MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by agentultra | 2025-06-04 15:26:39+00:00
You just have to look at who benefits from making these claims and keep asking where they're getting their claims/numbers from.

"Oh no, we invented an AI that is so smart we're afraid of it! We need AI safety!" is literally snake-oil sales pitching. Media outlets that give air to these claims are cringe.

AI isn't replacing people. It's being used to replace labour with capital which weakens labour's negotiating power in order to increase the profits of the capital class. Just as other disruptive technologies have been used in the past.

What the Luddite movement shows us is that society needs to prepare for taking care of highly skilled people. What society didn't do back then was take care of people. Textile workers didn't find jobs elsewhere unless you mean work houses. The myth capitalists fabricated around disruptive technologies is that people displaced by these technologies will acquire new skills and find work elsewhere and that these technologies create new opportunities. It doesn't exactly happen that way.

The same could happen here. The wealthy transfer even more wealth from the labour class to themselves and avoid taxation or doing their part to replace the value they've taken from the labour class.

Update: Changed sentence on the "capitalist myth" to explain what the myth is.
by tialaramex | 2025-06-04 15:26:50+00:00
Swiss Cheese model, to prevents bad things from happening we need to focus on preventing situations where those bad things could even arise.

Britain's Maritime Accident Investigation Branch (EU rules required members to have such agencies, although I think the UK had several of them before that anyway) published a memorable report where, despite this usual practice they offer zero recommendations.

The accident was basically some guys took a fishing boat out, did a lot of heroin, got into trouble and all died. And there were no recommendations because heroin is already illegal, operating a fishing boat while on heroin is also illegal, so, yeah, we already told you this was a terrible idea, there's nothing to recommend.
by shafyy | 2025-06-04 15:27:05+00:00
Same. I actually like writing code, reviewing code that my colleagues have written, having interesting technical discusisons. I don't want to spend my days reviewing code that some AI has written.

But I guess if you don't like writing code, and you are "just doing it for the money", having an LLM write all the code for you is fine. As long as it passes some very low bar of quality — which, let's be honest — is enough for most companies (i.e. software factories) out there.
by cvoss | 2025-06-04 15:27:25+00:00
> Dr. Fukuyama, when you plant the word "against" adjacent to the phrase "life extension," you've earned an "F" in Longevity Strawman Arguments, Volume 1.

> ...

> Fukuyama's syllogism boils down to:

> Change is necessary

> Death creates change

> Therefore, death is necessary

> By that logic, we'd still accept smallpox as the price of social dynamism.

If your first sentence accuses your opponent of using a strawman (I think that's what that sentence means... the double negative metaphor of failing a strawman class is confusing me), you had better make sure your conclusion isn't a strawman.
by HenryBemis | 2025-06-04 15:27:29+00:00
You kinda said it, but you didn't hit the nail on the head. Yes we need the pilots. But -I will repeat my own example in my current mega-corp employer- I am about to develop a solution using an LLM (premium/enterprise) that will stop a category of employees from reaching 50, and will remain to 20, and with organic wear & tear, will drop to 10, which will be the 'forever number' (until the next 'jump' in tech).

So yes, we keep pilots, but we keep _fewer_ pilots.
by skydhash | 2025-06-04 15:27:31+00:00
I don't think people has refused to learn C (which is not particularly hard to learn for someone who knows about assembly and various other languages at the time). A lot of compilers were buggy and people have lots of assembly snippets for particular routines. And that's not counting mature projects that was already in assembly and you have to maintain. A lot of programmers are actually fine trying new stuff out, but some are professionals and don't bring everything under the sun in their work projects.
by bluefirebrand | 2025-06-04 15:27:39+00:00
Demand does not always boom this way

AI companies are positioning themselves as "the everything machine"

The vast majority of software written today is "capture data -> transform data (optional) -> display data nicely formatted and easily accessible"

If an AI can wire into your database to retrieve the data in the format you want, then a bunch of the job is done

If the AI can also be made to present a form to users to capture the data in the first place, then almost all of the job is done

These are huge IFs. I remain skeptical that we'll reach this level soon. But if we do, the software industry is gonna tank

The AI industry will grow. Maybe.
by starlust2 | 2025-06-04 15:27:55+00:00
A thing people miss is that there are many different right ways to solve a problem. A legacy system might need the compatibility or it might be a greenfield. If you leave a technical requirement out of the prompt you are letting the LLM decide. Maybe that will agree with your nuanced view of things, but maybe not.

