MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by soulofmischief | 2025-07-07 19:48:49+00:00
The cool thing is that I don't need your approval or permission to decide how I want to network with others, or in what ways I decide to integrate technology into my networking.

> I’m not convinced a literal screen strapped to your face can beat your human senses perceiving the world and other human beings in the flesh at a biochemical level.

No shit? I already said VR isn't a core part of the metaverse vision. Zuckerburg didn't invent the concept of the metaverse or its modern incarnation, he co-opted it and even changed his company name in an attempt to make the metaverse synonymous with his company and particular vision. Do everyone a favor and decouple this from your understanding of what the metaverse scene set out to do.

My network stretches across the globe, it's impossible to replicate this without technology. Judge less, seek to understand more.
by cmiles74 | 2025-07-07 19:48:49+00:00
For everyone arguing that there’s no harm in anthropomorphizing an LLM, witness this rationalization. They talk about training and learning as if this is somehow comparable to human activities. The idea that LLM training is comparable to a person learning seems way out there to me.

“We have admired, memorized, and internalized their sweeping themes, their substantive points, and their stylistic solutions to recurring writing problems.”

Claude is not doing any of these things. There is no admiration, no internalizing of sweeping themes. There’s a network encoding data.

We’re talking about a machine that accepts content and then produces more content. It’s not a person, it’s owned by a corporation that earns money on literally every word this machine produces. If it didn’t have this large corpus of input data (copyrighted works) it could not produce the output data for which people are willing to pay money. This all happens at a scale no individual could achieve because, as we know, it is a machine.
by const_cast | 2025-07-07 19:48:54+00:00
> "helpless", and "that's just the way I am"

These don't mean the same thing. You can be the thing you are and not be helpless. For example, if you have ADHD that's just a part of who you are. That doesn't mean you can't take medication or form processes to help yourself and mitigate the effects of ADHD.

Also, in my experience, people who choose to never label themselves are not better off. They typically do have some sort of condition, sometimes multiple, and they actively choose to do nothing about it because they're in extreme denial.

I see this with parents all the time. "My kids doesn't have ADHD! Stop trying to label him!". Okay great, but little Timmy is about to flunk out at fucking third grade. Let's do something about it.
by linsomniac | 2025-07-07 19:49:22+00:00
>is it really saving you that much time over good snippets and quick macros in your editor?

I had someone say that to me ~a month ago. I had mentioned online that one of the things I had the AI tooling do that morning was to convert a bunch of "print" statements to logging statements. He said that was something he'd just have his editor find/replace do. I asked him what sort of find/replace he'd do that based on the content of the log message appropriately selected between "logging.debug", "info", "warning", and "error", because the LLM did a good job of that. It also didn't fall into the issues of "pprint()" turning into "plogging.debug()" and the like.
Show HN: Empromptu.ai – Agentic AI Building AI Apps
by anaempromptu | 2025-07-07 19:49:43+00:00
Hey HN! We're Empromptu.ai, an AI app builder that builds AI apps (RAG, models, evals all built in every app) Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w25XhUaPfls

We started Empromptu after burning through thousands of credits on AI builders and hitting the same problem: cool looking prototypes or demos that break with real users.

The issue wasn't the building process, it was accuracy. Most AI applications plateau at 60%~ reliability, which is fine for prototypes but it's unusable in production. We realized these tools aren't really "AI app builders", they're website builders that happen to use AI.

We wanted to solve the hardest problem first: making AI applications actually work reliably.

Our approach centers on what we call dynamic optimization. Instead of cramming every possible scenario into one massive prompt (which confuses LLMs), our system adapts contextually. A travel chatbot automatically knows to mention LAX for Los Angeles vs. Pearson for Toronto. This consistently delivers 90%~ accuracy versus the industry standard 60%~.

