MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by chistev | 2025-07-23 16:01:53+00:00
The popular evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins has said that the biggest unsolved mystery in Biology is - what is consciousness and why did it emerge?

WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?

"Modern purpose machines use extensions of basic principles like negative feedback to achieve much more complex 'lifelike' behaviour. Guided missiles, for example, appear to search actively for their target, and when they have it in range they seem to pursue it, taking account of its evasive twists and turns, and sometimes even 'predicting' or 'anticipating' them. The details of how this is done are not worth going into. They involve negative feedback of various kinds, 'feed-forward', and other principles well understood by engineers and now known to be extensively involved in the working of living bodies. Nothing remotely approaching consciousness needs to be postulated, even though a layman, watching its apparently deliberate and purposeful behaviour, finds it hard to believe."

WHY DID CONSCIOUSNESS EMERGE?

He speculates that consciousness must have been a product of our ancestors having to create a model of the world in which they inhabited.

To be able to think ahead (even if it's just one step into the future), and plan for eventualities must have led to the development of consciousness which gradually improved from its primitive form to the type of consciousness we now have.

"Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself. Obviously the limbs and body of a survival machine must constitute an important part of its simulated world; presumably for the same kind of reason, the simulation itself could be regarded as part of the world to be simulated. Another word for this might indeed be 'self awareness', but I don't find this a fully satisfying explanation of the evolution of consciousness, and this is only partly because it involves an infinite regress-if there is a model of the model, why not a model of the model of the model...?"

The quoted passages are from his book, The Selfish Gene.

Richard regards consciousness as a really great puzzle.

https://www.rxjourney.net/extraterrestrial-intelligence-and-...
by ModernMech | 2025-07-23 16:02:21+00:00
See this is what kills me about these things. They say they built this system that will build apps for you, yet they advertise it using a website that chews through my CPU and GPU. All this page does is embed a YouTube video, why is my laptop's fan going full blast? And I'm supposed to trust the code that emanates from their oracle coding agent? What are we doing here people??
by altairprime | 2025-07-23 16:02:39+00:00
I did my thirty years and, between SRE and AI, have seen the writing on the wall for the future of tech ops and have retired to go get a degree in accounting. The lack of degree was never so much an obstacle as my willingness to speak unspoken truths to leaders. There’s no way someone younger than me could reproduce my path, as it hinged on ten years of unpaid career development as a teenager. Get a degree so that you aren’t closed-minded and inflexible.
by bilekas | 2025-07-23 16:02:47+00:00
> Why should law enforcement have the privilege to know arbitrary information, especially deeply personal information, about law-abiding individuals?

They don't and that's called privacy. Seems I didn't make my point clear that saying "I don't have anything to hide" is perfectly fine when applying to anything criminal.

It's NOT the same as saying "I don't care about privacy".

If you commit a crime and hide that, that's a crime.

If you give out your address, that's not a crime and yes stupid to do, but you're not going to prison for it.

Highlighting that people conflate hiding things with privacy and they're just not the same.
by jmaker | 2025-07-23 16:03:12+00:00
Sonnet 4 is weird. Sometimes it creates empty files and wants to delete what I asked it to refactor, only to confuse itself even more. So I retry, same path of destruction. Next time I interrupt it and explicitly state that it must first move the type definitions to the new files, it just ignores that (exclaiming several times how “absolutely right!” I was), and destroys the files anyway.

I mean it’s not even good as a refactoring tool sometimes. Sometimes it’s acceptable to a degree.

It loves stopping in the middle of a refactoring or generating a test suite, even though it convinced itself that the tests were still failing.

That’s on something simple like TypeScript in a Node microservice repo.

Same MCP servers, same context, instructions, prompt templates, same config, same repos. GitHub Copilot, Claude Code.

So I just turn to a mixture of ChatGPT models where I need a quick win on a repo I took over and need to upgrade or when I want extra checks for potential mistakes or when I need a quick summary of some AWS docs without with links to verify.

