MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Aachen | 2025-07-29 21:26:51+00:00
I wonder how much this was a factor:

"The occurrence of inaccurate “hallucinations” by the current [LLMs] poses a significant challenge for their use in education. [...] we enriched our prompts with comprehensive, step-by-step answers, guiding the AI tutor to deliver accurate and high-quality explanations (v) to students. As a result, 83% of students reported that the AI tutor’s explanations were as good as, or better than, those from human instructors in the class."

Not at all dismissing the study, but to replicate these results for yourself, this level of gain over a classroom setting may be tricky to achieve without having someone make class materials for the bot to present to you first

Edit: the authors further say

"Krupp et al. (2023) observed limited reflection among students using ChatGPT without guidance, while Forero (2023) reported a decline in student performance when AI interactions lacked structure and did not encourage critical thinking. These previous approaches did not adhere to the same research-based best practices that informed our approach."

Two other studies failed to get positive results at all. YMMV a lot apparently (like, all bets are off and your learning might go in the negative direction if you don't do everything exactly as in this study)
by amelius | 2025-07-29 21:27:16+00:00
> Are you going to examine a few petabytes of data for each model (...) How?

I can think of a few ways. Perhaps I'd use an LLM to find objectionable content. But anyway, it is the same argument as you can have against e.g. the Linux kernel. Are you going to read every line of code to see if it is secure? Maybe, or maybe not, but that is not the point.

The point is now a model is a black box. It might as well be a Trojan horse.
by captainbland | 2025-07-29 21:27:32+00:00
I think this sounds similar on the surface but the nature of the distribution of physical goods and digital media are so different that the premise doesn't actually hold up. Age verification has a meaningful impact in the physical world because supply of goods is limited by physical process and marginal costs of supply/production. Reproduction and sharing of digital media, especially illicit digital media, is essentially free and limitless, and can be done by anyone and even be done anonymously or pseudonymously. You can't just link hundreds of people to a single unregulated bottle of beer you found out about but you can do that to a site hosting some adult content. The dynamics are totally different.
by jonathanlydall | 2025-07-29 21:27:35+00:00
Many professionals with lower skilled jobs sometimes lean too heavily on pattern matching too.

For example, customer service reps tend to often vaguely match your request with a possibly or only vaguely applicable templated response.

Technically savvy customers who tend to try explain problems in detail are probably more likely to get an actually non-applicable canned response as the CS rep gets frustrated with the amount of information and will latch onto the first phrase which relates to a templated response without really considering context.

My reply’s getting a little tangential now, but I feel this is good life advice, I’ve found I’m more likely to get decent customer service if I keep my requests as short as possible.

The first sentence needs to essentially state the issue I need help with. In some cases a bulleted list of things I’ve tried helps and then I’m sure to include essential info like an account number, e.g.

I’m getting error 13508 when I try log into my account. I’ve already tried the following solutions with no success:

- Clearing my browser cache and cookies.

- Restarting my computer.

- Running all software updates.

My account number: xxx

What is the next step here?
by altcognito | 2025-07-29 21:28:06+00:00
"Post truth". History is a funny topic. It is both critical and irrelevant. Do we really need to know how the founder felt about gun rights? Abortion? Both of these topics were radically different in their day.

All of us need to learn the basics about how to read history and historians critically and to know our the limitations which as you stated probably a tall task.
by lenerdenator | 2025-07-29 21:29:27+00:00
I feel like the main corpus for GHCP, at least, is probably just GitHub.

SO is filled with all sorts of questions from 10-15 years ago that aren't up-to-date with the languages and tooling of today. If you develop in a language that is substantially different from what it used to be (JavaScript, Python, etc.) that is problematic.
by mvieira38 | 2025-07-29 21:29:39+00:00
"thoughtful" is the key word that makes it not a contradiction logically speaking, as the author likely was writing about precisely the stress between meaningful participation leaving a legacy and mindless social media consooming.