But accuracy alone wasn't enough because we also needed to solve the builder gap:

- Simple builders (Lovable, Bolt): Create static websites, not AI applications

- Complex ML tools: Require dedicated teams most startups don't have (Arize, Voxel51) - we've also heard from both technical and non-technical founders that they found these tools very complex

- What's missing: Tools that build applications where AI is embedded functionality

So we built AI agents with optimization built-in. Users just type what they want to build and our agents handle the full development pipeline: creating applications with embedded models, RAG and intelligent processing. You can deploy to your own infrastructure via Netlify, GitHub or download it directly since you can run it locally.

The result: Startups, solo hackers and enterprises can build production-ready AI apps without hiring a dedicated ML team.

Waitlist: https://empromptu.ai

We'd love feedback from the HN community — esp. if you've hit similar accuracy problems or thoughts on the technical approach.
by foobarchu | 2025-07-07 19:49:53+00:00
I always found the latter to be a huge problem with that sub. So much stuff like "these products from X are the greatest thing ever...but that brand is terrible now, don't buy from them"

Turns out, BIFL products are only recognized as such in hindsight, which is often after enshittification hits.

I've found a good source of recommendations can be friends and family who bought something similar 3-4 years ago. If something is going to go catastrophically wrong, it probably will have happened by then, and it's still possible that the same product is available.
by amw-zero | 2025-07-07 19:50:29+00:00
Research points to there being a quadratic relationship between automated proof and code size: https://trustworthy.systems/publications/nictaabstracts/Mati....

Specifically, the relationship is between the _specification_ and the proof, and it was done for proofs written in Isabelle and not Lean.

The good news is that more and more automation is possible for proofs, so the effort to produce each proof line will likely go down over time. Still, the largest full program we've fully verified is much less than 100,000 LOC. seL4 (verified operating system) is around 10,000 lines IIRC.
by soVeryTired | 2025-07-07 19:50:44+00:00
Computers can already do a lot of things that no human can though. They can reliably find the best chess or go move better than a human.

It's conceivable (though not likely) that given training enough training in symbolic mathematics and some experimental data, an LLM-style AI could figure out a neat reconciliation of the two theories. I wouldn't say that makes it AGI though. You could achieve that unification with an AI that was limted to mathematics rather than being something that can function in many domains like a human can.
by pinkmuffinere | 2025-07-07 19:51:02+00:00
Ya, I don't believe ```paleo-anthropology "knew" that humans couldn't boil things until the invention of pottery```, it doesn't pass 'the laugh test'. There are many survivalist youtube channels that demo multiple methods to boil water without pottery [1][2]. If I were an anthropologist, I would be looking at modern survivalist methods to get inspiration for 'ancient' habits. Surely the folks that have studied their whole lives have even better sources of inspiration to investigate. Unless we have some source to back it up, I can't see how this remarkable claim should be trusted.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0zun_UxO2vU

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj_kUTBM6Qo
by ceejayoz | 2025-07-07 19:51:33+00:00
Both setups have a "is this deemed medically necessary and be covered" step, yes. The key difference is that "yup, necessary and typically covered" in Sweden gets you the procedure. In the US, it doesn't. You need coverage (or you pay out of pocket) for anything to be covered.

No insurance? The only care you can't be denied over payment is emergency care. (And the definition is narrow - they'll give you pain meds and IV fluids for your cancer and send you home. They will not do surgery/chemo for it without payment.)

As a bonus, Sweden's setup costs half as much, with similar outcomes. That's inclusive of taxation. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2023/11/health-at-a-gla...
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-07-07 19:52:30+00:00
> This part of the ruling is pretty much existing law. If you have a physical book (or own a digital copy of a book), you can largely do what you like with it within the confines of your own home, including digitising it. But you are not allowed to distribute those digital copies to others, nor are you allowed to download other people's digital copies that you don't own the rights to.

Can you point me to the US Supreme Court case where this is existing law?

It's pretty clear that if you have a physical copy of a book, you can lend it to someone. It also seems pretty reasonable that the person borrowing it could make fair use of it, e.g. if you borrow a book from the library to write a book review and then quote an excerpt from it. So the only thing that's left is, what if you do the same thing over the internet?

