MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by easterncalculus | 2025-06-23 06:53:26+00:00
It's comments like this that remind me I'm on HN. Let's be honest for a minute - take a sci-fi book of the shelf, any of them, current (Weir, Pierce Brown, etc) or classic (Asimov, PKD, etc). Almost always, you will find paper-thin characters and themes, written with the crutch of 'worldbuilding'. Here's the lineup - a downtrodden nerd, usually the protagonist, some stereotypical caricature of a woman, like a nagging wife, or ditz, or hag. A few archetypes for a boss, and some equally stereotypical villain. You won't find a Karamazov in sci-fi.

This is the problem with sci-fi in a nutshell, the characters fall flat in even the most seminal works. They are nor memorable at all and somewhere between uninspired and just downright bad. It's the status quo.

Sci-fi and fantasy fans talk about worldbuilding like it is some esoteric art. In the end worldbuilding is literally just plot, and it's well understood that plot is not the most important part of literature, not compared to deeper themes and characters. Is that because of "literary snobs"? No, it's because when you come back to a book in 20, 50, or 200 years you don't remember whether the protagonist's third neural implant was made of vibranium or aluminum, you remember how that book tackled incredible subject matter with layered characters, and pushed the limits of language in a way only possible in prose. When's the last time you heard of a sci-fi author that wrote like Woolf, or Joyce? Never.

Even in more literary sci-fi, for example Dune, the appeal is because it's basically just a medieval story transplanted into space. The focus is on politics and the human experience, not "what if storms lasted longer".

It's so obvious that sci-fi stories are generally better suited to the medium of film, they can capture the unreality in a more believable way, visually, and take less advantage of the ambiguity of text. It's not like sci-fi novels are pushing boundaries in prose anyways. It's much more pretentious to say they are by calling them equally "literary" than to just accept that novels which exemplify the medium are instead.
by Zaylan | 2025-06-23 06:54:45+00:00
I’ve noticed my reading habits changing too. I used to read a lot of literary fiction in my twenties, but now I mostly go for nonfiction or short-form stuff. It’s not that I think fiction is less important, it just feels harder to make space for slow, quiet stories that don’t offer an immediate payoff.

Maybe it’s not just a cultural decline, but a deeper shift in how we deal with time, attention, and meaning.
by rcarmo | 2025-06-23 06:55:18+00:00
In my experience there is a big difference between front-end and back-end stuff (i.e., formulaic/templated code and code that needs to solve an actual problem). LLMs breeze through the former, typically get stuck in the latter because of context and breadth limitations.

That doesn’t mean you can’t churn out all the surface accoutrements of an app (and some of the dull back-end stuff like user databases, etc.) faster—-but it is very far from replacing someone with system design skills in the long run.
by Skeime | 2025-06-23 06:55:25+00:00
Last time I checked, Word was also basically untenable for math-heavy writing because there was too much procedure involved in setting a formula. This is fine if you need one here and there, but if you have lots of formulas (including many tiny ones, like just using the name of a variable), switching to a dedicated formula mode in the interface is just not pleasant. In LaTeX (or Typst), I just type $, and off I go.
by BrandoElFollito | 2025-06-23 06:56:46+00:00
I like to go there from time to time to listen to languages I do not know.

Then I look at the place on Google street view (or satellite view of not available). And try to imagine the life of people there.

Then I go to Wikipedia to read about the place and then this is the end: I spend over or two hours reading randomly about loosely related topics.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing
by 112233 | 2025-06-23 06:57:22+00:00
The corollary of that is that most new c++ features get designed with the explicit intent of getting burried in std library implementation (with coroutines being excellent example).

Then, developer is presented with a nice, easy to use library interface, that violently explodes all the obscure implementation details in their face on first error.

