2025-06-04 17:03:35+00:00
> You very much do. It's like 3D-workstations and other pro-applications were not a competitive thing for PCs in the Eighties.

I never said anything about 3D workstations in the 80s.

I said 3D games were the tipping point where the envy flipped from PC->Amiga to Amiga->PC.

And that has nothing to do with personal preference.

> You need to connect the dots for a change, friend. I only brought it up to illustrate that you Westerners had a significant headstart; the tech I and most of my peers were fumbling around with beginning in the Nineties was already, parse this slowly please, available to YOU in the Eighties! Geddit?

I got your point the first time. However you keep conflating personal experience with technology.

Just because you didn’t have access to an Amiga 500 it doesn’t mean PCs were superior technology in the 80s. It just means your experience isn’t inclusive. Literally just that and nothing technical.

this is the crux of your disagreement: Just because you weren’t able to experience the competition in the 80s doesn’t mean it somehow didn’t exist.

> As great as the Atari and Amiga home computers and pro models were, these eco-systems, as such, definitely did not have the massive advantage in "all-inclusive" capabilities that is so often ascribed to them.

You’re making a strawman argument here.

We are simply comparing 80s home computers. In the 80s, PCs were several steps behind the competition. In general and against many common benchmarks and UX metrics.

We aren’t talking about $10,000 top of the line workstations against “pro” STs, we’re talking about a like-for-like in terms of home computers and price points.

PCs were much more upgradable. But then you could upgrade Amigas and STs too if you wanted. However PCs were the better option if you wanted something where you could define your own spec. Albeit this still wasn’t a common a thing until the late 80s. But I do agree that if you wanted the latest bleeding edge hardware then PCs were the way to go. However I’d wager you knew fewer people with $10,000 PCs than you knew with Amigas. ;)

———

Anyway, I think we’ve hit an impasse. You’re unwilling to accept that your experience is flawed and my unwillingness to accept your experience is fact.

So perhaps we should quit here before the conversation degrades.
by verisimi | 2025-06-04 17:03:36+00:00
It's not a helpful response, but then saying 'we should work hard to go to space' as a comment is generally accepted but is actually quite meaningless.

Why not say 'NASA' or 'my colleagues at NASA' or 'as a scientist' or 'humanity'. One should at least indicate the group the collective noun relates to, rather than assume this is understood. One shouldn't assume that one can speak for everyone, when that is most likely not the case.
by Joker_vD | 2025-06-04 17:03:39+00:00
> I’m too afraid to use non-ASCII in filenames much.

I suggest installing a fresh Linux distribution with e.g. bg_BG.UTF-8 locale and playing with it, especially with XDG directories like "Плот", "Свалени" and "Документи", and apps that should use them by default. Everything should Just Work™.

Although I admit that when reporting bugs for apps that can't handle non-ASCII paths, the responses from the developers (unless they're themselves from non-English speaking countries, but sometimes even then) quite often seem to be very thinly veiled "I can't be bothered to figure out where I botch things, why can't you just speak English like all reasonable people".
by rcarmo | 2025-06-04 17:03:43+00:00
I did that because people complained that the links were too visible (because the site is actually a Wiki, there are often several copies of the same link throughout the text).

Over the past 20 years there have been many schools of thought about it, and the only way I could get people to stop kvetching about it was to have the links become more distinct on paragraph hover but still render them in a distinct color (and oddly enough, the rate of complaints went way down when I shifted to dark red).

I have no sane explanation for this other than ascribing it to user-driven UX research over a massive amount of time (when compared to most other websites I know).

But (fun fact) the duplicate links inside paragraphs do wonders for RAG chunking and vectorization. :)
by bee_rider | 2025-06-04 17:03:54+00:00
I think Apple will have trouble course-correcting because there currently isn’t a good OS for sale. Why improve in terms of quality, if there isn’t any competition?

