MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by miningape | 2025-07-22 08:29:31+00:00
Excuse us for expecting evidence and intellectual rigour. :D

I've taken a number of university Sociology courses and from those experiences I came to the opinion that Sociology's current iteration is really just grievance airing in an academic tone. It doesn't really justify it's own existence outside of being a Buzzfeed for academics.

I'm not even talking about slightly more rigorous subjects such as Psychology or Political Science, which modern Sociology uses as a shield for the lack of a feedback mechanism.

Don't get me wrong though, I realise this is an opinion formed from my admittedly limited exposure to Sociology (~3 semesters). It could have also been the university I went to particularly leaned on "grievance airing".
by vrighter | 2025-07-22 08:30:06+00:00
This comment makes the assumption that the software is cloud based and all that matters is uptime.

I used to work on a backup application, it ran locally on our clients' machines. We had over 10000 clients. A 99.9% reliability would mean that there are 10 of our customers, at any one point, having a problem. It's not a question of uptime. It's a question of data integrity in this case. So 99.9% reliability could even leave us open to, potentially, 10 lawsuits. Also, about 10 support calls per day.

Now we only had about 10k customers at the time. Imagine if it were millions.
by sigmoid10 | 2025-07-22 08:31:00+00:00
This is basically the average rustacean's wet dream. But I can probably point out half a dozen reasons (without even thinking) why this wouldn't work in a realistic environment. Unless that one guy is literally a savant and the others are negative net contribution random monkey devs who were twiddling their thumbs all day at best. And in that case the end result would probably be the same, it has nothing to do with the specifics of this story.
by NicuCalcea | 2025-07-22 08:31:20+00:00
Maybe you wouldn't mind, but nevertheless, it has been tried and didn't work. Here's how it went for Blendle, which had the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Economist, Time, and more on board. It wasn't payment processors that killed it.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/08/the-poster-child-for-micro...
by spauldo | 2025-07-22 08:31:42+00:00
There is a place for cheap, untracked components. A hobbyist being able to pick up a bag of op amps for a couple bucks is great, even if sometimes they're not actually the part number they say they are. It's just the risk you take.

When you use counterfeit power components like SCRs, the risk you take is burning down your house with your family still inside.

Hey, it's your call. You're free to use what you like. Just don't say we didn't warn you.
What are the practical building blocks for independent AI agents?
by Sidddd | 2025-07-22 08:32:19+00:00
Hey everyone, I've been falling down a sci-fi rabbit hole lately, thinking about the long-term future of AI. The common trope is that AI will eventually become independent entities, acting on their own behalf in the world.

But moving past the philosophy, I got stuck on a very practical, almost mundane question: If an agent were to act independently, what would it own?

How would it pay for its own API calls, its server time, or even buy a new dataset? It can't exactly open a Bank of America account or get a driver's license to prove its identity. It seems like there's a fundamental gap between our current digital infrastructure, which is built for humans, and what a truly autonomous agent would need to operate.

This thought experiment led me to explore how concepts from Web3, like Decentralized IDs (DIDs) for identity and smart contract wallets for assets, could be a natural fit. It feels like this infrastructure is almost purpose-built for non-human actors.

I started tinkering with this idea, building a small project to see if an SDK could make it easy to give a Python agent its own unique on-chain identity and a secure, isolated "wallet." The goal is to let it own things and interact with services without ever touching my personal keys or accounts. I've been calling it CirtusAI.

But this is a huge, complex topic, and I'm sure I'm missing a lot. So my questions for this community are:

1. Do you think this "identity and asset" problem is a real barrier to AI autonomy?

2. What are the biggest security or ethical risks you see in an approach like this?

3. Am I crazy, or is the idea of "blockchain as the native world for AI" a concept with real legs?

Would love to hear your thoughts and criticisms on this whole idea. Thanks!
by wongarsu | 2025-07-22 08:33:09+00:00
I'm being made to pay for Autobahnen I barely use, finance kindergartens despite not having a child, and made to pay into public pensions with little hope of getting close to the same value out. All under threat of imprisonment, many without a way to even refuse (not that I'd want to) The only thing that sets the pubic broadcasting fee apart is that it's collected separately from taxes in an attempt to reduce the influence politicians have on broadcasters
by BennyInc | 2025-07-22 08:34:24+00:00
A similar product which hasn’t been mentioned yet is the Tigerbox. This works with cards similar to Yoto, but also offers a full library subscription, like a kids music and audioplay flatrate. Our kids love it. They also have an app as an alternative player, which is super useful on long carrides. And you can store music for offline usage on the box as well.

Yes, it’s not selfhosted and autonomous. But it’s a pretty neat service.
by nosianu | 2025-07-22 08:34:36+00:00
I don't get such incomplete, selective, comparisons.

The country can't go bankrupt and you just found another one.