Shouldn't we be able to distinguish this from the case where someone is distributing multiple copies of a work without authorization and the recipients are each making and keeping permanent copies of it?
by dylan604 | 2025-07-07 19:52:42+00:00
Which is interesting in how I grew up "knowing" the asteroid/meteor killed the dinosaurs, but TFA suggests it was just a theory at the time of my learning. Or how I grew up with images of the planets, not knowing that they were only taken when I was a small kid. It is just a weird thing to think about how some knowledge we accept as known might not have been known by our grandparents or even our parents. It just seems like we would have known things for a lot longer.
by dotancohen | 2025-07-07 19:53:11+00:00
> How's your Tesla Model 3 doing, by the way? Not that I'd want to imply your choice of transportation has anything to do with your incredibly unfavorable interpretation of this article and defense of Musk.

My Model 3 is great for 3.5 years and 110,000 km. At the time I bought it I felt it was too expensive for what it offered, but as I mentioned I've been advocating against carbon for decades and this was the first electric car available in my country. I bought one of the very first to arrive.

And yes, you are implying that somehow the car I drive is influencing my defence of Musk. If you had spent a bit more time examining my post history, you would have discovered that I am a huge SpaceX fan. That would have been at least a plausible argument in favour of your position. But alas, neither does that really affect how I view the article or Musk.
by derektank | 2025-07-07 19:53:41+00:00
Aging exists because the human body is optimized to survive and reproduce in a resource constrained environment with many threats. Our predecessors eked out just enough calories to survive to the age of 15, when we could begin reproducing. Any traits that made it more likely for us to survive until that point, even if those traits resulted in damage that would eventually accumulate and wear us down after our reproductive window, was selected for. We are all basically running the biological equivalent of overclocked CPUs without investing in proper cooling.

We no longer exist in a resource constrained environment and have access to massive amounts of energy from the sun which makes entropy a negligible concern. There is no good reason to not at least try to prevent or reverse senescence.
by spwa4 | 2025-07-07 19:54:07+00:00
It is because 10 measurements of that per second can predict with great accuracy where every object in the scene will go for the next few seconds, except for small children or bikes or ... that the LIDAR cannot see.

It can also tell you 4-5 seconds before it happens which objects are going to collide. Not just which object YOU are going to collide with, but any collision between any 2 objects if they are within the range of the LIDAR.

But they see fundamentally different things than humans. So humans will never work together nicely with LIDAR guided robots.
by jll29 | 2025-07-07 19:54:11+00:00
The details in how I talk about LLMs matter.

If I use human-related terminology as a shortcut, as some kind of macro to talk at a higher level/more efficiently about something I want to do that might be okay.

What is not okay is talking in a way that implies intent, for example.

Compare:

"The AI doesn't want to do that."

versus

"The model doesn't do that with this prompt and all others we tried."

The latter way of talking is still high-level enough but avoids equating/confusing the name of a field with a sentient being.

Whenever I hear people saying "an AI" I suggest they replace AI with "statistics" to make it obvious how problematic anthropomorphisms may have become:

*"The statistics doesn't want to do that."
by electroly | 2025-07-07 19:54:18+00:00
Thank you for trying it! Those MDI titlebars/controls bother me too. I haven't decided what to do about it. Microsoft hasn't updated MDI functionality since Windows 7. These days, people simply don't use MDI at all.

Minimize is disabled because it's too buggy currently, but I plan to bring it back. In the old days it would minimize to an icon but these days it minimizes to a tiny sliver of a titlebar that's impossible to click on. For Program Manager, I implemented a manual workaround (literally, my own minimized icon bar), but I haven't implemented that in File Manager yet. Definitely something I have planned for the future.

Thanks for the tip about smooth scrolling. I have it disabled in Performance Options, so I never noticed.
by const_cast | 2025-07-07 19:54:22+00:00
I think comparing LGBTQ+ identifications with mental illness is dangerous. Not too long ago we were quick to lump homosexuality in with these, despite the fact homosexuality is more of a state of being evidenced by real-life actions people willingly take. That being, sex with the same sex.

