MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by mrweasel | 2025-07-30 19:55:48+00:00
We do need to start talking about the failure of capitalism. I'm not naive enough to think that we should turn to communism, but it's clear how we're taught capitalism is suppose to work and how it plays out in reality are two different things.

Ideally capitalism would yield better product or services, for a lower price. That's no longer happening. We're getting shittier products and we're paying more. But somehow we convince ourselves that it's still good, because the stock market is going up, corporate profits are going up.

If there was ever any doubt that the hype is the product, then please explain the Tesla stock, 100% hype driven, there is zero correlation between the stock price and how the company is actually doing.
by peterlk | 2025-07-30 19:56:12+00:00
A dismissive “no” is not a helpful addition to this discussion. The truth is much more interesting and subtle than “no”. Directed stochastic processes that reach a correct conclusion of novel logic problems more often than chance means that something interesting is happening, and it’s sensible to call that process “reasoning”. Does it mean that we’ve reached AGI? No. Does it mean the process reflects exactly what humans do? No. But dismissing “reasoning” out of hand also dismisses genuinely interesting phenomena.
by bawolff | 2025-07-30 19:56:43+00:00
I don't know why people find the reasoning so shocking. It plays out the same in pretty much every country. Look at US during 9/11 or world war 2.

Some sort of attack happens, people get scared (often legitamently), they support measures they think will get their security back. Sometimes those measures are reasonable, sometimes they are more wtf, more often they are somewhere in between.

As the saying goes: hurt people hurt people.

That's not to say they are neccesarily illogical. There are real threats out there and sometimes the options to defend one self are limitted to unsaoury things. Most people if given the choice between shooting someone or being shot themselves, chose to shoot the other person.

No matter where you live, you have probably seen people react this way, even if just on a very small scale.
by pstuart | 2025-07-30 19:56:49+00:00
> transparently accepted money from waymo to peddle propaganda

If transparent enough (and not from an abhorrent source), I'd be ok with his product. He's even allowed to make the occasional mistake as long as he properly owns up to it.

Theres been a lot of valuable learning from him and it would be a pity to dismiss it all over a single fumble.
by kazinator | 2025-07-30 19:57:50+00:00
Training the weights of the neural network produces a humungous function with a vast number of parameters.

Such a function is not inherently mysterious due to the size alone. For instance, if we fit a billion numeric points to a polynomial curve having a billion coefficients, we would not be mystified as to how the polynomial interpolates between the points.

Be that as it may, the trained neural network function does have mysterious properties, that is true.

But that doesn't mean we don't know how it works. We invented it and produced it by training.

To say that we completely don't understand it is like saying we don't understand thermodynamic because the laws of thermodynamic don't allow us to predict the path of a particle of gas in, and so we must remain mystified as to how the gas can take on the shape of the container.

Say we train a neural network to recognize digit characters. Of course we know why it produces the answer 3 when given any one of our training images of 3: we iterated on bumping the weights until it did that. When we give it a an image of 3 not in our training set and it produces some answer (either correctly 3 or something disappointing) we are less sure. We don't exactly know the exact properties of the multi-dimensional function which encode the "threeness" of the image.

Sure; so what? It's a heck of a lot more than we know about how a person recognizes a 3, where we had no design input, and don't even know the complete details of the architecture. We don't have a complete model of just one neuron, whereas we do have a complete model of a floating-point number.

Gas in a container is a kind of brain which figures out how to mimic the shape of the container using a function of a vast number of parameters governing the motion of particles. Should we be mystified and declare that we don't understand the thermodynamic laws we came up with because they don't track the path taken by a particle of gas, and don't explain how every particle "knows" where it is supposed to be so that the gas takes on the shape of the cylinder, and has equal pressure everywhere?
by FireBeyond | 2025-07-30 19:58:16+00:00
> If you aren't under pressure to make your paycheck, you're less likely to take your passengers into marginal weather. (One of the most dangerous occupations in aviation is medivac/aviation EMS. There, the pressure isn't generally monetary but moral: you want to help a sick patient, so you take more risks.)