Modern C++ is made, I feel, primarily to make STL implementation less embarrassing.
by globular-toast | 2025-06-23 06:58:46+00:00
I don't understand people saying it's dystopian. This kind of thing is empowering people who are otherwise suffering from a lack of law enforcement. Motor vehicle operators take huge liberties all the time. Speeding, parking, excessive noise etc. None of these are their rights. They have just been taken at the cost of the rest of society. With great power comes great responsibility. That's how it should work. Stuff like this is just resetting the imbalance, giving power now to those outside of cars to force those inside to take responsibility.
by gattilorenz | 2025-06-23 06:59:19+00:00
Israel is bombing cities too[1], and the neighbors of the people who might be associated with the regime are just like you and me.

There are cleaning people and canteen workers in uranium enrichment facilities.

And so on. Once bombs start falling, it’s a silly idea that there’s no innocent casualty and that people won’t fear for their life regardless of their status when they hear bombs falling in the neighbourhood.

[1] and sure, that’s Israel (for now), but I don’t think that you’ll bother with this distinctions once you see bombs falling down
by int_19h | 2025-06-23 06:59:34+00:00
Your paper only claims that those Coq snippets constitute a "constructive proof sketch". Have those formalizations actually been verified, and if so, why not include the results in the paper?

Separately from that, your entire argument wrt Shannon hinges on this notion that it is applicable to "semantic spaces", but it is not clear on what basis this jump is made.
by bolshchikov | 2025-06-23 07:00:05+00:00
We are building Pooly.ai, an AI payments platform purpose-built for AI agents and their builders. It allows builders to easily monetize their agents and enable payment capabilities for them.

We’re are looking for a few early-stage builders, agent builders to join as design partners. If you’re AI agents using LangChain, CrewAI, and others, including no-code solutions (Lovable, N8N tools, or similar), and you're thinking about monetization - we’d love to work with you.

As a design partner, you’ll get:

Early access to our agent-native payments infrastructure (MCP, API & SDK)

Direct support integrating payments (KYB, subscriptions management and more).

If this sounds interesting, feel free to DM me or register on pooly.ai
by lrvick | 2025-06-23 07:00:07+00:00
The greatest thing a parent can do for a kid in the modern world is not buying them a car or paying for college. It is never letting them see you use a phone, never buying them a phone, and ensuring access to social media is delayed as long as possible. Think of phones as cigarettes.

Sure, they will have a hard time connecting with brain-rotted peers, but in the long run their average attention span will make them superhuman in a world of peers who have none left at all.
by PaulShin | 2025-06-23 07:00:11+00:00
Fair point no tool can manufacture intrinsic motivation. At the same time, even highly motivated people hit friction: digging through chat history, duplicating context, or chasing down “who owns this.”

The goal of what we’re building isn’t to make someone work; it’s to strip away the overhead that slows down people who already want to.

Think of it like version control: Git doesn’t write code for you, but it removes enough coordination pain that good engineers ship more often. We’re aiming for the same effect between conversation and execution—same motivation, less drag.

From our side, the north-star is a radically simple answer: let a single chat thread end all that visible complexity. One place, one flow, nothing to copy or sync. That’s the product we’re building toward.

Curious have you seen lightweight workflows that actually cut this friction without adding new layers?
by strogonoff | 2025-06-23 07:00:37+00:00
You are certainly free to write in any fashion you want, but any time you turn “raw” (as in raw photography, raw image data, raw image formats) into “RAW”, or Wasm into “WASM”, etc., you will[0] be knowingly wrong—like non-dyslexic people who choose to spell “u” instead of “you”, except unlike them you will not be saving keystrokes and you will be perceived as shouting, which I presume is almost never the intended vibe in the context.

Obviously, it’s not the end of the world. Employees of famous companies, occasionally even reputable and knowledgeable people are not immune to using wrong or mistaken spelling. This is explained by a simple fact that there are plenty of professionals who are dyslexic and/or careless about spelling, while still being experts in their subject areas. There is nothing wrong about that, but evidence of their misuse of written language is not grounds for an argument that the wrong spelling is correct. Researching what the word actually stands for takes less than a minute, and it should clear any doubt and avoid unnecessary arguments.

