MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by drdeca | 2025-06-28 20:07:25+00:00
Looking at [3], they seem to argue that the system isn’t complete for the usual Gödel reasons, which, sure, it isn’t, but then they call the claim that the system fails to decide, which is a statement about probability, a “scientific fact”. This seems to me like a mistake?

Like, a TOE is not expected to decide all statements expressible in the theory, only to predict particular future states from past states, with as much specificity as such past states actually determine the future states. It should not be expected to answer “given a physical setup where a Turing machine has been built, is there a time at which it halts?” but rather to answer “after N seconds, what state is the machine (as part of the physical system) in?” (for any particular choice of N).

Whether a particular statement expressed in the language of the theory is provable in the theory, is not a claim about the finite-time behavior of a physical system, unless your model of physics involves like, oracle machines or something like that.

Edit: it later says: “ Chaitin’s theorem states that there exists a constant K_{ℱ_{QG}} , determined by the axioms of ℱ_{QG} , such that no statement S with Kolmogorov complexity K(S) > K_{ℱ_{QG}} can be proven within ℱ_{QG} .”

But this, unless I’m badly misinterpreting it, seems very wrong? Most formal systems of interest have infinitely many distinct theorems. Given an infinite set of strings, there is no finite universal upper bound on the Kolmogorov complexity of the strings in that set.

Maybe this was just a typo or something?

They do then mention something about the Bekenstein bound, which I haven’t considered carefully yet but seems somewhat more promising than the parts of the article that preceded it.
by kylestanfield | 2025-06-28 20:07:37+00:00
Realistic AI video generation will put us firmly in a post-truth era. If those videos were 25% more realistic it would be indistinguishable from a real interview.

The speed with which you’ll be able to create and disseminate propaganda is mind blowing. Imagine what a 3 letter agency could do with their level of resources.
by dumroll | 2025-06-28 20:07:45+00:00
I have a different take. I am an immigrant. I speak 3 regional languages fluently and can partly speak German. While I always had English exposure since the age of 5 or 6, my parents spoke different language.

Everyone in my neighborhood who was not economically okay spoke different language than English.

I think it hurts more than helps when you are polylingual if you decide to spend majority of time in country like United States.

I have collected a lot of data around this. Time and time again, I can prove with data, that native english langauge speakers outperform anyone else. Whether it is college admissions, admissions to incubators like Y Combinator, job opportunities, sports opportunities, housing opportunities and more. If language is the sole factor to be considered, then polylinguals do not win.

When you speak a foreign language than English, you accent is bound to be messed up. Look at Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans or other people who speak dual langauge. There is always something off about their accent. This leads to acceptance and at time getting asked "are you american" or "were you born here?"

I am not saying dont learn foreign language. But, language is one aspect of being polylingual. You just dont speak words. Words have meaning and they are deeply ingrained in cultures.

If you know long term where you want to be, learn and speak and immerse yourself in the culture. Otherwise you are just creating more noise for social media points and making it harder for yourself to be a master of one language.
by moralestapia | 2025-06-28 20:08:01+00:00
The wording implies that Aaronson does not know what he's talking about.

>If you want to learn about actual Busy Beaver results [...]

This is saying there is no discussion of the results in the article, which is not true.

>Unlike Aaronson, he actually is on the forefront of Busy Beaver research [...]

This implies Aaronson has no (or lesser) authority on the subject and suggests we should listen to somebody else who purportedly has more.

Nowhere in @NooneAtAll3's comment is there an argument made against/for the contents of the article, an example of that would be:

"Aaronson mentions X but this is not correct because Y" or something along those lines.

Instead, the comment, in it's full extent, is either discrediting (perhaps unintentionally) and/or appealing to the authority of people involved. That's ad hominem.
Ask HN: Better-auth or Nextauth or something else
by dasubhajit | 2025-06-28 20:08:03+00:00
Hi, I know many of you here are running B2B start-ups. What authentication service/framework are you using for your multi-tenant authentication?