Yes, when a country messes up they have to actually fix things, there is no way around it. Except getting merged into another country - like my birth country, the GDR, ended up as West Germany's problem (but its people still had to do the work).

Also, if big enough companies (and banks) fail, it is the same. Not having a string government would not help either, in such cases the companies would be the government, as we saw in even wilder times of huge companies and much less state in the US some century or two ago.

At some point in the hierarchy you have to live with not having omniscience and accept that sometimes things don't work out, and that you can't just walk away from the consequences of those failures.
by bluecalm | 2025-07-22 08:35:05+00:00
There is a similar "community" of real estate investors. I've met one of them through a friend and asked a lot of questions about his business. He was "pivoting" to seminars and courses as well. I asked him why and he said he can "easily scale" with seminars/courses while investing, even pure flips takes time and you can only do so many with a limited budget, maybe one/two transactions a year.

I am very skeptical as well and I think there is a lot of truth to "those who can do, those who can't teach" adage. It's one thing if you are in "who can't" group because you are older/retired/done with it after many years. It's another if it's a guy in his 20's or 30's selling courses. Those in my experience are almost always just snake oil salesmen.
by inopinatus | 2025-07-22 08:36:37+00:00
I share a name with a retired professional sportsperson. Alas for them, I hold the naturally occurring gmail account, having registered it two decades ago. Whilst they were active this account received regular sponsorship offers from unsuspecting apparel manufacturers, equipment makers etc etc, and it was always my pleasure to string these along as long as possible until someone twigged
by Xlr8head | 2025-07-22 08:36:58+00:00
This is maybe down to using the same cognitive pathways to navigate SW that we use to navigate the real world: way points en route to a destination. Whereas those with more understanding of the system can deploy other methods that are a more direct fit to that structure. The problem is, then, that if you change the terrain (e.g. new os) you also need to change the map/route in the heads of all those users without system knowledge. Even some of those with system knowledge might STILL preferentially deploy their innate navigation cognition.
by akawry | 2025-07-22 08:37:48+00:00
ik_llama.cpp is a popular fork of mainline llama.cpp started last year containing many new SOTA quants and improved CPU performance.

On 07/20, GitHub deleted both the repo as well as the account without explanation. More discussion at https://huggingface.co/ikawrakow/Qwen3-30B-A3B/discussions/2
by pjc50 | 2025-07-22 08:38:28+00:00
Foreign abuses eventually rebound on the imperial core. The establishment of more and more internment camps and the snatch squads to fill them is extremely alarming, even if it doesn't have a "CIA" label on it but "ICE" instead.

America built a machine for overthrowing democratic governments in South America because they didn't align with corporate interests, and somehow pretends that this can be contained to only operate south of the Rio Grande?

Ironically I think the extremely indiscriminate nature of Trumpism might be its downfall when the security agencies finally turn on him. I wonder to what extent USAID really was a CIA front, and if they're offended that it was burned down without consulting them.
by wickedsight | 2025-07-22 08:38:52+00:00
That reminds me of this article:

https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/

They used genetic algorithms to evolve digital circuits directly on FPGAs. The resulting design exploited things like electromagnetic interference to end up with a circuit much more efficient than a human could've created.

In my mind this brings some interesting consequences for 'AI apocalypse' theories. If the AI understand everything, even an air gap might not be enough to contain it, since it might be able to repurpose some of its hardware for wireless communication in ways that we can't even imagine.
by beng-nl | 2025-07-22 08:39:16+00:00
Wow, that does sound like a big improvement. My git commits are, when not forced to be otherwise, very sloppy, even though I’d prefer them to be neatly self contained. But as you imply, there is friction to making these in git, while making lots of unrelated changes in a single coding session.

As an example of another ‘unnecessary’ switch, Pip with venvs was also completely solving all my Python dependency problems. I just needed to copy paste a few lines from my README to create and populate the venv, and remember to run pip and Python from that venv. And run pip freeze after package installs or upgrades. No problem. But switching to uv was a huge life improvement. No more copy pasting (‘uv sync’ does everything and even that isn’t needed) nor remembering extra steps and everything is fast so I’m never waiting and forgetting what I was going to do.

I could’ve been GP talking about pip but still I would be missing out.

I still see people clinging to cvs because it works for them (netbsd why?), which I respect but don’t understand/believe.

Fish don’t know what water is.

So.. I’m gonna give jj a go and trust life will be better again.
by Terr_ | 2025-07-22 08:39:18+00:00
The trick is that the rules it follows aren't the ones people write. The real ones just happen to give similar answers, until one day they don't.

The LLM takes a document and returns a "fitting" token that would go next. So "Calculate 2+2" may yield a "4", but the reason it gets there is document-fitting, rather than math.
by seec | 2025-07-22 08:39:55+00:00
What you say is nonsense because by this definition pretty much everything we eat since MULITPLE millennia is ultra processed.

