MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by syphia | 2025-07-29 22:30:40+00:00
In my experience as a math/physics TA, either a student cares enough about the material to reduce the resources they rely on, or they aim to pass the class with minimum effort and will take whatever shortcuts are available. I can only see AI filling the latter niche.

When the former students ask questions, I answer most of them by pointing at the relevant passage in their book/notes, questioning their interpretation of what the book says, or giving them a push to actually problem-solve on their own. On rare occasions the material is just confusing/poorly written and I'll decide to re-interpret it for them to help. But the fundamental problems are usually with study habits or reading comprehension, not poor explanations. They need to question their habits and their interpretation of what other people say, not be spoon fed more personally-tailored questions and answers and analogies and self-help advice.

Besides asking questions to make sure I understand the situation, I mostly repeat the same ten phrases or so. Finding those ten phrases was the hard part and required a bit of ingenuity and trial-and-error.

As for the latter students, they mostly care about passing and moving on, so arguing about the merits of such a system is fairly pointless. If it gets a good enough grade on their homework, it worked.
by dylan604 | 2025-07-29 22:31:00+00:00
okay. and? the CTO isn't the last word in anything. if they are overruled to keep releasing new features, acquiring new users/clients, sales forward dev cycles, then the whole thing has potential to collapse under the weight of itself.

It's actually the job of the CEO to keep all of the c-suite people doing jobs. Doesn't seem to stop the CEO salary explosions.
by eightysixfour | 2025-07-29 22:31:06+00:00
No, it has nothing to do with this being hacker news and everything to do with us being realists. Sam is overselling, we all "get" that at this point.

Trump is what we're talking about because this was such a transparent attempt for OpenAI to give Trump a talking point/win around AI in the US. Everyone knows if you are big enough and don't give him a win, he'll eventually come after you, so they're just playing the game. None of us like the game, but we're honest that it exists.
by jibal | 2025-07-29 22:31:06+00:00
Indeed; thank you. That's certainly what happened here, together with ad hominem whataboutism.

P.S. "please do flag and downvote rather."

I don't have that capability, else I would certainly use it.

"Surely you can appreciate that their comment was not written in agreement with or support for you"

No, I disagree; I think that is exactly what it was--the subject of the comment was your comment, not mine--you wrote of my statement as being a universal truth, not v.v.

Unsurprisingly, on every point where you and I disagree, I think that I am right and you are wrong.

I think it is best that, from now on, neither of us speak to or about each other.
by blattus | 2025-07-29 22:31:21+00:00
As a consumer I'm excited by the vision these convergent solutions sell, in a futuristic "I just carry one device" way, but I think the reason they haven't kicked off is that in reality you don't just have monitors and keyboards and mice lying around wherever you go.

A significant part of the value prop of the "mobile" desktop is that you can "just plug in", but if you have to carry a keyboard and mouse well you might as well also carry the incredibly thin screen it's attached to on a laptop.
by graemep | 2025-07-29 22:31:28+00:00
its not going to happen. Quite the opposite. The EU's age verification app will only work on Google attested (i.e. controlled by American big tech) smartphones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705240

The UK's Online Safety Act's main effect is to strengthen big tech and protect them from competition, and make self hosing prohibitively expensive for many.

European governments will talk about digital sovereignty but will do nothing that involved actually spending money, or regulating the private sector or anything actually effective.
by quickthrowman | 2025-07-29 22:31:43+00:00
An ERV itself does nothing for air quality, yours is likely just a a fixed plate air-to-air heat exchanger, much easier for a homeowner to maintain than an enthalpy wheel that has a motor and needs additional air filters since the fixed plate ERV has no moving parts.

Setting your furnace fan to ON to increase the number of air exchanges in your house without the heat exchanger would do the same thing.

Your indoor air quality, assuming your HVAC is properly balanced to have positive pressure, is determined by your furnace filter type and age and how clean your ducts are.

