MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by smokel | 2025-07-29 21:15:22+00:00
One aspect I find puzzling is why most two-factor authentication (2FA) applications restrict authentication to only a single valid code at any given time. This constraint inevitably creates a window during which it is inconvenient or impractical to copy the code to another device. Allowing the previous code to remain briefly valid would eliminate this unnecessary delay, enhancing usability without significantly compromising security.
by schwartzworld | 2025-07-29 21:15:22+00:00
I've been using Typescript for years and while I love it, it's far from the magic bullet. No, you'd need something more opinionated and actually typesafe, and now you're writing a different language that compiles to JS. There's a bunch of these, and they haven't caught on for a reason. Eventually you're going to need JavaScript.

There are more opinionated UI frameworks (angular) and frameworks with less magic baked into them (svelte, solid). React gives you the freedom to architect your app the way you want, for better or for worse. It was made by functional programmers to allow them to use composition and other FP paradigms in UI development. If you don't understand those concepts, or you just don't care for them, you're going to be swimming against the tide. Lots of tooling has been created to help those who do (Redux, for example).

Maybe you're right and "you're holding it wrong" isn't a valid answer, but it's not React's fault it took over the world. It was made to do a certain thing, and it's pretty good for that. That thing requires a way to create side effects (useEffect) and a way to provide referential stability (useMemo, useCallback). The React team has done a lot to document the right way to use these tools.

If it's not someone's thing, that's cool. If they are forced to use it at work, might as well learn a little FP and make life simpler.
by iandanforth | 2025-07-29 21:15:58+00:00
How is this kind of analogy helpful? You can frame any optimization problem as RL if you try hard enough. RL is a method of optimization which calls the optimum "reward maximization". You can craft the reward function any which way you want.

The key point about RL is that it is a sequential decision making process. If you don't have something (an agent) making multiple decisions over time while interacting with an environment, then why bother calling it RL?
by charlescearl | 2025-07-29 21:16:22+00:00
“Cuban information scientists didn’t just critique the limitations of traditional informatics, however. They also advanced a more critical approach to mathematical modeling, one that emphasized the social complexity and the historical contingency of informational regularities. In the 1980s, when Cuban libraries were beginning to adopt digital computers, Setién Quesada was tasked with developing a mathematical model of library activity, based on statistical data, for the purpose of economic planning. ”

https://logicmag.io/care/informatics-of-the-oppressed/
by realityfactchex | 2025-07-29 21:16:28+00:00
It's because of the mislabeling (and dare I say what almost smells to some probably like deceit, even if unknowing) involved, and the consequences of that.

So one one level you have semantic purists. Obviously some of those are here.

But on another level it's the broad (under- and mis-) understandings around the ML capabilities that now exist.

Basically, the ML does not constitute nor embody "intelligence".

Even if it can program software, make photos and video from prose, dictate and summarize audio, perform "business analysis", act as a therapist/friend, retrieve and distill "web search" results, translate languages, etc.

Yes, it can feign intelligence. Really, really well.

But the real critics in camp A are pointing out, that's just technology, that's not intelligence.

And camp B may be saying in some capacity, as a corollary, it's important to not misunderstand or misuse this, because of hypothetical consequences C, D, or E.

I won't defend any of these positions, here and now. I'm just answering the OP's question, "What drives this level of criticism?", in case they are not aware of these general positions and wish to explore them further.
Show HN: I Built a GitHub Action to Wait for Vercel Deployments Before CI
by bakkerinho | 2025-07-29 21:17:58+00:00
I built a GitHub Action that solves a common pain point in CI/CD pipelines with Vercel deployments. Instead of relying on GitHub's deployment_status events, it actively polls Vercel's API to ensure deployments are truly ready before running tests or other checks.

Key technical features: - Direct integration with Vercel's API for real-time deployment status - Configurable polling with timeout and interval settings - Support for team projects and branch aliases - Works with both preview and production deployments - No special webhook configuration needed

The main advantage is reliability: Many CI pipelines fail intermittently because they start running tests before Vercel deployments are actually ready. Traditional solutions rely on GitHub's deployment_status events, which can be unreliable or require complex setup.

This action solves that by: 1. Retrieving the latest deployment for your project/branch 2. Extracting the preview/production URL 3. Actively polling until the deployment is genuinely ready

Example use cases: - Running E2E tests against preview deployments - Multi-app testing workflows - Post-production deployment validation - Accessibility testing on live environments

I'd love feedback from the HN community, especially from those dealing with similar CI/CD challenges.
by jay_kyburz | 2025-07-29 21:18:30+00:00
People _do_ just wake up one day and decide some piece of land should belong to them, or that they don't have enough money and can take yours, or they are just sick of looking at you and want to be rid of you. They will have some excuse or justification, but really they just want more than they have.