I am the CEO of Backtick (backtickai.com) - an AI-native issue tracker designed to remove manual task management. Our product is built using mostly open-source frameworks and products; we strongly adhere to this ideology in our company. However, we currently use PropelAuth, which is not open-source, so we are looking to migrate away from it.

Better-auth seems like a good option. It supports multi-tenancy out of the box, has good documentation, and is MIT licensed. However, it's very new, not battle-tested, and I'm unsure about its security vulnerabilities.

Next-auth, while battle-tested, makes setting up multi-tenancy a pain.

If it's between these two, my preference would be Next-auth because of its maturity. But I'm wondering how you all are handling authentication. Which framework or hosted service are you using?

I would appreciate your comments on this.
by dangus | 2025-06-28 20:08:11+00:00
Sure, a lot of companies don’t need to keep innovating.

But still, TikTok passed Instagram active users. This would be like if Universal theme parks surpassed Disney Parks in revenue. Sure, they can both coexist, but it’s an embarrassing reflection of mismanagement when a company that is so far ahead is surpassed by a competitor with better management working with fewer resources.

And there are a lot of examples like IBM, Kodak, and General Electric where the company appears untouchable with no need to innovate until suddenly they really do need to innovate and it all collapses around them.
by zeroCalories | 2025-06-28 20:10:07+00:00
Unless you love the culture, there's no reason to learn a language besides English. I would ditch the knowledge and thousands of hours spent on my native language to improve my English, or really any other skill. Always funny watching Americans try to larp as cultured cosmopolitans by learning a language they'll never actually need. Especially in 2025, when you can just point an AI at something and ask it to read it for you.
by mpalmer | 2025-06-28 20:10:11+00:00
I'm of two minds about this. This is good advice for people who can't help but anthropomorphize LLMs, but it's still anthropomorphizing, however helpful the analogy might be. It will help you start to understand why LLMs "respond" the way they do, but there's still ground to cover. For instance, why would I put "respond" in quotes?
by nayuki | 2025-06-28 20:10:55+00:00
I think English monolingual people have a harder time learning and distinguishing homophones (words with same pronunciation but different spelling) - such as to/too/two, there/their/they're, its/it's, etc. If you know another language and correspond the aforementioned English words with those in the other language, you can see that they become quite distinct. For example, to/too/two in French is à/aussi/deux.
by jackthetab | 2025-06-28 20:11:01+00:00
Which LLMs and plans are you guys using for all of these cool ideas?

ATM I use ChatGPT Plus for everything except coding inside my Jetbrains IDEs.

I'm starting to look around at other LLMs for non-coding purposes (brainstorming, docs, being a project manager, summarizing, learning new subjects, etc.).
by klik99 | 2025-06-28 20:11:07+00:00
Maybe in theory, but in practice there is a strong power mismatch that causes investors to have a strong influence. Sand Hill learned it's lesson from Facebook/Zuckerberg and now always have a seat on the board. Only outliers like zuck/bezos/similar have the weight to push back against investors. Heck, even Dorsey couldn't for whatever reason.

And even if what you said is true, you can look at the results of years of this system, the difference between companies with outside investment vs without makes a strong case against what you're saying.

It's like saying educating people about their rights wrt police helps, but in practice police don't derive their power from actual laws and it comes at considerable personal expense to push it to courts, in the same way Delaware is very strongly biased towards shareholder rights.
by sorcerer-mar | 2025-06-28 20:11:29+00:00
Yeah, obviously that's not "the only force producing this outcome." Nobody claimed it was.

But it's important for founders to understand they are not legally obligated to do any specific thing for their shareholders. It is their responsibility to act morally. Yes, there are other incentives and forces at play. "Legal obligation" is not the cop-out excuse that executives claim it is.
by anigbrowl | 2025-06-28 20:11:48+00:00
It's the 'authenticity' issue of generative AI tat troubles me rather than the content of the viewpoints.

If these same ideas were expressed by Vtubers (virtual youtubers, anime-like filters for people who want to do to-camera video but are shy or protective of their privacy), it would not be troubling, as everyone understands that fictionalized characters are a form of puppetry an can focus on the content of the argument.

