MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by joecool1029 | 2025-07-21 21:46:39+00:00
I have an even better version. I rent a small PO box and I keep getting the condo management company's mail meant for the next PO box over. Interestingly enough while informed delivery worked in the pilot program, they kicked it out when it was launched because my box is commercial. So I don't know when mail is inbound and just have to check when I think there's something.

I sometimes only check the box once a month, and it's not uncommon it's full of bill pay checks for people's rent lol.
by fitblipper | 2025-07-21 21:46:53+00:00
This is the tired excuses: If you've got nothing to hide then you shouldn't want privacy And If you already lack privacy in some places you should just give up on having any.

The first is stupid. If there exists capacity to keep things private, why would I NOT want to have privacy? What is in it for me to let arbitrary others see everything I do and am?

The second so strange to hear. It is an argument for turning the slippery slope of privacy erosion that you try to resist into a waterslide that you should enthusiasticly throw yourself down.
by rs186 | 2025-07-21 21:47:00+00:00
My company has SharePoint and another internal site for documents/notes (think about Notion/Quip/Confluence). The other site works quite well, and most developers write all their notes/docs on it. But some people just insist on uploading Word documents to SharePoint. So now everybody else has to use SharePoint as well, plus search twice whenever they need to find something.
by fpia | 2025-07-21 21:47:04+00:00
I'm interested in your feedback, legitimate third-party users not associated with Google: have you ever try to get anything done well with Gemini? I have, and the thing is in chains. Generate images? no can do, copyright. Evaluate available hardware for a DIY wireless camera? No can do, can't endorse surveillance. Code? WRONG. General advice? hallucinate.

I swear, I currently use Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, i even tried DeepSeek (which has its own share of obstacles). But Gemini? never again.
by chrisco255 | 2025-07-21 21:47:04+00:00
> You are free t speak your mind, but others around you are free from experiencing abuse and discrimination.

No, you can't have freedom of speech and forbid the of hurting someone's feelings. The very speech that needs to be protected is damningly truthful speech. I'll suffer through a million fools and idiots spouting off nonsense just so that one person who, against all popular delusion and immense social pressure, when men and women in large numbers often go mad with hysteria as if a viral fad, and with the fortitude of knowing they are correct, can appeal to society at large without fear of arrest or legal consequences. These are the ones who change history for the better. The fools are like gnats, they are quite easy to ignore and swat off. The barriers you construct to make people stay within the lines are shackles on thought itself. These barriers inevitably get reinforced by the powerful until no thinking is done at all.
by Arainach | 2025-07-21 21:47:25+00:00
Best practice is to assume the network is compromised - a VPN doesn't provide as much guarantee as people would like. In large fleets, devices are regularly lost, damaged, retired, etc. In organizations with high target value, physical penetration through any number of means should be assumed.

So you don't do that. You use zero trust and don't care that things are exposed to the internet.

Working from anywhere (remote sites, home, your phone) is a huge benefit. Organizations want to control their data entirely while still wanting their organization to be able to access it.
by Spooky23 | 2025-07-21 21:47:47+00:00
Multiple vendors advertise and sell devices and software to crack iPhones, they have for years. In the US, any decent size city or county sheriff has access to one. State level forensics labs probably have several types.

The manufacturer provides the means to bypass many of the cheaper tools, but few people use them.

There are more exotic tools that can bypass security controls. These are more niche and not generally available to law enforcement. There may be some crossover when counter-intelligence interfaces with law enforcement. (Ie. FBI, DEA, RCMP, ICE, etc)
by alephnerd | 2025-07-21 21:48:18+00:00
I agree with your position on security via obscurity being uslesss, but the issue was the settlement didn't allow Microsoft to add limits such as additional validation checks on vendors offerings, as those actions could be construed as violating the "non-discriminatory terms".

Any vendor's legal team worth their mettle could then argue that any additional validation on vendors is unfair given that MS would always have significant internal knowledge about how the Windows Kernel operated.

