MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by wincy | 2025-07-22 14:44:36+00:00
I got a doctor to pull an internal tooth that had formed a cyst around it, a maxillofacial surgeon.

The dentist quoted $1300 but said insurance wouldn’t cover it, it’d be out of pocket. The surgeon did it (I was awake with local anesthesia) for $300 but insurance paid an additional $4000.

Before all this, A PE owned dentist office (the one that didn’t have the six month wait) had told me two years before that the pain I was experiencing was because I had periodontal disease and that I just needed to get a periodontal cleaning (which cost $750 and didn’t help at all, also conveniently not done by a dentist but a dental hygienist). This turned out to be very dangerous because the cyst was pushing and wearing away at my nose bone, and if I’d waited any longer my nose may have sunk into my face.

It’s definitely maddening the hoops one has to go through to get proper dental care in the US.
by mapontosevenths | 2025-07-22 14:44:52+00:00
This is the crux of the issue. The CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity and availability) are the root of all security. However, those goals are often self-contradictory.

There will always, for example, be a conflict between availability and confidentiality. Ultimate confidentiality might require that the data be stored in an inaccessible bunker with no outside access. Ultimate availability might involve hosting sensitive data on a publicly accessible server with no access controls.

In the real world we must always balance these needs carefully, and triage available resources to achieve an "ideal" outcome. This means that security will never, and can never, be a solved problem.
by throwaw12 | 2025-07-22 14:45:11+00:00
> come on, everybody knows this sort of thing doesn't actually work.

:)

then everybody should know things doesn't actually work on other side and no need to complain about it.

I think your example is slightly misleading, better example would be: imagine you are buying drugs, and you might die from overdose and you still decided to try and die, LLM is exactly this
by gortok | 2025-07-22 14:45:33+00:00
You're not going to get one.

You reach out every few months with updates, especially if those updates include the KPIs they're looking for to invest. If you don't know what those KPIs are, then your initial conversation with them was too hand-wavy.

If you have traction and you continue to gain traction, follow up every few months with a "This is where we are" email, if you'd like. But if you're waiting for them to do something before you make whatever move you were going to make after they made their decision, you're going to be waiting for a long time.
by MR_Bulldops | 2025-07-22 14:46:15+00:00
I have found the biggest commonality in otherwise intelligent Trump supporters in my life is deep-seated insecurity issues.

The second biggest is a life that hasn't gone how they had envisioned and, rather than take accountability, they blame anything but their choices. Though, I think lack of accountability is a symptom of insecurity, so it is wrapped up in the first issue.
by ChrisArchitect | 2025-07-22 14:46:19+00:00
What year is it, 2017?

https://2017-2021.state.gov/the-united-states-withdraws-from...

Boring, been here before. UNESCO and world moved on. With some notable declarations like Demoscene and Techno music being added in a number of countries. Too bad those couldn't be added to a US registry also.
by Analemma_ | 2025-07-22 14:46:42+00:00
Whether it’s legal slash fair use to train on copyrighted material is only one of the questions currently being asked though. There’s a separate issue at play where these companies are pirating the material for the training process.

By comparison, someone here brought up that it might be transformative fair use to write a play heavily based on Blood Meridian, but you still need to buy a copy of the book. It would still be infringement to pirate the e-book for your writing process, even if the end result was legal.
by 93po | 2025-07-22 14:46:46+00:00
why do you need a car that can do 65MPH? just take the backroads and chat with a friend or something while you drive, 30 MPH is plenty to get anyone anywhere. people made do with horses that did about 5 MPH for over a hundred years and they got around just fine. 30 MPH is, like, at least twice as fast as the horse
by leandrenash | 2025-07-22 14:46:54+00:00
Unimodaly Ingest is the world’s first truly unified data-ingestion CLI for machine learning. It automatically detects text, image, audio and tabular files, then validates, samples and augments them into a single, schema-validated dataset ready for training. With built-in metadata extraction and support for JSON/JSONL/CSV exports, you’ll cut your dataset-prep time from hours to minutes. Open-source, cross-platform and extensible, it’s ideal for data engineers, researchers and AI startups everywhere.
by MostlyStable | 2025-07-22 14:47:14+00:00
I will find these types of arguments a lot more convincing once the person making them is able to explain, in detail and with mechanisms, what it is the human brain does that allows it to do these things, and in what ways those detailed mechanisms are different from what LLMs do.