But using generative video to simulate ordinary people expressing those ideas is a way of hijacking people's neural responses. Just pick the demographic you wish to micro-target (young/middle/old, working/middle/upper class, etc. etc. etc.) and generate attractive-looking exemplars for messages you want to promote and ugly-looking exemplars for those you wish to discredit.
by fluidcruft | 2025-06-28 20:12:14+00:00
> When I reached out to Microsoft about Nixon’s comments, the company didn’t dismiss them at all. “Recent comments at Ignite about Windows 10 are reflective of the way Windows will be delivered as a service bringing new innovations and updates in an ongoing manner, with continuous value for our consumer and business customers,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “We aren’t speaking to future branding at this time, but customers can be confident Windows 10 will remain up-to-date and power a variety of devices from PCs to phones to Surface Hub to HoloLens and Xbox. We look forward to a long future of Windows innovations.”

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
by F3nd0 | 2025-06-28 20:12:41+00:00
On the other hand, it's perfectly reasonable not to give up the choice that you prefer and consider superior in many ways, just because ‘e-mail was eaten by Gmail and Outlook’. In fact, I personally feel great aversion to those two services and strongly dislike the idea of letting them dictate the way I use an open standard. If that was my main reason for ever using HTML e-mail (which, thankfully, it's not), I'd really rather just send plain text and have it look odd to the recipient.
by seadan83 | 2025-06-28 20:13:25+00:00
I'd say it's more about interactions and accountability rather than loyalty. Loyalty in Tribalism is essentially intrinsic to the power structure.

Really two dimensions:

(1) Prevailing power structures (is there a functional government that can physically enforce laws? If no, then is 'rule of power')

(2) intrinsic motivations based on world outlook (am I at peace with my enemies because of laws, or because of projection of strength?)

The article does define terms, but the term 'tribalism' is perhaps more properly called 'rule of power'. [1] While the terminology is tortured, nonetheless it is illustrative to understand 'rule of power' and that 'rule of law' can break down into 'rule of power'.

From the article:

> To understand tribalism, we must start at the beginning. Imagine a small village at the dawn of society. When a man is murdered for his property and there is no police to call, what happens? Without the threat of punishment, the profitable nature of violence becomes clear, and a simple, terrifying logic takes hold. You quickly realize that your safety depends not on your virtue, but on your ability to project a credible threat. You need allies. You need a tribe.

> This is the foundational axiom of this world: Tribalism is the logical response to a world where the only check on power is other power. In this system, actions are not judged by their morality, but by how they shift the landscape of power. For instance, a powerful clan demanding tribute from weaker villages isn't seen as committing extortion; it is establishing the price of stability and reinforcing the regional order.

> In fact, a tribal person might consider modern capitalism "rule of the strong", in that, you can do a lot with money.

I think the way to look at it is based on the two dimensions. First, is modern capitalism functioning within 'rule of power' (or 'rule of the strong'), or 'rule of law'. If a company does whatever they want, who holds them to account? It is debatable..

Second, the intrinsic motivations. A tribal person will assume the others are going to do whatever they can to get ahead. The tribal person will for example send lobbyists to influence laws either (1) because they can, and (2) because they assume others are going to do so as well.

[1] https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/09/the-rule-of-law-vs...
by cakoose | 2025-06-28 20:13:43+00:00
Why will TypeScript 7 make Node.js irrelevant?

In TypeScript 7, the compiler will be written in Go instead of TS. But the compiler will still produce JS code as its output and so Node.js is still relevant for running that JS code.

