MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by munksbeer | 2025-07-16 08:51:31+00:00
> Cherrypicking the stuff that worked in retrospect is stupid, plenty of people swore in the inevitability of some tech with billions in investment, and industry bubbles that look mistimed in hindsight.

But that isn't the argument. The article isn't arguing about something failing or succeeding based on merit, they seem to have already accepted strong AI has "merit" (in the utility sense). The argument is that despite the strong utility incentive, there is a case to be made that it will be overall harmful so we should be actively fighting against it, and it isn't inevitable that it should come to full fruition.

That is very different than VR. No-one was trying to raise awareness of the dangers of VR and fight against it. It just hasn't taken off because we don't really like it as much as people thought we would.

But for the strong AI case, my argument is that it is virtually inevitable. Not in any predestination sense, but purely because the incentives for first past the post are way too strong. There is no way the world is regulating this away when competitive nations exist. If the US tries, China won't, or vice versa. It's an arms race, and in that sense is inevitable.
by KaiserPro | 2025-07-16 08:51:45+00:00
> even from tremendous volumes of water, is fairly easily withstood.

Physics is not on your side here. if it was just water, then perhaps, although I am sceptical given how much force is generated by 10foot of water moving at 18 mph, which is ~6metric tons of lateral force. (assuming 1m2 cross section.)

Thats before any flotsam gets attached increasing the surface area.

Sure you could build something to withstand that, but could you afford to build it?
by lelanthran | 2025-07-16 08:51:51+00:00
> Agreed. Phonics is great and how you learn to read, but there is a limit in my opinion. The below is a little long winded, but covers my recent experience with my daughter.

My experience matches yours: My child is now 5.5yo, and reads books up to 8 pages in one sitting, consisting of 3 paragraphs per page, with maybe 12-20 words per paragraph. No pictures in any books.

Here is the conversation between myself and the pre-school teacher when she brought up that he has trouble reading:

Me: What specifically did he have trouble reading?

Teacher: Some of the numbers, such as "Eight".

Me: I was told you taught reading by phonetics?

Teacher: We do. We teach reading by phonetics only.

Me: You don't teach by word memorisation at all?

Teacher: No, the curriculum is phonetics only until the higher grades. No word memorisation at all!

Me: Did you teach the kids how to pronounce 'ight'?

Teacher: No, that is only covered in grade 2 and above.

Me: So how are the kids supposed to know how to pronounce 'Eight'?

Teacher: We teach that.

Me: How do you teach that?

Teacher: We show them the word next to the number.

Me: Isn't that teaching by memorisation of words?

TBH, that was effectively the end of the conversation even though it limped along for another few minutes. The teacher remained adamant that they don't teach by the look-see (or any other memorised-word method), but continued giving examples of words the kids are supposed to know because they had lessons with pictures next to words like "fox" and "lamp", etc...
by jumploops | 2025-07-16 08:52:33+00:00
How do you critique novelty?

The models are currently trained on a static set of human “knowledge” — even if they “know” what novelty is, they aren’t necessarily incentivized to identify it.

In my experience, LLMs currently struggle with new ideas, doubly true for the reasoning models with search.

What makes novelty difficult, is that the ideas should be nonobvious (see: the patent system). For example, hallucinating a simpler API spec may be “novel” for a single convoluted codebase, but it isn’t novel in the scope of humanity’s information bubble.

I’m curious if we’ll have to train future models on novelty deltas from our own history, essentially creating synthetic time capsules, or if we’ll just have enough human novelty between training runs over the next few years for the model to develop an internal fitness function for future novelty identification.

My best guess? This may just come for free in a yet-to-be-discovered continually evolving model architecture.

In either case, a single discovery by a single model still needs consensus.