Arguing for Claude, though, if you think of "contradictions" in the more wishy washy continental philosophy way, it fits. There is a stress between the concepts of "digital footprint" in the mass surveillance/commercial capitalism sense and "legacy" in the writer/creator sense, and it is a cool distinction to point out, where one ends and the other begins. If you read the full quote by Claude, it seems to be leading to this, especially the passage below:

"This reflects a deeper tension: How do you engage meaningfully with systems whose fundamental nature you find problematic?"
by evantbyrne | 2025-07-29 21:29:47+00:00
Signatures are the tip of the iceberg. Plenty of other forms of bs forensics live on in the legal system in some shape or form. e.g., fingerprint analysis, polygraphs, field sobriety tests, devices that literally do nothing, trainings on reading facial expressions, and so on. If you can take a two week course on it, then chances are there is some cop somewhere using it to detain people.
by SLWW | 2025-07-29 21:32:59+00:00
I only highlighted that I'm not in support of the crusades since it sounds like i might be by my comments. I was highlighting that they didn't just lash out with no cause to start their holy war.

Rhodesia is a hard one; since the more I learn about it the more I feel terrible for both sides; I also do not support terrorism against a nation even if I believe they might not be in the right. However i hold by my disdain for how the British responded/withdrew from them effectively doomed Rhodesia making peaceful resolution essentially impossible.
by miellaby | 2025-07-29 21:34:02+00:00
This article seems like fantasy fiction: 'We thought antibiotics were to blame, but actually, it's NO2.' (next 5G?) while it's widely recognized for the last ten years that the primary culprit is neonicotinoids: very potent and pervasive chemicals that accumulate in the biotope, killing all insects indiscriminately, contrary to the misleading claims made by the agro-industry.
by kulahan | 2025-07-29 21:34:07+00:00
IMO it's a stronger desire to "do no wrong" than to "do right". The adult entertainment industry is rife with trafficking, drugs, assault, etc. - it wouldn't surprise me one bit to hear the youngest generations are swearing off it simply because they won't associate with that level of dangerous stuff? I'm just pulling things out of my behind here though. I could be totally off the mark.
by taeric | 2025-07-29 21:34:25+00:00
I mean, somewhat true, but probably a touch oversold? I don't think people putting in a single beehive are doing much to impact a neighborhood. Probably less than having a house cat. Which, is not nothing, but is not ecosystem changing, either.

I'm reminded of how much we were taught that monocrops were bad things in grade school. And yet, you'd be hard pressed to name a popular food that isn't grown in giant monocrop fields.
by exmadscientist | 2025-07-29 21:34:55+00:00
Right, that's one of the pieces.

The article does not really fit that piece into the framework of "why do people in society feel that things are broken?" (which your comment seems to do just fine). Hence my complaint about the article.

Unfortunately sibling comments have exposed this article as likely to be AI slop, which would explain pretty everything about it. Now I am reassessing my own ability to be taken in by slop, and that's depressing in different ways....
by tracker1 | 2025-07-29 21:35:05+00:00
No, he's been working on building a larger eLearning solution with some interesting workflow analytics around courseware evaluation and grading. He's been involved in some of the newer LRS specifications and some implementation details to bridge training as well as real world exposure scenarios. Working a lot with first responders, incident response training etc.

I've worked with him off and on for years from simulating aircraft diagnostics hardware to incident command simulation and setting up core infrastructure for F100 learning management backends.
by Bjartr | 2025-07-29 21:35:27+00:00
In today's world of containerization and AI powered UI automation, perhaps a single user-facing client could be viable again, powered by hidden per-service clients under the hood. Where each services' UI state is continually monitored and interacted with by an AI directed by user interactions in the visible interface. That would be against the services' ToS probably, but it could work I think.

Who needs APIs when a computer can exploit the analog hole and use the same affordances as a human?
by anndvision | 2025-07-29 21:35:29+00:00
We recently ran similar experiments and saw that fine-tuning small models on automatically curated high-quality outputs from a large model can beat large-model performance while reducing inference costs by up to 30x and inference time by up to 4x.