Weirdly, I think they might be smarter than us. Despite being superficially uninterested in hardware, the general public seems to buy hardware, and then just use whatever OS comes on it. Apple seems to have aligned with this by easing up on software quality a bit and obtaining a reasonable (although not incontestable) claim at being the best hardware company with their M-series chips.
by spankibalt | 2025-06-04 17:04:24+00:00
> The “blameless” aspect is crucial: a good postmortem avoids conclusions like “Dan wrote a bug and it brought down our service” and instead says “Dan wrote a bug and it brought down the service: we need to improve our testing and deployment processes to make sure that they catch this category of bugs in the future.”

The offending dog's name is still there...
by jeffbee | 2025-06-04 17:05:20+00:00
This is an amazing bit already, but it would be a 10/10 joke if you could work "year of the Linux desktop" into it somewhere.

If you were serious, then I would point out that even nerd file browsers like Nautilus do not support xattr metadata editing, searching, or even viewing and Linux metadata indexing systems e.g. Beagle are all long-dead projects. The whole idea has no traction.
by bigstrat2003 | 2025-06-04 17:05:36+00:00
> It's the same thing with the atomic bomb. There wasn't really a choice not to do it.

There is always a choice. "Someone else will do this if I don't" does not absolve one from moral responsibility. Even if it is inevitable (which things generally are not, claiming they are is a rationalization most of the time), you still are culpable if you're the one who pulls the trigger.
by karmakurtisaani | 2025-06-04 17:05:38+00:00
I tend to think fascism loosely as a lack of deeper ideology with just a goal of obtaining and holding onto power.

This view captures nicely populist movements whose ideologies fit to short slogans and don't usually hold much water. Their leaders are never visionaries beyond how to get elected and staying in office, even if it means undermining democratic processes and institutions.
Ask HN: What do you use for writing and delivering documents in many formats?
by mbonnet | 2025-06-04 17:06:01+00:00
I work in a space where more traditional customers often want physical documents - PDFs, or even printed documents - while others ask for things like readthedocs-esque sites. What tools do you use for this, where you can write documentation in one place, and deliver multiple kinds of end-user formats?

Note that this isn't just code docs, but procedural/informative/tutorial type docs as well.
by cosmic_cheese | 2025-06-04 17:06:32+00:00
I’ve seen arguments that it largely comes down to the lack of a Jobs-like figure at the top maintaining a coherent, user-driven vision across the company and won’t hesitate to take a hatchet to projects and initiatives that aren’t furthering that vision.

Cook is excellent in terms of managing supply chains and has been good for the company’s bottom line, but he doesn’t have Jobs’ capability to discern what users want/need and what makes a good product, and I doubt he has anywhere near the level of direct involvement that Jobs had.

That’s not to glaze Jobs, he was anything but perfect but he was undoubtedly among the driving forces behind Apple’s quality and knack for building things that people want.
by rhubarbtree | 2025-06-04 17:06:39+00:00
I think that might be a rhetorical device bequeathed to you by the social media companies.

People of course do pay for things all the time. It’s just the social media folks found a way to make a lot more money than people would otherwise pay, through advertising. And in this situation, through illegal advertising.

The best thing we can all do is refuse to work for Meta. If good engineers did that, there would be no Meta. Problem solved. But it seems many engineers prefer it this way.
Ask HN: Programming and Startups in the Age of AI
by dennisy | 2025-06-04 17:07:06+00:00
I am not at all an AI doomer, I am extremely pumped about what AI can bring to software development.

One thing I have posted here about before was a feeling of becoming slightly stupider and lazy each time I ask one of the plethora of AI coding assistants to do some of my work. To combat this, I pretty much stop myself using these tools, very similar to how I allow myself only 30 mins per day on HN :)

However, now I am trying to launch another company - and I have the feeling that I cannot allow myself to not leverage the possible speed benefits of AI generated code as its no longer an intellectual endeavour but rather a competitive one.