Since we started agriculture in the fertile crescent, we have been making stuff like beer and flour-based bread which are based on processing of various cereals.

Depending on the variable, the glycemic index isn't that good. And yes, it is pretty easy to overeat bread, as long as you have something decent to use with (it can be as simple as dipping it in olive oil).

Your opinion is just hysteria indeed, and it is just that. There is absolutely no logical explanation/evidence that all the problems linked to food come from "ultra-processing" instead of just good old regular abuse and mis-use.

In all the studies you talk about, if you were to correct for exercice/activity and lifestyle you would find a nothing burger (sometimes just living in a poorer neighborhood will give worse outcome, because of the water quality).

The problem is mostly abundance, which is very often something other species also have to deal with. If you leave a pony/donkey in an area with lots of young sugary grass and don't make him work for it, he will overeat until he is so fat that it becomes a problem for his health. But I guess the grass is too "ultra-processed" or something...
by hermitcrab | 2025-07-22 08:40:22+00:00
Octopus are fascinating creatures who developed their intelligence quite separately from us (our last common ancestor was a flatworm). They have a very different nervous system to us - much more distributed. And they are an outlier in that pretty much all other creatures exhibiting high intelligence are long-lived and social, whereas octopus are generally short-lived and solitary.

If you want to learn more about them, I recommend: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Soul_of_an_Octopu...

Also, the charming film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Octopus_Teacher

Sadly, some people see them only as food. And there are proposals to intensively farm them in the EU. This seems particularly cruel for an intelligent, solitary animal. The intended method of killing them using cold water also seems cruel and inhumane.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64814781
by frizlab | 2025-07-22 08:45:31+00:00
I think you communicated well, probably I did not.

> suspending the rebase and going to do something else

This is what I find to be weird, personally. When doing a rebase, there’s no way I want to do something else in the middle of it, and having a modal state feels totally natural to me.

At first approach (I read a (very good) intro[1]; I did not try), it seems there’s a lot of new things to learn (for instance the revsets language), for a very minimal gain, so I’m (still) gonna pass on it. It feels like jj is solving a lot of problems that do not exist, or are mostly solved with worktrees.

That being said it’s true that everybody’s way of working is different, so I don’t know! Maybe jj will be picked up by the younger generation and it will become the new de facto standard. Time will tell…

Personally, the current VCS tool I’d like to try now instead of jj is fossil. It seems much more interesting as it promises to allow bypassing GitHub/other forge completely by being the full forge itself. In these days, having ownership of one’s data feels primordial to me.

[1] https://ofcr.se/jujutsu-merge-workflow
by Arkhaine_kupo | 2025-07-22 08:45:32+00:00
Its a cost risk analysis. We have tried letting studdents do whatever and most of the time it went nowhere, so we ended up with a more rational system (with many caveats) where experiments are proposed and people with good insights and sense of whether it might even work approve it before running it.

AI is going through the wild phase were people are allowing it to test, as soon as the limits are understood the framework of limitations and the rational system built around will inevitably happen.
by Timwi | 2025-07-22 08:45:32+00:00
> When you point out real world examples, the response is always “No, not like that”

My impression from this thread is that this is because the law was implemented in a way that's indicative of a lack of technical understanding on the part of the lawmakers and falls into a number of pitfalls that a law written by people competent in the field would avoid. Am I wrong?
by AngryData | 2025-07-22 08:45:56+00:00
Fiber should be the goal for everyone. Fiber is cheaper and lighter than copper which is why rural areas that haven't had any internet options except 56k on old degraded lines or satellite are finally now getting high speed internet the last few years, usually through co-op fiber startups. It can be hung on power poles, it can be installed with a trencher, and now that horizontal boring machines are incredibly common it can be put under existing infrastructure very easily.
Show HN: BrightShot – AI photo enhancement and virtual staging for real estate
by pguiraoc | 2025-07-22 08:46:01+00:00
Hi HN, I'm Pau and I just launched Brightshot (https://bright-shot.com/) — a tool that uses AI to enhance and virtually stage real estate photos.

The idea started when I was looking to buy my own apartment in my hometown. I was constantly frustrated by poor-quality listing photos — dark rooms, cluttered spaces, and angles that didn’t show much. I couldn’t tell whether the place had natural light, or even what it really looked like. The only way to know was to visit in person, which I didn’t always have time for.

That’s when I thought: what if there was a way to improve those photos automatically? Not just by making them look a bit nicer, but by actually revealing the potential of the space — clearer lighting, better framing, less visual noise, and even virtual staging. That’s what Brightshot does.

You can upload any photo — a living room, kitchen, exterior, whatever — and Brightshot will improve it automatically. It enhances lighting and clarity, removes visual clutter, and can even virtually furnish an empty space. You can also generate different lighting versions of the same room (like how it looks in the morning vs. evening), or create a short video walkthrough based on a single image.

