MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by camjw | 2025-06-16 14:35:38+00:00
The point is that people should be able to use their own judgement on a wide variety of issues and not be forced to delegate their decision making power to the courts/third parties.

There's a difference between "we want to lock this person up and take away their liberty, so we should be basically certain" versus "look man he's been done for drugs and she ended up with a broken arm, I don't trust this person".
by ben_w | 2025-06-16 14:37:11+00:00
All three initials of "[A]rtificial [G]eneral [I]ntelligence" have multiple meanings.

For the sake of employment, consider what happens if we can show that some model is equal-or-better than an IQ 85 human on all tasks for which you can actually get paid, while on hardware such that it is at least real-time and costs no more than whatever minimum wage is where you are. At this point, 16% of the population are never, ever, worth paying for.

I think current models and cheapest hardware aren't quite that combination of generality and cost — but the best models can do it, and hardware of fixed performance is still getting cheaper.
by maxlin | 2025-06-16 14:37:30+00:00
"per other comments" Lol.

The geoblocks are quite hard. The only situation where Russians have managed to use them for a short while is when they've managed to capture a terminal, and it hasn't been cut off because it's been unclear who was in control of it, and Ukranians benefit more of them as they've built a lot of things and process around them as it such a massive battlefield advantage if used right.

>Given his erratic behavior it's not hard to believe

Congratulations, you've managed to slip in to a sea of misinformation and media spin. Place a check on this in 5 years, these things tend to be silently put under the rug. It's like you're saying it wouldn't be a surprise if all future Falcon 9 rockets just blew up because they've done so at testing and because Starship does so too. Learn some distinction.
by toss1 | 2025-06-16 14:37:53+00:00
Note that this combination is a very synergistic combination of crops to grow together, and is millennia old.

"The Three Sisters planting method, commonly known as companion planting, entails growing corn, beans, and squash together in a mutually beneficial arrangement. It originated in North America around 3000 years ago.

...

Each plant brings unique advantages to the others; Corn serves as a trellis, providing a framework for the beans to grow and wrap around. Beans, acting as a natural fertilizer, add nitrogen to the soil, which benefits the growth of the corn and squash. Squash is typically planted between the corn and beans, and its ample leaves serve as a shield, blocking heat, retaining soil moisture and suppressing weed growth."

[0] https://www.nps.gov/tont/learn/nature/the-three-sisters.htm
by drweevil | 2025-06-16 14:37:58+00:00
>"Not least because there is no escaping a persistent flaw: large language models (LLMs) remain prone to casually making things up."

That's what they do! They are not called "Generative AI" for nothing. 'Generative' being just another word for "make things up". It's important to understand this, because once you do you understand that "casually making things up" is not a flaw at all. The real flaw is in our misunderstanding. And this misunderstanding leads to unrealistic expectations and misuse.

It should also be noted that this misunderstanding is perpetuated by the language being used by the AI community. "Hallucination", for example, falsely implies that the use case is legitimate, just a minor glitch here and there that we can fix with the next model.

Gen AI is an amazing bit of technology. It has some very interesting applications, so long as we understand what it does and so don't misuse it. Translating text, for example. Pattern matching in complex data. etc. But politicians and business executives are often turning to AI as a panacea when they themselves are out of ideas. And the AI moguls are encouraging them when they do so. We must call them out on this.
by ChrisMarshallNY | 2025-06-16 14:38:28+00:00
To be fair, he actually says that he isn't able to do comparison vids, yet (because the UK is fairly flooded with Meshcore, so I guess it's a good reason).

The video is a promotion for Meshcore.

But I'm not sure that's necessarily a negative. Meshcore does seem to be a good thing.

The one issue, from my limited understanding, is that Meshocore doesn't seem to have integrated positional data, which would be very important for things like emergency response efforts.
by mschuster91 | 2025-06-16 14:38:41+00:00
> I don’t have the actual stats, but, sadly, it seems like a gigantic chunk of the “i would rather pay a small fee to use a service rather than paying for it with exposure to ads” crowd is mostly all-talk.