We're not yet at a point where LLM coders will learn all your idiosyncrasies automatically, but those feedback loops are well within our technical ability. LLM's are roughly a knowledgeable but naïve junior dev; you must train them!

Hint: add that requirement to your system/app prompt and be done with it.
by jasonthorsness | 2025-06-04 15:28:10+00:00
I built my own front-end for hacker news and it supports dark mode. However now my problem is to comment (like this one) I have to switch back to hacker news itself, and the flipping back and forth from dark mode back to light mode is intense; I am still looking at after-images from the dark-mode text right now. So I will definitely support a native dark mode option :P.
by projektfu | 2025-06-04 15:29:11+00:00
Except they are due to age. While lifestyle changes may make some conditions less likely or less severe, don't kid yourself into thinking you can avoid them all forever. Nor is lifestyle change an easy path for most people. If it were, many of the lifestyle diseases would be gone, because we know so much about them. Of the diseases in the article, only NASH (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, called MASH in most of the article, presumably a typo) seems to be strongly related to lifestyle.

The government (or society, whatever) could reduce lifestyle diseases by closing the roads so that people do not drive, requiring jobs to be 50% physical, turning off electric lighting after 9pm, banning overly tasty packaged food, observing a sabbath, etc. Like that will ever happen. The studies are clear, so why don't we do this?

GLP-1 agonists are showing us that behavior has deeper roots than simple choice. People on these medications are able to choose the healthier choice without feeling something lacking, but when they are discontinued they typically return to old habits.

In the meantime, there have been successes at treating lifestyle diseases and giving people better, happier lives. I wish they could stop their behaviors, but I like that they have a chance to treat atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease, etc.
by toast0 | 2025-06-04 15:29:16+00:00
Yes. I buy things all the time from smaller vendors that support PayPal, Amazon Pay, maybe google/apple, as well as a direct credit card entry. Actually, even many large vendors offer a selection of payment options; I pay Walmart and I think BestBuy with PayPal because it's got my card saved and I don't want to get up and grab my wallet. PayPal has big issues if you're a small seller, but as a purchaser it's convenient.

I don't think I've seen vendors offer a choice of two different merchant accounts, but some do have multiple merchant accounts and select one or the other at time of billing; sometimes you can tell because it shows up a little different on the bill depending on the path, or more often because they send an announcement about trouble with billing and mention that it only affects some customers because they have two accounts.
by yuck39 | 2025-06-04 15:29:22+00:00
Don't rule out possibility 1.

Sometimes you have to learn how to frame the problem in a way to get the results that you want. These tools need lots of context, not just about the rest of the code base but the problem itself. You can think of it a bit like how the early adopters of high level programming languages had to fight against compilers to get the assembly output that they wanted.

For example, if I tell an LLM to generate a python script that finds the square of a number I might want: def square(x): return x * x

but it may give me: print("Enter a number:") x = int(input()) print("The square is", x * x)

This is a very very simple example but I think it illustrates my point. If you provide enough context to the exact problem you want to solve the results are astronomically better.
by ty6853 | 2025-06-04 15:30:17+00:00
Murray Rothbard argued there should be a thriving market for children. There's certainly something to it, there are so many places where children or at least female ones are viewed as completely without value and yet others who view them as both scarce and valuable. We are currently struggling much in this world with the problem of ensuring children end up where they are most cherished and valued.