There are other types of heat exchangers used to capture heat from exhaust air streams (enthalpy wheels are common in commercial HVAC) but none of them change air quality.

That being said, ERVs/HRVs are amazing and should be in every house, along with domestic hot water recirculating pumps[0] :)

There are also heat exchangers that capture latent heat from your shower water [1] to preheat the cold water line going into the hot water heater, though I am unsure if you’d ever capture enough latent heat back to pay for it. They’re made out of copper so they’re a bit pricey, and virtually everyone has a natural gas water heater where I live (MN), so it’s practically free to heat water.

[0] https://www.nachi.org/hot-water-recirculation-systems.htm

[1] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/drain-water-heat-recovery
by WarOnPrivacy | 2025-07-29 22:32:30+00:00
> I doubt this is Microsoft conspiring against a LibreOffice dev. It's not impossible, but it seems way more likely that it's just an automated process that is misfiring.

I could agree with the beginning of that but not the classification of a misfire. A misfire implies a brief, exceptional occurrence and neither of those adjectives seem likely here.

That's based on a few years spent in Microsoft's forever-shuffling admin carousel (EAC, Exch Migration, Intune, Azure hydra, 365/Copilot-all-the-things). Thru that, I have come to believe that incompetence is almost always the right answer for MS-generated woes.
by DoodahMan | 2025-07-29 22:32:34+00:00
> Where in reality, the war could have been over in 5 minutes if they released the hostages at any time during the past 3 years.

This talking point is very-much dated now.. Israel has said that they will not stop until Hamas is "eliminated". Netanyahu also threw in another condition to end the war: implementation of Donald Trump's plan to relocate Gaza's civilians [0]. So now I guess it doesn't end until ethnic cleansing is complete? That's lovely.

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-implementation-of-tr...
by apothegm | 2025-07-29 22:32:37+00:00
Because it literally is a mirror of the status quo. Training an LLM is having it memorize everything anyone has ever said on the internet (or a reasonable attempt at approximating that).

It operates by returning an averaged out version of the most common response to what you asked — so the average of everything that’s ever been said on the internet in response to a question like yours.

Which is pretty darn close to a definition of status quo.
by dgunay | 2025-07-29 22:32:47+00:00
Yeah this was unfortunately my experience too. A lot of head nodding and a token effort up front but they quickly reverted back to playing telephone on Jira tickets. A year or two later we're slowly ripping out the cucumber tests and replacing them with tests in our implementation language.

It's a two way street. I'd highly recommend never implementing it unless product is the one driving it, and actually makes it a priority.
by protocolture | 2025-07-29 22:33:23+00:00
Taking in those refugees, or having them leave and go anywhere is deeply unpopular everywhere. Because those refugees, have a right to return. They have land to go to, it might currently be illegally occupied, but their claim is valid.

Letting Israel force those refugees into another country just guarantees the completion of their racist genocidal settlement project.

Its weird to imply that refusing to help force them from their land is somehow inhumane, when the inhumanity is being driven by the force that drove them off their land and will shoot them if they try and return.

"The clock is never turning back". I really don't care which state controls the land, the people have a right to return. Really the 2 state solution is a distraction from Israels obligations to these people.
by billconan | 2025-07-29 22:34:15+00:00
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) The primary federal law governing automated calls and telemarketing in the U.S. is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991, enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Key Provisions of the TCPA Relevant to Your App:

Automated Telephone Dialing Systems (ATDS) and Prerecorded Messages:

The TCPA significantly restricts the use of ATDS (autodialers) and artificial or prerecorded voice messages.

To cell phones: Generally, it is prohibited to make calls to cell phones using an ATDS or a prerecorded/artificial voice without the prior express written consent of the called party.

To residential landlines: It is generally prohibited to make calls to residential landlines using an artificial or prerecorded voice without prior express consent, unless an emergency or an exemption applies.