That's because micropayments are still fucking annoying to do on both sides of any transaction:

- credit cards: cheap-ish at scale (2-5%), but users don't want to give random apps their CC details and integrating with Stripe/Paypal/whatever has the cost of UX flow break due to account details and 2FA compliance bullshit. In addition, every service paid-for by CC has the problem that only people with a CC can pay for it (so people in countries like Europe where "classic" bank accounts prevail are out of luck, and so are people in countries deemed too poor and/or fraud-affiliated are locked out entirely), and you gotta deal with tax and other regulatory compliance around handling payments as well. Oh and people will try to use your service to validate stolen payment credentials because a 1$ charge (especially for a well known service like Whatsapp) is most likely to be ignored by the accountholder even if fraudulent in nature, which in turn will lead to issues with chargebacks or, worst case, getting dropped entirely by the payment processor.

- in-app purchases: expensive (30% cut for the platform provider), serious headache to do when a significant chunk of the user base doesn't run phones with properly licensed Google Play Store (e.g. Huawei who aren't allowed to embed Play Store on their phones)

- bank transfer: possible, but restricted to the economic zones where there's enough customer base to justify the expenses of setting up a local company with a bank account (i.e. US, EU, India, possibly China), and transaction fees from the banks may end up being >>50% of the transaction's face value at such low amounts

- crxptxcurrency: even more of a hassle for customers to acquire, questionable legality / KYC issues, no realtime authorization due to mandatory waiting time for mining to confirm transactions

- pay by phone bill, premium numbers: possible, but need bureaucracy in each country, fraud / "my kid did it" complaints will run rampant, premium number calls are by default blocked in most if not all modern phone contracts ever since the early '00s and "dialer" fraud malware, difficult to associate with customer's phone number in the backend

In the end, if you truly want to capture a global audience with microtransaction payments, be prepared to deal with a loooooooooooooooooot of bullshit just to get started.

Long story short, we desperately need a global government effort to standardize payments at low fees. There's absolutely zero reason why banks and other intermediaries should be allowed to skim off more than 5% of any kind of transaction. ZERO.
by AshamedCaptain | 2025-06-16 14:39:05+00:00
You may be thinking of HDMI vs DisplayPort over USB-C, because otherwise they couldn't be more different. In any case, HDMI is still heavily patent and royalty encumbered, to the point it is going to be difficult for opensource GPU drivers to support native HDMI 2.1 or higher going on, while DisplayPort is still royalty free.

The situation is so bad Intel has pretty much skipped native HDMI ports in recent chipset graphics to focus on DP only (motherboards can still install off the shelf DP->HDMI converters), while on AMD the newer HDMI features won't be supported at all on Linux.
by close04 | 2025-06-16 14:39:13+00:00
> Nobody in real life thinks humans and machines are the same thing

Maybe you've been following a different conversation, or jumping to conclusions is just more convenient. This isn't about "legal status of AI" but about laws written having in mind only the capabilities of humans, at a time when systems as powerful as today's were unthinkable. Obviously the same laws have to set different limits for humans and machines.

There's no law limiting a human's top (running) speed but you have speed limits for cars. Maybe you're legally allowed to own a semi-automatic weapon but not an automatic one. This is the ELI5 for why when legislating, capabilities make all the difference. Obviously a rifle should not have the same legal status or be the same thing as a human, just in case my point is still lost on you.

Literally every single discussion on this LLM training/output topic, this one included, eventually has a number of people basing their argument on "but humans are allowed to do it", completely ignoring that humans can only do it in a much, much more limited way.

> is peformative and disingenuous

That's an extremely uncharitable and aggressive take, especially after not bothering to understand at all what I said.
by randerson | 2025-06-16 14:39:17+00:00
It's easy to have multiple chat apps in parallel though, each with their own network.

Ads will make more people Signal-curious, or even drive people back to text messages. The average person who switches will convince a non-zero number of their contacts to come with them. The shift will start gradually. Think of Skype, which at one point everyone I knew was on. That network didn't protect them from being replaced by competitors.