People _do_ just wake up and decide to be evil.
Show HN: Gradient-Free ML Algorithm (Available for Contract Work)
by atowns | 2025-07-29 21:18:52+00:00
Hi HN,

I'm Allen Townsend, an independent ML researcher, and I've developed a novel gradient-free machine learning algorithm that enables faster training and inference than traditional gradient-based approaches, especially in scenarios where:

Gradients are hard or impossible to compute

Simulation or black-box models dominate

Speed and stability are critical

This method avoids backpropagation entirely, yet achieves competitive results in optimization-heavy tasks. It's well-suited for reinforcement learning, simulation-based systems, and edge deployment use cases.

I'm currently looking for contract work to help teams develop custom models using this approach. If you have a tough modeling or optimization problem and want to explore this new direction, I’d love to collaborate.

You can reach me at townsendtech2025@gmail.com.

Happy to provide examples, benchmarks, or run a quick pilot project. Thanks for reading!

— Allen Townsend
by kemayo | 2025-07-29 21:19:14+00:00
The definition is:

> In paragraph (1), a “content recommender system” means a system, used by the provider of a regulated user-to-user service in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, that uses algorithms which by means of machine learning or other techniques determines, or otherwise affects, the way in which regulated user-generated content of a user, whether alone or with other content, may be encountered by other users of the service.

Speculating wildly, I think a bunch of the moderation / patroller tools might count. They help to find revisions ("user-generated content") that need further review from other editors ("other users").

There's not much machine learning happening (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES), but "other techniques" seems like it'd cover basically-anything up to and including "here's the list of revisions that have violated user-provided rules recently" (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter).

(Disclaimer: I work for the WMF. I know literally nothing about this court case or how this law applies.)
by colechristensen | 2025-07-29 21:19:23+00:00
Ugh no. There is a difference between treating a diagnosed condition with antibiotics and just regularly giving all livestock consistent doses as a preventative.

Drugs aren't just "take it and everything will be improved regardless of the situation". Better to think of them as carefully used poison, good but only when used wisely.

The 1950s vibe of sterilizing everything needs to be done.
by Karliss | 2025-07-29 21:19:33+00:00
A lot of diy/custom lure makers are are already doing something very similar.

The process involves a plastic mix called Plastisol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastisol which is initially liquid but after heating it for the first time and letting it cool it becomes rubbery.

In small scale setups the heating is typically done in a glass beaker and microwave or other heater. Injection is done using giant metal syringe (which are sold for exactly this purpose).

If you look up some videos of people doing it the process is quite messy. Search "making soft plastic lures" on youtube. Looks like this product just tries to streamline the process by integrating syringe, heater and mixer (typically you would mix in a dye and or glitter preferably without introducing a lot of air bubbles), while at the same time comparing their product to everything else except the direct competitors based on similar technology.

Considering the target audience (a lot of fishing lures) and information about their plastic/rubber - initially liquid, needs to be heated to ~180℃, becomes rubbery after cooling, recyclable seems likely that the rubber they are using is very similar to the plastisol stuff.

The recyclability claim is a bit weird. Yes you can remelt that stuff, which is not a problem if you heat it in a pot. Not sure how well it would work with their product which has the heater integrated and relies on the rubber initially being liquid at room temperature before the first heating so that you can suck it into syringe.

Using PLA molds also seems a bit of stretch. While their heater can be set to lower temperatures, the existing plastisol requires ~180℃ and screen in their own videos are showing similar temperature. PLA is melting temperature is ~210 and it becomes soft at 60. Might get away with PLA mold for some shapes once or twice. Maybe not so bad if it cools fast enough and actual melting temperature is lower than 180. In most of the lure making videos I have seen they are usually using aluminum molds.
by mathattack | 2025-07-29 21:19:50+00:00
I've met several of these students. It's like an MBA, but less social networking and more math. (And can be done co-term or in a year)

So does it add some value to someone who is already getting a bachelors in EE, CS or similar? Sure.

Would I put a history major with an MS&E degree in charge of anything significant? Probably not.

I suspect that the admissions rate of 7% is independent of coterms.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-07-29 21:20:44+00:00
The general problem here is that "disparate impact" is incoherent. If you charge everyone the same price then you're de facto excluding people with less money, and therefore have a disparate impact on the basis of various protected classes because of the correlation between e.g. race and poverty.

Now suppose you charge less to people with less money. Is that what you're supposed to do? No, sorry, there was a preexisting disparity in your customer population on the basis of national origin and doing that makes it worse, you still lose.

