MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ImPostingOnHN | 2025-07-10 23:24:49+00:00
> the root post asked for realistic alternatives

Yes, reasonable alternatives to mass deportation of millions of citizens and noncitizens to gulags, conflict zones, etc.

The response included options even more reasonable than that one, so no problem there.

> All two of you?

As opposed to all one of you? Why would your own comprehension of your own words somehow nullify other people saying they were incomprehensible? Of course your words weren't confusing to you, they came from your brain!

> Flatly untrue

Of course! It stands to reason that 2 people who tell you the same thing, one a 3rd-party observer, must both be wrong if you disagree with them, obviously.

I noticed you totally excluded the substantive part of my reply where it's explained why everyone found your quoting confusing. I'm sure it's much easier to just ignore it and say 'nope'. Makes for a better conversation, right? Like this one? Anyways, here is the substance again, if you want to focus on it:

The quote, as used by you, does not support the position you have been espousing. That is to say: to whatever extent that other poster 'doesn't get to decide what constitutes American interests', neither do you. So why quote it in that context?
by pythonaut_16 | 2025-07-10 23:25:41+00:00
Someone else mentioned it already, but what is there to talk about with SQL Server (and Oracle)? Like I'm sure there's plenty someone could write about but generally it's pay Microsoft so it's their problem.

Whereas something like Postgres has a plethora of forks and tools built around it, because it's open source devs can actually do interesting things to solve their problems.
by whartung | 2025-07-10 23:26:05+00:00
Back in the day, I had a Mattel Power Shop. https://corporate.mattel.com/brand-portfolio/power-shop

It had was a combined jig saw, lathe, drill press, and disc sander.

Now, I don’t know much about modern scroll saws, but the “blade” on this thing was more like a thin, round file. Perfectly adequate for something like popsicle stick thick wood. It more ground it’s way through wood than actually cutting it.

I think it would take some pressure to really hurt a finger. I can say there was no real bloodletting on my projects.

The drill bits were pointed, flat pieces of metal. It was all designed for really soft wood.
by jazzyjackson | 2025-07-10 23:26:38+00:00
I'm not really interested in AI agents for my webbrowser, but it would be pretty cool to see a fork of chromium available that, aside from being de-googled, relaxes all the "restricted access" to make it more fun to modify and customize the way you guys are. Just a thought, may be more of a market for the framework more than the product :)

See Sciter. A very cool, super lightweight alternative to Electron, but unfortunately it seems like a single developer project and I could never get any of the examples to run.

https://sciter.com/
by soobinrho | 2025-07-10 23:27:00+00:00
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by martinald | 2025-07-10 23:27:16+00:00
Actually, this is exactly what underdeveloped prefrontal cortex looks like at scale. You're describing sophisticated technical execution combined with catastrophically poor judgment.

They bragged about it to the BBC as well. This is not a clever strategy to not get caught. Neither is not immediately fleeing to another jurisdiction than the very one you committed the crimes in.

This is what happens when you have extremely smart kids with high risk-taking tolerance. If they weren't as intellectually gifted, they might be driving a souped up 15 year old Golf like a maniac round country roads - but because they have these technical capabilities, their poor judgment scales up to cause millions in damage instead of just getting themselves arrested with a few grams.
by jcelerier | 2025-07-10 23:27:35+00:00
Even if you don't write header guards by hand you get issues. The amount of time I got bitten by someone naming a file "widget.h" or "utils.hpp" three levels of libraries down with the corresponding #ifndef WIDGET_H which broke the build in incredibly mysterious ways...

https://github.com/search?q=ifndef+WIDGET_H&type=code
by ghushn3 | 2025-07-10 23:27:39+00:00
This is absolutely incorrect. It runs counter to every high functioning safety culture I've ever encountered.

The system allowed the human to take the incorrect action. If your intern destroys your prod database, it's because you failed to restrict access to the prod database. The remediation to "my intern is capable of destroying my prod database" is not "fire the intern" it's "restrict access to the prod db".