Transgender people often suffer gender dysphoria. You're correct that it's possible that gender dysphoria might be a downstream effect of society. Namely, we are an extremely gender-segregated society. There's truly only one way to be a man, although there are multiple ways to be a woman. People feel forced and confined to a very small subset of behavior and self-expression.

Existing between genders is, unfortunately, untenable. Society is just not built for that. But existing as the opposite gender seems to be perfectly doable. I'm not saying that it's that simple and all transgender people would disappear if we live in a society with no gender roles or expectations, but certainly they heavily feel the pressure of those gender roles and expectations.
by bornfreddy | 2025-07-07 19:54:39+00:00
This! It is bad enough that most designers think they are UX experts too (few of them are), but trying to micromanage devs so that every screen would be "pixel perfect" really takes the cake. Especially when the provided designs (that should be followed religiously) are missing core functionality and the whole flows. Just give me the guidelines please, and please please be consistent with them!

Well, I'm sure they have their own set of gripes about the developers too. ;-)
by kinow | 2025-07-07 19:54:45+00:00
> That said I understand why this is an issue and seeing a (representative) code sample is invaluable.

Yeah, I'd also hate to be in that position where I may be the best candidate for a position but somebody else got it just because they have public projects. But at the end, the managers/HR/technical team/etc. are all trying to minimize risks to the company and projects.
by hyghjiyhu | 2025-07-07 19:54:55+00:00
Perhaps it was unwise to use the term dna damage yes. I used it to mean any deviation from the initial dna of the fertilized egg, including breakage, point mutations, missing chromosomes, viral insertions and probably more I can't think of right now.

Edit: I suppose those are all called mutations. Somehow I thought mutation meant a small local change only.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | 2025-07-07 19:55:02+00:00
"This is how AI gets introduced to the marketplace-by force-feeding the public. And they're doing this for a very good reason."

"Most people won't pay for AI voluntarily-just 8% according to a recent survey. So they need to bundle it with some other essential product."

"You never get to decide."

Silicon Valley and Redmond have been operating this way for quite some time.

They have been effectively removing choice long before this "AI" push. Often accomplished through "defaults".

This "AI" nonsense may be the most bold example.

"But if AI is bundled into existing businesses, Silicon Valley CEOs can pretend that AI is a moneymaker, even if the public is lukewarm or hostile."

"The AI business model would collapse overnight if they needed consumer opt-in. Just pass that law, and see how quickly the bots disappear. "

"You don't get to choose. You're never asked. It just shows up. Now you have to deal with it."

"If they gave people a choice, they would reject this tyranny masquerading as innovation."

"The AI business model would collapse overnight if they needed consumer opt-in."

We never get to find out what would happen.

One comment I would like to add here.

By removing meaningful choice and creating fabricated "demand" these so-called "tech" companies (unnecessary intermediaries) when faced with antitrust allegations then try to argue something like, "Everyone is using it therefore everyone wants it." And, "This shows everyone prefers us over the alternatives."

"Frank Zappa offers a possible mission statement for Microsoft back in 1976, a few months after the company is founded."

RIP.
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-07 19:55:26+00:00
Japan is mostly cold to temperate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Japan

except for some small islands like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamitorishima

There's a lot of concern that tree-planting projects wind up like this

https://e360.yale.edu/features/phantom-forests-tree-planting...
by soulofmischief | 2025-07-07 19:55:29+00:00
Then go play GTA IV on your Playstation 3, since you lack understanding about the goals of world models and cannot recognize incremental progress towards that vision, and are only interested in armchair criticism without a full understanding of the scene.

Every game company is going to use this tech in some form one day, whether in a production engine or during the prototyping phase. At some point, you're going to have to shed your biases. If you lack the vision or understanding to appreciate the research going into this, you're welcome to come back years from now when a finished product has reached the masses.

> If this was created by someone I knew, I'd tell them to learn Unity or something and make an actual game.

