MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Arathorn | 2025-07-19 23:44:42+00:00
Huge thanks for giving details we can investigate; i've taken a look:

* That event is in the matrix.org DB...

* ...but it failed authentication checks and got rejected from being added to matrix.org's copy of the room, presumably because matrix.org didn't think the sender was in the room at the point that the message was sent

* This was almost certainly because the state groups that tracked that the sender was in the room had been deleted due to the where clause on DELETEs matching unrelated rows thanks to the corrupted index

So the sending server probably thought it had successfully sent the message, but matrix.org quarantined it due to the db corruption. Therefore we need to manually flush the rejected messages to get them re-authorised in the impacted rooms; we hadn't spotted the problem so forgot to do so. I've nudged the folks who run the server to take a look on Monday.

Sorry you got hit by this, and thanks again for the actionable report.
by throwaway328 | 2025-07-19 23:45:49+00:00
The word for this, we learned recently, is "LLM inevitabilism". It's often argued for far more convincingly than your attempt here, too.

The future is here, and even if you don't like it, and even if it's worse, you'll take it anyway. Because it's the future. Because... some megalomaniacal dweeb somewhere said so?

When does this hype train get to the next station, so everyone can take a breath? All this "future" has us hyperventilating.
by ImaCake | 2025-07-19 23:46:18+00:00
>our only options are "do nothing" or "murder executives".

Well no, we can have some form of mediator institution which arbitrates such debates peacefully. You could also setup a ritualised debate implicitly agreed to by both parties so you could do this without an EPA - this is essentially how humans did things before we invented rationalised nation states.

You should avoid silly personal attacks, you might get better responses from people.
by thegrim33 | 2025-07-19 23:46:21+00:00
I know it's an analogy that's probably been done to death already, but it truly feels like Bitcoin 2.0.

Back in the Bitcoin hype days, there were new posts here every single day about the latest and greatest Bitcoin thing. Everyone was using it. It was going to take over the world. Remember all the people on this very site that sincerely thought fiat currency was going away and we'd be doing all of our transactions with Bitcoin? How'd that work out?

It feels exactly the same. Now the big claims are that coding jobs are going away, or if you at least don't use it you'll be left behind. People are posting AI stories every day. Everyone is using it. People say it's going to transform the industry.

Back then there was greater motivation to evangelize Bitcoin, as you could get rich by convincing people to buy in, and it's just to a lesser degree now. People who work for AI companies (like the author), posting AI stuff, trying to drum up more people to give them views/clicks, buy their products.

And of course you'll have people replying to this trying to make the case for why AI coding is already a thing, when in reality those posts are once again going to be carbon copies of similar comments from the Bitcoin days "hey, you're wrong, I bought pizza with Bitcoin last night, it's already taking over, bud!"
by bko | 2025-07-19 23:47:04+00:00
I like watching youtube videos solving these problems. They're deceptively simple. I remember reading one:

x+y=1

xy=1

The incredible thing is the explanation uses almost all reasoning steps that I am familiar with from basic algebra, like factoring, quadratic formula, etc. But it just comes together so beautifully. It gives you the impression that if you thought about it long enough, surely you would have come up with the answer, which is obviously wrong, at least in my case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csS4BjQuhCc
by don-bright | 2025-07-19 23:47:08+00:00
Im just going to make sure at least one post here mentions S-100 bus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSAI_8080

Thanks for coming to my ted talk
by scarier | 2025-07-19 23:47:39+00:00
I love that this is a thing, but man am I disappointed by the lack of a quantitative methodology (especially in terms of ranking problems by probability, severity, and cost) and specific, actionable recommendations. In aviation for example, some of the recommendations include

>Understand and adopt new and emerging technologies...

>Embrace proactive approaches to address sustainability, resiliency, and risk...

>Support and encourage airports to look at their systems holistically...

I can't disagree with any of those things, but at the same time nothing in this report helps clarify where we should allocate our ever-more-finite resources.
by dataflow | 2025-07-19 23:47:49+00:00
Your comment is incredibly confusing (possibly misleading) because of the key details you've omitted.