People are also increasingly worried about retaliation from the government for their supposedly free speech, which has already driven a few people I know to secure alternatives that aren't operated by Trump allies.
by frakt0x90 | 2025-06-16 14:39:43+00:00
Except prison has some very key differences from living freely in another state or country. You cannot leave and so don't have a choice about where you work. Even if cost of living is low in prison, you often still have to pay for being there and wages are far less than the cost. A prisoner will be released one day and their cost of living will skyrocket overnight. Do we want motivated hard working people leaving prison with nothing so they end up back in the same environment that got them there in the first place?
by tmoertel | 2025-06-16 14:40:11+00:00
> Is there a good reason why a developer in Thailand or India should be paid less than their colleague who works on the same team, but is based in the US?

Yes, and that reason is that people in most of the developed world are free to say yes or no to job offers based on their individual preferences. And, it just so happens, in Thailand and India there are many people who will happily say yes to offers that people in the US would say no to. The cost of living explanation that companies give is illusory; the reality is that they have to pay enough to get people to say yes.

Now, you might ask why people in different countries say yes to offers at different compensation levels. But I think the answer is self evident: people will say yes to offers when they believe that there are lots of other people who will say yes to it. Under those circumstances, saying no won't earn a higher offer but cause the company to give the job to someone else.

Ultimately, then, regional prices are set by what the locals are generally willing to say yes to.
by bastawhiz | 2025-06-16 14:40:15+00:00
Indeed. I quickly searched and found this article:

https://archive.is/yiiBF

The original link does not say that the girlfriend reported the broken arm to the police. The police were called by her mother, who made the allegation against Thorpe. The article above says:

> According to [Thorpe's lawyer]’s appeal, Abogast told police she had fallen three days before Thorpe’s arrest and doctors at Elliot Hospital said her arm was broken in three places.

The original link says that she had scars and scabbing on her face, but this link says that Thorpe also had scars and scabbing, which the police noted in their report as consistent with drug abuse.

I'm not one to disbelieve women when they report abuse. In this case, the alleged victim didn't report any abuse, a third party who was not witness to any alleged crimes did. It's also very unusual to have your arm broken in three places, call your mom to say what happened, and then not seek any kind of treatment. I feel sad for everyone involved, because it's clear to me at least that the drug issues were the crux of the matter (which is corroborated by the actions and findings of the state). Without a statement from the girlfriend or a finding by the state, any suggestion of domestic abuse is unwarranted speculation.
by mapt | 2025-06-16 14:40:17+00:00
I think if we want research to survive we need to start funding it on a basis other than paycheck-to-paycheck. We need to acknowledge the adversarial nature of the current political situation.

If you have a $50M study that takes 10 years, $50M leaves the budget on approval and goes into a foundation dedicated to that study.

The alternative is this sort of atrocity - https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1kh21p5/discarding...
by dawnofdusk | 2025-06-16 14:40:19+00:00
This is just a question about the origins of inhomogeneity in the universe. The prevailing theory is cosmic inflation, I believe: in the early universe a quantum field existed in a high entropy state and then the rapid expansion of space magnified small spatial inhomogeneities in the field into large-scale structures. What we see as "low entropy" structures like stars are actually just high entropy, uniform structures at a higher scale but viewed from up close so that we can see finer-scale structure.
by FridayoLeary | 2025-06-16 14:40:41+00:00
It really is great at being a pen. It writes well and doesn't break. Shout out to the bic which has 4 colours (rgb&b) for being so useful and high quality.