But of all things reliable it is not yet.
by fifticon | 2025-07-23 16:03:23+00:00
It depends on what you mean by 'ban'. In the country where I live (Denmark), they are very much banned, unless you can demonstrate your legitimate current use case for them. In particular, you are not allowed to wear them in public places where people gather or gather in groups. And 'beating up cops anonymously' is not an approved use case :-) The rule as I understand it, also covers [sic] extreme religious dress rules for women.

Here is the relevant section from our current laws: https://danskelove.dk/straffeloven/134b
by norir | 2025-07-23 16:03:33+00:00
Here is my cynical take in ci. Firstly, testing is almost never valued by management which would rather close a deal on half finished promises than actually build a polished, reliable product (they can always scapegoat the eng team if things go wrong with the customer anyway).

So, to begin with, testing is rarely prioritized. But most developer orgs eventually realize that centralized testing is necessary or else everyone is stuck in permanent "works on my machine!" mode. When deciding to switch to automated ci, eng management is left with the build vs buy decision. Buy is very attractive for something that is not seriously valued anyway and that is often given away for free. There is also industry consensus pressure, which has converged on github (even though github is objectively bad on almost every metric besides popularity -- to be fair the other larger players are also generally bad on similar ways). This is when the lock in begins. What begins as a simple build file starts expanding outward. Well intentioned developers will want to do things idiomatically for the ci tool and will start putting logic in the ci tool's dsl. The more they do this, the more invested they become and the more costly switching becomes. The CI vendor is rarely incentivized to make things truly better once you are captive. Indeed, that would threaten their business model where they typically are going to sell you one of two things or both: support or cpu time. Given that business model, it is clear that they are incentivized to make their system as inefficient and difficult to use (particularly at scale) as possible while still retaining just enough customers to remain profitable.

The industry has convinced many people that it is too costly/inefficient to build your own test infrastructure even while burning countless man and cpu hours on the awful solutions presented by industry.

Companies like blacksmith are smart to address the clear shortcomings in the market though personally I find life too short to spend on github actions in any capacity.
by anotherhue | 2025-07-23 16:03:57+00:00
I often raise this point, but it bears repeating.

> Interesting to note that the Mozilla CEO earned nearly as much ($5.6 M) as Mozilla received in donations ($7 M).

Baker did a CHM oral history some time ago, some of it is interesting, most of it is like deposing a lawyer.

https://youtu.be/EqW2rg0boKk?feature=shared
by sorcerer-mar | 2025-07-23 16:04:05+00:00
Tax emissions, incentivize density, let the market work.

We have both natural and artificial incentives in the opposite directions. Get rid of them then let's see what else needs to be done after that.

I've given my proposal. What's yours?

By the way, the top emitters per capita are the developed countries and those who produce energy for the developed countries. Not sure how this angelic developed country meme came to emerge among people who vaguely gesture at developing nations "exporting people" to developed countries to do bad things, but it's not correct.
by magicalhippo | 2025-07-23 16:04:25+00:00
Reminded me of when I got to see one of the customs declaration for an off-shore oil platform built here in Norway.

It was a single-item declaration: one oil plaform.

However, the elecronic customs message format didn't have enough digits to fit the item value, over a billion NOK IIRC.

After some calls with customs, they had to send it with a fictitious item value and add the true value in a free-text field.

This worked fine since there were no duties or taxes on exporting oil platforms, so no cross-checks that would fail.
Show HN: The missing link of a bookstore's tech stack
by greenie_beans | 2025-07-23 16:04:30+00:00
Hi HN!

I built Bookhead because I used to work as a bookseller and I wasn't happy with the software options when I decided to sell my own collection online (with the hopes of one day growing so I can open my own brick & mortar). So I decided to make my own bookselling app...a classic hacker distraction.