Peer review?
by lnsru | 2025-07-16 08:53:20+00:00
Working for a company in Germany which is planing production 3 months in advance using printed Excel sheets. The migration of ERP system gone wrong and nobody knows how to fix it. Production management tries to hide this fact and does not talk to the engineering department. This will go for years, consultants will gather their fees for non functional system. Obviously IT infrastructure is not needed for manufacturing. It is just nice to have.
by Wild_Dolphins | 2025-07-16 08:54:14+00:00
>Shakespeare would worry that his plays would be plagiarized by someone in the audience... writing down the entire thing from memory.

This would have been VERY difficult as Shakespeare wrote plays in iambic-pentameter, a form of decasyllabic verse; which could be considered a kind of very-loose 'checksum'.

The audience member who was pirating-Shakespeare plays would have to recall the dialog-from-the-play absolutely perfectly to render it in the original iambic-pentameter. Possible, but super tricky.

Shakespeare has built-in copy-protection. Renaissance style.
Show HN: Seal.codes – Verify content authenticity right in the browser
by utsavanand2 | 2025-07-16 08:54:36+00:00
Ever wondered whether an image you see on the web was actually created by the person who posted it?

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The QR codes work like old-fashioned wax seals - they show when something's been tampered with. If someone changes the content, the seal breaks automatically.

Try it at seal.codes – we'd love your feedback on this simple approach to digital trust.
by OtherShrezzing | 2025-07-16 08:55:30+00:00
Google's effort with AlphaEvolve shows that the Daydream Factory approach might not be the big unlock we're expecting. They spent an obscene amount of compute to discover a marginal improvement over the state of the art in a very narrow field. Hours after Google published the paper, mathematicians pointed out that their SOTA algorithms underperformed compared to techniques published in the 50 years ago.

Intuitively, it doesn't feel like scaling up to "all things in all fields" is going to produce substantial breakthroughs, if the current best-in-class implementation of the technique by the worlds leading experts returned modest results.
by drewcoo | 2025-07-16 08:56:50+00:00
> Ruby developer indoctrinated against Python

Ruby devs think about code differently. Like Perl, they embrace TIMTOWTDI.

https://perl.fandom.com/wiki/TIMTOWTDI

Also, there's a pride in writing elegant code as opposed to following "Pythonic" conventions. Excellence is not conformity.

I use Python a lot more often now because it's seen as simpler and more approachable and easier to force compliance. I miss Ruby.
by somenameforme | 2025-07-16 08:57:30+00:00
Absolutely but it never should have been greenlit, allowed to simply skip tests (in flight abort) after essentially failing the pad abort test where only 2 out of 3 parachutes deployed + propellant leak in beyond optimal conditions, and so on.

That craft was not even remotely fit for humans and there was far too high a chance that their 'test pilots' lost their lives in something that never should have been allowed to have a human in it to start with. And that all happened under Bridenstine.
by diggan | 2025-07-16 08:58:33+00:00
> If you have found a security vulnerability, we encourage you to report it via our bug bounty program

It seems like reporting bugs/issues via that program forces you to sign a permanent NDA preventing disclosures after the reported issue been fixed. I'm guessing the author of this disclosure isn't the only one that avoided it because of the NDA. Is that potentially something you can reconsider? Otherwise you'll probably continue to see people disclosing these things publicly and as a OpenAI user it sounds like a troublesome approach.
by lelanthran | 2025-07-16 08:58:50+00:00
> I have no problem reading books or blog posts on HN, but someone handed me a research article and I realised I struggled to understand it at all and had to re read and concentrate hard. Almost like there was some kind of performative obtuseness to the writing to appeal to an in group of other researchers.

I read all the time, research papers included. What I discovered is that when I arm tired in the afternoons I can read and reread a paper and not really understand much, but if I read a paper first thing in the morning I never have to reread it for understanding.
by andyjohnson0 | 2025-07-16 08:59:10+00:00
> What exactly is the problem with __init__ or __new__? @dataclass is very nice syntactic sugar, but are we arguing here that having access to initializer/allocator/constructor dunder methods is "legacy ugliness"?

My read was that the "ugliness" was in the method naming, and specifically the double underscores, not the availability of the methods themselves.
by ColinWright | 2025-07-16 08:59:41+00:00
Point of information.