We benchmarked closed-source (OpenAI, Google) and open-source (Qwen) models on multi-turn maze navigation (BabyAI), agentic RAG (Multi-Hop), and agentic tool use (τ-bench).

We're still running a few experiments and plan to update the post with additional results in a few days.

Looking forward to trying out importance weighting soon!

Curated Behavior Cloning: Small LLMs Can Beat Large Ones at 5-30x Lower Cost: https://www.tensorzero.com/blog/curated-behavior-cloning-sma...
by Uveddi | 2025-07-29 21:36:22+00:00
Hey Hacker News,

I built Uveddi, a new open-source CLI to tackle architectural drift and unmanaged technical debt.

Unlike linters that focus on single files, Uveddi acts as an "AI Architect," analyzing your codebase's high-level structure to find insidious anti-patterns that can destabilize a project over time. It uses deep Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) analysis to catch things like:

Cyclic Dependencies The "Blob" (God Objects) Unstable Interfaces

A key feature is our hybrid AI model built for flexibility and privacy. You can run Uveddi with local LLMs (via Ollama), so your code never leaves your machine. For teams, you can connect to commercial LLMs, where we use smart-prompting to keep costs down and prevent hallucinations.

It generates actionable Markdown reports with Mermaid.js diagrams to help you visualize complex dependencies. The CLI is written in Rust for performance, so it's fast and fits right into a CI/CD pipeline.

Sign up for the private alpha release! https://tally.so/r/31oOyp

Finally, we built it to be extensible with a sandboxed WebAssembly (WASM) plugin system. The goal is to let the community contribute custom scanners for new patterns or languages.

We're in the early stages and would love your feedback. I'm here to answer any technical questions. Let me know what you think!
by noleary | 2025-07-29 21:37:01+00:00
Imagine two different password strength standards:

1. Just a 4 digit numeric PIN like `1981`

2. A 20 character upper/lower/numeric/special-character password like `qmd1tkf7mwa.PQB0qrz$`

--

The PIN has lower entropy and is therefore a lot easier to brute force.

I haven't calculated this stuff myself -- I just used Wolfram Alpha -- but it looks like the PIN would take <1 second to brute force, while the 20 character password would take 7.6 * 10^25 years. [1] [2]

--

[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=password+strength+qmd1t...

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=password+strength+1981
by varenc | 2025-07-29 21:37:22+00:00
This feels like a classic example of a platform provider eating its own ecosystem. There's many custom "GPTs" out there that do essentially the same thing with custom instructions. Mr Ranedeer[0] is an early well known one (30k stars). But now essentially the same functionality is built straight into the ChatGPT interface.

[0] https://github.com/JushBJJ/Mr.-Ranedeer-AI-Tutor
by cycomanic | 2025-07-29 21:37:23+00:00
This is definitely not fringe conspiracy theorists. In fact I would argue that it's largely people familiar with the sport that are skeptical.

It was the same during the Amstrong times. I was racing as an amateur during those years, and lots of people were quite open about doping, i.e. everyone new someone who had been on training camp with people who were using, people asked others what they used... This particularly known for the top amateurs and continental pros. If you brought this up with regular cycling fans (particularly in the english speaking sphere), you would get accused of being a conspiracy theorist, that the top talent would not need to do this (only the talentless masses who could not make it otherwise...). Which is such a weird argument considering the gains we knew about. Well we know how history turned out.

Considering that it's the same people running the show (I encourage anyone to look into the history of Mauro Gianetti who believes that UAE would not do everything for a win), I believe everything we hear about is just the tip of the iceberg and reality is much worse. Cycling lost their right to benefit of the doubt a long time ago. As a side note, I don't believe they will every catch a high profile rider with those motor tests. Nobody actually wants to catch them, just imagine they find Pogacar was using a motor, that would be the death of cycling as a marketable sport. That would be swept under the carpet, just like Amstrongs positive EPO test was initially.
by runarberg | 2025-07-29 21:37:29+00:00
Sorry, I’m not looking for analysis, but rather blame. If HN moderation is more keen on taking down comments that asks hard questions about the community then comments which are doing a known form of hate speech (which genocide denial undoubtedly is) that is precisely the failure in moderation which I was talking about.