Bookhead has two main parts: 1. an inventory management app that allows a bookseller to list their books anywhere they want to sell books (like Squarespace, Biblio, eBay, Shopify (coming soon!), etc) 2. an e-commerce platform with a CMS for selling books and letting a store control their online brand

I have a very exciting roadmap that I'm not ready to fully reveal, but it's all based on books. I'm building a sorta Zapier-like platform for independent booksellers. Everything is so fragmented and disconnected, which makes it hard for booksellers to do their work. I'm hoping to change that. I have a blog post that lays out my vision here: https://bookhead.net/blog/fragmented/

The current iteration is like "data engineering as a service for books." A book is a powerful thing. I'm hoping to give a bookstore everything they need to sell books online. Inventory, e-commerce, marketing, etc. It's a crowded market but I've had fun making the bookselling app that I believe should exist.

If you know any booksellers, please let them know about this! I'm onboarding my first customer right now and the biggest bottleneck is the other bookselling software providers, despite my intention to collaborate instead of compete. It's frustrating to wait for two weeks for a point of sale provider to setup an integration. It's almost like they don't care about their customers. Some providers even require ethernet cables for their software...still partying like it's 1999. Perfect for early-adopter booksellers frustrated with current tech who understand the power of automation.

I'm currently looking for funding so I can focus on this full-time. My biggest problem right now is time (aka money) because I have to sell my time to make rent etc, and can't focus on this project like I need to. I've gotten good validation from booksellers and other technically savvy folks in the industry (I've heard from two different companies that they've considered building something like this), so I believe I have something valuable. I'm not interested in funding from somebody who doesn't share my love for books or doesn't support my mission: help people use technology to promote literature. I believe that literature is one of humanity’s most prized creations, and we can use technology as a tool to keep this gift alive.

Please email me at sam@bookhead.net if you know of booksellers who might want to be an early adopter, or know of any funding opportunities that might be a good fit.
by amendegree | 2025-07-23 16:04:32+00:00
> invade a country

Arab colonizers invaded Israel on Oct 7th (and many times before that too) and kidnapped 100s of civilians. Israel is now trying to retrieve them.

> commit a genocide

Arab/Muslim colonizers have been attempting genocide since before the 1600s, their most recent attempt was on Oct 7th. Again Israel is simply trying to reclaim their own people and prevent any future genocide attempts.
by ceejayoz | 2025-07-23 16:04:34+00:00
Reminds me a bit of when the UK accidentally invaded Spain on a training exercise. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-invade-spa...

> Lord West said: "It wasn't one of the best days in my time. I had a phone call from the military commander saying, 'Sir, I'm afraid something awful's happened.' I thought, 'Goodness me, what?' And he said, 'I'm afraid we've invaded Spain, but we don't think they've noticed.'

> "They charged up the beach in the normal way, being Royal Marines—they're frightfully good soldiers of course, and jolly good at this sort of thing—and confronted a Spanish fisherman who sort of pointed out, 'I think you're on the wrong beach.'
by nilamo | 2025-07-23 16:04:42+00:00
My experience seeing animals is apparently different from yours. The anticipation/tell is very clear for a wide range of animals... Birds squat down before taking off, cats hunker down to the ground before pouncing, etc.

Even the human jumping example again... Suggesting people only bend their knees for performance would mean the "normal" way of jumping involves keeping your legs straight at all times and using your ankles/toes for all your thrust?
by nirvanatikku | 2025-07-23 16:04:45+00:00
I find we're all missing the forest for the trees. We're using AI in spots.

AI requires a holistic revision. When the OS's catch up, we'll have some real fun.

The author is good to call out the differences in UX. Sad that design has always been given less attention.