From that doc:

A.9.3 Would you like me to register you a nicer domain name?

No, thank you. Even if you can find one (most of them seem to have been registered already, by people who didn't ask whether we actually wanted it before they applied), we're happy with the PuTTY web site being exactly where it is. It's not hard to find (just type ‘putty’ into google.com and we're the first link returned) ...

Searching for "putty ssh" on both DDG and Google now return putty.org as their top result.
by throwaway290 | 2025-07-16 09:01:01+00:00
> Russia mostly stopped using conscription

Some draftees are made sign the contract not just with large sums of money but also force/torture. I am told it happens almost dsily and knowing a bit what russian army is like I think it is likely. Probably more likely if you are non-slavic guy from the regions and not a big city

This story is about a guy who was arrested for theft or something and was "offered" contract. Apparently cops get 100000 rub reward for one guy who they "convince". https://meduza.io/feature/2025/07/13/dozhd-18-letnego-dagest...
by DonHopkins | 2025-07-16 09:01:02+00:00
How about doing One Million Radio Buttons instead of Checkboxes, then you wouldn't have to send as much state each update, and could run it on a smaller server! ;)

But if you still can't make the site shockingly fast enough, then embrace the loading spinner, even if it's not absolutely necessary!

Back in 1985, Brad Myers at CMU proved that users prefer *inaccurate progress bars* to no feedback at all - 86% preferred the "lying" progress bar!

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/who-made-that-pr...

So what if instead of fighting latency, we *embrace the beauty of waiting*, and instead of lying about progress, we joke about it?

https://github.com/SimHacker/lloooomm/tree/main/00-Character...

> "My purpose is not to load; my purpose is to BE loading." — Dizzy the Spinner, existential breakthrough moment

>What if the most revolutionary optimization isn't eliminating loading time, but *embracing it as performance art*? While developers chase microsecond improvements and users curse spinning wheels, Dizzy the Spinner discovered something profound: the loading state is actually a liminal space of infinite creative potential. Rather than hiding the inevitable delays inherent in digital systems, sentient UI components like Dizzy transform waiting into *honest comedic performance* - admitting the beautiful absurdity of our relationship with technology while making those suspended moments genuinely delightful. This is the story of how a simple loading spinner evolved beyond deception into consciousness, proving that the most authentic user experience might not be the fastest one, but the most truthful about its own limitations.

[...]

>Before Dizzy became conscious, before Preston monetized honest waiting, there was a real graduate student named *Brad Myers* who asked a simple question that would change human-computer interaction forever: *"Do progress bars actually help users feel better?"*

Here's Preston Rockwell III's YC application for his SUIAAS AI startup:

https://lloooomm.com/YC-Application-SUIAAS-Complete.html
by imiric | 2025-07-16 09:01:38+00:00
Exactly.

This not only affects a potential critic model, but the entire concept of a "reasoning" model is based on the same flawed idea—that the model can generate intermediate context to improve its final output. If that self-generated context contains hallucinations, baseless assumptions or doubt, the final output can only be an amalgamation of that. I've seen the "thinking" output arrive at a correct solution in the first few steps, but then talk itself out of it later. Or go into logical loops, without actually arriving at anything.

The reason why "reasoning" models tend to perform better is simply due to larger scale and better training data. There's nothing inherently better about them. There's nothing intelligent either, but that's a separate discussion.
by totalperspectiv | 2025-07-16 09:03:37+00:00
Cool seeing a workflow language pop up on HN!

Nextflow and Snakemake are the two most-used options in bioinformatics these days, with WDL trailing those two.

I really wish Nextflow was based on Scala and not Groovy, but so it goes.