It sounds terrible, but I'm inclined to agree with him the children would be better off if there really were child auctions.
by bluefirebrand | 2025-06-04 15:30:32+00:00
I think humans should have a strong incentive to never let this become reality

I do not want to see the bloodbath that will follow

And I do pretty strongly think that is the trajectory we're on. We cannot create utopia for 1% of the population and purgatory for the other 99% and expect people to just sit still and take it
by q3k | 2025-06-04 15:30:34+00:00
Yeah, any of these AI accelerationist threads make me feel like I'm working in some parallel universe.

Writing code has never been a bottleneck for me. Planning out a change across multiple components, adhering to both my own individual vision and the project direction and style, fixing things along the way (but only when it makes sense), comparing approaches and understanding tradeoffs, knowing how to interpret loose specs... that's where my time goes. I could use LLM assistance, but given all of the above, it's faster for me to write it myself than to try to distill all of this into a prompt.
by Nkharrl | 2025-06-04 15:31:05+00:00
My startup defends companies from exactly this. (www.specprotected.com)

Happy to give guidance to a fellow startup - I know you're unlikely in a position to be able to pay for a solution.

Digital goods, donations, ticketing, any sort of marketplace -- it doesn't matter your size, just having a merchant account they can transact against is enough motive for them.
by topaz0 | 2025-06-04 15:31:10+00:00
I get the sense that the problem with "longevity" research per se is that it is largely driven by the desire of extremely wealthy and selfish people to live forever no matter the cost, rather than to extend every person's healthy lifespan incrementally. The biggest hurdle for the latter is not new research. It's lack of access to affordable healthcare, which would be easy to provide if society weren't so obsequious to the welfare of the most wealthy. I think medical research is generally a good thing (and full disclosure I am tangentially involved in it), but extending the lifespan of the ultrarich is generally going to be bad for society.
by tristor | 2025-06-04 15:31:11+00:00
I really love Merlin as a hobbyist nature photographer. Not just the sound ID, but even more importantly it has a wonderful function that allows you to visually ID a bird from a photo. I don't know much about birds, other than having an appreciation at a distance and finding them photogenic, and Merlin has helped me learn a lot about the birds I've photographed as well as identifying them. This is one of the most important apps on my phone. One of the best things I've seen come out to the public from academia.
by absurdo | 2025-06-04 15:31:17+00:00
I read the original article. I feel like the author of this retort got nerd sniped. “Cracks knuckles”? I can find better things to grind an axe about.

The original article is an opinionated rant. It’s not a scientific or a philosophical treatise, so bringing up things like how diabetes is being cured is far, far outside of the subject matter. So for me this retort is invalid from the get go.

The crux of the original article can be summed up as: “I don’t want to be lorded over by morons who pay their way to live to 200 years.” Hard to argue with that.

In particular I’m amused by this line from the original article:

> I am not looking forward to living in such a world, and indeed I think that such a world might constitute an immense disaster for humankind.

I’d argue the world/humankind is already an immense disaster and things can’t get much worse in any real way. It’s run by sadists and we don’t even know why we are here.
by slibhb | 2025-06-04 15:31:21+00:00
I'm in favor of research into life extension. But I don't think this response really deals with the fundamental objection of:

"Change is necessary

Death creates change

Therefore, death is necessary"

Perhaps humans are not very capable of change once we reach adulthood and so significantly (or indefinitely) extending human lifespan would result in civilizational stasis. I don't see a simple way to overcome this argument.
by bluGill | 2025-06-04 15:32:00+00:00
Maybe. If you calim to wash a million cars but only wash a thousand that will be obvious, but 10 washes different is lost in the noise. Nail salons are easier because you can have the expensive personalized service that no real person buys but if someone investigates you will give it to them.

More likly the above are selling something illegal though. Pay for the expensive hand car wash but get drugs instead with a cheap automatic wash - nobody will know the difference.

For higher valued goods they use horses. A saddle can go for $30,000, so you buy some $1000 saddles and sell them for $30,000 and $29,000 worth of something else.
by Peroni | 2025-06-04 15:32:00+00:00
>And it’s decimated other professions like manual agriculture, assembly line jobs, etc.

When Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line, production went from hundreds of cars to thousands. It had a profoundly positive impact on the secondary market, leading to an overall increase in job creation.

I've yet to see any "AI is gonna take your job" articles that even attempt to consider the impact on the secondary market. It seems their argument is that it'll be AI all the way down which is utter nonsense.
by elliotbnvl | 2025-06-04 15:32:10+00:00
You're missing the point. People refused to learn it not because it was technically challenging but because it was a transformation. It happens with every increase in abstraction; folks fall by the wayside because they don't want change.

The same thing is happening with LLMs. If anything, the gap is far smaller than between assembly and C, which only serves to prove my point. People who don't understand it or like it could easily experience massive productivity gains with a minimum of effort. But they probably never will, because their mindset is the limiting factor, not technical ability.

It really comes down to neural plasticity and willingness to adapt. Some people have it, some people don't. It's pretty polarizing, because for the people that don't want change it becomes an emotional conversation rather than a logical one.

What's the opportunity cost of properly exploring LLMs and learning what everybody else is talking about? Near zero. But there are plenty of people who haven't yet.
by rigrassm | 2025-06-04 15:32:14+00:00
I have a bunch of Blue Jays around my house and it turns out they are so good at imitating a specific hawk species(blanking on its name) that Merlin actually reports it as the hawk! I went and listened to real recordings of that hawks call and I couldn't tell it apart from the Jays imitation call.

Now, I know it's technically possible it was a real id, but Im pretty sure the bald eagle it detected was actually one of the kids down the street running around screaming lol
by oldjim69 | 2025-06-04 15:32:39+00:00
Because of their behavior? Violence was one of the main ways actors resolved conflicts in this period. Didn't like a new tax or that the King appointed his cousin or not your cousin Bishop? Revolt! Have a battle, whoever wins the fight gets his way.

Clovis I the would have absolutely used centralizing tools like railways and the telegraph to enforce his rule more uniformly and ensure his dynasty's success. He only reason why he didn't was because he couldn't.

Dark ages monarchs spent all their time trying to stabilize their regime and enforce their will on the society. We know this because we know how much time they spent marching around their areas putting down revolts and fighting off invasions.
by kennywinker | 2025-06-04 15:32:43+00:00
It is listed at $495, that’s true. Have you ever tried to buy a machine off alibaba? In my limited experience: unless it says buy it now, with shipping costs listed, it’s probably not the price you see on the listing.

I see this same “pc180” elsewhere for about $1500, so i’d guess that’s what it’d cost when you actually try to buy it.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe that only applies to the couple machines I have looked into and not this one.
by HenryBemis | 2025-06-04 15:32:58+00:00
I remember the "Beatle that got away" saying that "the best thing that happened in my life was to leave the Beatles, and I would never change that" (I don't remember the precise quote, but it was something along those lines). He then went on explaining how "if I was still with the Beatles he wouldn't have the kids he now has, and there is no price for that.
by _DeadFred_ | 2025-06-04 15:33:52+00:00
I have had zero issues because of jitter with my Novation SL MkII so I consider it a non-issue, and I think the tons of hits made using USB MIDI controllers speak to that. or the tons of artists that perform using Ableton. Or the tons of live artists that perform using Gig performer. Going between a piano, piano action, synth action, and un-weighted keyboards has much more impact on playing. Do we shame the old past for having different pricing options/cheapening out on keybeds?

There is so much music software that doesn't phone home it's a ridiculous focus. iLok is the biggest phone home and you can buy a USB stick to stop that so? I don't get the point?

" No crashes what so ever and also no distractions by updates or "phone home applications". It just works, distractless! Shame on the "present future".