[0] Now that you know…
by adrian_b | 2025-06-23 07:03:08+00:00
Those who made such early examples of chromium-containing steel had no idea that chromium existed.

What happened is that they have found a place with chromite and they have believed that they have found magnetite, because both are heavy blackish stones. Most likely the chromite was actually mixed with true magnetite, which is always much more abundant (chromite is a mixed iron-chromium oxide, while magnetite, which has an identical crystal structure, is a mixed Fe(II)/Fe(III) oxide).

Then they have used the magnetite mixed with chromite exactly like they knew to use magnetite, for making steel.

The steel happened to be better than what they had made before, and they were happy that they had found a source of particularly good magnetite for making steel.

After gathering experience, they have probably adjusted their techniques for smelting and forging to work better with steel made with the natural magnetite-chromite mixture, but that is all the extent of their knowledge.

Because the ancient smiths did not know how to do chemical analyses, they had no idea why using similarly looking minerals mined from different places results in metals with different properties. In the ancient world it was well known that certain steels or bronzes made in certain places are much better than the steels or bronzes made in other places, so the price of steel or bronze varied a lot based on its provenience. These quality differences were frequently caused by impurities in the source minerals used for metal production, whose presence was unknown for the ancients, but they were aware of the qualities of the metals produced there.

No knowledge whatsoever about the existence of chromium has existed anywhere, before the creation of the modern chemistry, based on the concept of chemical element, slightly before the French Revolution, towards the end of the 18th century, which triggered an intense search for the discovery of new chemical elements.
by octo888 | 2025-06-23 07:03:35+00:00
> One thing you learn quickly is that despite all the Internet talk about having a BATNA or putting companies in a bidding war against each other is that the majority of candidates really don’t have other options to even compare against.

You also "learned" this by your company themselves making it hard for candidates to have multiple offers, as you seemed to imply in another comment that you shorten the timeline near the end (after no doubt having a long application and interview process, which I'm sure is rationalised as industry standard) to prevent multiple offers ("we need to move on to the next candidate quickly")

And even had the audacity to say that people who want to extend the process aren't serious, knowing full well most companies drag on the application and interviewing process for weeks and months. It's all just power dynamics and everything else is nonsense

I'm not sure we need HR PR on this site, on this post about trying to bump salary, in this very tough climate.
by jstummbillig | 2025-06-23 07:03:44+00:00
> Telling others how “the market” is when you only have your very limited subjective and anecdotal experience to share is a bit bold

Aren't people that complain about this not being possible not doing exactly the same? Maybe we can land on: This is a comment section. People bring their own views of things.

The anchor here is Patricks ideas. I am not sure if his data raises to the level of statistical significance, but it's clearly not nothing and, unless he is outright lying, seems to yield significant positive results.

What people in this thread offer on the other end is fairly light, ignores a lot of Patricks advice, tries to make special cases where there are none, and is really a lot of regular grade negativity and excuses – and then claiming that the advice does not work, when, what they really mean is: I really do not want any advice, because I am a grown up person and it would be super uncomfortable to admit to myself that I have done this wrong over potentially many, many years.
by samjones33 | 2025-06-23 07:05:12+00:00
I am not saying it is good or desirable.

Do you live in a place that has a death cult committing daily acts of violence and killing (against people on both sides of the fence, of both "ethnicities")?

Do you live in a place where billions are spent on offensive weapons (tunnels, rockets) and stolen from donated food aid (as Hamas has been hijacking aid for many years and selling it at profit)?

If you do not, do you have any idea how a group of people (e.g. a society) responds to ongoing violence and threats of violence?

Your dismissive "constant shifting goalposts and lack of self awareness will always startle me" is the mark of someone who sits in an armchair and experiences no threat.

Beware of being dismissive. This region needs people who push for the hard work of peace and avoid labels and dismisiveness.

There was a peace movement in the 1990s. It accomplished a lot (a million+ Palestinians live under a Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza was left to its own devices in 2005).

A death cult (probably two) killed that process. By killing people (including the Israeli Prime Minister). Years earlier, that death cult killed Sadat for his peace making work.