Even the best trained humans will make errors. They will make errors stochastically. Your systemic safety checks will guard against those errors becoming problems. If your safety culture requires all humans to be flawless 100% of the time, your safety culture sucks.

So no, this isn't a fault with a human. Because this was a possible error, it was inevitable that at some point a human would make that error. Because humans never operate without errors for extended periods of time.
by gerdesj | 2025-07-10 23:28:17+00:00
I know exactly (within reason) how TLS works. However that enforceable guarantee may not be in the end user's best interests.

Your browser could require via TLS certain CA only signed responses and even covertly do that and flatly refuse to use the system configured DNS and fib and lie. At least DNS over UDP/TCP can be easily manipulated locally through a packet filter and via NAT n that and it can be inspected by the end user easily.

No, I am not suggesting you break any security model - a MitM run by yourself is yours and yours alone. If you consider your browser might be hostile <tin foil crackling sound effect here> then you really have to look quite deeply into what security model you are dealing with and how it really works.

Proxies and so on are just tools for a job as are DNS servers (I have one just for my customer's Let's Encrypt challenges) and all the rest.

I like to forget the usual trite networking bollocks and think quite clearly about how it all really hangs together. I start with what I would like to be the source of "truth" with regards the thing I type into the browser and the IP address that is returned and connected to.
by xenadu02 | 2025-07-10 23:29:39+00:00
FWIW Airbus has tested a force-feedback side stick. Why they don't already offer it as an option I do not know. Maybe they are calmer now but for decades they took the attitude that "We built an un-crashable airplane because we are smarter than you" and took any criticism as a personal attack.

If you're curious the 757, 767, 777, and 787 are all fly by wire but use both physical linkage under the deck and force-feedback servos to transmit control surface feel back to the pilots. But they also have torque tubes that can be overpowered and ... shocker... in a dual input situation they do the same as Airbus: average the inputs. But at least you have to really yank on the controls to make that happen.
by potato3732842 | 2025-07-10 23:30:21+00:00
>. If the incident had been sudden onset of thick toxic smoke

Pinpoint "seems reasonable" changes like that without regard for the whole system of interactions are what sank Thresher.

The "sudden onset of thick toxic smoke" is rare. It's either not that toxic or the onset isn't that sudden. You can't just design the system based on assumptions of needing to cover a rare corner case without taking a look at the whole general thing and the frequency of various anomalies and crunching the numbers to see if you're not actually making it worse. I agree that the masks should be simple and reflexive but you absolutely could compromise the whole system if you prioritize reflexive over other attributes without actually taking a full stack look at the tradeoffs in all areas. Aircraft manufactures employ people to think about this stuff and they're frequently why "seems reasonable" changes don't get made.
by tzs | 2025-07-10 23:30:30+00:00
> xAI released Grok 4 about a day after removing inappropriate posts by the chatbot on X, including antisemitic comments and replies to users. “Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the company posted.

(I'm going to highly anthropomorphize Grok here because I'm not sure of the right terms for what these systems actually do)

It sounds like they haven't taught Grok not to think hateful things. They've only taught it to not actually say those things in public. If that's the case wouldn't it mean that its answers would still be based on its antisemitic beliefs and so still might be highly biased against Jews?
by g-b-r | 2025-07-10 23:30:33+00:00
> I'd love to support this energy, but part of being serious is priorities

This energy needs to be put into something more meaningful than a chat site

It's not a chat site, it's a discussion site, and some people get influenced by what they read.

Of course not a ton of people, but still, the discussions on it do have the chance of having some effect
by fhub | 2025-07-10 23:31:50+00:00
My five year old played with this quite a bit at Maker Faire last year. He picked it up quite well. I had it in my mind to get him one for his next birthday but forgot until I saw this post. His school has Makedo tools and he likes them. So the combination might be something that he'd use on a semi-regular basis. We have no shortage of "material" being delivered.
by dlcarrier | 2025-07-10 23:32:12+00:00
I live near a railyard that is almost at sea level, but it it's less than 70 miles from an over 7,000 ft mountain pass, so they keep some pretty intense snow removal equipment in the rail yard, when its not in use.

