MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by npip99 | 2025-07-16 19:25:00+00:00
Hey! We actually did a lot of research into ELO consistency, i.e. to check whether or not the NxN pairwise matrix followed the ELO model. It was a long road that's probably grounds for an entirely separate blog post, but the TLDR is that we observe that:

For each document, there is a secret hidden score "s" which is the "fundamental relevance according to the LLM". Then, when we sample (q, d1, d2) from the LLM, the LLM follows the statistical property that:

- The "fundamental hidden preference" is `pref = s_{d1} - s_{d2}`, usually ranging between -4 and 4.

- The LLM will sample a normal distribution around the `pref` with stddev ~0.2, which is some "inner noise" that the LLM experiences before coming to a judgement.

- The preference will pass through the sigmoid to get a sampled_score \in [0, 1].

- There is an additional 2% noise. i.e., 0.98 * sampled_score + 0.02 * random.random()

When we use Maximum Likelihood Estimation to find the most likely predicted "hidden scores" \hat{s} associated with each document, then we go ahead and sample pairwise matrices according to `0.98 * sigmoid( \hat{s}_1 - \hat{s}_2 + N(0, 0.02) ) + Uniform(0.02)`, then we get a pairwise matrix with virtually identical statistical properties to the observed pairwise matrices.
by uecker | 2025-07-16 19:25:27+00:00
I do not really agree with respect to C. I often have to deal with C code written by unexperienced programmers. It is always relatively easy to refactor it step by step. For C++ this is much more painful because all the tools invented to make the code look concise make it extremely hard to follow and change. From the feature set, I would say that Rust is the same (but I have no experience refactoring Rust code).
by arscan | 2025-07-16 19:25:39+00:00
> Looking at the kind of mistakes Claude made, it seemed like a human could make those mistakes too (very useful feedback for us to improve our API ).

This is something we've found for our API -- just having LLMs attempt to use it helps us identify things that we haven't documented well or placed enough emphasis on (for things that are critical but are non-obvious or may be drowned out by other less important information). Improvements that help the LLM tend to be good for developers too.
by jdauriemma | 2025-07-16 19:25:42+00:00
This is similar to many experiences I've had with LLM tools as well; the more complex and/or multi-step the task, the less reliable they become. This is why I object to the "graduate-level" label that Sam Altman et al. use. It fundamentally misrepresents the skill pyramid that makes a researcher (or any knowledge worker) effective. If a researcher can't reliably manage a to-do list, they can't be left unsupervised with any critical tasks, despite the impressive amount of information they can bring to bear and the efficiency with which they can search the web.

That's fine, I get a lot of value out of AI tooling between ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude+MCP, and even Apple Intelligence. But I have yet to use an agent that has come close to the capabilities that AI optimists claim with any consistency.
by tenacious_tuna | 2025-07-16 19:25:55+00:00
I'm also between GenZ and Millennial. I don't have many (any?) GenZ friends, but I feel like I say "no" to social events the most out of my peers (and have for a while). I frankly don't know how to juggle it all: between maintaining important relationships (two partners, calling family regularly, keeping up with close friends), household stuff (cooking, cleaning, laundry, administrative overhead), exercise/my own hobbies (going to the gym once a week), I feel like I barely have time to do... Anything, let alone have downtime to myself.

I have (single) peers and friends who maintain wall-to-wall social calendars, so I've assumed for a while that the difference is just the amount of engagement multiple romantic entanglements takes, but maybe I'm missing something.

I'd love to "do nothing" much more than I can (read a book, work on a project, tidy my basement, learn a new skill...)
by pavlov | 2025-07-16 19:25:58+00:00
It's terrible. Scrolling and zooming gestures on a MacBook trackpad seem to do completely random things depending on where the mouse cursor happens to be.