To be clear, I'm relatively confident that LLMs aren't conscious, but I'm also not so overly confident to claim, with certainty, exactly what their internal state is like. Consciousness is a so poorly understood that we don't even know what questions to ask to try and better understand it. So we really should avoid making confident pronouncements.
by dweinus | 2025-07-22 14:47:17+00:00
"AI" is just a misleading and unhelpful term, exactly because it causes people to assume that there are properties we associate with intelligence (abstract thought, planning, motivations, emotions) present in anything given the term. That is easier to correct when someone is referring to a logistic regression. I think that "AI" has clung to LLMs because they specifically give the illusion of having those properties.
by disgruntledphd2 | 2025-07-22 14:47:39+00:00
Well yeah, sortof. Note that the credit card companies mostly function as tech providers for the actual banks, who get a bunch more of the money.

And there are a bunch of fixed costs that emerge in running payment networks at scale (mostly related to fraud and disputes), so micropayments are a hard sell.

Possible that someone could try again with stablecoins but I'm still sceptical it would work. Like, I'd pay for it but I already pay for a bunch of newspapers monthly.
by lastcat743 | 2025-07-22 14:48:18+00:00
> Power has no concept of morality

I will go one further smarty, Power is savage and the “terrible burden of free will” is to mitigate savage Power with a civilizing accord.

“There shall be an uncorruptible righteous rule of law among Powers over Man.”

Next you will ask me, “How does Man maintain an ‘uncorruptible’ righteous[1] rule of law”?

1: principled upon Truth and serving to protect ‘the unculpable’ from breach by will or neglect; one entitled by domain, competent and uncorrupted [hard line on purgery].
by isoprophlex | 2025-07-22 14:48:49+00:00
Yeah. If HN is your primary source of in depth AI discussion, you get a pretty balanced take IMO compared to other channels out there. We (the HN crowd) should take into account that if you take "people commenting on HN" as a group, you are implicitly selecting for people that are able to read, parse and contextualise written comment threads.

This is NOT your average mid-to-high level corpo management exec, who can for more than 80% (from experience) be placed in the "rise of the business idiot" cohort, fed on prime linkedin brainrot. self-reinforcing hopium addicts with an mba.

Nor is it the great masses of random earth dwellers who are not always able to resist excess sugar, nicotine, mcdonalds, youtube, fentanyl, my-car-is-bigger-than-yours credit card capitalism, free pornography, you name it. And now RLHF: Validation as a service. Not sure if humanity is ready for this.

(Disclosure: my mum has a chatgpt instance that she named and I'm deeply concerned about the spiritual convos she has with it; random people keep calling me on the level of "can you build me an app that uses llms to predict Funko Pop futures".)
by svachalek | 2025-07-22 14:48:52+00:00
One massive difference between the two is that a human mind is still in "training" mode, it is affected by and changes according to the conversations it has. An LLM does not. Another major difference is that the human exists in real time and continues thinking, sensing, and being even while it is not speaking, while an LLM does not.

If you ascribe to the idea (as I do) that consciousness is not a binary quality that a thing possesses or does not, you can assign some tiny amount of consciousness to this process. But you can do the same for a paramecium. Until those two major differences are addressed, I believe we're talking about consciousness on that scale, not to be confused with human consciousness.
by vonnik | 2025-07-22 14:49:33+00:00
All LLMs hit a ceiling of complexity beyond which they cease to understand the code base. Greenfield projects show this particularly well, because the LLM works until it doesn’t. There are lots of greenfield projects that should exist! And lots of ways that someone can manage context and their own understanding of code to push the LLM further than its current limits, although not indefinitely far.
Ask HN: Python developers at big companies what is your setup?
by ravshan | 2025-07-22 14:49:34+00:00
I am trying to transition from .net to python, but finding conflicting information online about what people Actually Use.