Does anyone out there feel similar, torn between true learning and pace of launching? If so, how do you deal with it? Do you try and keep yourself sharp in other ways?
by tzs | 2025-06-04 17:07:29+00:00
>> The automation of farm work is the most notable and most labor-impacting example we have from history, rapidly unemploying a huge portion of human beings in the developing economies of the late 19th and 20th centuries. And yet, at the conclusion of this era (~1940s/50s), the conclusion was that “technological unemployment is a myth,” because “technology has created so many new industries” and has expanded the market by “lowering the cost of production to make a price within reach of large masses of purchasers.” In short, technological advances had created more jobs overall

From the late 19th century to the 1940s/50s is 50 years. It's not really reassuring to middle aged workers who lose their jobs to new technology that 50 years later there will overall be more jobs available.
by efavdb | 2025-06-04 17:07:30+00:00
FWIW here is a case study from shopify covering a project of theirs using fine tuning on a bi-modal model to extract product features. I get that this is not the situation you care about -- they are running at such scale that they need the inferences to be cheap.

https://www.llama.com/static-resource/llama-case-study-shopi...
by jcalvinowens | 2025-06-04 17:07:36+00:00
Well, losing three months of revenue is going to really hurt when the stablecoin inevitably eats shit: hope you're prepared for that.

The risk is obviously lower because you aren't parking money there. I could certainly see how you might come out ahead in fees for certain international transactions.

But your original claim was that the aggregate risk-cost of dealing in stablecoins is lower than real currencies, and that is absolutely preposterous: you aren't accounting for all the risks.
by davidcbc | 2025-06-04 17:07:58+00:00
My doctor was in a pilot program for this exact thing. It recorded our conversation and created the after visit summary.

It's summary was that I wasn't taking my antibiotics (I was, neither I nor my doctor said anything to the contrary). Luckily my doctor was very skeptical of the whole thing and carefully reviewed the notes, but this could be an absolute disaster if it hallucinates something more nefarious and the doctor isn't diligent about reviewing
by trashface | 2025-06-04 17:08:07+00:00
Programmers (and other full time computer users) should be careful with this and similar yarn-based hobbies. I gave myself an apparently permanent RSI issue in my shoulder from knitting with bad technique (had too much tension in my yarn I think). I learned from you tube videos, a human probably could have told me I was doing it wrong but I didn't ask anyone.

The injury does affect my computer use, when it gets real bad I have to switch my mouse pad to the other side of my desk. I haven't knitted in years and its still there.
by zahlman | 2025-06-04 17:08:27+00:00
> The student who wants to engage with programming and software likely has other goals in mind.

And the student who doesn't learn these concepts will inevitably run into a roadblock soon thereafter.

> But a student who gets to just sit there and listen to you drone on and on about "abstractions" and "instructions sets" and "data is code" and "semantics"

You don't "drone on" about these things. You introduce them as it makes sense, by pointing things out about the first programs as they are developed. You don't talk about abstracting things and assigning semantics; you do it, and then point out what you've done.
by WalterBright | 2025-06-04 17:08:28+00:00
I did a lot of assembler programming before discovering C. I learned C in maybe an hour because of that.

Not knowing assembler means programmers have a bit of a blind spot towards what are expensive things to do in C vs what generates the best code.

For example, debugging a program sometimes requires looking at the generated assembler. Recently I was wondering why my deliberate null pointer dereference wasn't generating an exception. Looking at the assembler, there were no instructions generated for it. It turns out that since a null pointer dereference was undefined behavior, the compiler didn't need to generate any instructions for it.
by throwanem | 2025-06-04 17:08:34+00:00
Twain, like Faulkner, has long been a favored subject of the trust-fund set...now that he's safely dead and unable to render a direct opinion in the matter, of course.

In this case, the author evidently need not earn his living through the quality of his prose. He would be destitute, otherwise. But Harper's is not what once it was.