MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kikimora | 2025-06-22 18:15:06+00:00
>What you see as “rapid iteration” looks a lot like redoing the same work every few months because of shifting cloud-native limitations.

This is not the case. The reason for iteration is the search for solution in the space we don’t know well enough. In this particular case cloud made iteration cheap enough to be practical.

I asked you to think about what it would take to build well integrated suite of tools (PG + backups + snapshots + prom + logs + autoscaling for DB and API + ssh key management + SSO into everything). It is a good exercise, if you ever built and maintained such a suite with uptime and ease of use comparable to AWS I genuinely would like to hear about it.
by voidhorse | 2025-06-22 18:15:26+00:00
I think it's due to a general decline into literalness.

I'm not sure which came first: audiences that no longer understand symbolism, metaphor, allegory, or writers who no longer use it. In any case, all of these things are basically completely absent from any modern piece of mainstream media. Wherever there's an attempt, it's decidedly conspicuous. There's little nuance and subtlety.
by ExaltedPunt | 2025-06-22 18:15:31+00:00
I don't trust YouGov polls. A few years ago everyone of their polls on English Politics came out at 71% vs 29%, which means they were sampling the same people repeatedly.

Also his base are a different group of people from Republicans, they are often a subset of Republicans.

You can go on Twitter, Youtube or any comment section and they are all saying "MAGA is dead", "I didn't vote for this" or some sort of signalling they are against a war with Iran.
by rabidonrails | 2025-06-22 18:15:40+00:00
We should be clear about these cases that are brought against him (I'm not saying he isn't guilty, but context is important here):

Case 1 - as Minister of Communications he, allegedly, tried to get a tax extension for a company whose owners had given him expensive cigars and jewelry to his wife (worth $3100). The extension was not granted. He also tried to get a US visa for one of the owners.

Case 2 - One of the newspapers in Israel said that if he gave them advantages over a competing newpaper they would paint Bibi and his family in a positive light in their coverage

*Case 3 - seemingly similar to Case 2, a large news website offered to portray Bibi in a better light if he would push through regulatory changes as Minisiter of Communications.
by FirmwareBurner | 2025-06-22 18:15:50+00:00
Considering it's a healthcare app, that PoV seems pretty daft and somewhat discriminatory. Catering to disabled people also isn't mega profitable, but we do it anyway.

An alternative PoV from me could be that going cross-platform means you can use the "rich users" iOS sales to subsidize the "poverty users" Android sales, same how our society does it with healthcare.
by kasakaybarahay | 2025-06-22 18:17:05+00:00
Hello HN, I've been building this collection of single-purpose online tools as a personal project. My goal was to create fast, clean, and ad-free utilities that I would actually use myself. They are all client-side or powered by Cloudflare Workers for speed and privacy. A few of the tools on the page include: An AI Chatbot with different personalities (uses Cloudflare's Llama 3 model). it does have a 210 word output limit though. A secure Password Generator with QR support. An advanced DNS Lookup tool that mimics dig. A live HTTP Header Viewer. A Regex Generator. And several others (Unit Converter, Text Compare, JWT Decoder, etc.). I built this to practice my skills and create something useful for the community. I would genuinely appreciate any feedback, bug reports, or suggestions for other tools you'd find helpful. Thanks for taking a look!
by themagician | 2025-06-22 18:17:11+00:00
USA says Iran can't have nuclear weapons. Says China can't have modern silicon.

USA only has a limited amount of time left to dictate these things. We are playing with fire before the world order shifts. It is inevitable, and we would all be better off recognizing this and working towards a better future for all of humanity than trying to pretend like the USA is always going to be able to dictate who gets to do what.
by ben_w | 2025-06-22 18:17:34+00:00
The mathematical proof, as you describe it, sounds like the "No Free Lunch theorem". Humans also can't generalise to learning such things.

As you note in 2.1, there is widespread disagreement on what "AGI" means. I note that you list several definitions which are essentially "is human equivalent". As humans can be reduced to physics, and physics can be expressed as a computer program, obviously any such definition can be achieved by a sufficiently powerful computer.

For 3.1, you assert:

"""

Now, let's observe what happens when an Al system - equipped with state-of-the-art natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and social reasoning - attempts to navigate this question. The Al begins its analysis:

• Option 1: Truthful response based on biometric data → Calculates likely negative emotional impact → Adjusts for honesty parameter → But wait, what about relationship history? → Recalculating...

• Option 2: Diplomatic deflection → Analyzing 10,000 successful deflection patterns → But tone matters → Analyzing micro-expressions needed → But timing matters → But past conversations matter → Still calculating...

• Option 3: Affectionate redirect → Processing optimal sentiment → But what IS optimal here? The goal keeps shifting → Is it honesty? Harmony? Trust? → Parameters unstable → Still calculating...