Support those who push for peace.

Call out those who don't.
by b33j0r | 2025-06-23 07:05:51+00:00
I think the metaphor is great.

Each tile has a superposition of possible states that collapse into one observed state. That’s all the metaphor is meant to mean, I think.

What are better names?

- Lego Simplices

- Tile Constraint Pairing

- Pipe Fitting

- Cartesian Convolution (nah)

- Finite automata (ok that’s fair, but subthings need names)

I dunno, I think the WFC metaphor works for me. The “wavefunction” is just the finite set of states that have a non-zero probability of being observed.
by quleap | 2025-06-23 07:07:05+00:00
Claude Code had been supporting SSE transport without requiring mcp-remote.

So I don't really understand what's new in this announcement.

Maybe what's actually new is streamable HTTP and OAuth?

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/blob/main/CHANGELO...

1.0.27 Streamable HTTP MCP servers are now supported Remote MCP servers (SSE and HTTP) now support OAuth MCP resources can now be @-mentioned
by thaumasiotes | 2025-06-23 07:07:29+00:00
> I also tried to move all my books purchasing to B&N and again, surprisingly, they haven’t learned any real lesson in past 25 years. Their website is clunky, they charge $7 delivery fee, they can’t even deliver to my nearest their own shop for free!

I went to barnesandnoble.com to check this out.

There's a banner at the top of the page:

> Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.

> For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.

The words "upgrade now" link to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/downloa... .

It does look like you're right that they won't ship books to your local B&N:

> Other reasons that an item may not be available for Buy Online, Pick Up in Store include:

> The item is out of stock in your selected store

This is very odd, because they will do that if you go into the store and order from there.
by lenkite | 2025-06-23 07:07:52+00:00
Sorry, I just had to respond to this ridiculous assertion..your "peaceful protestors" were building and firing slingshots, molotov cocktails and even DIY rocket launchers - they were even fawned upon and idolized by the Western press for this. You do that in any nation and you will get a beating from the police. You do that in the US and you will be rapidly sent to the after-life.

Hell, several people even made a giant catapult on-site (props given for engineering knowledge though). What surprised me at that time watching is that the Ukrainian police were so tolerant of rocks falling on them. American police would have immediately opened fire. Of-course, that tolerance didn't last long once policemen started taking casualties.
by DidYaWipe | 2025-06-23 07:08:04+00:00
"Radio Shack began selling private label products under the name Realist, but the name was changed to Realistic after some litigation."

Cool story. I wish a few comments like the above had a bit more background. I wonder if the problem with "Realist" was the existence of the Stereo Realist, a popular 3-D camera made from 1947-71.

Edit: Yep! Google's so-called "AI" says:

"Tandy, through their RadioShack brand, could not use the name "Realist" for their private-label products because of a legal dispute with the company that produced the well-known Stereo Realist camera, according to 2080 Ventures. The Stereo Realist camera was a popular 35mm stereo camera produced by the David White Company.

This legal dispute led Tandy/RadioShack to change their brand name from "Realist" to "Realistic". The change occurred in 1954, after Radio Shack had already begun selling products under the "Realist" brand."
by noelwelsh | 2025-06-23 07:08:29+00:00
I've done some simple Typst programming via Claude, and it worked fine. I expected it to be ignorant of Typst but that was not the case.

One of the best things about Typst is that most tasks are very simple. Compared to the reams of Latex BS I was replacing, building my book with Typst is momumentally simpler.
by casenmgreen | 2025-06-23 07:08:30+00:00
It seems to me this is probing behaviour.

It is a low-risk, initial probe, to test the bounds of what currently is considered normal.

If it fails - it it is rejected - it was not controversial (parking fines) and so the cost is low.

If it succeeds, the boundary of normal has been moved, and then civilian reporting of crimes for money will be extended to other crimes.

Given USA now has authoritarian Government of Donald, this is obviously and incredibly bad.

An obvious thought is that it will come to be used by ICE to incentivize civilians to report on "illegal immigrants", as defined by Donald.