Web UI developers: if you expect people to zoom in on your infinite canvas thingy, it needs to work like Figma. There's no other option if you don't want to frustrate your users.
by zozbot234 | 2025-07-16 19:26:44+00:00
Thing is, that kind of vitriol is the whole point of hateful rhetoric, by and large. It's what occasionally makes "hate" appealing to some people in the first place - see your local hate-filled social media network for evidence of that. Posting "hateful rhetoric ... coolly and without vitriol", intentionally or not, is an excellent way of unpacking it for everyone else and showing just how pointless it really is.
by nikisweeting | 2025-07-16 19:27:06+00:00
obviously don't try those first I'm just saying there's a stack of options to work with for any level of isolation you desire.

start with wheels if you just want pre-built binaries, move up to conda if you need arch and OS-specific C libs that depend on system packages, flatpack or docker if you dont want those to mess up your host, or unikernel/firecracker/VMs if you need kernel modules or hardware virtualization.
by alexjplant | 2025-07-16 19:28:07+00:00
> They all switched to Python, because you have to explain less

I think this could be generalized to ergonomics. Java 1.6 is an absolute nightmare for a newb compared to Python. No top-level statements, explicit typing, boxing, verbose declaration syntax, long import statements, curly braces everywhere... and, most importantly, no out-of-the-box REPL. Java has since made strides and borrowed from Kotlin and Lombok but my understanding is that it was too little too late.

Depending upon preference and application one might consider ~half of these things anti-features at the expense of stability but it speaks volumes to why people join and stay in a software ecosystem. If I had to work on a Python project again I'd use mise with uv and viciously lint the codebase down to a reasonable fully-typed subset of the language devoid of custom decorator magic and dunder abuse.
by fjfaase | 2025-07-16 19:28:43+00:00
It is important to realize that many MAGA voters did not vote for Trump for what he does for them but what he does against others. These voters do not see him as a savior that saves them, but as one that fight on their side against those they perceive as their enemies (whether real or imagined). They are willing to suffer for him as long as they get the idea that their enemies suffer even more. It is a common technique among authoritarian leaders.
by mbastos | 2025-07-16 19:30:19+00:00
Jobs aren’t really about what you know, they’re about the problems you can solve. The knowledge matters, sure, but it’s secondary to: can you fix this, and can you do it efficiently enough that it’s worth paying you for it?

If you’re a solid problem-solver, you can usually convince someone to give you a shot. You keep the job by solving problems well, over and over. And you get the next one by showing that you’ve done it before, faster, better, smarter. That’s the cycle.

Doesn’t matter if you use AI, pen and paper, or carrier pigeons, as long as you solve real problems, consistently then you’ll never have trouble finding work.
by Night_Thastus | 2025-07-16 19:30:21+00:00
Both the C++ and Python are mine. I have cases of both C++ calling Python, and Python calling C++. Problems could be on either side.

The problem is how to step into one from the other, you really can't as far as I know.

The python parts aren't standalone enough that it could just be run on its own, there's so much setup involved prior to that point that it can really only be run from the top-level user controls.
by pi_22by7 | 2025-07-16 19:31:10+00:00
Honestly, I'm getting tired of the endless parade of "better" build tools. Maven works fine for most of what I do, even if it's occasionally painful. Gradle is... well, Gradle has its moments.

That said, Mill's performance claims sound interesting. If it really can cut build times by 3-6x, that's really amazing. I've wasted too much time in my life waiting for builds, especially on larger projects.

The Scala thing is a bit of a turn-off though. I get that you don't need to write Scala yourself, but now I'm dragging in the Scala ecosystem just to build my Java project? Feels heavy.

The IDE integration sounds nice in theory - being able to actually navigate and understand your build in IntelliJ would be pretty sweet.

Still not sure the switching costs are worth it unless you're really hitting Maven/Gradle pain points. But if I was starting a new project from scratch, might be worth a look.
by chrisjj | 2025-07-16 19:31:13+00:00
> How did she "allow it to happen"?

Inadequate security.

> I may of missed something, but I understood that these were direct attacks that exploited phishing attacks.

So?