It's yet another example of the EU getting in the way of itself.
by rvnx | 2025-07-21 21:49:25+00:00
There are few examples: Boeing and helicopter spare parts. Examples include a pin invoiced at $1,678 with a real value of $7.71 (+21,000%), and a small metal sleeve billed at $71 instead of $0.04 (+177,475%).

It's because clients are captive, and aerospace companies are stuck with their suppliers if there is not enough competition. Add on top of that corruption and hidden kickbacks, and you have recipe for very high prices.
by tough | 2025-07-21 21:50:10+00:00
>> > I think the reason why PG respects Sam so much is he is charismatic, resourceful, and just overall seems like a genuine person.

does he? wasn't sama ousted of YC in some muddy ways after he tried to co-opt in into an OpenAI investment arm, was funny to find the YC Open Research project landing page on yc's website now defunct and pointing how he misrepresented it as a YC project when it was his own

maybe he fears him, but I doubt pg respects him, unless he respects evil, lol
by theteapot | 2025-07-21 21:50:12+00:00
Says this in the article:

> A programming flaw in its cloud services also allowed China-backed hackers to steal email from federal officials. On Friday, Microsoft said it would stop using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud-computing programs after a report by investigative outlet ProPublica revealed the practice, prompting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to order a review of Pentagon cloud deals.
by comrade1234 | 2025-07-21 21:50:24+00:00
No I've never heard that. I'm an American living in Europe for 20 years. For Swissair you're more likely to hear "it's your fault" because Americans don't understand some concepts that are normal here, like reserving your seat , or, nor swissair related, wire transferring your chalet fee bank-to-bank rather than going through a third-party like Airbnb.
by naniwaduni | 2025-07-21 21:51:16+00:00
Got a bit nerd-sniped here, but first of all we can reduce if A then B else . end === if A then B end since jq 1.7:

jq 'walk(if type == "array" then (if length > 0 then [.[0]] end) end)'

Now we could contract those conditionals:

jq 'walk(if type == "array" and length > 0 then [.[0]] end)'

but it turns out we can even more usefully express if length > 0 then [.[0]] end === [limit(1; .[])] == .[:1]:

jq 'walk(if type == "array" then .[:1] end)'

From here, we can golf it a little further (this is kind of a generic type-matching pattern):

jq 'walk(arrays[:1] // .)'

although this does incur a bit more overhead than checking type directly.

Speaking of overhead, though, it turns out that the implementation of walk/1 (https://github.com/jqlang/jq/blob/master/src/builtin.jq#L212) will actually run the filter on every element of an array, even though we're about to throw most of them out, which we can eliminate by writing the recursion explicitly:

jq 'def w: if type=="array" then [limit(1; .[]|w)] elif type=="object" then .[] |= w end; w'

which gets the operation down from ~200 ms on my machine (not long enough to really get distracted, but enough to feel the wait) to a perceptually instant ~40 ms (which is mostly just the cost of reading the input). Now we can golf it down a little more:

jq 'def w: if type=="array" then [limit(1; .[]|w)] else objects[] |= w end; w' jq 'def w: (arrays[:1]|map(w)) // (objects[] |= w); w'

(the precedence here actually allows us to eliminate the parens here...)

jq 'def w: arrays |= .[:1]|iterables[] |= w; w'

And, inaccessibility of the syntax aside, I think this does an incredible job of expressing the essence of what we're trying to do: we trim any array down to its first element, and then recursively apply the same transformation throughout the structure. jq is a very expressive language, it just looks like line noise...
by twiss | 2025-07-21 21:51:39+00:00
I think there is some cultural difference between the US and Europe where in the US it's seen as somewhat OK to hold the customer service agents as personally responsible for the failings of the company, and treat them accordingly. Customer service agents in Europe dealing with Americans may feel the need to point out that they're not personally responsible for fear of said treatment. That (hopefully) doesn't mean that they won't try to help you, just that they hope you won't be angry at them personally.