People recommend their favorite tool, but when you look into it, it is barely supported or already abandoned.

I will focus on working with LLMs.

Edit: By tools I meant everything related to python development starting from python version, package manager, environment manager, IDE and ending with deployment tools
by kazinator | 2025-07-22 14:49:37+00:00
.a archives can speed up linking of very large software. This is because of assumptions as to the dependencies and the way the traditional Unix-style linker deals with .a files (by default).

When a bunch of .o files are presented to the linker, it has to consider references in every direction. The last .o file could have references to the first one, and the reverse could be true.

This is not so for .a files. Every successive .a archive presented on the linker command line in left-to-right order is assumed to satisfy references only in material to the left of it. There cannot be circular dependencies among .a files and they have to be presented in topologically sorted order. If libfoo.a depends on libbar.a then libfoo.a must be first, then libbar.a.

(The GNU Linker has options to override this: you can demarcate a sequence of archives as a group in which mutual references are considered.)

This property of archives (or of the way they are treated by linking) is useful enough that at some point when the Linux kernel reached a certain size and complexity, its build was broken into archive files. This reduced the memory and time needed for linking it.

Before that, Linux was linked as a list of .o files, same as most programs.
by kuhsaft | 2025-07-22 14:49:58+00:00
The closest comparison to SharePoint is probably a combination of Zoho Connect, Zoho WorkDrive, and Zoho Flow. Zoho's office suite also integrates with WorkDrive and has collaborative editing. They even have a desktop app for Writer.

Even then, SharePoint is more of a platform. You can build SharePoint apps and extend it.

There isn't a comparison for SharePoint Server. There really isn't any single thing like it for on-premise.
by ineptech | 2025-07-22 14:50:24+00:00
Another FF feature I love that I believe Chrome lacks: text replacement in bookmarks. Add a bookmark with url "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/%s" and keyword "wp" and typing "wp Potato" in the url bar will take you to the wikipedia entry on Potato.

I switched to FF a few years back I really do like it better, but honestly even if it crashed every hour on the hour I'd still use it over chrome for uBO alone.
by superkuh | 2025-07-22 14:50:38+00:00
I understand the audience this person has written for: professional developers. In that context, sure. But for everyone except professional developers vibe coding is amazing.

It gets the things they want to do done. No paying someone else, no asking for help on $chatprotocolchannel, no getting a friend to help. It's just there. It doesn't matter if it's ugly. It doesn't need to be monetized, doesn't need to be worked on by a team of people. It just needs to work... enough.

Vibe coding may not be for you. But vibe coding is so that we don't need to bother you for trivial things (like porting a 12 .c file X11/cairo program to a single .pl file cariro/gtk program).
by akashshah87 | 2025-07-22 14:50:45+00:00
“The U.S. began defunding UNESCO under Obama after it admitted Palestine as a full member—and then withdrew entirely during Trump’s first term.” — [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/world/europe/us-withdraw-...)

This isn’t just a blip, but part of a long-term downward trajectory in U.S. and UNESCO relations.
by louthy | 2025-07-22 14:50:50+00:00
> wouldn't expect a clone

If I create a new object I would expect the 'init time' properties to be initialised. Regardless of how it was initialised. The current approach just leads to inconsistent data structures, with significant issues for debugging how a data structure got into an inconsistent state. Modern language features should not be trying to save nanoseconds like they did in the past. Or, should at least default to 'correct' with performance opts outs.
by hbn | 2025-07-22 14:50:55+00:00
On my list of concerns for big tech abusing power, the ad company with the browser monopoly leveraging their position to essentially end ad blocking on the web by disabling it on the browser people are using in practice is very high on the list, and I would have been fine waiting on forcing Apple to let you uninstall the camera app, or switching the iPhone to USB-C if it could have prevented this. This didn't come out of nowhere, we've known about manifest v3 for years now.

In fact Google's browser monopoly only looks like it's gonna get further cemented as Apple is forced to allow other browser engines, which is the only thing keeping any sort of competition against Chrome.