> IMHO the statement should be

> I'm devastated that this happened despite our best efforts to prevent this type of attack

It seems she decided instead to stick to the truth.
by tptacek | 2025-07-16 19:31:25+00:00
Sure; the system we have in place is rather good at handling overtly vitriolic comments (my experience is generally that user flags kill them before emails to the moderators land). I'm just leaving open space for critiques of HN moderation; those are a fine thing, but they're really only meaningful if you can write the moderation guidelines that fill the gaps you're worried about.
by atomic_cowprod | 2025-07-16 19:32:11+00:00
Up until recently, fares for the LRT system in my city were enforced by a random check by transit police, typically by having an officer board trains and check riders' tickets at random times during random days and handing out fines to fare evaders who they caught.

Between around mid-2006 and the end of 2008 I rode the train to work downtown every day. The trains were so crowded during rush hour that it was impossible for Transit police to board trains to check fares, and even outside rush hour, fare checks were very occasional. A monthly pass at the time was around $75 and a fine for fare evasion was around $200 (the first violation was less than $200, and I think it increased until a cap of something like $250 for repeat offenders). I'd worked it out that if I was caught without paying a fare less than once every three months, it would be cheaper to just pay the fine if/when I got caught rather than buy a pass. So I didn't buy a pass and decided to see how long it would take to actually get caught.

The answer was about 18 months. Got a $170 fine. Which I then forgot about and never actually paid. The statute of limitations on that fine has long since expired.
by NoMoreNicksLeft | 2025-07-16 19:33:03+00:00
> Before the Internet, many people out of school never again wrote a full paragraph. Now they write a few every day.

If they could be called paragraphs, that is. A more accurate description might be a random sample of phrases that spontaneously popped into their heads, only loosely relevant to each other in the broadest possible sense, minus anything like grammar, punctuation, or even non-mediocre word choice.
by tialaramex | 2025-07-16 19:33:19+00:00
I've seen this idea from a few people and I don't get it at all.

Rust is certainly not the simplest language you'll run into, but C++ is incredibly baroque, they're not really comparable on this axis.

One difference which is already important and I think will grow only more important over time is that Rust's Editions give it permission to go back and fix things, so it does - where in C++ it's like venturing into a hoarder's home when you trip over things which are abandoned in favour of a newer shinier alternative.
by npip99 | 2025-07-16 19:33:56+00:00
Yeah that's exactly what we observed. Our goal was to create an absolute score that's completely independent from the Corpus, which is difficult because naturally all ELO distributions are inherently tied to the corpus itself!

When we were exploring the mathematical foundations, we considered ELO scoring against a "Universal Corpus" based on the natural entropy of human language (Obviously that's intractable, but sometimes this term cancels out like in the DPO proof).

But eventually we figured out a method using cross-query comparisons to assign an "ELO bias" to all document ELOs within a given query's candidate list. This normalizes it correctly such that when a candidate list is all bad, the ELOs shift low. And when the candidate list is all good, the ELOs shift high. Even when the relative ELOs are all the same.
by crinkly | 2025-07-16 19:34:09+00:00
Lived in London for over 40 years. Never let your stuff out of sight for a minute. My foot always goes through a loop on my bag. Had at least two attempts to grab it which was stopped dead by this. I use a knackered looking Osprey daylite plus bag which has straps around the zips that stops people casually having a go at it as well. Mostly no issues in the last 10 years but I know people who are careless and have been done a few times.

My general travel experience, outside the UK, is that if you dress down, use a knackered looking bag and a shitty no brand knackered phone case and people will leave you alone. Passport goes on you in a zipped inner pocket anywhere on the planet. Same with wallet, keys, anything. Never wear anything that indicates you have an iPhone worth nicking. Apple Watch / Airpods make you a target.

Many people aren't travel savvy. It scares me.
by yjftsjthsd-h | 2025-07-16 19:34:25+00:00
So here's the thing. Chrome OS is absolutely a Linux distribution. It's even a GNU/Linux distribution (based on Gentoo), unlike say Android/Linux, which is doing its own thing. But... When people say "desktop Linux", they mean one of the user-controlled distros, not the locked down appliance that is ChromeOS. It's like how nobody who says they want a Linux phone mean Android. Technically correct, but not what people mean.
by jumploops | 2025-07-16 19:34:29+00:00
My favorite theory so far is that the dodecahedrons were used to create metal chains.