> The book Superforecasting documented that for their best forecasters, rounding off that last percent would reliably reduce Brier scores.

Rounding off that last percent... to what, exactly? Are you excluding the exceptions I mentioned (i.e. when you're already close to 0% or 100%?)

Nobody is arguing that 3% -> 4% is insignificant. The argument is over whether 16% -> 15% is significant.
by akoboldfrying | 2025-07-19 23:48:23+00:00
> bool() is a truthiness check and not a type cast like int() and float(). It seems like your issue is with the name of the function, because if it was more aptly named to something like istruthy() this discussion wouldn't be happening.

Right, the bug is in the inconsistent naming.

It's roughly as bad as having arithmetic operators named +, -, *, / that perform arithmetic as usually understood, except that + actually performs XOR and is documented to do so.
by zer00eyz | 2025-07-19 23:48:37+00:00
> without the borrow checker ... golang... concise error handling syntax

Except both of these things are that way for a reason.

The author talks about the pain of having other refactor because of the borrow checker. Every one laments having to deal with errors in go. These are features, not bugs. They are forcing functions to get you to behave like an adult when you write code.

Dealing with error conditions at "google scale" means you need every one to be a good citizen to keep signal to noise down. GO solves a very google problem: don't let JR dev's leave trash on at the campsite, force them to be good boy scouts. It is Conways law in action (and it is a good thing).

Rust's forced refactors make it hard to leave things dangling. It makes it hard to have weak design. If you have something "stable", from a product, design and functionality standpoint then Rust is amazing. This is sort of antithetical to "go fast and break things" (use typescript, or python if you need this). It's antithetical to written in the stand up requirements, that change week to week where your artifacts are pantomime and post it notes.

Could the borrow checker be better, sure, and so could errors in go. But most people would still find them a reason to complain even after their improvement. The features are a product of design goals.
by godelski | 2025-07-19 23:48:38+00:00
Another thing you can do is just run a container or a specific backup user. Something like with a systemd-nspawn can give you a pretty lightweight chroot "jail" and you can ensure that anyone inside that jail can't do any rm commands.

pacman -S arch-install-scripts # Need this package (for debian you need debootstrap) pacstrap -c /mnt/backups/TestSpawn base # Makes chroot systemd-nspawn -D /mnt/backups/TestSpawn # Logs in passwd # Set the root password. Do whatever else you need then exit sudo ln -s /mnt/backups/TestSpawn /var/lib/machines/TestSpawn sudo machinectl start TestSpawn # Congrats, you can now control with machinectl

Configs work like normal systemd stuff. So you can limit access controls, restrict file paths, make the service boot only at certain times or activate based on listening to a port, make only accessible via 192.168.1.0/24 (or 100.64.0.0/10), limit memory/CPU usage, or whatever you want. (I also like to use BTRFS subvolumes) You could also go systemd-vmspawn for a full VM if you really wanted to.

Extra nice, you can use importctl to then replicate.
by sfink | 2025-07-19 23:49:14+00:00
Hm. Kinda, though at least with the dream it was your brain generating it. Well, parts of your brain while other parts were switched off, and the on parts were operating in a different mode than usual, but all that just means it's fun to try to get insight into someone else's head by reading (way too many) things into thir dreams.

With ChatGPT, it's the output of the pickled brains of millions of past internet users, staring at the prompt from your brain and free-associating. Not quite the same thing!
by positron26 | 2025-07-19 23:49:32+00:00
The vulnerability in the thinking is that if GNU can't reliably get crystals started, if the seeds that make it are dependent on some external force like Cygnus or Linux, and dominant GCC can become has-been GCC, maybe we're looking at an afterglow of some luck and experiment that has a very bleak future if left alone.

Maybe people realized the FSF model isn't sustainable, and a model dependent on mass-volunteerism and religious viral spread of cooperative behaviors falls off when the days become months and the months become years. What if the greys are not being replaced by the dabbers. If that's the case, there won't be another bang.