Critical care (but not flight) paramedic (though I have transferred patients hundreds of times to them):

When we request Heli EMS tht providers are given patient details, but the pilot is strictly given "pickup" and "destination" (they used to be given patient weight, and may still be depending on location and size of helo, but generally not) - the goal being "evaluate safety based on weather conditions only, not a patient condition that tugs the heart strings".
by kjkjadksj | 2025-07-30 19:58:21+00:00
As unfortunate as it is, genocides and persecution based on ethnicity or religious orientation are not unique to the Jewish experience. In either case the solution is to target these actions and these policies. The existence of the state of Israel does nothing to further action against these efforts, if what you allege about entire cities in Europe is indeed true. Israel seems to not protect the European Jew at all, nor the African Jew, the Asian Jew, or the Jew anywhere really aside from the Jew within the state of Israel who is actively working to further the goals of the armed forces of Israel, because the state of Israel itself turns its back on Jews in Israel who are critical of this direction.

I just can't get over the cognitive dissonance that this sort of primitive tribalistic propaganda world view creates. Where on the one hand it is claimed that these groups are like water is to oil: entirely immiscible and irreconcilable and should be kept apart as the sole solution. Then you go to a random city in the United States and Germans, Jews, Iranians, Chinese, Russians, and Americans are all neighbors, seeing themselves as equal, working together and raising their kids together, thinking nothing of it because they all share more or less the same exact lived experience.
by paulryanrogers | 2025-07-30 19:58:57+00:00
> Maybe you’ll say Israel is the original Jewish homeland and therefore the occupation is justified?

Being raised evangelical, I was taught the land belonged to the Jews since God judged the original inhabitants, and was given to them forever. Those who taught me see modern Israel as righting ancient wrongs and Palestine as occupying Jewish land. They've even visited the West Bank through a food effort with a Christian missionary.

Having left the church, it's much clearer to me that Arabs and Jews have both lived there for thousands of years. Both have a right to exist and the capacity to live peacefully together. Sadly those with guns, reductive beliefs, or (sometimes understandable) grudges just won't stop. I'm ashamed the US is supporting these cycles of violence, especially evangelical Christianity.
by Night_Thastus | 2025-07-30 19:59:02+00:00
I wish I could live in a world of fast.

C++ with no forward decls, no clang to give data about why the compile time is taking so long. 20 minute compiles. Only git tool I like (git-cola) is written in Python and slows to a crawl. gitk takes a good minute just to start up. Only environments are MSYS which is slow due to Windows, and WSL which isn't slow but can't do DPI scaling so I squint at everything.
by cobbal | 2025-07-30 19:59:05+00:00
Specific example: for a while, color emoji worked on macOS emacs perfectly. Then it was decided that since linux couldn't support it, it needed to be disabled on macOS, or else people might want to use a non-free system. It was removed for many years.

http://xahlee.info/emacs/misc/emacs_macos_emoji.html
by bombcar | 2025-07-30 19:59:16+00:00
There's opportunities for the right person out there, I've seen it a few times - young man (or woman) who wants to run a farm or rural business or whatnot, either marries into the family or becomes "basically adopted" and inherits the business or farm.

You have tons of businesses that are viable (produce enough money to support a family) as long as you never load it with debt; because they do NOT produce enough to support a family and the debt load that would come from buying it.

So they're unsaleable.
by lygaret | 2025-07-30 19:59:30+00:00
there's another interesting issue on OSX which I've got a patch for in my homebrew version: on OS X, sleeping in a thread can hang, which causes LSP issues for me (through the `lsp-auto-install` package, since it downloads in a thread). The bug thread is interesting, but seems to have petered out; the patch works for me though!

[bug]: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=75275#83 [brew]: https://github.com/d12frosted/homebrew-emacs-plus/compare/ma...
by pyman | 2025-07-30 19:59:57+00:00
The web is fast.

> Rarely in software does anyone ask for “fast.”

