MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: Strooptest.run – a dead-simple, browser-only Stroop Test
by gregzeng95 | 2025-07-03 14:37:28+00:00
Hey HN,

I made https://strooptest.run, a super simple Stroop test you can try in under a minute.

No ads, no sign-up, just a clean way to test your brain’s reaction time and focus.

Would love feedback or ideas for what to add next!
by atrus | 2025-07-03 14:37:40+00:00
If we're just talking about interstellar objects, and assuming a decent lead time (not oh hey it's going to hit in 3 days), it's probably easier to prevent it from hitting us since it's most likely just passing through. You'd only need to give it a small enough nudge to have it miss a smidge. That's something we're more than capable now of doing, and have done.
by sneak | 2025-07-03 14:37:40+00:00
I administer reading comprehension tests and typing speed tests to all candidates I consider hiring.

It’s overlooked.

Good ones who can’t type fast, I assign them typing lessons their first few paid days on the job, and a half hour twice a week thereafter for a while.

I’m an outlier and can type 120wpm without trying very hard, but I expect 40-50wpm (touch typing, not hunt and peck) at a minimum from staff that work with computers and aren’t disabled.
by paulgerhardt | 2025-07-03 14:38:04+00:00
For longer threads I find frequent prompting for sectional summaries along the lines of spaced repetition helpful.

Recently was evaluating some investment property for a friend that had valuable timber, historic notability, distressed foundation and structural elements, compromised access, and utility hookup challenges.

I would document and tackle all of the structural challenges then have ai summarize. Move on to all the access challenges. Summarize. All of the historic noteworthiness criteria etc.

Most people passed on the site because of one or other deal breakers but by synthesizing summaries was able to discover assistance programs targeted for “ag + historic” or “historic + access” initiatives etc that made the numbers pencil out as a “no-brainer” investment. These wouldn’t have unlocked otherwise without five decades of experience rehabilitating farmhouses in this part of the country.

Anyway, I imagine a similar approach would work for enriching NPC interactions in a game world.
by incomingpain | 2025-07-03 14:38:17+00:00
If you consider tech at the size of Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Google.

Europe has SAP from germany. That's it. You might say Spotify in Sweden or ARM from UK, but microsoft just laid off more than both of those have combined. Not the same scale.

Consider as well, it's certainly not talent, there's tons of highly skilled software people in the EU.

The literal holdup is converting that talent to business. Why is the EU so hostile to business? Extreme regulation, high taxes, high labour laws, and anti innovation/entrepreneurship is the problem.

The EU isnt even in the tech war because of their own choice of government. The EU has made their bed and must now sleep in it because it will take a long time to fix these problems through multiple elections.
by freedomben | 2025-07-03 14:38:19+00:00
> Look closely at every major breakthrough, even those in AI-driven medicine. It’s still humans pointing the AI down the right paths. Human creativity is the spark.

In the short term yes, but we're already seeing nearly autonomous agents get impressive results. It won't be very long until the average person can be that guiding hand, rather than a software engineer who knows how to code by hand and design software. This is good for the world, terrible for the software dev
by johnnyjeans | 2025-07-03 14:38:41+00:00
I'm not sure why we would want to replace mechanical systems. A portable AC unit with 10,000 BTUs uses ~650wh these days, and it'll turn a 50m^2 apartment into an icebox. That's not much more than a flagship GPU pulls. This is also about the least efficient class of aircon you can get.

Sure less energy usage is always better, and if we could get the same out of mere single digit wh power draws that would be cool. But I don't think thermoelectrics are ever going to get us there.
by StillBored | 2025-07-03 14:38:49+00:00
They have, at least in some places. Where I live (Austin TX) I've been in multiple high schools that have extensive Manual machine shop/3d printing/CNC/Electronics/etc labs for students to use. It might even be at the point where the nicest/most complete machine shops in town are actually in the suburban high schools. Go to the local FIRST https://www.firstinspires.org/ competition and talk to the kids from the high schools in the more expensive parts of town where their parents are getting tens of thousands of dollars in donations every year for the teams. Whether any random kid can use them is a different story, but they do 'work' if by success having both of your school's FIRST team leads go to MIT is any indication, as happened last year at the HS my kid graduated from.