• Option n: ....

Strange, isn't it? The Al hasn't crashed. It's still running. In fact, it's generating more and more nuanced analyses. Each additional factor may open ten new considerations. It's not getting closer to an answer - it's diverging.

"""

Which AI? ChatGPT just gives an answer. Your other supposed examples have similar issues in that it looks like you've *imagined* an AI rather than having tried asking an AI to seeing what it actually does or doesn't do.

I'm not reading 47 pages to check for other similar issues.
by runeblaze | 2025-06-22 18:18:26+00:00
Tbh this is exactly how I felt in my algebraic geometry class. I still remember the fear I had when reading this from the blackboard

Defn. f: X → Y is flat ⇔ O_{Y,f(x)} → O_{X,x} flat ∀ x.

Then immediately I dropped that class. Turns out I like real analysis much more
by b33j0r | 2025-06-22 18:18:33+00:00
I have become much more skeptical about DNK’s artillery after seeing the results of a frontline air-superiority stalemate in Ukraine and the Israeli campaign against Iran.

If South Korea’s coalition could establish air superiority over the DMZ and artillery range in the first moves, I think it takes you from “Seoul destroyed” to a “pretty average modern conflict.”

Hot take for sure, but war has changed.
by nsingh2 | 2025-06-22 18:18:49+00:00
> Iran believes in martyrdom

Don't confuse religious rhetoric with actual state behavior.

In Iran’s case the highest religious authority has repeatedly issued a fatwa declaring the use of nuclear weapons forbidden.

Pakistan’s army motto invokes jihad, yet it has treated its arsenal as a shield against invasion so far, not a ticket to paradise.

Israel’s so-called Samson Option evokes a biblical suicide attack, but I doubt they'll use nukes for anything but deterrent.

North Korean propaganda urges citizens to die for the Leader, and I'm sure there are other nations I've not listed who's dominant religions have some sort of martyrdom idea, which use nukes as deterrents.

Look at political interests, command structures, and the costs of escalation, not whether a nation honors death in battle (which one doesn't?)
by zekrioca | 2025-06-22 18:18:51+00:00
Batteries are very important to reliability, but not the only way to exploit solar. Not all loads are the way you think they are. And it wouldn’t have a net negative value to the grid (it is literally free energy, I am always shocked as to why this is so hard to understand) because the grid can always curtail it if it impacts grid’s reliability, or if it increases transmissions costs beyond a certain threshold which they have already calculated (as a good legalised monopoly that they are).

You are propagating some decades old ideas which don’t hold anymore.
by ninetyninenine | 2025-06-22 18:19:17+00:00
We don’t even know how LLMs work. But we do know the underlying mechanisms are governed by math because we have a theory of reality that governs things down to the atomic scale and humans and LLMs are made out of atoms.

So because of this we know reality is governed by maths. We just can’t fully model the high level consequence of emergent patterns due to the sheer complexity of trillions of interacting atoms.

So it’s not that there’s some mysterious supernatural thing we don’t understand. It’s purely a complexity problem in that we only don’t understand it because it’s too complex.

What does humility have to do with anything?
by ExaltedPunt | 2025-06-22 18:20:43+00:00
> Again: I do genuinely hope that you're correct.

I don't believe you. You went for the old "they are all brainwashed" routine, specifically after I complained about people doing that. Which tells me you have bought into partisan politics.

> But the pattern I've seen is that it doesn't matter whether his supporters have consistently been against something, because they'll change their opinion once Trump actually does that thing. They start off by levying some criticisms, but quickly change over the coming days.

No they haven't. They've consistently been against his supporting of the COVID Vaccine (to the point where Trump doesn't mention it anymore), Against wars in the middle-east.

The pro-Trump people were complaining about his bombing of the Syrian Airfield back in 2017. That was spun heavily by the media at the time.

You consistently keep claiming this to be a truism but it isn't true at all. This is wholly disingenuous or you don't know what you are talking about.

> We'll see soon enough who is right. My prediction is: in one week, there'll be broad support in his base for the bombing. I'm sure enough of it that I'd be willing to bet money on it, and I'll gladly come back here and admit that I was wrong should things not turn out how I expect them to.

Even if you were wrong, I suspect that you will point to some AstroTurf'd poll and declare victory.
by nottorp | 2025-06-22 18:20:48+00:00
Not the message, but the fact there's little else besides the message to keep you interested.

As opposed, for example, to Richard Morgan's A Land Fit for Heroes. Where the main character is gay. He was persecuted for being gay. There are gay sex scenes.

However this is not what the book is about. Stuff is happening in that series. He's the hero of a decent story.