Still doesn't make sense to me and is needlessly shaming/negative. My setup just works and is way more distract less than past hardware setup, especially if you are talking about recalling projects. I lost WAY more projects/work previously than I do now, and when things failed in the past you were hit until you could perform a hardware fix (if you could afford the cost of the fix). I'll take software.
by gawa | 2025-06-04 15:34:12+00:00
That's what I understood as well. Also, the author mentions:

> The installation succeeded, but the system would panic during boot. *Bhyve is more of a niche thing and not among the hypervisors supported by NetBSD*, [...]

I am guessing what he meant was rather "the support of NetBSD (as a guest OS) by the hypervisor Bhyve", because Bhyve is an hypervisor running on FreeBSD. Given the other posts on the blog, it would not be surprising if the author was daily driving FreeBSD while doing this experiment, and Bhyve is well maintained and probably the best fit in the BSD world for this. I don't even know if OpenBSD's vmm can virtualize something else than OpenBSD.

From https://wiki.freebsd.org/bhyve :

> Q: What VM operating systems does bhyve support?

> A: bhyve supports any version of FreeBSD i386/amd64. OpenBSD, NetBSD, illumos and GNU/Linux are supported using the UEFI and the sysutils/grub2-bhyve port.
by saalweachter | 2025-06-04 15:34:29+00:00
Actually, the Imperial system messed itself up, post-1776.

The US did screw up a bit by standardizing on the wine gallon (231 cubic inches) instead of 222 cubic inches. This leads to a fluid ounce that is about 4% larger than an Imperial fluid ounce, and breaks the "a pint's a pound the whole world round" relationship (an Imperial fluid ounce of water weighs an ounce, and a pint of water being 16 fluid ounces is also a pound, which is 16 ounces of weight); in the US, a gallon of water now weighs "a little more" than 8 pounds.

Of course, in the UK, an Imperial gallon of water now weighs exactly 10 pounds. This is because in the 1820s -- which you will note is half a century after the US and UK parted ways -- the UK decided to add more factors of 10 and 7 into their units, and redefined the pint to be 20 fluid ounces instead of 16, and a gallon became 160 instead of 128.

The US and UK systems of measure diverged after 1776, and I'd argue the UK system changed more during standardization and re-standardization from the semi-formal system they shared before.
by MarceColl | 2025-06-04 15:34:29+00:00
in my case it runs on a good old server.

> So your Python code without modidication can benefit from it.

that's not completely true though, say you have two python processes, you need to solve yourself how they communicate, HTTP? a message broker? through the DB? You need to handle errors, stateful deployments.

You can deploy python code without modification if the python code does very simple things. My point is that the BEAM gives you a lot of this mostly presolved for you without having to add more infrastructure.
by TSiege | 2025-06-04 15:34:59+00:00
This article is not based in much real history. If people would like to learn more about how life was for actual average people in Medieval Europe and how they asserted their own power I recommend this episode on Tides of History: Peasants' Rebellions and Resistance

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3gQ0ECOuDEPGGE5oDRj8g0

here's the blurb for anyone curious > The medieval world relied on peasants. They grew the food, maintained the buildings, produced the craft goods, and made up the vast bulk of the population. But they were never particularly happy with their place in society, and rebellions, revolts, and quieter forms of resistance were ubiquitous.
by bluefirebrand | 2025-06-04 15:35:00+00:00
Maybe one day, but not right now

My experience with the current stuff on the market is you get out what you put in

If you put in a very detailed and high quality, precisely defined question and also provide a framework for how you would like it to reason and execute a task, then you can get out a pretty good response

But the less effort you put in the less accurate the outcome is

If a bad doctor is someone who puts in less effort, is less precise, and less detail oriented, it's difficult to see how AI improves on the situation at all

Especially current iterations of AI that don't really prompt the users for more details or recognize when users need to be more precise
by prmph | 2025-06-04 15:35:00+00:00
This is what I see when I try it:

Claude Code can now be used with your Max subscription from the Claude app or billed based on API usage through your Console account.

Select login method:

1. Claude account with Max subscription Starting at $100/mo - Best value, predictable pricing 2. Anthropic Console account API usage billing

Not sure whether the CLI has not been updated