This is in California, where the highest point of the mountain pass averages tens of feet of snow, but most years are less than that, with one or two years every decade making up for it in excess precipitation. Having a huge difference between mean and median precipitation means that most years are in drought, and during the ones that aren't everything floods twice, once when it rains and again when the tremendous snowpack melts.

Anyway, the extreme snowpacks mean that the rail company has to be prepared with equally extreme equipment. They don't just have snowplows, but snowblowers wider than the locomotive its attached to. To make them even scarier looking, the body is painted black, with the blades painted bright red. It looks like the circular maw of some kind of eldritch abomination. I suppose they want it to look as intimidating as it is dangerous.

If you want to see one, do an image search for "union pacific rotary snowblower". They are even more intimidating in real life.
by jonathanlydall | 2025-07-10 23:32:27+00:00
I think good technical writing is a lot like good interior design.

My brother is an interior designer who has done lots of work for hotels. He says that as an interior designer, people typically only notice your work if you’ve done it badly.

If you use a decently designed hotel room you don’t think much of it, but if it’s got problems like badly laid out space, even if you can’t quite put your finger on it, it feels “off”.

If a reader doesn’t have any opinions on a technical article and got the information they were expecting, then it’s probably well written.

When I write technical documents I aim to avoid anything in them which would detract from providing information as effectively and unemotionally as possible.
by bshepard | 2025-07-10 23:32:41+00:00
"You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.” -- someone wise, or was he?
by leoh | 2025-07-10 23:33:01+00:00
There’s a lot more in 1984 than the high-level ideas which are held in contrast to Huxley (risks of oppression versus risks of opulence). Both are certainly at play.

A few of the things from 1984 that I’ve noticed or have been told about and often reflect upon:

* 1984 is a book that is concerned with the physical body and the deprivations experienced in Oceania — ie Winston’s gastric distress is articulated on the first page; many of us experience meaningful bodily distress on account of our food systems, stress, disconnection, and other issues

* 1984 is largely about alienation — many of us prioritize our work and other fears over connection in the same ways that Winston and Julia do (engaging in sex is taboo in Oceania); although engaging in sex is not forbidden in our culture, taking the time to really connect with others when so many of us feel so much constant pressure to work can feel “wrong”

* stirring up hatred among the populace in 1984 is a common theme; in our culture, on both the right and the left, an insistence on hating others, other political parties, other countries, and injustice (ie as opposed to cultivating love and compassion for those suffering) form the basis of profound issues we face today
by frabcus | 2025-07-10 23:33:15+00:00
They have somewhat an internal model of arithmetic, with lookup tables and separate treatment of digits. I'm conscious you might have seen this already and not interpret it like that, but in case you haven't section 6 on addition in this Anthropic interpretability paper goes into it.

https://transformer-circuits.pub/2025/attribution-graphs/bio...

Keep in mind that is a basic level of understanding of what is going on in quite a small model (Claude 3.5 Haiku). We don't know what is happening inside larger models.
by mrpippy | 2025-07-10 23:33:29+00:00
> Given their nature the original intent was probably that they were secured at the factory and never touched

Specifically in this case, that factory being Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita where the 737 fuselage is manufactured. Part of the problem here is that Boeing in Renton didn't have processes for removing the MED when necessary on the final assembly line (in this case to rework rivets near the door). Without processes, there was one senior guy on the door team who taught himself how to do it, this was only needed a few times a year, but he was on vacation when this airframe needed the MED removed. Someone else did it (the NTSB couldn't determine who), the work wasn't tracked, and a separate team (the team literally sealing it up so it could be moved outside) put the MED back in but didn't install the bolts (which were gone).
by taruschirag | 2025-07-10 23:33:33+00:00
- I recently realized that I tell chatgpt almost everything about my day and it kind of "knows" some major events in my life. Even more than my bestfriends because can be judgy at times.