I feel like the anti-Apple snark that's been so popular since around the late 2000s (and I took part in in my angsty teen years) has been affecting the priority of what's being dealt with from regulators and it annoys me.
Show HN: Sounds Social – A new platform to share and discover music and sounds
by matteodem | 2025-07-22 14:51:00+00:00
Hey HN!

I’ve been working on Sounds Social over the past few weeks—a free platform where anyone can upload, share, and discover music and sounds.

Features: * Simple upload & user profiles * Like & follow functionality * Stream tracks directly in the browser * Battle Mode (two sounds are pitted against each other and you decide which sound slaps harder) * Monetization (70% of your PRO plan goes to the audio creators you support) * Github link: https://github.com/sounds-social/platform

For the one’s interested. I context engineered the platform with Gemini CLI. 90% of the code is written by an AI. I know some of you might be put off by this, but all in all being an overseer of an AI coding agent has been a good experience so far.

The tech stack is Meteor and React together with Tailwind for styling. I really enjoyed having all the features like user system, verification / forgot password emails and more baked into the framework. Testing also has been a breeze. Where I got stuck was implementing a CI with a README badge. If anyone has tips on how to implement that I’d be glad if you could give me some pointers (create a Github issue or comment down below).

I’d love to get your feedback, suggestions, or bug reports!

Here’s the link to check it out: https://soundssocial.io/ About page with more info: https://soundssocial.io/about

Thanks for giving it a try!
by toyg | 2025-07-22 14:51:07+00:00
> which modern browser doesn't handle XSLT 1.0?

I know it depends of the definition of "modern browser", but I'm fairly sure that MSIE and pre-chrome Edge had lost support for it at some point, since MSXML stopped being shipped with them.

I honestly don't know what the current state of the art is, but Firefox doesn't do native XSLT anymore afaik (yes, you can do it in JS, but it's an extra step).
by ryandv | 2025-07-22 14:51:13+00:00
As a STEM field, the software engineer's role is probably still secure against AI tool wielders waving around chainsaws without the necessary training and accidentally sawing production databases in half.

What LLMs are poised to replace is basically the entirety of the liberal arts and academic disciplines, where output is largely measured on the production of language - irrespective of that language's correspondence to any actual underlying reality. Musicians and authors - fiction and non-fiction alike - are already witnessing their impending obsolescence in real time.
by mattmanser | 2025-07-22 14:51:16+00:00
This is one of those instances where you're arguing over the meaning of a word. But they're trying to explain to a layman that, no, you haven't awoken your AI. So they're using fuzzy words a layman understands.

If you read the section entitled "The Mechanism" you'll see the rest of your comment echoes what they actually explain in the article.
by zavec | 2025-07-22 14:51:43+00:00
> it can be helpful if you’re very flexible

My biggest takeaway from this article is that I should go and see which of these systems have APIs I can query, because if I have a lot of flexibility I think it'd be easier to script it than clicking through a whole bunch of different options on google flights trying to find what the cheapest fare is. I want to be able to write a script that says "here are my dealbreakers, here are the range of dates I can leave on, here's the range for coming back, go and find the best deal"

I guess that's the type of service people typically build and charge for.
by ceejayoz | 2025-07-22 14:51:45+00:00
> There is no context that justifies UNESCO focussing on criticism of Israel's self defence, as opposed to focussing on Hamas's attrocity that started the war (or Putin etc)

Sure there is. Only one is still actively happening, and it's the one that's killed 20-60x as many civilians, depending on whose estimates you follow.

> There is no context that justifies UNESCO rebranding Jewish holy places as “Palestinian World Heritage sites.” Jews existed in the region for more than a thousand years before the violent Islamic conquest and colonisation.