When I first saw the title, my initial thought was this may relate to AX, which I think compliments the topic very well: https://x.com/gregisenberg/status/1947693459147526179
by AgentMatrixAI | 2025-07-23 16:05:23+00:00
haven't tried Qwen but used these "near instant token" like groq and another one that uses diffusion model to generate code via LLaMA and the results weren't satisfactory.

now if something like Gemini 2.5 pro or Sonnet 4 even can run on Cerebras generating tens of thousands of code in a few seconds, that could really make a difference.
by jstasiak | 2025-07-23 16:05:32+00:00
The package has now been restored/reinstated: https://web.archive.org/web/20250723155529/https://www.npmjs...

This has been reflected in a recent edit and comments here: https://github.com/stylus/stylus/issues/2938

No updates to the security advisory at this time: https://web.archive.org/web/20250723155624/https://github.co...
by xg15 | 2025-07-23 16:05:46+00:00
I think it's a data quality problem first, which might lead to a sort of overfitting as a consequence.

How would the AI know that a series of zero-amplitude audio samples should generate the string "[silence]"?

It can only know that if the vast majority of silent audio segments in the trainser are consistently labelled with that string. But that doesn't seem to be the case: Silence is either not labeled at all, or labeled with all kinds of different markers or labeled with unrelated things, like copyright credits.

So even if the model successfully learns a generalized representation of the concept of "silence", it's not clear at all which of all the different labels it should use for that concept.

So what might happen is that the model then starts to overfit on the tiny variations of the individual silence segments, in a desperate attempt to devise some kind of system behind the all the different "silence" labels - which will of course go wrong spectacularly as such a system doesn't exist. (Or if it does, is entirely accidental and not something that should be learned)
by MITSardine | 2025-07-23 16:05:55+00:00
At the same time, the cos and exp are also computed using addition and multiplication. Unless the values are tabulated, I imagine you'd use a series expansion. Or an even more straightforward argument is computers only know how to do addition and multiplication...

In the case of the exponential, if you're willing to start from a known value (say 0, where exp(0) = 1) and need values until the last, then using the very definition of the exponential is even more straightforward... this is the only function s.t. f' = f and f(0) = 1. In other words, step through it! The most natural definition of the exponential is as an ODE to begin with.

Tangentially related, this is one of my favourite articles "Nineteen Dubious Ways to Compute the Exponential of a Matrix":

https://www.cs.jhu.edu/~misha/ReadingSeminar/Papers/Moler03....
by 4bpp | 2025-07-23 16:06:36+00:00
I would go further and say that even if these things are for criminals, that is okay; and allowing some amount of criminal activity is necessitated by the basic humility of conceding that we might not have figured out the best set of rules for humanity to live under.

It might be appealing to fantasise about catching all the criminals and stopping all their dastardly deeds, but where would we be now if our governments had this capability 30 years ago? ...90? ...270? Would we be happier today if the last 1000 years had passed completely free of theft, murder, pederasty, and also free of blasphemy, heresy and challenges to the divine right of kings? Today, we are grateful for the actions of many a disgusting criminal that would have been condemned by any respectable and well-adjusted member of society (including you, had you lived then) at the time. Who knows which ones of today's criminals we will be thanking 30 years into the future?
Show HN: Symbol.so – Customize Unicode Symbols and Export as SVG/PNG
by liquid99 | 2025-07-23 16:06:40+00:00
Hi everyone!

I created this website to make it easy to customize and export Unicode symbols as SVG or PNG, or simply copy them quickly with their HTML, CSS, or Alt codes.

It features over 70 categories, thousands of symbols, one-click copy, clipboard history, and fast symbol search.

Would love to hear your feedback!
by FerkiHN | 2025-07-23 16:06:57+00:00
Yes, I used ChatGPT to help refine the README and occasionally get suggestions for cleaner or more efficient code patterns.

But the core logic, turbo decoding modes, and embedded optimization — that’s all written, tested, and understood by me.