A stay-at-home mom/pattern maker whose "eureka moment was visiting the Met in New York and seeing Roman jewelry with knitted chains" created a video confirming her theory was possible[0].

The glove theory is also good (and maybe the device was just multi-use?), as I seem to recall that the majority (all?) of these devices were found in colder/northern Roman settlements.

It seems the "wear pattern" on this example[1] from the UK matches what one might expect if you were to repeatedly wrap wire around the corner knobs.

With that said, its unclear that we'll ever know! (unless we find a grave with dodecahedrons and their products)

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lADTLozKm0I

[1]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1325774111601067&id=...
by ajross | 2025-07-16 19:35:16+00:00
The whole model is broken. The NPM/PyPI idea (vscode extensions got in similar trouble recently) of "we're just a host, anyone who wants to can publish software through us for anyone in the world to use with a single metaphorical click" is just asking for this kind of abuse.

There has to be a level of community validation for anything automatically installable. The rest of the world needs to have started out by pulling and building/installing it by hand and attesting to its usefulness, before a second level (e.g. Linux distro packagers) decide that it's good software worth supplying and supporting.

Otherwise, at best the registries end up playing whack-a-mole with trickery like this. At worst we all end up pulling zero days.
by zamadatix | 2025-07-16 19:35:31+00:00
Regarding the 20% some clients/resolvers will mark a server as temporarily down if it fails to respond to multiple queries in a row. That way the user doesn't have to wait the timeout delay 500 times in a row on the next 500 queries.

From the longer term graphs it looks like volume returned to normal https://imgur.com/a/8a1H8eL
by vel0city | 2025-07-16 19:35:43+00:00
If we had heroin advertisements on TV showing how great life is while doing heroin, just ask your doctor, would you still say there is no culpability of harm on the company paying for the ads (the same company supplying all the heroin to the market)? And then remember, actually that was reality, they just didn't call it heroin.

If consumers didn't have in your face advertising about how this new magical wonderdrug will solve all your life problems and you'll be happy again just like all these paid actors, you think they'd still be shopping around doctors as hard? You think they'd even know to shop around for that wonderdrug or pressure their doctor to try it?

Do you think people's decisions to shop around for doctors has zero relation to the drug advertisements they see on TV, on billboards, on the side of busses, in magazines, on the radio, on websites, etc?

Do you think people would still buy as much Coca Cola if they stopped advertising?

With your logic we might as well allow marketing of tobacco to minors again. After all, stores aren't legally allowed to sell it to the minors, so it's just a fault of the stores and the kids.

Do you think we as a society are better off or worse off having pharmeceuticals directly advertised to consumers?
by EvanAnderson | 2025-07-16 19:36:04+00:00
I emailed and spoke on the phone w/ my wife for a over a month before we met face-to-face. She told me, years later, she anticipated I'd have a particular gait. When we finally met I did not disappoint. She has described it as an "effeminate" gait.

We recently moved into house with wood floors. I experience my daughter and wife's gaits in new way. Their footfalls have a distinct "thud-thud-thud" with the landing of their heels first, whereas mine are a lot lighter. My daughter definitely didn't inherit my gait, even if she did inherit some of my psychological and mental eccentricities.
by asimpletune | 2025-07-16 19:36:08+00:00
I mean, the insurmountable problem is - and will always be - that true knowledge lies beyond words. You can communicate and articulate and pontificate and these are all good things, but even at their best efforts they will never be more than a mechanical process that will never quite get you there. In other words, there will never be the right words to “get it” because what there is to get is fundamentally unexplainable.

It’s like trying to explain what one may see hear or feel when their on vacation at an exotic new location by talking about the train tracks that brought you there.

So when you’re reading you’re not downloading packets that add up to some kind of point. Instead, in the absolute best case scenario, you’re simulating the experience, according to the author’s recommended doses, of someone else “acquiring” knowledge. This “someone else” is the nameless reader the book was written for but they are not you.
by xhkkffbf | 2025-07-16 19:36:21+00:00
Oh please. Don't dig yourself deeper. So what if the copyright owners set what you think of as an unreasonable price? In almost every case, those works are not part of the collective culture you celebrate. If the creator doesn't want to share, who cares? That's their perogative-- and there are plenty of other perfectly nice works that are made by people who are desperate to share. So please don't use this looney point as an excuse to steal.