Definition of ATDS: The definition of an ATDS has been a subject of legal debate. The Supreme Court in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid (2021) narrowed the definition to systems that use a random or sequential number generator to store or produce numbers to be called and then dial them. This means simply dialing from a stored list might not be considered an ATDS, but if your system generates or "predicts" numbers, it likely would be. However, even if your system isn't strictly an ATDS, the "prerecorded voice" or "artificial voice" prohibitions still apply.

"Telemarketing" vs. "Informational" Calls:

The TCPA distinguishes between telemarketing/advertising calls and purely informational calls.

Telemarketing/Advertising Calls: These have the strictest consent requirements (prior express written consent). If your app promotes or advertises anything, even indirectly (e.g., promoting your app's service itself), it could be deemed telemarketing.

Informational Calls: These generally have a lower consent bar (prior express consent, which can be verbal or implied through an established business relationship), but still carry restrictions, especially for robocalls to cell phones.

Crucially, calling the IRS or DMV is generally considered an "informational" or "transactional" purpose from your side, not a telemarketing call to you. However, your app initiating the call using an automated system creates the legal exposure.

Do Not Call (DNC) Registry: While primarily for telemarketing, if your app's purpose somehow touches on soliciting, you'd need to check against the National Do Not Call Registry. However, calls to government entities (like IRS/DMV) are not typically subject to DNC rules in the same way consumer phone numbers are.

Newer FCC Rules on AI and Robocalls: The FCC is actively addressing the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in robocalls. As of late 2024 and early 2025, the FCC has affirmed that AI-generated voices are considered "artificial or prerecorded voices" under the TCPA, meaning they are subject to the same consent requirements. There are also proposals for clearer disclosure requirements for AI-generated calls.
by filleokus | 2025-07-29 22:34:33+00:00
I've been occasionally using Microsoft's RDP Client [0] on my iPhone with external keyboard + mouse with a usb-c cable into my external monitor (with a Logitech RF dongle connected to the back of it).

It worked okay, the mouse support is somewhat of a hack, but keyboard works awesome.

The biggest annoyance was actually getting RDP to work satisfactory on a linux box with no external monitor plugged in to it (hetzner box).

I thought someone would have created an app to run browser on the external screen in full resolution, so I could skip RDP and use vscode server via the browser. But the only option seems to be infinitex2p which is not available in the EU :(.

[0]: Which in typical Microsoft idiotic fashion semi recently got renamed to "Windows app"... [1]: https://x.com/infinitex2p
by jacobedawson | 2025-07-29 22:34:39+00:00
An underrated quality of LLMs as study partner is that you can ask "stupid" questions without fear of embarrassment. Adding in a mode that doesn't just dump an answer but works to take you through the material step-by-step is magical. A tireless, capable, well-versed assistant on call 24/7 is an autodidact's dream.

I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism. Learning something online 5 years ago often involved trawling incorrect, outdated or hostile content and attempting to piece together mental models without the chance to receive immediate feedback on intuition or ask follow up questions. This is leaps and bounds ahead of that experience.

Should we trust the information at face value without verifying from other sources? Of course not, that's part of the learning process. Will some (most?) people rely on it lazily without using it effectively? Certainly, and this technology won't help or hinder them any more than a good old fashioned textbook.

Personally I'm over the moon to be living at a time where we have access to incredible tools like this, and I'm impressed with the speed at which they're improving.
by wewewedxfgdf | 2025-07-29 22:34:45+00:00
I think we are agreed.

Companies, after a disaster, focus lots of effort on that particular disaster, leaving all the other potential disasters unplanned for.

If you work at Webflow, you can anticipate LOTS of work in disaster recovery in the next 12 months. This has magically become a high priority for the CEO, who previously wanted features more than disaster recovery planning.

They will wait to focus massive resources on their security until after they get hacked.
by ACCount36 | 2025-07-29 22:34:50+00:00
As always: if those ideas are so good, why aren't they used?