So at least some of our students are being given the opportunity, and there are multiple paths to success, but maybe the largest difference is that while truly talented multi disciplinary young engineers (and I work with a few) are rare, they always have been. The real questions are probably around social issues, does giving your kid a phone remove the boredom that encourages them to tinker with stuff in the garage, is there a sweet spot of being able to afford an old car, but to poor to pay to fix it, force kids to learn hands on repair skills. Does being able to stop at radio shack/surplus/frys/metal supply/etc and browse racks of stuff on the way home from school encourage kids to build stuff to impress their friends, or is having it delivered in the mail enough. AKA, like me the other day, I stopped a microcenter to get a pedestrian computer peripheral I could have ordered from amazon, but discovered a ESP camera module that gave me 'ideas'.
by jqpabc123 | 2025-07-03 14:39:08+00:00
I guess historically, lots of companies have operated by selling dreams.

Among it's peers, Tesla has no equal in the "dream" category.

Tesla is one of the "Magnificent 7" technology stocks. Leaving Tesla aside, the average P/E of this group over the last 2 years is around 30. Tesla is currently around 170.

But even this doesn't really capture the full extent of the Tesla "dream". Tesla is the only one of these stocks with an earnings decline over the past 2 years.

The highest valuation combined with the poorest results --- that's a lot of dreaming.
by light_hue_1 | 2025-07-03 14:39:21+00:00
That's handled by the MCP server in the sense of it doesn't do authentication, etc. it provides a simplified view of the world.

If that's what you wanted you could have designed that as your poorly documented internal API differently to begin with. There's zero advantage to MCP in the scenario you describe aside from convincing people that their original API is too hard to use.
by throw10920 | 2025-07-03 14:39:31+00:00
> I have no difficulty seeing the difference between hate speech and criticism of the state.

You have no difficulty manufacturing what you believe to be a difference (that clearly does not survive contact with reality), because you're ignorant of the world around you.

> Of course if someone tries to muddy the waters, they should be criticized

No, if someone tries to falsely claim that there's a clear and objective difference, as you are, they should be criticized.

> Hate speech very clearly has meaning

No, it very clearly does not, and the fact that you're expressing that opinion indicates that you're extremely uninformed about history. "Hate speech" wasn't even a concept that existed until the 20th century, originally only referred to race when it was defined by the ICERD, constantly changed and increased in scope, and still even today not only has no commonly agreed-upon definition, but is used to suppress relevant-to-society free speech that the State does not approve of.

If you go and ask 10 random people in your country what the definition of "hate speech" is, they will not be able to agree on a definition - anyone who has gone out and actually interacted with different groups in their country (as opposed to being isolated to a single community) knows this to be true. That by itself is factual proof that there is no consensus definition of the term.

Not that there needs to be any further elaboration than that, but...

> I'm not sure what specific incident you're referring to

Marie-Thérèse Kaiser, a German politician, posted a social media post with the text "Afghanistan refugees; Hamburg SPD mayor for 'unbureaucratic' admission; Welcome culture for gang rapes?" and was charged under German hate speech laws. You're extremely authoritarian and progressive, so you probably feel that a penalty should have been given out, but regardless of your feelings, the fact is that that was not clearly incitement to hatred or violence, and that the poster was charged for "hate speech" for making political statements about immigration.

> banning expressions that incite hatred or violence against people based on [...]. What's unclear about that?

It's very clear to anyone who has contact with reality that not only does "hatred" also have no consensus definition, but neither does "inciting", and so both of those terms can be and are interpreted in an extremely wide spread that is abused by the State.

Not only is the lack of consensus of definition of the concept of "hate speech" factual evidence that your claims about it being clear are false, but even your citation of the German legal definition contains terms that have neither consensus population definition nor objective test (legal or otherwise).
by unethical_ban | 2025-07-03 14:40:22+00:00
Disagree.