The context there is simple; quite a few places are holy to more than one religion. Some are holy to Palestinians; some are in Palestinian territories, like the Church of the Nativity.
by gruez | 2025-07-22 14:51:47+00:00
The CFAA might be vague, but the case law on scraping pretty much has been resolved to "it's pretty much legal except in very limited circumstances". It's regrettable that less resourced defendants were harassed before large corporations were able to secure such rulings, but the rulings that allowed scraping occurred before AI companies' scraping was done, so it's unclear why AI companies in particular should be getting flak here.
by MostlyStable | 2025-07-22 14:51:47+00:00
I'm not the one making claims. I'm specifically advising not making claims. The claim I'm advising not making is that LLMs are definitely, absolutely not, in no way, conscious. Seeing something that, from the outside, appears a lot like a conscious mind (to the extent that they pass the Turing test easily) and then claiming confidently that that thing is not what it appears to be, that's a claim, and that requires, in my opinion, extraordinary evidence.

I'm advising agnosticism. We don't understand consciousness, and so we shouldn't feel confident in pronouncing something absolutely not conscious.
by nextos | 2025-07-22 14:52:33+00:00
> I've never had Firefox issues on Linux.

My experience on Linux running on very old hardware (4th Gen Intel) is also good. Firefox feels quick and snappy. It uses a reasonable amount of resources, and has a relatively modest memory footprint by modern browser standards. In comparison, Chromium makes my fans spin on every site and eats several GB of memory.

The annoying part of Firefox is that development seems a bit stagnant in some areas, especially taking into consideration the amount of resources Mozilla has. For example, bookmarks and history still rely on a very old native UI that is quite clunky. Customization via user.js is too imperative and most options are largely undocumented.
by stareatgoats | 2025-07-22 14:52:41+00:00
So, you need the supernatural connotations in order to explain that Hitler was bad? Feel free, but to me the problem is the anti-intellectualism of it. Because "evil" is a self-sufficient explanation, which doesn't explain any of the real reasons for the rise of Nazism and cloaks the fact that ethnic cleansing and genocide are very much human behaviors, which history has sadly proven again and again. We're not getting to grips with it by calling it "evil" (or "Evil!!" even), which is mere name-calling, essentially. Name-calling of others that is.
by triceratops | 2025-07-22 14:53:02+00:00
> a 20-minute walk really shouldn’t be a major hurdle for the vast majority of working adults

Most US adults live in suburban or non-dense cities. In the 20 minutes it takes to walk to and from the bus stop they can complete most of their trips in a car. Driving is the competition. Walking per se isn't the problem. The time it wastes is the hurdle.

> Even in... manhattan... it’s very common to spend 30 minutes... between walking to/from the

And that's an acceptable tradeoff in Manhattan because driving the same distance would take twice as long and be 4 times as expensive.
by dangus | 2025-07-22 14:53:44+00:00
Nobody likes to hear it but hardware just doesn’t last that long.

Even if you reuse the hardware by selling it off to homelab types or donating it, it’ll get faulty in a few very short years. It’s already been running 24/7 for a long time.

It’ll also be far less energy efficient in operation compared to newer hardware generations.

I also don’t really see what your beef with SO is for using SQL Server. Are you suggesting that companies do a major refactor every time their software stack goes out of style? There really isn’t anything wrong with SQL Server nor is there anything wrong with SO at a technical level.

You might be upset that entire industries run on imperfect tech stacks but value isn’t driven by tech stack choice. I’m not going to buy a sandwich from a different restaurant because they are using better tech than the restaurant with bad food.
by hopelite | 2025-07-22 14:53:52+00:00
A toxic, psychopathic, narcissistic con job is parody?

I don’t think people are at all understanding that they are in an abusive relationship and have been all their lives and so have all the people around them all their lives for many generations now. We have all been born into a cult and that cult is all we know, so we are afraid to even just contemplate for a moment that it could all just be lies and abuses by liars and abusers.

If they can get you to voluntarily believe crazy things and do abusive things, they can get you to believe and do anything. That applies to the full political spectrum and for most people.

It’s not a farce. It’s something way worse.
by benoau | 2025-07-22 14:53:55+00:00
> You HAVE TO move to bim, the better vim. It's very similar to vim, but different enough that you have to learn new stuff

Wit the added bonus that "bim" won't remain popular enough to sustain its development for long, so "bim" users have to switch to the fork "bbim" in 2 years, that won't remain popular enough to sustain its development for long...