Or is there something else about TypeScript 7 that will make Node.js irrelevant?
by mbStavola | 2025-06-28 20:13:51+00:00
Looking at the reasoning[0]:

> To plead a claim of fraud, petitioner must plead that: (1) respondent made a false representation to the USPTO; (2) respondent had knowledge of the falsity of the representation; (3) the false representation was material to the continued registration of the mark, and (4) respondent made the representation with the intent to deceive the USPTO. > A claim of fraud must set forth all elements of the claim with a heightened degree of particularity [...] Indeed, “the pleadings [must] contain explicit rather than implied expressions of the circumstances constituting the fraud.” In addition, intent to deceive the USPTO is a specific element of a fraud claim, and must be sufficiently pleaded > Essentially, Petitioner’s theory of fraud is based on allegations that the specimen of use submitted with Respondent’s maintenance documents do not show use by the proper party. It is well-settled that the proper ground for cancellation is the underlying question of whether the mark was in use in commerce, not the adequacy of the specimens [...] the insufficiency of the specimens, per se, does not constitute grounds for cancellation; the proper ground for cancellation is that the term has not been used as a mark

From what I understand, TTAB is stating that simply showing that Oracle improperly submitting Node.js as a use of mark does not constitute fraud because the intent to deceive was not explicit. It's a bit frustrating because if its not _fradulent_ the only thing I am left to believe is that they were _negligent_.

To file for a mark or renewal of a mark and claim ownership of something you do not own is insane. It's not like this is a 5 second process or that there isn't a lot of money riding on this-- this sort of thing is super serious and incredibly important! You're telling me no one at Oracle or their counsel was able to catch this in review before filing? As far as I can tell, in the renewal for the mark[1], Node.js was the sole specimen provided as an example of mark use! Come on...

EDIT: Sorry, correction, they have three specimens attached to the renewal, two of which seem to be the same. Clearly an insurmountable amount of work and too complicated to validate.

[0]: https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92086835&pty=CAN&eno...

[1]: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn75026640&docI...
by armchairhacker | 2025-06-28 20:14:06+00:00
I think finances are more a concern/incentive.

Consider: the government pays a salary to each married family while they raise children; the salary would be equivalent to a blue-collar job, and it would scale with the number of children up to a point (e.g. 4 kids).

I strongly believe that'd lead to many more marriages and childbirths. Many people not interested in raising kids would prefer it over a "regular" job. Families with adoptive children would also be paid, so it could decrease adoption difficulty and stigma as a side-effect.

However, some people will game this policy, and it would be very expensive to implement.
by jbiason | 2025-06-28 20:14:32+00:00
That's one way to think about numbers and not about the persons.

I believe most of countries have orphanages already -- and what you're suggesting already exists in some countries (I do believe we still have that in Brazil).

While that could increase the number of people, orphanages are not great places to raise a child (with rare exceptions). Imagine you growing up with a large group of other child, and nobody actually take the time to take care of you. What kind of person would you be today?
by varispeed | 2025-06-28 20:14:53+00:00
Let’s be honest: it’s fundamentally about analysing memory access patterns, spotting reuse opportunities, and orchestrating data flows. That’s classic systems engineering. Useful, yes. Rocket science, no. The real joke is how the profession has sunk so low that anything beyond a trivial for-loop becomes a grounds for whitepapers, corporate branding, and breathless conference talks. In the past, we’d have quietly shipped this and moved on. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t patented it yet.
by abeppu | 2025-06-28 20:15:09+00:00
I think we should shift the focus from adapting LLMs to our purposes (e.g. external tool use) and adapting how we think about software and focus on getting models that internally understand compilation and execution. Rather than merely building around next token prediction, the industry should take advantage of the fact that software in particular provides a cheap path to learning a domain-specific "world model".

Currently I sometimes get predictions where a variable that doesn't exist gets used or a method call doesn't match the signature. The text of the code might look pretty plausible but it's only relatively late that a tool invocation flags that something is wrong.

If instead of just code text, we trained a model on (code text,IR, bytecode) tuples, (byte code, fuzzer inputs, execution trace) examples, and (trace, natural language description) annotations. The model needs to understand not just what token sequences seem likely but (a) what will the code compile to? (b) what does the code _do_ and (c) how would a human describe this behavior? Bonus points for some path to tie in pre/post conditions, invariants, etc

"People need to adapt to weaker abstractions in the LLM era" is a short term coping strategy. Making models that can reason about abstractions in a much tighter loop and higher fidelity loop may get us code generation we can trust.
by LegionMammal978 | 2025-06-28 20:15:57+00:00
> There is no situation where "the next step" of the Turing Machine "depends on your axioms" and could thereby be affected by such a decision.