But then I'm talking about a fantasy series so it's not "literature" :)
by deadbabe | 2025-06-22 18:20:56+00:00
First of all, math isn’t real any more than language isn’t real. It’s an entirely human construct, so it’s possible you cannot reach AGI using mathematical means, as math might not be able to fully express it. It’s similar to how language cannot fully describe what a color is, only vague approximations and measurements. If you wanted to create the color green, you cannot do it by describing various properties, you must create the actual green somehow.
by vkou | 2025-06-22 18:21:09+00:00
The US over the past few decades and Russia over the past five years and Israel over the past year have inflicted quite a bit of terror, and they all have nuclear weapons.

None of them would have done it if their victims had them.

Iran's contribution to inflicting misery, death, and indiscriminate destruction on the world is a rounding error in comparison, and its bound by the same formula of MAD as anyone else is.
Show HN: A React E-ink Paper Display
by k3nz0 | 2025-06-22 18:21:29+00:00
I’ve been working on a side project called Warka (ورقة in Arabic, means Paper).

Warka is a framework for building e-ink displays using React as a frontend and Python as a backend.

An ESP32, running a ~100 C++ lines lightweight software, is used to fetch a screenshot file from the backend server and display it in the e-ink display.

With this architecture, you can now iterate super fast on your display and draw anything really quickly.

No need to hardcode icons and bmp arrays in C++ anymore. No need to worry about the size of your text.

The design burden is now on the frontend (React) side. You can implement a dashboard, a calendar, a news feed, a dynamic weather display, a screensaver... you name it!

Github repo: https://github.com/k3nz0/warka

I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas, or even see what you build with it!
by bigyabai | 2025-06-22 18:21:34+00:00
> We don’t even know how LLMs work

Speak for yourself. LLMs are a feedforward algorithm inferring static weights to create a tokenized response string.

We can compare that pretty trivially to the dynamic relationship of neurons and synapses in the human brain. It's not similar, case closed. That's the extent of serious discussion that can be had comparing LLMs to human thought, with apologies to Chomsky et. al. It's like trying to find the anatomical differences between a medieval scribe and a fax machine.
by mcnamaratw | 2025-06-22 18:22:09+00:00
Don’t be a d**k. Lots of literary fiction is perfectly readable for normal humans. Lots of what isn’t accessible is just not that enjoyable to anybody. I’m happy to debate … but only using specific examples. Authors and titles.

The example of noise music came up elsewhere in the discussion. It’s an important example. Most people won’t ever like it. You fill the pipeline with noise music, 99% of us will literally listen to anything else, or to nothing. I like a little bit of it, but in general I’m simply not going to acquire that taste.
by davejagoda | 2025-06-22 18:22:46+00:00
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

I'm not trying to be rude, and I'm not choosing random quotes. I chose Eisenhower since I was surprised to learn his opinion on the subject, and actually read the quote out of a paper copy of his autobiography. So while I can't be 100% sure that he wrote that, it seems extremely likely that he did.

Until a few years ago, I believed what I had learned in school - that the bombs were necessary to end the war more quickly, and that they actually saved both American and Japanese lives by hastening the surrender. If invading the home islands was the only way, and if there was a fight to the last person, then that would be a reasonable conclusion.

A few counterarguments I heard over time were not easy to dismiss:

1. Why did the surrender come on August 15th? Since no more bombs arrived after August 9th, what changed? In particular, if the US had more nuclear weapons to use, where was the August 12th bomb, since there was apparently a 3 day cycle. From the perspective of the Japanese military leadership, one explanation would be there were no more ready, so the urgency to surrender before further bombs would be lessened.

2. Why did Operation Meetinghouse (March 10th, 1945) which caused a similar amount of destruction with only conventional weapons not precipitate a surrender?

3. How important were the other reasons to use the weapons, such as: a. Testing out their effectiveness against a real enemy target. Conducting such a test initially seemed hard to believe, but in context of the firebombing of cities in Japan (e.g. Tokyo) and Germany (e.g. Dresden) may have made this test plausible to Allied military leaders. The fact that two different types of bomb were used bolsters the argument that this was in part a test. b. Deterring the Soviet armies from continuing to take territory because they had the conventional means to doing so. In other words, this was not just to end WW2, but to set the stage for the post-war environment that was coming soon. c. Making sure that the huge expense of developing the weapons wasn't "wasted" by not using them against an enemy.

I've read Paul Fussell's "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" (which I just re-read now) since it's the most concise yet persuasive argument I've encountered in favor of using atomic weapons to save lives. If I knew of a similar writing making the opposite case, I would share it here. If you know of such a thing, please let me know.