I don't think I can relate this article to what actually happened to the web. It went from being an unusable 3D platform to a usable 2D one. The web exploded with creativity and was out of control thanks to Flash and Director, but speeds were unacceptable. Once Apple stopped supporting it, the web became boring, and fast, very fast. A lot of time and money went into optimising the platform.

So the article is probably more about LLMs being the new Flash. I know that sounds like blasphemy, but they're both slow and melt CPUs.
by teiferer | 2025-07-30 20:00:29+00:00
> So: is it bad over the long term? Meh, who knows? It's not trivial to answer, right?

There are two statements here:

1. Your "who knows if medical research funding being severely reduced will lead to a worse outcome in terms of research results; not trivial right?"

2. My "reducing funding of medical research will have a negative impact on research results."

It's not hard to argue that the first one is the claim that has the burden of proof.
by ImPostingOnHN | 2025-07-30 20:00:30+00:00
> Israel believes that if it stopped fighting, the Israeli people would be overrun and slaughtered.

So does every genocidal perpetrator. It is not a surprise that someone committing ethnic cleansing or genocide will attempt to justify it as self-defense.

Fortunately, as explained at the linked post above, a unilateral claim of self-defense is not a serious justification for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

> Right here and now you have the ear of the nation of Israel, so you say what?

'The ear of' the perpetrator of ethnic cleansing and genocide is an unserious concept. Did the allies convince hitler to stop his holocaust by 'having his ear'? If you think so, then now is a good opportunity for you yourself to suggest how you would convince israel to stop their ethnic cleansing and genocide. You have the ear of the nation of Israel! What do you suggest? Remember:

- All people are equal, so your proposal cannot prioritize israeli interests, needs, or safety over those of Palestinians, or vice versa.

- Ethnic cleansing and genocide are bad no matter what, and worse than anything else anybody can do, and thus stopping it is more important than israel's military or political goals.

- "We will stop perpetrating crimes against humanity if..." cannot legally be used as a bargaining chip.

- As a good heuristic: if your proposal is serious, it would likely be able to gain majority support in the UNGA.

Your serious proposal is eagerly awaited. If you have no more answer to the conundrum than repeating over and over violate international law, commit crimes against humanity then you are unserious.
by FireBeyond | 2025-07-30 20:00:34+00:00
> A commercial pilot needs at least 250 hours and a medical certificate that needs to be renewed periodically.

That's true, but for anything other than the most podunk regional airline, you're going to need 1,500 PIC (pilot-in-command) hours before the airline will even consider you (although I believe I heard due to pilot shortages some airlines were willing to consider 1,000 hours).
by ASalazarMX | 2025-07-30 20:00:43+00:00
> there is no "just stop fighting" option that leaves Israel with a high confidence that another Oct 7 won't happen in the next few years

How can the same country that prides itself in their intel/spying prowess, and has demonstrated sophisticated capabilities and attacks, claim it will be helpless if they don't absolutely disappear another group of people and take their territory?

I seriously doubt the Oct 7 attack caught Israel by surprise, given the scale of it and the level of compromise Israel had on Hamas. Given the disproportionate response Israel was prepared to employ, it was a perfect casus belli to appropriate even more land, as it is happening right now.
by thescriptkiddie | 2025-07-30 20:00:49+00:00
in the long view, much of the US's economic success (prior to the post-wwii economic miracle) can be attributed directly or indirectly to cheap and plentiful food. this of course means that farming is not a very profitable business. but that could change if a handful of large corporations buy up a plurality of the farms and exert their monopoly power to push prices up. this would be very bad.
by uludag | 2025-07-30 20:01:18+00:00
Almost actually. My nine year anniversary is coming up this November. Obviously the experience isn't perfect (like the article mentions), but it's perfectly usable.

You don't have to look hard to see that the Emacs maintainers aren't actively hostile to non-free OSes. Android is another good example. The Emacs manual states "it must be necessary to consider Android proprietary software from a practical standpoint." and yet a good amount of work went in to adding support for Android.
by ProfessorLayton | 2025-07-30 20:01:24+00:00
Builders may earn more making "higher end stuff" but the people who can afford those units can also afford the less expensive ones, pricing everyone else out. More housing, regardless if it's affordable or not helps keep prices in check.