There are multiple protected classes and how something affects one of them is often the inverse of how it affects a different one, so it isn't possible to not have a disparate impact. And then whether something is considered to in any given case is nothing but politics and vibes.
by zamadatix | 2025-07-29 21:20:46+00:00
The measure would probably be whether any of the reports led to examples of downstreams either syncing prior to release via security sharing they didn't already have established or any projects preparing to sync out of normal schedule ahead of time, regardless of if that's a small or large magnitude of change. How companies would prefer the public hear about a vulnerability has always been the lowest concern out of disclosures so I don't expect it to bring anything new here.

Google's products represent 3/6 of the initial vulnerabilities following this new reporting policy in the linked reporting page.
by ryukafalz | 2025-07-29 21:20:48+00:00
If phones consistently gave you a useful desktop environment when you plugged them into a monitor, I imagine that might change.

I think offices are the most likely places to have something like this, though. My company has monitors with USB-C dock inputs set up at each desk; you grab a desk and plug your laptop into it when you get there. But they're just using DisplayPort Alt-Mode, and a phone with a desktop mode would work with them as well.

I wish I could do that for work; would save me from lugging around a rather heavy laptop. :)
by micahdeath | 2025-07-29 21:21:08+00:00
My issue is that they are oversold to fix everything when, so far, it seems like fancy reporting and searching. Once you have an answer, then you go and fact check the answers with even more searches or plug in the provided code and find the API is wrong or it just doesn't compile.

Of course, I also do things that aren't the normal/common, so the learning isn't there.

Simple things, like basic CRUD operations work well but my apps aren't basic. =P
by bsder | 2025-07-29 21:21:56+00:00
> However the solutions are absolutely useless for anyone else but the implementer.

Disposable code is where AI shines.

AI generating the boilerplate code for an obtuse build system? Yes, please. AI generating an animation? Ganbatte. (Look at how much work 3Blue1Brown had to put into that--if AI can help that kind of thing, it has my blessings). AI enabling someone who doesn't program to generate some prototype that they can then point at an actual programmer? Excellent.

This is fine because you don't need to understand the result. You have a concrete pass/fail gate and don't care about underneath. This is real value. The problem is that it isn't gigabuck value.

The stuff that would be gigabuck value is unfortunately where AI falls down. Fix this bug in a product. Add this feature to an existing codebase. etc.

AI is also a problem because disposable code is what you would assign to junior programmers in order for them to learn.
by yujonglee | 2025-07-29 21:22:06+00:00
At least for near future, we'll focusing on meeting notepad side of a thing.

We actually have "export to Obsidian". I think you can pair Hyprnote nicely with Obsidian.

Screenshot: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5149b68d-486c-4bd...

You need this plugin installed in Obsidian first: https://github.com/coddingtonbear/obsidian-local-rest-api

Obsidian export code 1:

https://github.com/fastrepl/hyprnote/blob/d0cb0122556da5f517...

Obsidian export code 2:

https://github.com/fastrepl/hyprnote/tree/main/plugins/obsid...
by neutronicus | 2025-07-29 21:22:39+00:00
History in particular is rapidly approaching post-truth as a knowledge domain anyway.

There's no short-term incentive to ever be right about it (and it's easy to convince yourself of both short-term and long-term incentives, both self-interested and altruistic, to actively lie about it). Like, given the training corpus, could I do a better job? Not sure.
by ctas | 2025-07-29 21:22:50+00:00
The goal is not to use a similar tech stack e.g. GNUstep. Instead I'm focusing more on outcome - a desktop environment with a similar degree of polish and functionality without the need for third party tools.

To stay competitive and iterate fast I'm adding a high-level JS/CSS API on top of Wayland, think AppKit + SwiftUI. If you look over my shoulder it might look like I'm making a webapp, but on a custom browser.
by hinkley | 2025-07-29 21:22:52+00:00
Livestock aren't given low level antibiotics as a prophylactic. They're given as an alternative to growth hormones. Antibiotic consumption gives you bigger cows.

That's the ugliest part of this whole thing. We aren't trying to keep animals safe, we are trying to keep the cost of hamburgers down even if it means people dying of incurable infections in hospitals.
by dillstead | 2025-07-29 21:23:02+00:00
You're right, you definitely can strip away the section headers. Notice that there's always a dynamic segment? If there wasn't, stripping away the section headers would make it very difficult to locate this very important piece of an ELF binary.

I had to make sure that I always inserted a page size multiple of bytes into the executable which can add up to a page of unused padding in addition to the thunk and chunk.
by SlowTao | 2025-07-29 21:23:03+00:00
Time to try "Delphi for dummies!"