Maybe see what I'm up to with https://prizeforge.com. I'm hoping to get the MVP functioning with semi-decency today. Mac does not agree with the WASM and I have at least one small dirty hack to execute before I can go live.
by sundarurfriend | 2025-07-19 23:50:03+00:00
> Who writes python this way?

People learning the language or learning programming, something Python is supposed to be good for and is widely used for. Also, casual and intermittent users of Python, who might not hold all the details in their head because they work in multiple different languages. These categories would encapsulate the majority of Python users in practice, and all of them end up "QA testing" the language unintentionally and wasting time and effort figuring out inscrutable problems.

A better designed language could prevent a lot of these abuses, give informative error messages, or at the least warnings. These are not inevitable results of language flexibility, but in many cases just the result of poor design that got patched up imperfectly over time - which is understandable given Python's history, but doesn't make the problems go away.
by cam_l | 2025-07-19 23:50:03+00:00
So what you are saying is, it eventually trickles down?

edit: The reality is they don't spend enough for it to offset the harms that wealth inequality brings.

I know a couple of people who have been using this London loophole as a way to avoid paying taxes anywhere at all. They are not residents here, they are not residents there, and their income is earnt globally. So they think they shouldn't have to pay tax to any particular country.
by artikae | 2025-07-19 23:50:07+00:00
> those only apply to arrays of primitives

I guess you've not written much python, or just not used any custom types in lists if you have.

class Thing: def __init__(self, a, b): self.a = a; self.b = b def __eq__(me, them): return me.a == them.a and me.b == them.b >>>[1, 2, Thing(6, "Hi")] == [1, 2, Thing(6, "Hi")] True >>>[1, 2, Thing(6, "Hi")] == [1, 2, Thing(6, "Hello")] False

In this case, the builtins are syntax, namely the `==` operator. There's a uniform syntax for comparing two objects for equality.
by SJC_Hacker | 2025-07-19 23:50:38+00:00
If you have a central authority which is keeping track of the ledger, they always have the ability to disallow any given transaction at their discretion or at the behest of some more powerful organization, e.g governments

This is one of the problems that crypto was attempting to solve (if implemented properly and used correctly). There is a third party(the "network"), but its decentralized and at least for "proper" networks, no one organization has a controlling interest in the network

Now any given miner/producer does not necessarily have to accept any random transaction. In practice however, for mature networks such as Bitcoin there are so many different miners/producers, its unlikely they would all conspire to disallow certain accounts or types of transactions.

Now this is certainly possible for a crypto exchanges and therein lies the rub with cryptos - if you want to get the cryptocoin, you generally have to buy it with good old fashioned hard currency. Conversely if you want to convert the cryptocoin back into hard currency. And exchanges nowadays are facing increasing regulations from governments. Which means practically you are still largely under the thumb of those powerful organizations without some real gymnastics involved, such as trading crypto for cash with a real person in a back alley somewhere, or vice versa
by palata | 2025-07-19 23:50:46+00:00
I choose a language that is as ergonomic as possible, but as performant as necessary. If e.g. Kotlin is fine, there is no way I will choose Rust.

Many projects are written in Rust that would absolutely be fine in Go, Swift or a JVM language. And I don't understand: it is nicer to write in those other languages, why choose Rust?

On the other hand, Rust is a lot nicer than C/C++, so I see it as a valid alternative there: I'm a lot happier having to make the borrow-checker happy than tracking tricky memory errors in C.
by ashdksnndck | 2025-07-19 23:52:46+00:00
This claim makes some sense to me if your development life cycle is: write and compile once, never touch again.

Working at a company with lots of systems written by former employees running in production… the advantages of Rust become starkly obvious. If it’s C++, I walk on eggshells. I have to become a Jedi master of the codebase before I can make any meaningful change, lest I become responsible for some disaster. If it’s Rust, I can just do stuff and I’ve never broken anything. Unit tests of business logic are all the QA I need. Other than that, if it compiles it works.
by whartung | 2025-07-19 23:53:07+00:00
> then one day you realise you're looking at unintelligible nonsense and you say "Oh no, what have we done?"