If existing practices are somehow radically worse, I would expect the first entity to adopt better practices to obtain a significant advantage - and the competition to copy them eventually.

I'm incredibly skeptical of any "everyone is doing X completely wrong and you should listen to ME and BUY MY BOOK instead".
by TexanFeller | 2025-07-29 22:35:06+00:00
> Management Science

It’s jarring and galling to see management and science put together in a way that’s suggestive of management being a science. It reeks of stolen valor.

Obligatory Feynman on “sciences”: https://youtu.be/tWr39Q9vBgo?si=SYTZSNA0G-RZDguA
by troyvit | 2025-07-29 22:35:19+00:00
I wonder what it would be like to have a giant Mason Bee hotel in a riparian buffer strip alongside a plot. One problem would be as you point out that predators could find them easily. Another might be that pollinating one crop doesn't do enough for a mason bee all season long.

It looks like some folks use them for berries though: https://backyardbeekeeping.iamcountryside.com/plants-pollina...

We have some of those in our wild crazy yard. I gotta build me some homes for them because you're right they are so cute.
by Eji1700 | 2025-07-29 22:36:13+00:00
I've been diving towards this outcome for awhile now.

I have a gpd pocket 4 for my machine, but carry a chiri CE 5x3 and the MS arc mouse (and am looking for a second screen).

It's an extremely small footprint in my bag, and i'm not sure it can get much smaller. You could remove the keyboard and the mouse from the Pocket 4, but given they're on top of the hardware it wouldn't save that much space.

I can, in theory, do the same setup with my phone instead of the pocket though. I'm yet to really hook it all up and test (I expect several points of failure given past experiments), but the idea really is intriguing.

It does however require people to get more comfortable with smaller keyboards/mice (please for the love of god, if nothing else, swap left control with caps lock), or at least more portable ones.

And as for the ideal of "carry a drive, hook up to hardware as needed", that'll always run into the common issue of who is maintaining the hardware. We need cheap and easy to fix/replace hardware for that to ever really be a thing.
by FuriouslyAdrift | 2025-07-29 22:36:29+00:00
Industrial electrician around here start at 30 - 35 for 2 years as a trainee then go to 40. That's top 10% income for low cost of living area. It's not unusual to hit 100k with no school debt at a young age.

Industrial automation technician I have worked with makes north of 300k but he is traveling all over the world to do it.
by pron | 2025-07-29 22:37:39+00:00
TLA+ was specifically designed for practitioners (https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/book.html), although he did use earlier incarnations of TLA to analyse his own concurrent and distributed algorithms.

His paper explaining TLA [1] says:

> We are motivated not by an abstract ideal of elegance, but by the practical problem of reasoning about real algorithms. Rigorous reasoning is the only way to avoid subtle errors in concurrent algorithms, and we want to make reasoning as simple as possible by making the underlying formalism simple.

The introduction to the book says:

> TLA provides a mathematical foundation for describing systems. To write specifications, we need a complete language built atop that foundation. I ini- tially thought that this language should be some sort of abstract programming language whose semantics would be based on TLA. I didn’t know what kind of programming language constructs would be best, so I decided to start writing specifications directly in TLA. I intended to introduce programming constructs as I needed them. To my surprise, I discovered that I didn’t need them. What I needed was a robust language for writing mathematics.

> Although mathematicians have developed the science of writing formulas, they haven’t turned that science into an engineering discipline. ... The specification of a real system can be dozens or even hundreds of pages long. Mathematicians know how to write 20-line formulas, not 20-page formulas. So, I had to introduce notations for writing long formulas. What I took from programming languages were ideas for modularizing large specifications.

And the Getting Started portion says:

> A system specification consists of a lot of ordinary mathematics glued together with a tiny bit of temporal logic. That’s why most TLA+ constructs are for expressing ordinary mathematics. To write specifications, you have to be familiar with this ordinary math. Unfortunately, the computer science departments in many universities apparently believe that fluency in C++ is more important than a sound education in elementary mathematics. So, some readers may be unfamiliar with the math needed to write specifications. Fortunately, this math is quite simple. If exposure to C++ hasn’t destroyed your ability to think logically, you should have no trouble filling any gaps in your mathematics education.