- It has been able to give me new perspective on some things but it cant remember subtle details + I use GPT for other work so it doesn't always focus on what i need when journaling.

- It has been almost like a bestfriend that tells me stuff (sometimes it is what i already deep down know but gpt telling me reinforces it and other times its new.)

- It is intended to be a journalling / companion / self help tool for us.

- Looking for people to interview for PMF and giving free Dunkin gift cards who reach out.
by comeondude | 2025-07-10 23:33:46+00:00
Im genuinely blown away by llms.

I’m an artist who’ve always struggled to learn how to code. I can pick up on computer science concepts, but when I try to sit down and write actual code my brain just pretends it doesn’t exist.

Over like 20 years, despite numerous attempts I could never get past few beginner exercises. I viscerally can’t stand the headspace that coding puts me in.

Last night I managed to build a custom CDN to deliver cool fonts to my site a la Google fonts, create a gorgeous site with custom code injected CSS and Java (while grokking most of it), and best part … it was FUN! I have never remotely done anything like that in my entire life, and with ChatGPT’s help I managed to it in like 3 hours. It’s bonkers.

AI is truly what you make of it, and I think it’s an incredible tool that allows you to learn things in a way that fits how your brain works.

I think schools should have curriculum that teaches people how to use AI effectively. It’s truly a force multiplier for creativity.

Computers haven’t felt this fun for a long time.
by kunzhi | 2025-07-10 23:34:15+00:00
> At its heart, education is a project of guiding learners to exercise their own agency in the world. Through education, learners should be empowered to participate meaningfully in society, industry, and the planet.

I agree but I have never seen an education system that had this as a goal. It's also not what society or employers actually want. What is desired are drones / automatons that take orders and never push back. Teaching people about agency is the opposite of that.

We are so stuck in a 19th century factory mindset everywhere, GenAI is just making it even more obvious.
by KerrAvon | 2025-07-10 23:34:57+00:00
> Unfortunately over the years, it has become true. The rise of extremely biased right-wing media sources has made things like FOX news arguably centrist given the overton window move.

That's not how the Overton window works; you are buying into the bias yourself at this point.

> Which made the left-wing sources lean into bias and becoming themselves complicit (e.g. hiding Biden's cognitive decline)

(a) There are no left-wing media sources in 2025 (b) I'm sure you consider the New York Times a left-wing media source, but it spent the entire fucking election making a fuss about Biden's so-called cognitive decline and no time at all about Trump's way more disturbing cognitive decline. And Jake Tapper, lead anchor on "left-wing" CNN, won't shut up about Biden even now, in 2025.
by andy99 | 2025-07-10 23:35:10+00:00
> Current GenAI technologies represent unacceptable legal, ethical and environmental harms, including exploitative labour, piracy of countless creators' and artists' work, harmful biases, mass production of misinformation, and reversal of the global emissions reduction trajectory.

It's really annoying that political stuff always pollutes things. I largely agree with the position about GenAI being bad for education, but that position is not strengthened by tacking on a bunch of political drivel.
by coderjames | 2025-07-10 23:35:47+00:00
> the price seems way high.

How much is your child's finger worth?

I'm looking at getting a SawStop table saw so I can teach my child woodworking with slightly more peace-of-mind that if something goes wrong, they'll be less likely to lose one or more fingers. Kids get distracted, they forget what rules you've taught them in the past, accidents happen.

This is also a tool I'll consider purchasing to provide my child an introduction to the concepts before graduating to the bigger, louder, stronger wood saws.
by michaelt | 2025-07-10 23:36:45+00:00
Are there all that many parents who want to teach their kid woodworking, but can't use the classic teaching method of taking them to the workshop and handing them a coping saw under careful supervision?