I need an analogue way to get access to my accounts.

If my phone gets crunched, I should be able to go to a secondary device or secure sheet of paper and restore full access to my password safe/accounts. Nothing should be tied to one piece of hardware.

It's why I despise having to use proprietary TOTP like Symantec for banking. If my phone breaks, I have to go through a recovery process. If I could backup my TOTP with a normal app, it wouldn't be a problem.
by troyvit | 2025-07-03 14:40:29+00:00
We have a lot of sensitive meetings these days, so we aren't recording them. We have had to put guard rails in place to keep people from sending their AI note-takers to the meetings because they don't listen to our CEO when he says not to do that. Few people in our org worry about the security implications of ingesting sensitive information with these tools.

I read this from a video transcript on National Law Review [1]:

> The question becomes, where is it saved? Who has access to it? Is it secure? Is it being disclosed? All the same kinds of questions that organizations face when they are processing sensitive personal data or sensitive company data. That's just to kick it off.

But the wapo article says it even better:

> 'Nothing will be forgotten'

That is not always a feature with meetings, and the more you read the article the more vapid most of the responses here ("meetings dumb. me no have to go now") become.

[1] https://natlawreview.com/article/we-get-privacy-work-assessi...
by lsaferite | 2025-07-03 14:40:30+00:00
No. You are giving textual instructions to Claude in the hopes that it correctly generates a shell command for you vs giving it a tool definition with a clearly defined schema for parameters and your MCP Server is, presumably, enforcing adherence to those parameters BEFORE it hits your shell. You would be helping Claude in this case as you're giving a clearer set of constraints on operation.
by quickthrowman | 2025-07-03 14:40:41+00:00
You can get 4 COP with a regular air cooled chiller and up to 7 COP if you add an evaporative cooling tower.

Variable frequency drives have made running pumps and fans a lot more efficient, even residential HVAC equipment is starting to get EC motors or VFD driven A/C motors. I can run my 10,000 BTU (1kW) window unit at 68F for an entire month in the summer and it only costs $50 due to the variable speed fans and compressor pump.

What’s the use case for peltier coolers, wearable cooling?
by hearsathought | 2025-07-03 14:40:47+00:00
Universities were initally founded as "repressive" regimes as the first universities started as theological schools.

> Chinas universities exist under a repressive regime that disallows certain concepts, conclusions and speech.

Using your logic I guess we don't have any great universities in the US or any great universities in europe. All universities exist in societies and every society has "repression" of some kind of another.

Go read about ideological purgings of universities in the US and european countries throughout history. Heck there are things you can think or say in a university in europe that will get you arrested today.

You might as well claim germany, russia, britain, france and the US never produced great scientists because they were all repressive regimes. When in actuality, some of the greatest scientists, thinkers, etc came out of the most repressive regimes.
by d3ckard | 2025-07-03 14:41:04+00:00
I call bullshit. This is like saying an average person can be the driving hand for legal documents or medical diagnosis.

The whole point is that as a specialist you vouch for what has been created. Yes, your time moves away from writing code to reviewing it, but it still requires competence to figure out whether what code is doing is exactly what is supposed to be doing.
by the_mitsuhiko | 2025-07-03 14:41:16+00:00
> Sure, you could dump all the documentation into context for code generation, but that often requires more context than interacting with an MCP tool.

MCP works exactly that way: you dump documentation into the context. That's how the LLM knows how to call your tool. Even for custom stuff I noticed that giving the LLM things to work with that it knows (eg: python, javascript, bash) beats it using MCP tool calling, and in some ways it wastes less context.

YMMV, but I found the limit of tools available to be <15 with sonnet4. That's a super low amount. Basically the official playwright MCP alone is enough to fully exhaust your available tool space.
by a_bonobo | 2025-07-03 14:41:21+00:00
Yes I've tried to have an internal standard for AI usage: at least the PR people have to tell us if they use AI. It completely changes how we approach editing of a text AI-written vs human-written (humans don't hallucinate citations, for a start).