Dictating what builders can make, if they can at all, is a large reason housing prices have gotten out of hand.
by FunkyFreddy | 2025-07-30 20:02:14+00:00
I am a product guy and was curious about a never ending probolem my girlfriend voiced to me.. the issue that lots of women struggle to make a decision on what to wear and not having confidence in knowing what looks good on them.

It starts with a colour analysis to give styling recommendation that I see becoming a styling assistant that can interact chat and voice based..

It can utilise AI and algorithm based product suggestions.

A super interesting problem to solve using genAI tools and new foundation models today. A clear value proposition and use case.

I need a full stack person to build this with me.
by jerf | 2025-07-30 20:02:47+00:00
I think it's better to think of these things as relative. Not that I personally am absolutely invincible against scams, but that there is some scam of some level of sophistication that would get me, there's some threshold.

And that threshold will move over time, and as you say, depending on conditions. Even our personal defenses should not be predicated on being perfect all the time, and that's completely impractical at a societal level. And I worry about AI making it practical to target more people directly at scale and raise the sophistication on their end over the next 10-20 years.

Today I think I can say with a straight face that I'm quite sophisticated against this sort of scam. But the day will come, unless something gets me earlier, when my children will have to take my email account away if they want to inherit anything. Old age makes fools of us all. And who knows if something will get me earlier some other way. Unfortunately, invincible confidence in the here and now won't protect me.
by istjohn | 2025-07-30 20:03:23+00:00
If you read the section of South Africa's Application Instituting Proceedings in the International Court of Justice entitled Expressions of Genocidal Intent against the Palestinian People by Israeli State Officials and Others, you'll find a compelling case that genocidal intent was clearly expressed. There are over seven pages of quotes and citations of Israeli leaders expressing that intent.

The section begins halfway down page 59.

0. https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...

Edit: The application was submitted on December 28, 2023.
by immibis | 2025-07-30 20:03:53+00:00
You're being pretty pedantic about the specific term used. Everything they said makes sense if you change "prompts" to "training examples" and you wouldn't expect someone who hasn't implemented an AI model to know the difference.

It's like someone said while driving the car "let's give it some gas" and you said "but the tank is almost full" when they obviously meant "let's press the accelerator pedal"
by reverendsteveii | 2025-07-30 20:04:14+00:00
This doesn't preclude that though. Maybe it's because I'm a weightlifter and while we compete with one another we really don't, but my own numbers can be my rival. In fact, they're a much more effective rival than anyone else at the gym because they can never be permanently beaten, they can never retire, they will always demand more. If I wake up tomorrow and through some miracle I'm the best weightlifter on earth and can bench a 1000 pounds, 1005 pounds exists whether someone else can lift that much or not. If you're Tom Brady you don't need Peyton Manning in order to throw more touchdowns and fewer interceptions, you need to throw more touchdowns and fewer interceptions. If your rival has a career-ending injury does that define your pinnacle? Not if you're actually in competition with yourself it doesn't.
by MzHN | 2025-07-30 20:04:22+00:00
`git reparent origin/main -n 3` sounds a lot like `git rebase --onto origin/main HEAD~3` and `git move-branch from to` sounds like `git branch -f from to`.

I love backup branches as much as anyone but I'd also recommend getting used to `git reflog` or perhaps `git log --all --oneline --graph --reflog` if you're worried about losing commits.

There is one* footgun in git that you can't just reflog your way out of and it's stashes because they piggyback off of the reflog, so dropping stashes will also remove them from the reflog. In those cases you can still visualize them with `git fsck --connectivity-only | grep 'dangling commit' | awk '{print $3}' | xargs git log --oneline --graph --all --reflog`.