I built it using a set of AI models tailored to real estate photography. Right now I’m working on batch editing for agencies, more customizable staging styles, and integrations for property platforms.

Would love to hear your thoughts — especially if you’ve ever rented, sold, or photographed a place. Does this solve a real pain? What’s missing? Would you trust AI-enhanced images for your own listing?

Thanks for reading! — Pau
by Nursie | 2025-07-22 08:49:19+00:00
I sometimes say octopods.

Octopi is correct, in that it is an english language plural for octopus. It is not etymologically sound, certainly, as it's a latinate plural on a greek root.

So anyone telling you that any other form is wrong and insuating that 'octopi' is more correct is certainly asking to be mocked. But as we don't really do '-podes' in english, and "Octopusses" is a bit of a mouthful, I think we can accept any and all as more or less equally cromulent.
by RumourRider | 2025-07-22 08:49:32+00:00
We do not. There are so many caveats in relevant part of the human rights act.

> The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part...

While the US has restrictions on speech, there are far far fewer restrictions.

The "uncodified constitution" that we have doesn't guarantee you "Freedom of Speech" either. I've read the relevant parts of the constitution in the UK. It gives Parliamentarians the right to unlimited speech.

Finally "Freedom of Expression" and "Freedom of Speech" are not the same thing.
by jpalawaga | 2025-07-22 08:49:33+00:00
Overhead bin space is a big one. Even as am someone who travels with a duffle at almost always fits. I’ve had to check it before being in the last group, waiting til the end.

One other one I ran into with the “dead last” strategy was I ended up waiting in line anyhow… on the jet bridge, which was worse than waiting in a queue in a nice airport terminal. So my purely practical brain says to go at the beginning of my group, get it over with, and then I can be settled with no worries rather than having to pay attention to the boarding sequence at all.
by rasadov | 2025-07-22 08:49:37+00:00
Thanks for sharing your experience! You're spot on about BYOSMTP being a major hurdle. That's actually why we built Fertit as both a hosted service AND open-source. Users who want managed SMTP get the simplicity, while those with existing infrastructure can self-host. We've found the dual approach helps address different needs without forcing everyone down the same path. The spam challenge is real, and I'm curious how Sendune balances generous free tiers with spam prevention? Our pricing takes a different approach with smaller contact limits but lower entry costs, though I agree contact limits across the industry can feel arbitrary.
by ascorbic | 2025-07-22 08:49:55+00:00
In the context of so-called "European elites threatening freedom and democracy", the UK is very much included in that category, as this story demonstrated.

On the other point, while you can of course boycott anything for whatever reasons you want for as long as you want, you do realise that the UK has a different government now. One that opposed Brexit, and has already signed agreements for closer cooperation with the EU. I still boycott Dyson because of his support for Brexit, but boycotting an entire country because of the actions of a former government that is now in opposition seems a bit pointless.
by sethammons | 2025-07-22 08:50:47+00:00
Nice commits can really tell a development story that makes reviews easier. That said, I want all teams to squash merge their feature into master after tests pass. One commit at the end, and one commit to remove in case of an issue affecting customers related to the release.

A very, very large problem at five out of six companies I have worked at is casual code improvement and refactoring. Devs would say, "we will address that minor and unrelated thing in a separate PR" - one that never comes. At one company, a single PR could address unrelated fixes and it was encouraged to "take out the trash" on the code. Unrelated metrics added, logging improvement, or code simplified, or test robustness improved, etc. That company had vastly better code. Easier to read. Easier to maintain. Easier to observe. And easier to test.
Kill the Middleman, Hack the Tower
by ricecat | 2025-07-22 08:51:14+00:00
The cyberpunk genre has always been about friction—between man and machine, between freedom and control, between the street and the tower. But beneath its neon-soaked aesthetics and chrome implants lies a consistent economic tension: centralized systems that no longer serve the many, and decentralized workarounds that barely keep the underclass alive. In many ways, the rise of crypto and Web3 today doesn’t just echo cyberpunk themes—it realizes them.

https://www.gizvault.com/archives/kill-the-middle-man-hack-the-power
by benterix | 2025-07-22 08:51:59+00:00
It all started with Novell Netware. It was a great product and companies would buy it to have centralized management. Microsoft noticed this and decided to use their power position to drive Novell out of the market by offering a similar service and have it built in in their server product line. Novell tried to fight but it didn't last long.

The protocol was proprietary and an open source implementation in Samba was very slow at catching up. If you decided to host a domain controller using it, you newer knew if a random disconnect was a network issue or the controller or the client.

And here we are. Active directory, or Entra or however they call it these days, is basically a standard way to manage users everywhere. And until a strong entity (EU?) comes up with strong backup towards an alternative solutions (we have plenty of them now), the situation will not change.