Of course this is impossible to enforce, and I believe that the PR people would rather hide their AI usage. (As I wrote above why pay high salaries to people who automate themselves away?)
by lastofthemojito | 2025-07-03 14:41:22+00:00
> Along this road is also the farthest north point you can travel on a road in eastern Canada.

There's always so much room for pedantry with statements like that. If eastern Canada includes Labrador (which it generally does), the town of Nain (which is further north) has roads that people drive cars on: https://maps.app.goo.gl/b1saMzzXKDQrHZQy6

Nain isn't connected to the rest of Canada's road network though, so it depends if one really means something like:

"this is as far north as I can take a long road trip in eastern Canada" or "this is as far north as I can be in a car, on a road, in eastern Canada, even if it is just a 1km ride from the airport on one side of town to the hotel on the other"
by _Algernon_ | 2025-07-03 14:41:31+00:00
>This is simply not true. Writing - particularly in the context of instant messages sent during work - cannot convey tone, and it is far less asynchronous than being able to have a conversation with someone.

It is though. The amount of thought that can be put into writing is at least 1-2 orders of magnitude greater. The amount of thought that can be put into conversational speech is limited to roughly one second per second.

Writing also has the benefit of maintaining a record of what was said. The number of misunderstandings that could have been a avoided by writing is staggering.
by azath92 | 2025-07-03 14:41:44+00:00
yeah seeing so many people using this its clear we should add some way for people to indicate when things felt off vs good, so that we can start tweaking the system, maybe with some evals.

We played around with the idea of a "fun" or "random" category, but ultimately didn't include it in this little first demo, as we found it super hard to have it not be just literally random (although that might not be a bad thing as you say)

On the topic of different moods and headspaces, thats one of the things more broadly we are really thinking about outside of this demo, and hadn't really considered for here but should. What different data can we use (in this case maybe just a different survey for different "profiles"), and how can a user manage those different profiles and front pages will be questions to answer.

Id be really interested to know if anyone has done topic grouped or themed frontpages for hackernews, as this would map well to that concept. ill have a look.
by mystraline | 2025-07-03 14:42:11+00:00
Absolutely.

Violence does solve things, but also can make for an immediate 'Very Bad Time'.

Police use violence. Military uses violence. Difference is state-monopoly or not. To say violence doesn't work would be to say the police and military don't work - and they do.

Anybody calling on violent means should absolutely call upon peaceful means first, secondly, and more. Violence should only be after all peaceful means have been tried.

Its better to win by peaceful means, than by exertion of violence. And, violence is no guarantee of winning. And even if you do win, can still be pyrric, in which everyone loses.

Tl; dr. Be wary of people casually calling for violence. They're either a state actor, dumb, or both.
Show HN: Perinola – A lightweight, rotating responsibility framework for teams
by ignaciovdk | 2025-07-03 14:42:18+00:00
Hi HN,

I’ve been working on Perinola, an open-source, lightweight framework for team collaboration based on a playful Latin American spinning top game. It introduces rotating roles (called “spins”) like Take One, Put One, or Take All, designed to distribute ownership, encourage learning, and keep team dynamics fresh without heavy processes.

It’s ideal for: • Tech teams tired of rigid agile setups • Startups needing flexible structure • Product squads looking to rotate leadership and learning

Each “spin” corresponds to a responsibility for a given cycle (usually 1–2 weeks). It’s meant to be simple, fun, and adaptable — something you can try without changing your entire stack.

You can read the full framework and implementation guide here: https://perinola.org
by lreeves | 2025-07-03 14:43:12+00:00
The commands aren't the special sauce, it's the analytical capabilities of the LLM to view the outputs of all those commands and correlate data or whatever. You could accomplish the same by prefilling a gigantic context window with all the logs but when the commands are presented ahead of time the LLM can "decide" which one to run based on what it needs to do.
by ocschwar | 2025-07-03 14:43:36+00:00
Yes. Jumping the border is a misdemeanor if you don't immediately self report to request asylum.