In Nazi Germany, Anne Frank was betrayed, revealed to the Gestapo, sent to a concentration camp and died there, because two Dutch brothers accepted the incentive provided by the Nazi party, the reward for doing so, to hand in Jews.

You do not use civilians for law enforcement because when misused it fundamentally and profoundly undermines civil society.

The State defines profoundly unjust new "crimes", and then sets everyone watching everyone, in return for pay, to accuse each other - and this in the "mass deportation", and "due process not necessary" environment now brought into being by Donald.
by coderenegade | 2025-06-23 07:10:06+00:00
Apple's paper sets up a bit of a straw man in my opinion. It's unreasonable to expect that an LLM not trained on what are essentially complex algorithmic tasks is just going to discover the solution on the spot. Most people can solve simple cases of the tower of Hanoi, and almost none of us can solve complex cases. In general, the ones who can have trained to be able to do so.
by xp84 | 2025-06-23 07:10:44+00:00
On the other hand, before the iPhone, literally every phone had a back cover that could be removed with bare hands and batteries held in by friction. After iPhone, all phones are sealed and require tiny screws to be removed, special adhesives to be defeated (god help you if you break off the stretchy adhesive strips), and of course seals to be replaced. And all this was done from the 2007 iPhone, over a decade before Apple did any IP67 rating of any kind, so none of it was done for waterproofing.

So, "Apple killed battery swappability" is a fair thing to say.
by SkiFire13 | 2025-06-23 07:10:54+00:00
> it's explicitly stated in the article: > > > For an arbitrary n, compute the table full of values and their proofs, and just pull out the nth proof

That's what the intermediate function is doing, but _it doesn't need to be executed_ for the final proof to be valid.

> if you thought harder about it you'd realize what you're suggesting is impossible

No, it is perfectly possible. This is not a program running all cases and `assert`ing that they have the expected result, this is a proof encoded as a program that when executed will surely produce a proof that for the given n the theorem holds. But it surely produces a proof when executes you don't need to execute it to know that a proof exists and thus the theorem holds!

This is exactly what mathematicians do when they prove theorems. Do you think they go on and check for every number n that some theorem holds? That's impossible to do for every possible n, and this is exactly what you're claiming you can do in every other language.

And just to be extra clear, a signature like this:

> theorem maxDollars_spec_correct : ∀ n, maxDollars n = maxDollars_spec n

Does not mean that for every n the function returns a boolean indicating whether `maxDollars n` is equal to `maxDollars_spec n` or not. Instead, it _surely_ returns a proof that they are equal. And with _surely_ I mean it cannot return errors or exceptions or whatever. It is guaranteed that the function will terminate with a proof for that proposition, which I want to reiterate again, it's the same as knowing that the proposition is true.
by teen-different | 2025-06-23 07:14:20+00:00
I've been frustrated with the current state of AI assistants. We're always switching tabs to ChatGPT or Claude, copying and pasting context back and forth. It feels like we're working for the AI, not the other way around.

So, I built an experiment to flip that script: an AI that follows you. https://github.com/Pi4Wear/systemcursor

It's a system-wide, context-aware text completion tool that uses Google's Gemini 1.5 Flash to take screenshots of your active window. This gives it visual context, so it understands whether you're in your IDE, a terminal, a browser, or word processor, and provides more relevant suggestions.

The vision is to make AI assistance as seamless as autocorrect, but infinitely smarter—a "system cursor" that works everywhere.

This is where I need the open source community's help. Right now it's X11-only on Linux, but the real potential lies in making this work everywhere. I'm looking for contributors to help with:

Windows implementation (Win32 APIs) macOS support (Accessibility APIs) Wayland compatibility Local model integration (Ollama, GPT4All) Better OCR and context extraction Performance optimizations

This is a seed-level experiment that could fundamentally change how we interact with AI—but only if the community helps it grow. The future of contextual AI shouldn't be locked behind proprietary walls.

What would it take for you to use something like this? And more importantly want to help build it?