He recognises the tradeoffs of abandoning the programming style, but it is done to make the language simple and practitioner-friendly (and it is a much simpler language than Python, let alone any other specification language, all while preserving maximal expressive power). You can have an opinion on whether this is a good tradeoff or not, but it was done intentionally, and with the purpose of helping practitioners.

[1]: https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/lamport-actions.pdf
by josephg | 2025-07-29 22:37:54+00:00
Yep, I agree that they should have stopped by now.

> Sure, maybe the 8 year old did in fact kick you in the shin and spit on you. I still expect the adult to act with a higher moral standard.

Nah. Morality isn’t just for when it’s convenient. I find it kind of racist to liken Palestine to children. They know what they were doing when they went on a killing spree on October 7. Just like Israel did when they bombed peoples homes.
by truleesincere | 2025-07-29 22:38:09+00:00
New transparency reports and leaked guidelines reveal Meta’s AI enforces 154M quarterly actions (suspensions/deletions), extrapolating to:

500,000+ accounts removed daily

1.5–3M permanent deletions monthly

10–15% error rate (50K+ families locked out/day)

Sources:

Meta Q3 2023 Transparency Report

Scaled 2017 moderation leaks (2024 userbase)

NYU research on wrongful suspensions

Discussion: Is this digital preservation’s extinction event? Are error rates acceptable for scale?
by hnuser123456 | 2025-07-29 22:38:16+00:00
What I never got is, why do we experience anything? Why can't the universe exist as a simulation where people do people things without having to consciously experience it all? Why can't I just shut off my experience and let my body do whatever it would do without having to put in effort, the same way everyone else's body does whatever it'll do without me having to experience everything they do?
by mbrd | 2025-07-29 22:38:49+00:00
It's definitely not the hobby of choice for young boys any more, but it feels like it is having a golden age of kit quality aiming at an older audience with disposal income. Manufacturers like Tamiya, and also Eduard or Meng (those are my favs anyway) are producing extremely high quality kits.

There is always consternation amongst modelers about where the next generation will come from, but the Gundam/Gunpla scene is supposedly very large in Japan and growing in the West.
by pamelafox | 2025-07-29 22:39:16+00:00
I ran an automated red-teaming against a RAG app using llama:3.18B, and it did really well under red-teaming, pretty similar stats to when the app was gpt-4o. I think they must have done a good at the RLHF of that model, based on my experiments. (Somewhat related to these kind of adversarial attacks)
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-29 22:39:26+00:00
See these

https://www.yogile.com/forest-frolic-2025#21m

https://www.yogile.com/trackapalooza-2025#21m

https://www.yogile.com/thom-b-2025#21m

I have no nostalgia for film, I could not afford to take 1500 film photos at a sports event -- even a photo like this which doesn't seem that remarkable

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114401857009398302

wouldn't have come out that good handheld with a 35mm back in the day.
by kiitos | 2025-07-29 22:39:38+00:00
a URL is also a single string that's easy to copy and paste, the question I have is how these strings get resolved to something that I can connect to

if you need to go thru a relay to do resolution, and relays are specified in terms of DNS names, then that's not much different than just a plain URL

if the string embeds direct IPs then that's great, but IPs are ephemeral, so the string isn't gonna be stable (for users) over time, and therefore isn't really useful as an identifier for end users

if the string represents some value that resolves to different IPs over time (like a DNS entry) but can be resolved via different channels (like thru a relay, or via a blockchain, or over mdns, or whatever) then that string only has meaning in the context of how (and when) it was resolved -- if you share "abcd" with alice and bob, but alice resolves it according to one relay system, and bob resolves it according to mdns, they will get totally different results. so then what purpose does that string serve?