But the majority of people getting rounded up right now are for unlawful presence.

And a lot of them have no idea that their presence was marked unlawful until ICE gets them. There's a reason civil offenses are supposed to be handled with proper notification and court summonses instead of this shit.
by light_hue_1 | 2025-07-03 14:44:11+00:00
Yes. I'm not the poster but I do something similar.

Because now the capabilities of the model grow over time. And I can ask questions that involve a handful of those snippets. When we get to something new that requires some doing, it becomes another snippet.

I can offload everything I used to know about an API and never have to think about it again.
Show HN: Nucleus (v0) – The AI data analyst built like a teammate
by Jmagro44 | 2025-07-03 14:44:35+00:00
Hey HN community! We just launched our v0/mvp of Nucleus. an AI-powered data analyst designed to feel like a teammate, not a tool.

Most AI products in the BI space today still require some SQL/technical knowhow...an input/output that isn't purpose built for non-technical users. We decided to try and solve one of the root problems and go down a different path. Nucleus lets non-technical teammates ask questions, and engage directly with natural language, allowing them to get live insights from your database. This means that there is no setup, no dashboard building, no more endless dev request tickets!

Why we built it: We got tired of being the “can you pull/query xyz data for me?” team. BI tools were designed for analysts, rev ops, and engineers, but most teammates just want answers, and fast. Nucleus helps them explore metrics, create lightweight dashboards, forecast (if enough data exists), and share insights without needing to touch a bit of SQL.

How it works: - One-click data connection (PostgreSQL for now...let us know what else you want us to support) - Natural language prompting/conversations (Nucleus will ask followup questions so your non-technical teammates are thinking deeper) - Get back a live metric, chart, or insight...then turn it into a dashboard - Save it, share it, or keep exploring!

No modeling layer, no dbt required. Just answers and insights.

Who it's for: - Founders and business operators - PMs, marketers, and growth teams - Solo builders who want clarity without overhead

We’re in early access right now and would love feedback from the HN community. Try it free (no credit card): https://www.getnucleus.ai/ Tap > "Get Started"

Would love to hear: - What feels useful vs over-engineered vs needs more attention? - How you’d want to integrate this into your existing stack - Where we should go next?

Thanks for checking it out!! – The Nucleus Team
by db48x | 2025-07-03 14:44:49+00:00
Yea, that is worth looking in to. It could be that individual ICE agents are just not doing their job in order to sandbag the president. Or it could be that far, far fewer illegal immigrants crossed the border <https://x.com/RealTomHoman/status/1940156659084796257> during Trump’s terms than Biden’s or Obama’s; it’s currently about 60× lower than the average during Biden’s term. There’s also the million people who signed up to self–deport in order to avoid being arrested by ICE. Perhaps the removal numbers will rise as they actually leave.

But have any of Trump’s executive orders told ICE to be more violent? I haven’t noticed any that said that, but maybe you could link to it.
by cmrdporcupine | 2025-07-03 14:45:08+00:00
Yeah if your secret sauce is a chip, with very particular timing and memory behaviour... you've just built in obsolescence. There's no abstracted API for doing the fancy graphics (at least not one used by games, etc), and the whole system is built around sharing the memory bus between CPU and VDP (not going to fly once memory & bus speeds became a fraction of the CPU speed and once cache was a serious thing)... it's just stuck in a grotto.. a neighbourhood that looks fantastic when you moved in but now the next city over is getting a brand new subway system while you're still stuck with an old fleet of busses.

Nevermind Moore's law and exponential improvements... you're stuck even falling behind in very incremental developments.

I also lived through this era, but from the Atari ST side. When I got my 486 it was a feeling of a kind of relenting "sigh" abandoning the 68k and its basic superiority... but economies of scale and the arrival of Linux (I used the very first versions, before the a.out->ELF transition even) made it worthwhile.