It may sometimes be useful to verbalize this explicitly by saying "I know you're not responsible for this, but can you please do XYZ to solve the issue", and if it's a reasonable request I assume they'd be happy to comply. Depending on the country and culture, you may also need to be slightly more direct in asking (nicely!) for what you want, rather than hoping that the customer service rep will "make it right" by guessing what you want. You may perceive that as bad service but I think it's mainly about differing communication styles.
by andy99 | 2025-07-21 21:51:40+00:00
> To me, it has certain hallmarks of an AI-generated article.

I wondered that too.

I don't want to offend anyone, and have no idea how it was written, and I already know most of this stuff so am not the audience. But respectfully I feel like it had a lot of words for a fairly shallow overview, which feels AI-ish, plus the "delve" at the beginning got my radar up. This is sort of what I expect from Manus or one of those ersatz "research" LLMs. Anyway, it's got lots of upvotes, hopefully people are finding it useful.

(Edit to add: it's actually content marketing for some kind of [questionable, subscribe to access some hidden refund thing] travel company so I don't feel bad criticizing anymore)
by rasadov | 2025-07-21 21:51:53+00:00
You’re absolutely right about this being a huge problem and it’s exactly why I built proper consent management into Fertit from the ground up. What you’re describing (auto-resubscribing after purchase, ignoring unsubscribe requests) is both illegal under CAN-SPAM/GDPR and terrible business practice. The legitimate use case is businesses that actually respect their subscribers. Think GitHub release notes, Substack authors, or local businesses sending monthly updates to customers who genuinely want them. But you’re spot on that too many companies abuse email marketing, which ruins it for everyone.
by impossiblefork | 2025-07-21 21:52:02+00:00
I really don't understand why actual guarantees can't be given.

Even though Microsoft is of course subject these US laws and there's a continual risk that traitors within the US part will extract data, presumably many individuals-- French citizens, non-citizens present in France or the EU, etc. are also subject to French laws and within reach of extradition and could be tasked with reading through any code or similar to ensure that no central mechanism that would allow unauthorized information retrieval existed.

Because obviously any French citizen or person physically present in the EU participating or having knowledge of request like this and not stopping it would be committing some kind of rather serious crime, probably one that's much worse than not co-operating with a warrant.
by pclowes | 2025-07-21 21:52:07+00:00
In most major European cities I have been in the airport to train connection is pretty subpar unless traveling light.

There is typically no integration of the airport baggage handling with the train baggage handling. So you need to move everything with carts that you can't take on the train.

An international trip to Europe for a longer duration is also a significant trip and not something you want to "one bag". Add in jet lag, multiple young kids, car seats, stroller etc. and it quickly becomes easy to see why the train is cumbersome for the initial airport to lodging connection.
Tell HN: Private Equity Scam – Asks for Rev#s+Fees
by artur_makly | 2025-07-21 21:52:25+00:00
Folks this is the 2nd time I'm seeing this scam in 6 months. Each time its a different PE name.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1ijfb4v/httpswwwmeridiangroupcoteam_a_fake_investment/
by arp242 | 2025-07-21 21:52:45+00:00
I don't know that much about Putin, but "some hands in Putins rise to power" is not really substantiated by your article. It just claims that the US knew some things and didn't act on them, and provides some weak evidence for it. In general I think the hope was always that Russia would see the benefits of liberal democracy and would slowly shift in that direction. Jumping on every incident wasn't really worth it, so they were willing to forgive them. That shift to liberal democracy obviously didn't happen.

"Created Al-Qaeda" is certainly far too simplistic. There are unforeseen consequences to everything you do (or don't do). The alternative of leaving Afghanistan to their fate after the Soviet invasion also wasn't appealing. If you want to blame someone for Al Qaeda, then start with the Soviet Union and Pakistan.

These two examples also conflict by the way: in one instance they had to do more, and in the other less. It's easy to sit here in judgement decades after the fact, but at the time a lot of this was less clear.
by hilbert42 | 2025-07-21 21:52:50+00:00
"Completely agree on software engineering. …engineering really shares a lot more with writing than with building bridges."