But if you want to know what the best cheap writing pen, it's the clear pilot pen. Everyone around me uses it. There is also the opaque pilot v5 which was the gold standard when i was in school.
by paxys | 2025-06-16 14:40:54+00:00
Network effects aren't a big deal when it comes to messaging. There was a time when people thought iPhone wouldn't be able to overcome Blackberry because everyone was on BBM. In the last couple decades we've seen people go from ICQ to AIM/Yahoo/MSN to Google Talk to Skype to Facebook Messenger to BBM to Whatsapp/iMessage/Instagram, with dozens of smaller options like Kik, Viber, Line, Signal, Telegram all hanging around. It doesn't take much to cause another shift in the space.
by perching_aix | 2025-06-16 14:41:54+00:00
> It happens to run on billions of devices, after corporations realized they can profit from "a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)"

While hordes of people peddle that everyone should be using it like gospel.

> After living in a few quite different countries, I have to disagree.

Yeah dude, tell us about all the countries where cursing isn't impolite and unprofessional.
by Joel_Mckay | 2025-06-16 14:42:11+00:00
Julia is somewhat different:

1. readability with explicit broadcast operators

2. interoperability with other languages including R and Python

3. performance often exceeding numpy and C/C++ code

4. usability in numerous workflows:

https://www.queryverse.org/

The idea of using Lisp or Prolog in a production environment doesn't sound fun at all. Yet, they do make some types of problems easier to handle. =3
by carlosjobim | 2025-06-16 14:42:14+00:00
Most people go absolutely mentally deranged by a simple magical incantation. The powerful incantation or spell consists of only one word: "Free". That word will make people loose their mind and their soul.

It will make people accept anything and everything that they would never otherwise accept. They will line up for hours, they will accept hostile and toxic messages being screamed into their faces, they will humiliate themselves, they will spend sleepless nights, they will willingly enslave themselves, they will wither away in sickness, they will murder millions in the most cruel way imaginable.

All for "free".

Societies in our history were not arranged in the same way around money, because probably there was some knowledge of the two-sided curse of avarice and stinginess. I'm talking about medieval and post-medieval society, where most people didn't use or have money in their everyday life. Instead they had duties.
by busterarm | 2025-06-16 14:42:19+00:00
Thank you for having a strong constitution here.

It's obvious from the comments in the thread that the internet hate mob still wants its pound of flesh and for Preston to be judged for life regardless of current circumstances.

They don't realize how damaging their posts are to people who have done wrong in the past and want to change their lives. Once again I am ashamed to be part of the Hacker News community, but thank you for your fairness and goodheartedness.
by hinkley | 2025-06-16 14:42:28+00:00
Humanity didn’t really take off until we figured out how to make use of inedible calories though. Making lots of tea and thin soups in the winter should have been a target for many of them.

One person did quite well finding wild onions but as I recall got some stomach distress from them. Raw onion doesn’t agree with people when you aren’t eating much else. But those greens would have made soup for days.
by whywhywhywhy | 2025-06-16 14:42:40+00:00
>but if he's working the same hours and is just as productive as any other employee, shouldn't he be paid the same?

Why would the salaries all bump up to big American city salaries instead of resting somewhere in the lowest range worldwide? If we purely judge work completed.

If you're a remote worker your competition is the world not people in the major city the company is based in.
by rendaw | 2025-06-16 14:42:42+00:00
If you're 10 hours into debugging something, or you're swamped with a horde of bug reports and bad reviews, and after digging in you find the bug is in upstream code laced with humor, it comes off as if upstream isn't serious about software development or is making light of the responsibility. Lots of things start small, but X11, Android, etc etc are now used by millions, in lots of different situations, and humor is highly contextual.
by lo_zamoyski | 2025-06-16 14:43:21+00:00
This sounds good. It is important that we recognize all of the purposes of punishment instead of overemphasizing one or neglecting the other.

Punishment has three ends: retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence. It is important that you pay for your crime for the sake of justice; it is charitable and prudent to rehabilitate the criminal, satisfying the corrective end of punishment; and would-be criminals must be given tangible evidence of what awaits them if they choose to indulge an evil temptation, thus acting as a deterrent.