I think that’s a bit of what the Java String Template folks went through.

It was a pretty cool system (on the surface, not having used it, I liked what I saw), but they pulled it straight out. They felt the direction was unworkable. Pretty interesting considering I think the demand for such a facility (as mentioned, once tasted, hard to let cider), plus the work involved to date. Interesting they found it irredeemable to shelve it entirely and back to the white board.
by cbsmith | 2025-07-19 23:53:45+00:00
So what if it is a fiber channel over ethernet drive?

I got bad news for you: they're always unreliable.

I've got a setup where the network filesystem is more reliable than the local filesystem. The local filesystem is running on a RAID-0 with fiber channel over ethernet and the network storage is a RAID-5 of a bunch of RAM block devices all linked over infiniband.

Your typical SSD these days is effectively a very complex distributed RAID, but it pretends to be a very simple local disk... and that's what most local filesystems are running on.

Honestly, NFS was designed to run over UDP originally. Failure was totally an option. When I was in school, the NFS filesystem was way more reliable than the local filesystems on the same computer. Yes, distributed filesystems are hard, but... NFS is comparatively straightforward for a lot of what passes for "reliable" these days.
by zug_zug | 2025-07-19 23:54:53+00:00
Let me guess "opt-in" means checked by default and hidden 12 menus deep.

Or worse-yet, opt-in means "Hey our rates are going up, but not if you agree to this" (something comcast did recently).

Or opt-in is stored in some database somewhere and might "accidentally be misread" due to a "bug".

If they want real-opt-in then it should be a SMS message at the time they want to know, and a phone-number you can reach out to for more information. This would give an audit trail at the very least.
by calmbonsai | 2025-07-19 23:55:04+00:00
WJW. Yeah, this definitely seems like a scam.

1) Always, always look over the receipts of your expenses.

2) When possible, use a dedicated 'travel' credit card for these sorts of things to minimize impact on other accounts.

3) Line out that charge, photograph the receipt, and offer to pay only for the rest of the bill. If that's not acceptable, you can walk away or pay it and then immediately issue a fraud alert on the account. Not a dispute, but a fraud alert.

4) With few exceptions, credit card providers is the U.S. will not process a dispute on the account until the transaction is no longer "pending". That usually takes 2-3 business days.

5) Use that 2-3 day window to communicate with hotel management regarding this issue.

6) If the hotel will not budge, flag the charge as 'fraud'. Upload a photograph of your lined-out receipt to your credit card provider. Never use that particular hotel again.

7) If you don't have privacy concerns, share it on social media.
by balderdash | 2025-07-19 23:55:11+00:00
I don’t think the wealth taxes, fundamentally workable because you have issues you raised above, but other things like liquidity and indivisibility of assets.

I think the simpler solution if simply passing along the original cost basis to heirs (and without documentation it’s assumed to be zero). That way people or even families can defer taxes on income, but eventually they get paid.
by xoa | 2025-07-19 23:56:20+00:00
>Opt in means nothing in the face of a legal subpoena

Or scarier, a National Security Letter the government claims the company can't even talk about except maybe in secret court. Or perhaps scariest, a """"National Security Letter ;^)"""", ie, the company absolutely wants to gleefully cooperate with the government and give it whatever it wants for the right price, but also wants to maintain a veneer of "we totally care" and the government obligingly produces some demand and the company then goes "oh geez we totally place customers first and privacy is our highest priority ....but we had to because of terrorist pedo murder rioter jaywalkers, the government ORDERED us to not our fault nothing we could do!" while facilitating it without any challenge at all.
by marcianx | 2025-07-19 23:57:46+00:00
To make sure I understand correctly: did you want to read a `String` and have lots of references to slices within the same string without having to deal with lifetimes? If so, would another variant of `Rc<str>` which supports substrings that also update the same reference count have worked for you? Looking through crates.io, I see multiple libraries that seem to offer this functionality:

[1]: https://crates.io/crates/arcstr [2]: https://crates.io/crates/imstr
by noodletheworld | 2025-07-19 23:58:55+00:00
> If you go out of bounds, Rust will panic and tell you exactly where it panicked

This arguement has a long history.