I see AI as a tool, not an author — it helps speed things up, but I still do the thinking.
by ms0 | 2025-07-23 16:06:58+00:00
Inspired by sensory augmentation projects like NorthSense/North Paw (wearable devices that vibrate in the direction of North), by cultures that navigate using cardinal directions ("south" instead of "to your left"), and the idea of active inference I wanted to see if I could gain a similar intuitive sense of orientation using just spatial audio cues from my phone. People who used North Paw say that while using it, they had a sense of north and navigated better; but once they stopped, they lost the sense, and their navigation skills were back to baseline. So I thought that I don't want the app to tell me where's north; I want it to make me predict north, and correct me when I'm wrong.

I started with a webapp, but it couldn't run in the background, so I (or, well, little helpful shoggoths: Claude, Gemini, & Codex) built a native iOS app instead. The core functionality is simple: every few seconds (configurable), it makes a subtle cue sound, and one second later, it plays a short sound coming precisely from the direction of North using spatial audio (headphones required). After a couple of weeks, I found I could instinctively sense North, including when the app wasn't running. It's definitely not magic: if I teleport somewhere (i.e., use the tube), I normally need to look at the compass once to start tracking it again; but it still feels like I've acquired a new sensory modality.

The app also supports vibration mode (for discreet haptic pulses when you're facing North), runs unobtrusively in the background without affecting your music or podcasts, and can be calibrated to offset the phone being at an angle in your pocket.

I now usually know the direction of North instantly without actively thinking; navigation feels genuinely easier and more intuitive. It's probably most beneficial in areas without strict street grids (like most of Europe) than in the US, though.

The source code of the app is on GitHub, and the app is on the App Store.
by gruez | 2025-07-23 16:07:12+00:00
>Apartheid, genocide and war crimes are not "culture war" issues.

"Culture war" doesn't literally mean culture stuff like religion. It basically covers any controversial issue over ideology.

From wikipedia:

>A culture war is a form of cultural conflict (metaphorical "war") between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology (moral beliefs, humane virtues, and religious practices) upon mainstream society,[1][2] or upon the other. In political usage, culture war is a metaphor for "hot-button" politics about values and ideologies, realized with intentionally adversarial social narratives meant to provoke political polarization among the mainstream of society over economic matters,[3][4] such as those of public policy,[5] as well as of consumption.[1] As practical politics, a culture war is about social policy wedge issues that are based on abstract arguments about values, morality, and lifestyle meant to provoke political cleavage in a multicultural society.[2]

Of course, everyone thinks their issue is a Super Serious Issue that isn't culture war, and their side is so obviously correct that the idea controversy exists at all is absurd, so you really can't take someone's word that it's not a culture war issue. The Wikipedia article agrees with this. It lists such serious issues as trans rights, education policy, and obamacare. I'm sure if you asked strong supporters/opponents for those issues, they'd scoff at the characterization of "culture war".
by zelphirkalt | 2025-07-23 16:07:40+00:00
My Haskell reading is weak, but that looks like it would change the order of elements in the 2 lists, as you are prepending items to the front of `trues` and `falses`, instead of "appending" them. Of course `append` is forbidden, because it is linear runtime itself.

I just checked my code and while I think the partition example still shows the problem, the problem I used to check is a similar one, but different one:

Split a list at an element that satisfies a predicate. Here is some code for that in Scheme:

(define split-at (λ (lst pred) "Each element of LST is checked using the predicate. If the predicate is satisfied for an element, then that element will be seen as the separator. Return 2 values: The split off part and the remaining part of the list LST." (let iter ([lst° lst] [index° 0] [cont (λ (acc-split-off rem-lst) (values acc-split-off rem-lst))]) (cond [(null? lst°) (cont '() lst°)] [(pred (car lst°) index°) (cont '() (cdr lst°))] [else (iter (cdr lst°) (+ index° 1) (λ (new-tail rem-lst) (cont (cons (car lst°) new-tail) rem-lst)))]))))

For this kind of stuff with constructed continuations they somehow never get it. They will do `reverse` and `list->vector`, and `append` all day long or some other attempt of working around what you specify they shall not do. The concept of building up a continuation seems completely unknown to them.