That's easy, you just have to be an ultrafinitist, and say, "The definition of a TM presupposes an infinite set of natural numbers for time steps and tape configurations. But there aren't actually infinitely many natural numbers, infinitely long executions, arbitrarily long proofs, etc., outside of the formalism. If a formal statement and its negation do not differ regarding any natural numbers small enough to actually exist (in whatever sense), then neither is more true than the other." In particular, consistency statements may have no definite truth value, if the hypothetical proof of an inconsistency would be too large.

Of course, metamathematics tells us "you can't do that, in principle you could tell the lie if you wrote out the whole proof!" But that principle also presupposes the existence of arbitrarily-long proofs.

(Personally, hearing some of the arguments people make about BB numbers, I've become attracted to agnosticism toward ultrafinitist ideas.)
by klipt | 2025-06-28 20:15:57+00:00
> People don't leave their homes voluntarily. They leave because of violence or fear of violence.

Well the same applies to the Mizrahi Jews who fled Arab countries to Israel.

The Arab countries then seized their properties, which are estimated to add up to multiple times the size of Israel itself.

So on the larger ledger of who owes who reparations, the Arab states clearly owe Israelis more than the other way around.
by jancsika | 2025-06-28 20:17:01+00:00
> My favorite Satie piece is “Vexations” [1], a short clip that the composer ostensibly wished to be played 840 times in a row.

Live performances of Vexations are illuminating in their own right.

But as a reminder for those who don't know: from the score it's clear Satie was satirizing the practice of composers taking on the long, boring process of drilling inane counterpoint exercises in the hope of eventually writing "serious" music, only to teach themselves the singular lesson of how to write long, boring phrases of music.

Probably he's also satirizing the arbitrariness of the received wisdom, as evidenced by his surprising voice-leading decisions for the phrase in Vexations. (Digression-- I find the common-practice prohibition on parallel fifths funny given there are near-constant parallel fifths sounding as an accident of the harmonic series, especially prominent in step-wise basslines in the cello or bass part. Did Rameau or anyone every address that? I don't remember...)
by leakycap | 2025-06-28 20:18:22+00:00
Hampster Dance circa '97: https://web.archive.org/web/19990429045319/http://hampsterda...

Homestar Runner still works 25 years later: https://homestarrunner.com

Trojan Room Coffee Pot is my kind of fun https://web.archive.org/web/19961226162310/http://www.cl.cam...
by gpm | 2025-06-28 20:18:45+00:00
I can't pretend to be an expert, but I'll argue BB(7) is probably larger than Graham's number.

BB has to grow faster than any computable sequence. What exactly that means concretely for BB(7) is... nothing other than handwaving... but it sort of means it needs to walk up the "operator strength" ladder very quickly... it eventually needs to grow faster than any computable operator we define (including, for example, up-arrow^n, and up-arrow^f(n) for any computable f).

My gut feeling is that the growth between 47 million and 2^^2^^2^^9 is qualitatively larger than the growth between 2^^2^^2^^9 and graham's number in terms of how strong the operator we need is (with gramah's number being g_64 and g here being roughly one step "above" up_arrow^n). So probably we should have BB(7)>Graham's number.
by ivape | 2025-06-28 20:19:33+00:00
David Simon (creator of The Wire) once gave a lecture at a Jewish conference trying to make the case that Jews in America should be uniquely aligned with the plight of Black Americans in the inner cities. The case was that the Jews went through an experience during WW2 that makes them uniquely qualified to always align in solidarity against oppression, poverty, and general suffering.

To be children of ethnic cleansing (obviously I’m describing the Holocaust lightly here) and still commit the same crime in Gaza is profound.

It’s a great point you bring up, that being, what have we learned?