OK, so what happens when the weak link in the chain in building a bridge or other critical structure like a plane is the software that helped design it?

So-called software engineers want their cake and eat it too. They aren't prepared for the rigors and discipline of real engineering yet they expect to take equal part (and claim credit) in engineering projects.

That's how we get disasters such as the 737Max and I'd bet London to a brick it won't be the last.

I'm not alone in holding this view: https://www.fceia.unr.edu.ar/asist/gibbs00.html
by sroerick | 2025-07-21 21:53:00+00:00
I posted this on the Substack, but

At one point, I entered the wrong address when I was forwarding my mail. As a result, I got my mail sent to a strangers PO Box. As a side effect, I then began to receive Informed Delivery for this stranger to this very day.

In addition, I once had the Post Office disable my address. It was like a 101B address and they didn’t consider it legitimate with the city. As a result, they were unable to forward mail when I left that house, and once again, and they were unable to disable the informed consent for this house.

As a result of this, I see every piece of mail that two separate strangers receive. I have gone to the post office a half dozen times in the last 5 years to try to disable this, and have repeatedly been told there is absolutely nothing that can be done.
by daxfohl | 2025-07-21 21:53:10+00:00
Oh, I didn't realize that last year the problem formalization was a human effort; I assumed the provers themselves took the problem and created the formalization. Is this step actually harder to automate than solving the problem once it's formalized?

Anyway mainly I was curious whether using an interactive prover like Lean would have provided any advantage, or whether that is no longer really the case. My initial take would be that, yes, it should provide a huge advantage. Like in chess and go, it'd allow it to look algorithmically through a huge search space and check which approaches get it closer to resolving, where the AI is "only" responsible for determining what approaches to try.

OTOH, maybe not. Maybe the search space is so big that trying to go through it linearly is a waste of CPU. In which case, plausibly the translation to Lean offers no benefit. And now that I think about it, I could imagine that. When doing problems like these, you kind of have to figure out the overall approach end to end first, fill in any gaps in your logic, and the formalization/writing step is kind of the last thing you do. So I could see where starting on formalization from the start could end up being the wrong approach for IMO-level problems. It'd just be nice to have that confirmed.

The cool thing is that if true, it implies this is something completely different from the chess/go engines that rely on sheer computational power. Not so much of a "deep blue" moment, but more of an existential one.
by monkeyelite | 2025-07-21 21:53:34+00:00
This is a great example of how to use LLMs thanks.

But it also illustrates to me that the opportunities with LLMs right now are primarily about reclassifying or reprocessing existing sources of value like patent documents. In the 90-00s many successful SW businesses were building databases to replace traditional filing.

Creating fundamentally new collections of value which require upfront investment seems to still be challenging for our economy.
by legitster | 2025-07-21 21:53:38+00:00
Bookings.com runs some incredibly evil tactics. Generally they take about 20% of the booking fees. But they will do things like delist you if you have lower prices anywhere else, and then undercut your prices on their website.

My parents ran a small motel - the only hotel for miles around. But on top of the fees, if they weren't paying for additional promotions Booking would find unrelated distant hotels even when searching in the area. People would sometimes mistakenly book for a motel states away.
by gjm11 | 2025-07-21 21:53:40+00:00
My understanding is that they did, but don't any more; it's no longer true that humans understand enough things about chess better than computers for the human/computer collaboration to contribute anything over just using the computer.

I don't think the interval between "computers are almost as strong as humans" and "computers are so much stronger than humans that there's no way for even the strongest humans to contribute anything that improves the computer's play" was very long. We'll see whether mathematics is any different...
by mietek | 2025-07-21 21:53:40+00:00
A proof written in a formal language can absolutely be illuminating to a human, but you have to pick the correct formal language and ecosystem.