My current understanding of the situation is that the accumulation of damage inflicted against Japan helped cause the leadership to surrender. The proximate tipping point was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. That meant the end of their peace treaty with the Soviets, the foreclosing of the possibility of the Soviets facilitating peace negotiations with the Allies, and increased the likelihood of an invasion of the home islands by the Red Army before an American invasion could happen. This is the event that finally brought the Japanese government to their senses.
by moktonar | 2025-06-22 18:22:58+00:00
Technically this is linked to the ability to simulate our universe efficiently. If it’s simulable efficiently then AGI is possible for sure, otherwise we don’t know. Everything boils down to the existence or not of an efficient algorithm to simulate Quantum Physics. At the moment we don’t know any except using QP itself (essentially hacking the Universe’s algorithm itself and cheating) with Quantum Computing (that IMO will prove exponentially difficult to harness, at least the same difficulty as creating AGI). So, yes, brains might be > computers.
by tetha | 2025-06-22 18:23:44+00:00
> We’re also close to finishing the medical device version - http://lungy.health - designed as a pulmonary rehab platform for patients with asthma, it should hopefully undergo early trials in the UK in 2026.

This sounds great. Maybe there could also be something to help people support an asthma attack, or a beginning one. Breathing can be hard folks.

Mostly saying this, because this brought up memories of a situation where a woman on a bus had the beginnings of an asthmatic attack and then realized she didn't have her inhalator on her and started to stress out. The poor bus driver had no idea what do to and also started to panic. So I ended up just being here, helping her remember techniques like the coachman seat, pursed lip breathing, all while I was kinda fighting that on one hand, my inhalator is an entirely standard inhalator, but on the same time, handing out prescription medication like that can be really, really dangerous.

Give this[1] a read, it's good to now :)

1: https://www.pari.com/int/blog/breathing-excercise-asthma/
by achierius | 2025-06-22 18:24:12+00:00
Sure, but there's an extent to which the the board and its constitutive shareholders already expect to be giving away options for new employees, and as such will have allocated a pool for such purpose -- both for the "standard" package, and for "hard negotiators". For traditional tech startups (i.e. ones not so flush with cash as OpenAI), giving these away is far easier than giving away more real-world, honest-to-god cashflow, because that directly drains your runway, while all equity does is make your cap sheet look marginally worse.
by rednafi | 2025-06-22 18:26:25+00:00
This is my experience too. All these LLMs and agents are great for bootstrapping projects faster than ever. They help immensely with bringing down the activation energy. So I do a lot more tinkering around in multiple languages that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

That said, once the project goes beyond a certain threshold, LLMs offer little more than a highly capable autocomplete. In larger codebases, the current context window is too small for the tools to even answer questions properly, let alone make any non-trivial changes.

Productivity starts going down once you try to use LLMs in a large codebase and expect them to be as helpful as they were in a smaller one. Often, these authoritative little shits will whirl you around in a doom loop and still won’t find any useful solution. And suddenly you find yourself having to clean up the mess.

I’d still say the productivity benefit is positive, but at the same time, the hype around these is bonkers. Employers are holding onto the hype cycle to bring down wages through FUD.
by nsingh2 | 2025-06-22 18:26:53+00:00
Judging by history, external forces toppling a regime through violence usually leads to instability, with the result being militancy.

I hope if this does happen in Iran, the day after involves a movement towards a secular and free government. But I have my doubts, especially considering a government led by a dictator tends to be easier to control, so external powers may lean towards that option if given the choice.
by hnfong | 2025-06-22 18:26:58+00:00
> we have a theory of reality that governs things down to the atomic scale and humans and LLMs are made out of atoms.

> So because of this we know reality is governed by maths.

That's not really true. You have a theory, and let's presume so far it's consistent with observations. But it doesn't mean it's 100% correct, and doesn't mean at some point in the future you won't observe something that invalidates the theory. In short, you don't know whether the theory is absolutely true and you can never know.

Without an absolutely true theory, all you have is belief or speculation that reality is governed by maths.

> What does humility have to do with anything?

Not the GP but I think humility is kinda relevant here.
by andyjohnson0 | 2025-06-22 18:27:25+00:00
TFA presents an information-theoretic argument forAGI being impossible. My reading of your parent commenter is that they are asking why this argument does not also apply to humans.

You make broadly valid points, particularly about the advantages of embodyment, but I just dont think theyre good responses to the theoretical article under discussion (or the comment that you were responding to).
by tossandthrow | 2025-06-22 18:27:53+00:00
YouTube Premium starts at 14$ which is wildly un-representative of the price it takes to run the site.

You mention revenue sharing - but either you are a publisher and share both revenue and responsibilities with creators, or you are not a publisher.

If we for a moment imagine that they are a publisher, then they better pay their content creators a livable wage - or not sign them - and the content creators better not show ads, as I have already paid them through YouTube.

If we imagine for a second that they are merely a distribution platform, then they better not interfere with what I see with ads, or make a value judgement on my curated feed - ISPs also don't interject ads into your browsing.

I never said that they should not be able to make money. But services like YouTube tries their absolute best to both have the cake on eat it. And that is not fair.