I mean, I'm sure there's a handful of parents who value woodworking skills but do no woodworking themselves - but are there enough to support a whole product category of $250 cardboard tools?
by ltbarcly3 | 2025-07-10 23:37:39+00:00
"It feels very credulous to ascribe what happened to a system prompt update. Other models can't be pushed into racism, Nazism, and ideating rape with a system prompt tweak."

You don't even need a system prompt tweak to push chatgpt or claude into nazism, racism, and ideating rape. You can do it just with user prompts that don't seem to even suggest that it should go in that direction.
by ethan_smith | 2025-07-10 23:39:09+00:00
Your $350/kWh for the EcoFlow is actually pretty good - that's lower to mid-range for consumer LFP power stations right now [0]. The best consumer units are still hitting around $300/kWh, but there's a long tail of more expensive options. Still a huge gap from utility-scale ($52/kWh), but the trajectory is steep.

The "death spiral" scenario you mention is interesting - we're probably still a few years out from consumer storage being cheap enough to cause mass grid defection, but the economics are getting compelling fast. The portability premium and all the inverter/BMS/housing costs still add up compared to raw cells, but even those are dropping quickly.

[0] https://gearscouts.com/power-stations
by oooyay | 2025-07-10 23:39:11+00:00
FOKS is a cool project; what kind of projects do you foresee getting spun off from this?

I'm actually working on a crytpography based project inspired by Keybase's use of Merkle Trees and identity proofing but with an added dash of privacy through pseudonyms and chain hashing. Thanks for putting time into this.
by Retric | 2025-07-10 23:39:43+00:00
You can’t extract more energy from ocean tides than are actually in the ocean tides.

> Exponential growth is real

It’s really not. 99% of the energy used by humanity is still sunlight used to grow crops the same it’s been for thousands of years, and crop land use hasn’t been increasing exponentially. The majority of growth has been from efficiency gains not utilizing more energy.

Our ancestors realized irrigation and selective breeding allowed for more production from the same land. Fertilizer, better breeds, insecticides, meant more yield and automation meant less labor but the underlying energy input is unchanged barring increases in land under cultivation or the mouthes of livestock.

Instead many historic curves look exponential when you ignore the underlying population growth driving the whole thing and the recent reductions in fertility.
by xp84 | 2025-07-10 23:40:12+00:00
Thanks for the correction. My main point was that Matter over a normal Ethernet network is imho a different animal than Matter over Thread.

Not that I've yet found any decent devices that don't cost a fortune that do anything with Thread, other than apparently a half dozen things I own are Thread Border Routers (hubs). I have all these hubs and nothing for them to speak to.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-07-10 23:40:40+00:00
> What sort of things do you think people do that it is often the case that there is a genuine question of whether or not the use was fair

Every time some new technology or other change happens, things become possible that didn't used to be and then nobody knows what the law is going to be until a judge decides the case.

> Nobody made you undertake the questionable fair use. If you're gonna fease, you better not malfease.

But how are you supposed to know that before you get sued? If it's something you are allowed to do, but you don't know that yet for sure, what do you do to find out?
by radium3d | 2025-07-10 23:40:50+00:00
Tesla focused its pricing on drivers of gasoline vehicles, and their gas cost savings estimates are actually quite low compared to the real savings you will achieve. It was annoying when you already drive an EV and are buying a Tesla though to have to uncheck the savings option to see the pre savings prices. They changed it now so by default it only includes the $7500 and no longer automatically checks the gas savings.

EV (133mpge) 0.045 cents per mile (Tesla Model 3 SR+ RWD) Gas (26mpg) 0.155 cents per mile (Subaru crosstrek)

Based on my experience I highly recommend everyone buy any EV if you drive an ICE vehicle. Even charging at DC fast chargers still saves money, but if you can charge at home, you are really missing out on savings big time and it's time to look seriously into it.