That is to say, if my posts were correctly taken down for e.g. being rude, then I would expect posts which engage in seriously harmful rhetoric to be taken down much quicker.

Note that when I say moderation I am talking about moderation in a broad sense, not just what the admins do, but also when user flags take posts down. As a community HN should be very quick on taking down posts which engage in genocide denialism.
by ryukafalz | 2025-07-29 21:37:53+00:00
I used to use Ubuntu Touch on my OnePlus One for quite a while and it was very nice! I had to switch away because it didn't really support group MMS (still doesn't from what I can tell), and then later US carriers started requiring VoLTE which it didn't support for a while either. But I still hope to switch back someday, that was the most enjoyable phone I'd used since the N900.
by kulahan | 2025-07-29 21:38:07+00:00
Mason Bees are hilarious bees native to North America that don't fly very well, so they just kinda dive-bomb flowers to get pollen. This is important because that heavy slam (well, heavy for a flower) is enough to distribute pollen into the air. These bees are fat, fuzzy, and winter over by crawling into holes and sealing themselves inside with some mud-spit.

It's VERY easy to create homes for these guys - if you've ever seen someone with a large log that has lots of little holes drilled in it, they were likely prepping a Mason Bee habitat. Ideally, they burrow into hollow, dry grass stems that broke off at some point in the fall.

I try to tell people about this bee because it's so easy to make homes for them. Just make sure to move the home every year, or it becomes too easy for predators to find them.

edit: also worth mentioning this bee is so docile, it usually only stings when it's squeezed or wet, and its sting is very light, and the hook is unbarbed. Better than honey bees in so many ways.
by AndrewKemendo | 2025-07-29 21:38:40+00:00
I have almost entirely switched to ddg for search and find it’s way better than google for everything with one exception: anything commercial

So Google is still the best search if you’re trying to source some obscure robotics part (for example)

But I’ll never go back to Google for search, it’s a terrible experience with all the AI Slop and ads
by Almondsetat | 2025-07-29 21:38:50+00:00
Man, that would be great. Imagine going out for a walk with just your smartwatch. Then you go back home and you insert the watch into a phone case and it gives it more RAM and CPU power and it becomes your phone and you go out again. Then when you come back you put it inside your big box and now you have a computer. All with the same accounts, OS, apps.
by Mawr | 2025-07-29 21:39:02+00:00
> Instead of being able to immediately see the syntax so they can rush back here to make insightful and educated comments on how that syntax compares to $their_fave_lang, they are forced to spend up to 4 or even 5 minutes reading documents clearly describing the design of the language, and being obliged to click on their mouses up to 10 times even in some cases.

Welcome to interface design! Your way of thinking could not be more wrong if you tried :)

How buying stuff on say Amazon works:

1. Click on picture of a car

2. Click "Buy Now"

How it would look like if we apply yours/the Pony website designers' approach:

1. Read a 10 page description of what the car is

2. Click on a link buried on page 12 that lets you buy the thing

Which approach gets more sales?
by megfaibischkuhn | 2025-07-29 21:39:11+00:00
Goal: build something for the Outside Lands attendees that folks would genuinely want to use at a music festival (where most would rather be dancing than on their phone)

Outside Cam turns your phone into a virtual photo booth that could land your photo on Outside Lands stage screens.

https://outside-cam.lovable.app/

Snap a photo → it reads your vibe and matches you with artists from the lineup to help you discover new music (use it for your post-show photo recap on IG and impress your friends with your music taste) → Submit to potentially appear on the big screens between sets

I built this solo in 3 hours as a non-techie & this was my first ever hackathon! I'm working on making it better and would love your feedback @spreadaioli on Tik Tok, Youtube, and Instagram :)

-Meg Faibisch Kuhn
by zamalek | 2025-07-29 21:39:14+00:00
> using a calculator to come up with the same answer does not

I'm not sure why you're still talking about this. A basic "non-graphing" (90s "scientific calculator") is not capable of doing all the work for you. All it did was the basic things like add, mul, sub, sin, cos, etc. I am referring to one of these[1].