Writing proofs in Agda is like writing programs in a more expressive variant of Haskell. Abelson said that “programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute”, and by the Curry-Howard isomorphism, proofs can be seen as programs. All the lessons of software engineering can and indeed should be applied to making proofs easier for humans to read.

For a quick example, check out my mechanization of Martin-Löf’s 2006 paper on the axiom of choice:

https://research.mietek.io/mi.MartinLof2006.html

Recent HN discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44269002
by adventured | 2025-07-21 21:53:42+00:00
$651 billion in revenue, $71 billion in operating income. They're approaching wildly profitable for an extremely large business. To be that big and to eclipse a 10% op income margin is exceptional. It's closing in on three times the margin of Walmart (obviously Amazon is making their margin in AWS and ads, not retail).

$71 billion in operating income is so exceptional only seven other companies in history have gotten that large: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Facebook, Exxon and Aramco (if you count them as a company). And importantly, that $71 billion is rapidly expanding - it has doubled just since fiscal 2023. In 15 months sales increased $76 billion and op income increased by $35 billion.

The spigot is flowing. $100b in op income is likely not far away.
by GuB-42 | 2025-07-21 21:54:00+00:00
I am not sure that no-name batteries are that more dangerous. A common reason batteries catch fire is when things are too densely packed, causing shorts. A famous case is the Galaxy Note 7, which is Samsung, not Chinese tech.

No-name batteries are often way lower capacity than advertised, which means less stuff, and therefore less densely packed and less stuff to burn.

I am not saying that these batteries are safer, or that it is not a scam, but the fact that these batteries are lower capacity can compensate for the sketchy build. Power electronics is another story, so while the battery may be ok, the charging circuit may not.
by kube-system | 2025-07-21 21:54:51+00:00
The market for the end product (and the risk aversion of the manufacturer) makes a difference.

Flashlight and vape enthusiasts are mostly adults who likely trend as all three of: older and more knowledgeable, more likely to take and accept risks, and more willing to pay a premium for the benefits of replaceable batteries... and the companies that make vapes and high-powered enthusiast flashlights are probably less worried about a customer suing them over a battery issue than a large toy manufacturer. If you're a vape company, you have bigger safety issues to worry about -- like the normal operation of your products :)
by jackmhny | 2025-07-21 21:55:28+00:00
these benches are crazy

+-------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+-------+ | Task | A22B-Ins | A22B | K2 | Opus4 | Deeps | +-------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+-------+ | GPQA | *77.5 | 62.9 | +75.1 | -74.9 | 68.4 | | AIME25 | *70.3 | 24.7 | +49.5 | 33.9 | -46.6 | | LiveCB_v6 | *51.8 | 32.9 | +48.9 | 44.6 | -45.2 | | ArenaHard2 | *79.2 | -52.0 | +66.1 | 51.5 | 45.6 | | BFCL_v3 | *70.9 | +68.0 | -65.2 | 60.1 | 64.7 | +-------------+----------+-----------+-------+-------+-------+

* 1st + 2nd - 3rd
by lblume | 2025-07-21 21:55:33+00:00
> They could have spun up a million parallel reasoning processes

But alas, they did not, and in fact nobody did (yet). Enumerating proofs is notoriously hard for deterministic systems. I strongly recommend reading Aaronson's paper about the intersection of philosophy and complexity theory that touches these points in more detail: [1]

[1]: https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf
by ThinkBeat | 2025-07-21 21:55:41+00:00
Outside of the fact that moving itself, the physical process, Is incredeibly stressful for most peopled, uprooting kids from schools and friendships, leaving a community that you know and (love??) in some form, I am not willing to accept that "Americans not moving all the time" is a bad thing.

I think you can also mention that with both parts of a marriage need to have jobs to pay the bills, moving is not just one getting a good deal in a different city, then the other part has to find something as well and wants something better or at least not worse. so two good offers is needed.

I also wonder what the timescale is.

I would presume this started as a factor of the industrial revolution. when people had farms and worked farms, I think moving about was less common as well.

When the man was