"You are Julian Miller, a curious programmer, always eager to learn new languages. Delphi has caught your eye, promising rapid application development and a visually intuitive approach. You're excited to dive in, but first, you need to get Delphi installed and running. The first chapter of 'Delphi for Dummies' is open in front of you, ready to guide you through the process."
by jauntywundrkind | 2025-07-29 21:24:19+00:00
Nice having this backstory (fantastic production value too, impressive start to this podcast). Dis-aggregating the responsibilities of the DB into multiple pieces just feels so logical, helps make sure each piece can scale. Deterministic Simulation Testing gets mentioned in the video & was way ahead of it's time here. https://apple.github.io/foundationdb/testing.html

Hacker News is here too! From July 2012 (78 points, 72 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4294719

For a general introduction, I enjoyed the recent submission How FoundationDB works and why it works: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37552085 https://uvdn7.github.io/notes-on-the-foundationdb-paper/
DietPi released a new version v9.15
by StephanStS | 2025-07-29 21:25:19+00:00
DietPi is a lightweight Debian based Linux distribution for SBCs and server systems, with the option to install desktop environments, too. It ships as minimal image but allows to install complete and ready-to-use software stacks with a set of console based shell dialogs and scripts.

The source code is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi The main website can be found at: https://dietpi.com/ Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DietPi

The project released the new version DietPi v9.15 on July 28th, 2025.

The highlights of this version are: New images for Orange Pi 3 (non LTS version) New script converting Debian Bookworm to Trixie (Trixie scheduled on 2025-08-09) NanoPi R5C: MAC address is now static (also after rebooting) Moonlight (GUI): Unlocked for all ARM and RISC-V systems (excluding ARMv6 RPi) Unbound: Improvements of installation and cron-job setting Fixes for Dietpi-Display, DietPi-Dashboard, microblog.pub, Ampache, File Browser, Octoprint The full release notes can be found at: https://dietpi.com/docs/releases/v9_15/
by dortlick | 2025-07-29 21:25:20+00:00
Don't we already have individual pricing on lots of things like used cars, contractors doing work on your house, car insurance, etc? Most people that work in sales have some ability to adjust pricing based on their personal judgement of the customer(mark). Do you think there's not discrimination by a contractor when they come into your house and size you up and what they think you are willing to pay or maybe they just don't like your race/religion/smell. I'm just a little confused when it's so outrageous if airlines or amazon gives different prices to different people when it happens every time there is actual one on one price negotiation.
by SLWW | 2025-07-29 21:26:41+00:00
Do you have references or corroborating evidence?

In 1992 a statue was erected to Harris in London, it was under 24 hour surveillance for several months due to protesting and vandalism attempts. I'm only mentioning this to highlight that there was quite a bit of push back specifically calling the gov out on a tribute to him; which usually doesn't happen if the person was well liked... not as an attempted killshot.

Even the RAF themselves state that there was quite a few who were critical on the first page of their assessment of Arthur Harris https://www.raf.mod.uk/what-we-do/centre-for-air-and-space-p...

Which is funny and an odd thing to say if you are widely loved/unquestioned by your people. Again just another occurrence of language from those who are on his side reinforcing the idea that there is, as you say is "very controversial", and maybe not a "vast majority" since those two things seem at odds with each other.

Not to mention that Harris targeted civilians, which is generally considered behavior of a war-criminal.

As an aside this talk page is a good laugh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arthur_Harris/Archive_1

Although you are correct I should have used more accurate language instead of saying "considered" I should have said "considered by some".
by brenosh6 | 2025-07-29 21:26:49+00:00
This is solid — Agentainer is tackling a real pain point in how agentic systems are deployed. Spinning up durable agent containers with persistent state, retries, and proxy routing without DevOps friction is definitely useful for the current wave of AI builders.

That said, we’ve taken a different angle with SILVIA by Cognitive Code.

Where Agentainer is focused on deployment infrastructure, SILVIA is focused on the core cognition and orchestration layer that actually governs long-running agents across systems. It’s a deterministic AI architecture that models memory, intent, context, and control in real time — not just running agents, but coordinating, supervising, and explaining them in environments like defense, finance, logistics, and healthcare etc.

Think of SILVIA as: • The mind behind the agents — not just the house • A true cognitive engine, not probabilistic • Built for explainability, auditability, and compliance from day one • Deployable across edge, cloud, or hybrid networks — including air-gapped and multi-domain systems

If Agentainer is Docker + reliability for AI, SILVIA is OS-level intelligence for live decision systems.

Both have their place — and in fact, SILVIA could orchestrate fleets of Agentainer-managed agents if aligned.

https://www.cognitivecode.com/
by csb6 | 2025-07-29 21:26:50+00:00
> TLA+ doesn't require simulating anything

I was referring to way the Python REPL examples/tree diagrams and sections on execution histories were used to explain things in the article, not to TLA+. I was contrasting how the author explained specifications versus how someone like Dijkstra would, not anything about TLA+. I don’t know enough about TLA+ to say anything interesting, but I appreciate your explanations of its approach!