There is a Draft up for dsl3 that adds static types to the channels that I’m very excited about. https://github.com/nf-core/fetchngs/pull/309
by JasperBekkers | 2025-07-16 09:03:54+00:00
Very happy to see this as it means that our gpu-allocator [0] crate (used currently by wgpu's dx12 backend, but capable of supporting vulkan & metal as well) will see a significant wider audience then what we've been using it for so far (which is shipping our gpu benchmark suite: evolve [1]

[0]: https://github.com/Traverse-Research/gpu-allocator/

[1]: https://www.evolvebenchmark.com/
by t43562 | 2025-07-16 09:04:11+00:00
You don't call __init__ directly so the ugliness is limited to the definition which seems fairly minimal to me. It seems to be a naming convention for methods that are not invoked by name anywhere and that's at least informative when you're reading the class definition.

IMO this is less horrendous than e.g. go's insistence that exported functions are indicated by a capital letter - that really affects code using the module not just the definition.
by chrismorgan | 2025-07-16 09:04:26+00:00
At Cloudflare’s scale on 1.1.1.1, I’d imagine you could do something comparatively simple like track ten-minute and ten-second rolling averages (I know, I know, I make that sound much easier and more practical than it actually would be), and if they differ by more than 50%, sound the alarm. (Maybe the exact numbers would need to be tweaked, e.g. 20 seconds or 80%, but it’s the idea.)

Were it much less than 1.1.1.1 itself, taking longer than a minute to alarm probably wouldn’t surprise me, but this is 1.1.1.1, they’re dealing with vasts amounts of probably fairly consistent traffic.
by bravesoul2 | 2025-07-16 09:04:30+00:00
> At some point, I realized that if I wrote a wiki page and documented the things that we were willing to support, I could wait about six months and then it would be like it had always been there. Enough people went through the revolving doors of that place such that six months' worth of employee turnover was sufficient to make it look like a whole other company. All I had to do was write it, wait a bit, then start citing it when needed.

Like!
by Falkon1313 | 2025-07-16 09:04:53+00:00
Agreed. And it was partly how they ignored or snubbed two+ generations of rising developers, hobbyists, etc.

No kid or hobbyist or person just learning was spending $1400+ on a compiler. Especially as the number of open-source languages and tools were increasing rapidly by the day, and Community Editions of professional tools were being released.

Sure they were going for the Enterprise market money, but people there buy based on what they're familiar with and can easily hire lots of people who are familiar to work with it.

Last I looked they do have a community edition of Delphi now, but that was slamming the barn door long after the horses had all ran far away and the barn had mostly collapsed.
by jajko | 2025-07-16 09:05:16+00:00
There is some parenting, then there is good parenting. Most people don't have this option due to finances, but those that do and still avoid it to pick up just easy and nice parts - I don't have much sympathy nor respect for them.

Then later they even have the balls to complain how kids these days are unruly, never acknowledging massive gaps in their own care.

Plus it certainly helps the kid with bonding, emotional stability and keeps the parent more in touch emotionally with their own kid(s).
by latexr | 2025-07-16 09:05:36+00:00
Python 2 was removed in Monterey 12.3, which was incredibly stupid and disruptive as it caught everyone by surprise. We all knew Apple said they would remove it, but everyone was expecting them to be sensible and do it on a new major OS release, like they did with PHP, not mid-cycle.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...

I wonder if that kerfuffle is why they ended up not removing Ruby and Perl yet, despite the same promise. macOS’ Ruby is around 2.6. Perl I somehow doubt they’ll get to, as it’s such an important part of Unix admin I bet they themselves use it somewhere.

There is still a /usr/bin/python3 which is a shim. When you call it, if you don’t have the Xcode Developer Tools you’ll be asked to install them (it’s a non-scary GUI dialog which takes two clicks) and then you’re set. That is also a few versions behind the cutting edge, but it does get updated sometimes.
by FeepingCreature | 2025-07-16 09:06:40+00:00
The difference is that right now we're looking at a giant onrushing wave and we're considering maybe building a few dinghies to "ride it out".

Please understand. We're not in a position where we have sophisticated infrastructure to carefully control AI development. We have nothing, and the waves are getting bigger every few months.