> It's not far from how common core, aka new math actually tries to teach it. It actually shows you understand the mechanics

I understand the mechanics of mathematics but still fared more poorly than I should have because I messed up a simple op like multiplication more often than I should have. My point is that had I had access to a basic calculator I would have scored significantly better in school. I went from Bs to As (80%, not sure what that is in GPA) in university by mere virtue of being able to use a simple calculator.

Again, not being able to use a [basic] calculator tests a signal that isn't actually important. Not being able to use Google/AI/whatever in your interview similarly tests an unimportant signal. The most important hire signal for a SDE is actually how they operate in a team and how they communicate with stakeholders, which these coding tests don't do.

[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/FX-77.JP...
by entropie | 2025-07-29 21:39:16+00:00
It was not a short way to get her there.

I tried a web interface before among other thigs. The telegram bot is perfectly fine because she can just use the share button on youtube on her mobile.

If the bot receives a message specifically from her, it is stored in a special folder in Jellyfin, and jf displays the recent added tracks.

She spent the last few days and weeks sorting 500+ GB of audiobooks onto an external SSD she bought on my recommendation.

I give lots of tech support, but I try to do it in a way that she gets something out of it so I have to spend less work later.

I haven't been able to get her to use ChatGPT so far, but I will eventually.

She used my telegram bot so much that I rewrote the original software (1) to something better (2) (that I can use regulary as well). The second iteration supports mqtt and magic wormhole and sends wormhole codes back to the sender after downloading. It was a bit much for her, she never used wormhole but I do.

1: https://gist.github.com/entropie/d265e94136b9777cc6b3190189b...

2: https://github.com/entropie/ytdltt
by exmadscientist | 2025-07-29 21:39:29+00:00
There is this guy: https://clima.protoart.net/

It looks to tick a lot of boxes but isn't quite what I want, and is just expensive enough that I haven't pulled the trigger to test one out anyway. It seems to be well regarded if it does what you're looking for.

(I really only want to add wall thermostats to a new-built house that was designed for mini-splits for the beginning, so it has crappy remotes but no wall thermostats, and to have some button I can press for "all off" to make sure all the mini-splits are actually off. Other features welcome, but those are what I'm really after.)
by jonahx | 2025-07-29 21:39:32+00:00
> learn more about the Israeli/Palestinians

> to be quite good at math and programming

Since LLMs are essentially summarizing relevant content, this makes sense. In "objective" fields like math and CS, the vast majority of content aligns, and LLMs are fantastic at distilling the relevant portions you ask about. When there is no consensus, they can usually tell you that ("this is nuanced topic with many perspectives...", etc), but they can't help you resolve the truth because, from their perspective, the only truth is the content.
by SLWW | 2025-07-29 21:40:12+00:00
A nation that might fit this description may have had their populace indoctrinated (through a widespread political campaign) to believe that the majority of the world throughout history seeks for their destruction. That's a reason for why they think that way, but not because they woke up one day and decided to choose violence.

However not a justification, since I believe that what is happening today is truly evil. Same with another nation who entered a war knowing they'd be crushed, which is suicide; whether that nation is in the right is of little effect if most of their next generation has died.
by SalariedSlave | 2025-07-29 21:41:03+00:00
I'd be interested to see, what results one would get, using that prompt with other models. Is there much more to ChatGPT Study Mode than a specific system prompt? Although I am not a student, I have used similar prompts to dive into topics I wish to learn, with I feel, positive results indeed. I shall give this a go with a few models.