That's sad. Sad that you don't think actual games will be made with this technology, sad that you're gatekeeping what games even are by using vague qualifiers like "actual" which allow you to retreat from your position as needed, sad that you'd discourage them from continuing to research this amazing new avenue of creative possibilities.
by joshstrange | 2025-07-07 19:55:37+00:00
> The reason I chose to make Danish Names a paid app from the beginning was simply that I think it's a lot more honest and upfront to charge a small one-time fee before the download, as opposed to claiming your app is free and then charging a high fee or even a subscription inside the app. There's an honesty and straight-forwardness to paid apps that I like: You pay once, and then you don't get bothered with requests for paid upgrades when you're using the app.

I understand what you are going for here but I have no qualms with "Free, with IAP" as long as when I look at the IAP I see things like:

- Unlock Full Version

- Remove Ads

- 1 Month/1 Year (for certain types of apps where that makes sense)

- Lifetime Unlock

and not:

- 100 Gems

- Pack of Coins

- Subscription for an app that I only plan to use a handful of times
by dexwiz | 2025-07-07 19:57:27+00:00
> While retirement typically occurs, after completing a career and saving and investing for it, a new trend is emerging among Gen Z career professionals called “micro-retirement.” Micro-retirements involve taking a one to two-week break from work every 12 to 18 months.

Wow, since when did a perfectly normal PTO policy get renamed? If anything this just sounds like pre internet vacations, where PTO meant actual time off, not working remote.

The article then goes on and repeatedly bashes the reader about how this might be "risky" for savings and career growth. If two weeks off a year is now risky, we're cooked.
by kinow | 2025-07-07 19:57:41+00:00
Agreed. Another thing that helps is writing. If you have a blog, it helps tremendously as it's possible to learn a lot from an engineer when the posts contain some thoughts about what that person learned or worked on, some opinions, techniques and tools used, etc.

Even these Linkedin posts are fine, as long as it's not an ad to some tool, or just full of buzzwords.

The kind of "behind the trenches" posts are great too, to explain something that happened in a project, a challenge you had, how you debugged a problem. This saves a lot of time in the interview as I would read it all and use that to discuss with the candidate.
by Croak | 2025-07-07 19:57:57+00:00
Ed Zitron over on wheresyoured.at has done some great work showing how all of these companies are just burning through money.

No reasonable businesses would spend such money if they have none. They should work on becoming profitable. OpenAI can't really be called a startup anymore and they should have for a long time have had a path to profitability. Right now it feels like they are all just running around aimlessly, like chicken without a head, trying to make up the promises they made 2 years ago. All the while they are burning through money, like it is growing on trees, until they have none left.

This is also not limited to OpenAI. Just watch what is happening at Facebook and their hiring bonuses. Feels like a bubble ready to burst.
by const_cast | 2025-07-07 19:57:58+00:00
We don't view it as unquestionable, we question it quiet a bit. Like, a lot actually. And people do change course if they want, that happens sometimes.

And on the topic of infertility, it's complicated. Many people have no desire to have children, and many people are infertile anyway. I'm infertile due to cancer, and little did I know this was pre-determined at birth. I didn't even make it to my mid twenties before that chicken came to roost.

But I face a lot less stigma and questioning about that. Everyone is quick to accept I'm infertile and that's that, and there's nothing anyone could have done. If this happened in my 50s this would make more sense. But, I didn't. I became infertile around the same time many people choose to transition. And yet, my infertility isn't a topic of discussion.
by joshstrange | 2025-07-07 19:58:30+00:00
> I have mostly found that all app store apps, no matter what app store, are 100% garbage unless they come from a Fortune 500 company and even then, a lot of those are garbage.

Hard disagree. My favorite apps are made by either a solo developer or a small group/company.

Some examples:

- Overcast (Podcast Player)

- Prologue (Audiobook App)

- Octal (HN Client)

- Apollo (RIP, Reddit)

- Drafts (Notes app)

- Any Zach Gage game

- Widgetsmith (Widgets)