And really, your point about poor people is true about everything. Why shouldn't they get free food for life just because they "grew up" eating? Or a free bicycle because they rode one when they were five?
by npip99 | 2025-07-16 19:37:09+00:00
Yes our pairwise method is based entirely on 2AFC comparisons, for both intra-query and inter-query ELO calculations.

It's definitely the best if not only way to get extremely high signal, and a score assignment that actually converges the more you sample.

In terms of the "F" in 2AFC, we actually have this amusing snippet from our prompt:

> Do NOT output a score of 0.0, ensure to focus on which document is superior, and provide a negative or positive float between -1.0 and 1.0.
by naysunjr | 2025-07-16 19:37:11+00:00
Am constantly reminding people my gait is off due to post surgery scarring internally creating a tension.

Now everyone gonna think I’m autistic. Not that there’s anything wrong with being autistic. It’s the pop science mindset of the aggregate that’s the problem.

There’s a lot of phrenology and humours type pseudoscience within these analysis. Social gossip effort to normalize what we are despite physics we cannot control making all those choices for us.
by delfinom | 2025-07-16 19:37:51+00:00
Most semiconductor vendors have now outsourced library creations (for free to end users) to services like UltraLibrarian where you pick what you want and download.

The quality however is meh.

Libraries are a very touchy subject. Most of the time, outsiders to the field just want "plug and play".

Professionals in the field? Holy fucking hell can we get neurotic. In a large company you may have more than one person dedicated just to managing libraries and drawing them to your standards instead of letting the internet do it. And there's a whole list of reasons why one may do it vs. not do so. (Schematics are a form of design expression and as such there are many standards and thoughts on optimal forms of expression, including dependency on the particular sub-industry you are)

No different than software engineers having their favorite programming language, markup language, config file language, code style guidelines, deployment workflows, etc.
by philistine | 2025-07-16 19:37:51+00:00
Add it to the list of the death by a thousand cuts of Nvidia as a gaming powerhouse. I would have said that they would have fixed it eventually to be chosen by Valve for a Steam Deck, but they’re gorged on AI money at this point. I don’t think they’re the future of gaming GPUs at all. They’re very slowly abandoning the market through those cuts.
by taylodl | 2025-07-16 19:37:59+00:00
The total system weight for hydrogen (tank + hydrogen) for a class 8 truck capable of a range of 500 miles is 16% of the weight that an EV battery pack would be that delivers the same range - even though the EV is considerably more efficient. That decrease in weight is extra payload that can be delivered.

Because this application is limited to commercial traffic, we don't need to worry about an expansive hydrogen distribution network like we would have to do with non-commercial vehicles. Also, Toyota's hydrogen pumps are designed to fill at the rate of diesel - so the trucks can be easily refilled.

The bottom line is I don't think this is an either/or decision. I think there are some applications for which hydrogen makes more sense, and there are some applications for which EV makes more sense.
by nerevarthelame | 2025-07-16 19:38:54+00:00
This is the first time I've heard of slopsquatting, but it does seem like a major and easily exploitable risk.

However, blocking an email domain will dissuade only the lowest effort attacker. If the abusers think slopsquatting is effective, they'll easily be able to find (or create) an alternative email provider to facilitate it.

And assuming that the attacks will persist, sometimes it's better to let them keep using these massive red flags like an inbox.ru email so that it remains a reliable way to separate the the fraudulent from legitimate activity.
by bell-cot | 2025-07-16 19:39:24+00:00
> AmeriStarRail, a startup specializing in high-speed and intermodal passenger rail, pitched a partnership with Amtrak to launch the "Transcontinental Chief," a high-speed rail route that would run between Los Angeles and New York in under 72 hours.

Google Maps says it's a bit over 2,500 miles between LA and NYC. (As the crow flies, but the article's map isn't too far off.)

And 2,500 miles / 72 hours is ~35 MPH.

Not exactly "High-Speed Rail", in my book.