In our systems today, we either neglect correction, leaving people to rot in prison or endanger them with recidivism by throwing them back onto the streets with no correction, or we take an attitude of false compassion toward the perp by failing to inflict adequate justice, incidentally failing the deterrent end in the process.
by maxlin | 2025-06-16 14:44:21+00:00
What the hell are you on. I didn't say "ChatGPT is the source". Neither is Wikipedia. It _HAS_ cited sources. Like Reuters. Idk if that's enough for you.

You're talking of "slop" and "overwhelming conversation" while I added a reasonably useful objectivity-based review on something I could easily write from memory. My message, both in being written in an informed sense, and having had it reviewed is quite high above an average comment in effort and reasons it couldn't just be made up.

And you try to bring that down. Go look in the mirror and ask yourself if your motivations are pure.
by bee_rider | 2025-06-16 14:45:04+00:00
We’ve definitely reached that point. I’ve seen responses that are essentially,

Well, here’s what ChatGPt has to say:

<begin massive quote>

If folks are doing that, then I assume they are also quoting it without citation—although, I have no idea about this case. It looks sort of rambling for ChatGPT, doesn’t it?
by cwharris | 2025-06-16 14:45:12+00:00
You’re right. the cadence is written by ChatGPT. I’m pretty terrible at keeping my thoughts cohesive, so I often use it as a post processor. I’ll try not to do that.

Because you had the decency to respond, I’ll spent some more time thinking about this and see if I can come up with a more well rounded response that incorporates more of the traditional language of physics. But to your point about entropy not being a “force”, you’re probably right. Someone got to choose what that word means, and I’m probably not using their definition. But let me ask you this… would you rather have a book that explains everything and not know how to read it, or trust your own eyes ears and hands, and not be able to share it?
by dzaima | 2025-06-16 14:45:17+00:00
For malloc/free specific workload is much more important than for a bump allocator; malloc potentially has branching and different cache access/utilization patterns depending on requested sizes or distance/pattern between mallocs & frees, whereas a bump allocator is just bumping a single pointer, with basically zero mispredicts, and very simple linear cache utilization that's easily prefetched.
by TXAggieTPM | 2025-06-16 14:45:43+00:00
We (Boomers) really don't get credit for the really tough problems we've solved with no cloud, no GPU, 8 bit CPUs and a meg of RAM. We did that when we were young and no one seems to appreciate what we've learned since then. I'm a TPM and there experience is everything if you are horizontal (i.e. silo busting).

A potential resource is this Podcast/Site: https://www.itgetslateearly.com/ I fast forward some as the host has a chip on her shoulder but her guests have nuggets. I really need to work out feeding the podcast to an AI Agent to extract those tasty bits!
by ROllerozxa | 2025-06-16 14:46:17+00:00
Indeed. There is such an immense amount of media that is produced from decade to decade that nobody can ever know everything and understand "all" the references. Things that may seem like "things everyone know about" vary wildly between location and year ranges, and in the recent decades with the Internet there are just so many subcultures that all could be classified as "nerdy" but which lack a lot of overlap.

I suppose I'm too young to have watched Star Trek when it was really popular (and have all sorts of other blind spots when it comes to TV shows and other media even for people my age), but I've definitively heard about it. And I know some other references to it like Spock and the Vulcan salute, but the Tricorder had completely missed me until now.

Also, with something like GRAVITY_DEATH_STAR_I I could pretty easily tell it was a reference to something fictional (in that case Star Wars) since there is obviously no celestial body with that name. But with the Tricorder I was looking to actually make sure it's not some kind of actually real but vestigial hardware sensor thing that Android might have supported in the 00s, tangentially related to the Tricorder that was on Star Trek. I have certainly witnessed stranger coincidences.

Like Android still has functionality in the API for supporting trackballs, which I know used to be on some really early Android phones. So if that had been among the list as "there's this joke input device called a 'trackball' in the API, implying there are phones with a big physical ball you can roll around to move a cursor on the screen", that would be quite silly. Because it was a real and used thing in the past, even though nowadays it's more of a legacy feature (though might be a bad example as I assume you can connect input devices over USB or Bluetooth that may be treated as a trackball by Android).