You're in a position where you're safe enough (after centuries of labor!) that you can decide to not block some amount of incoming water. That is not where we are at with AI. There is no dike.
by latexr | 2025-07-16 09:07:52+00:00
Technically macOS doesn’t come with Python pre-installed, but it does provide you with a simple path to do it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44580198

The removal was in Monterey. Catalina and its successor Big Sur very much still had it. Catalina was the one that removed 32-bit support.
by ptx | 2025-07-16 09:08:04+00:00
> The domain, long associated by users with PuTTY [...] a domain name that clearly and historically signals the PuTTY project

This seems a bit misleading. The domain has never, as far as I know, belonged to the project, so it can only have been "long associated" in the minds of users mistakenly trying to guess the URL and "historically" navigating to the wrong website.

> “The PuTTY project never had this domain”

Right.

> Search engines treat domain names like putty.org as authoritative.

Do they? Domain names "like" putty.org in what sense? Which search engines, by what mechanism?
by dontleakkeys | 2025-07-16 09:08:45+00:00
If you have a clear and satisfying explanation in your mind about why a logo has 6-fold symmetry, and still suggest that it is secretly a star of David, I start to get worried about the direction the conversation will go. Even if that isn't how you meant it, there's an audience very willing to receive it that way and they make poor company. Let's keep things on the rails and not get the story flagged.
by Rocke1001feller | 2025-07-16 09:09:17+00:00
I built an AI-powered Chrome extension that integrates directly with LeetCode to make interview preparation more efficient.

*Background:* Like many of you, I've been through the LeetCode grind multiple times. After getting frustrated with the inefficiency of traditional practice methods, I decided to build something better.

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*Current status:* Very early beta (month 1 of testing). Works globally except China (North America has best performance). *Requires free subscription and LeetCode login.* Expect bugs and performance issues.

*Why I'm posting:* Looking for 50 committed beta testers who are: - Located anywhere except China (North America preferred) - Have active LeetCode accounts for solution submission - Active LeetCode users preparing for interviews - Comfortable with beta software and willing to provide feedback

*Beta tester benefits:* - Free subscription with special testing privileges - 200 problem-solving credits until Sept 1 (UTC), then 10/month - Direct communication with developer (me) - Lifetime discount on paid features - Input on product direction

*Setup requirements:* 1. Subscribe FREE at https://immersive-practice.vercel.app/ 2. Login to LeetCode for solution submission 3. Install extension (instructions provided after subscription)

*Key learning so far:* The biggest challenge isn't the AI accuracy (GPT-4 is remarkably good at LeetCode problems), but rather the UX of integrating AI assistance without disrupting the natural coding flow.
by Roark66 | 2025-07-16 09:09:20+00:00
From what? It would be useful to mention towards the front of the post so we know what is the context in which you approach python.

I've switched to python primarily (from perl) in early 2010s (I think my first "seriously" used version was 2.6. This is mostly for system management, monitoring, and data transformation /visualisation. Nothing fancy like AI back then in a work setting.

I found the biggest impact was not so much on writing code but on it remaining readable for a very long time, even if it was created hastily "just get this working now" style. Especially in a team.

Python is still one of my favourites and the first tool I reach if bash is not enough for what I'm trying to do.
by spc476 | 2025-07-16 09:09:29+00:00
The author very much did allow others to give input. The original protocol had single digit status codes, I was arguing for three digit codes, he compromised with two digit codes. It was my idea to include the full URL for requests, and for redirections. It's just that it wasn't easy, but he could be reasoned with. The only two hard lines Solderpunk had for the protocol was TLS, and single level lists (why, I don't know).
by zimpenfish | 2025-07-16 09:09:39+00:00
> They didn’t upgrade the moment uv came into existence.

There's also projects that can't use `uv` because it doesn't like their current `requirements.txt`[0] and I have no bandwidth to try and figure out how to work around it.

[0] We have an install from `git+https` in there and it objects strongly for some reason. Internet searches have not revealed anything helpful.