*(as long as you've committed your changes, if not then there are way more)
by mrbungie | 2025-07-30 20:05:00+00:00
It might not be intended as an attack, but it does feels like one (especially that unnecesary jab at technophiles). Also I find it incredibly ironic that you are making so many assumptions about what GP meant, what HN audience understands from the article and what they will make of it just to make a point about philosophy of science and popsci.
by micromacrofoot | 2025-07-30 20:05:15+00:00
I think it's more insidious than the top 1%, what % of americans buy some frivolous overpriced coffee or cookie regularly? viral beverages like prime? the absurdity of ordering mcdonalds via uber eats?

income inequality is wild right now, but even lower classes are participating in some absurd sort of money grabs regularly...

the top of the market, these billion dollar companies that have perfected this sort of private equity capitalism have optimized every day luxury that can bleed anyone dry... not just the rich... wework or wish go down the tubes and it's on to the next one, founders rocket off and some unlucky investors are stuck holding the bag

every category of daily life now has some optimized extraction mechanism
by 9rx | 2025-07-30 20:05:33+00:00
> Farming is a terrible business. My few hundred acres (maybe worth $5M) will only churn out a few hundred grand in profit

Well, it is ultimately a real estate business. The "hundred grand" in profit is really there only to support the mortgage payments — meaning that's what other farmers are counting on, so they're going to drive the prices down to that point. It is like a tech startup. You are counting on the assets increasing in value when you exit. That is where the profit will eventually come from, hopefully. It is not a business for everyone, but I like it.

> Many of the buyers keep growing their farms because it's a status symbol.

And because the fun parts of the job end too quickly when you don't have enough acres. I'd at least like to double my acreage. That is where I think I'd no longer be in a position of "That's it? I want to keep going!" and instead "That was fun, but I think I've had enough."

That said, the machines keeps getting bigger, whether the farmer likes it or not, so perhaps in that future I'll need even more land to satisfy the pangs.
by freeopinion | 2025-07-30 20:05:37+00:00
I'm not anti-LLM even if the following statement sounds like it.

I don't trust LLMs, even to summarize for me. I have to fact-check every single statement. For instance, if I ask ChatGPT, "Is PLA more dense than ABS?" it answers, "No, PLA is not more dense than ABS." Those are direct quotes. In the third paragraph, ChatGPT says, "So technically, PLA is denser than ABS, not less — I misspoke earlier."

I find LLMs good for using words that I didn't think of. I can then reword a search to get better search results.

To be fair, the cherry-picked example I used above sounds a lot like a human. Humans make such mistakes and corrections. If a human had given me that response, I would shrug and ask more questions. But it would make that human not be my go to source.

It makes me shudder to think about code that is written in such a manner.
by _mocha | 2025-07-30 20:05:47+00:00
I'm somewhat surprised to see this on the front page of HN. I distinctly remember this material being covered in a single lecture during our freshman CS course 20 years ago. I doubt this would've reached the front page in HN's early days, and it makes me wonder if we've moved away from teaching these fundamentals due to the heavy reliance on abstraction and ai agents in today's industry.
by tome | 2025-07-30 20:06:08+00:00
I'm still not sure what you mean. Are you saying that when children are unintentionally killed in war that is "punishment"? Were the children killed by NATO troops in Afghanistan "punished"? For that matter, do you think Oct 7 was Palestine "punishing" Israel?

> A blatant lie.

Interesting. How are you so sure that the article I linked is a blatant lie and the one you linked isn't?
by dagw | 2025-07-30 20:06:25+00:00
who is doing super shady appearing online gambling?

At a guess, mostly people who for various reasons aren't allowed to gamble on more 'legit' sites, either because of their age or other local laws and jurisdictions. If you 'need' to gamble and are forbidden to gamble legally, then you will find a way to gamble illegally. Just look at the 'offline' world, before sports gambling became basically legal, lots of people would place bets with very shady operations.
by h2zizzle | 2025-07-30 20:06:28+00:00
Doesn't matter. If a system's purpose is what it does, a people's priorities are what they invest in, in aggregate. Boomers hold outsize wealth and have steered America's economic and political ship for most of the lives of the younger generations. So the current crop of Stupid Things are mostly Stupid Boomer Things (or else they wouldn't exist, as there would be no money or political will to sustain them).

Refusing to take responsibility isn't a good look, either. So is derailing with respectability gripes. Let's solve the problem at hand.