It is a widely used pattern in rust.

It is true that panics are memory safe, and there is nothing unsafe about having your own ref ids.

However, I believe thats its both fair and widely acknowledged that in general this approach is prone to bugs that cause panics for exactly this reason, and thats bad.

Just use Arc or Rc.

Or, an existing crate that implements a wrapper around it.

Its enormously unlikely that most applications need the performance of avoiding them, and very likely that if you are rolling your own, youll get caught up by edge cases.

This is a prime example of a rust antipattern.

You shouldnt be implementing it in your application code.
by dzaima | 2025-07-19 23:58:55+00:00
FWIW, my specific room didn't lose much due to the missed syncing, I manually copied over the lost messages (..and we're used to doing so due to the flaky discord bridge). I just noted it as it seemed like a generally relevant thing (and of course perhaps more important for other affected rooms). Thanks for looking into it though, good to know that's at least not how it's supposed to function!
by beering | 2025-07-19 23:59:11+00:00
What do you mean by “pure language model”? The reasoning step is still just the LLM spitting out tokens and this was confirmed by Deepseek replicating the o models. There’s not also a proof verifier or something similar running alongside it according to the openai researchers.

If you mean pure as in there’s not additional training beyond the pretraining, I don’t think any model has been pure since gpt-3.5.
Ask HN: How do you digest fact that you are not successful by 40
by hubmusic | 2025-07-19 23:59:44+00:00
Curious to see what others think. There is west village in nyc or rich neighborhoods in SF, LA where people live and spend as if they are from another planet. Houses, vacation homes, yearly trips, spa, jetski, ski trips and more.

Then, there are some people who barely get by or get by with barely anything left after rent, healthcare, and household expenses.

America has entered this era of distribution of wealth that is really sad. I don’t subscribe to socialism or communism but it’s hard to see that some people are just never going to make it.

As someone who graduated in 2007 and financial crisis struck, it’s been disaster after disaster. I know some lucky people made it in tech and now have $2m or more at their name. But, there are people like me who don’t have much to show for. Just a sad reality.
Ask HN: What would convince you to take AI seriously?
by atleastoptimal | 2025-07-20 00:00:08+00:00
Recently OpenAI announced an AI model/system they had recently developed won a gold medal at the IMO. The IMO is a very difficult exam, and only the best high schoolers in the world even qualify, let alone win gold. Those who do often go on to cutting edge mathematical research, like Terence Tao, who won the Fields medal in 2006. It has also been rumored that DeepMind achieved the same result with a yet to be released model.

Now, success in a tough math exam isn't "automating all human labor" but it is certainly a benchmark many thought AI would not achieve easily. Even so, many are claiming it isn't really a big deal, and that humans will still be far smarter than AI's for the foreseeable future.

My question is, if you are in the aforementioned camp, what would it take you to adopt a frame of mind roughly analogous to "It is realistic that AI systems will become smarter than humans, and could automate all human labor and cognitive outputs within a single-digit number of years".

Would it require seeing a humanoid robot perform some difficult task? (the Metaculus definition of AGI requires that a robot be able to satisfactorily assemble a (or the equivalent of a) circa-2021 Ferrari 312 T4 1:8 scale automobile model.). Would it involve a Turing test of sufficient rigor? I'm curious what people's personal definition of "ok this is really real" is.
by eldenring | 2025-07-20 00:00:52+00:00
> Borrowchecker frustration is like being brokenhearted - you can't easily demonstrate it, you have to suffer it yourself to understand what people are talking about. Real borrowchecker pain is not felt when your small, 20-line demonstration snippet fails to compile.

As someone who writes Rust professionally this sentence is sus. Typically, the borrow checker is somewhere between 10th and 100th in the list with regards to things I think about when programming. At the end of the day, you could in theory just wrap something in a reference counter if needed, but even that hasn't happened to me yet.