MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by socalgal2 | 2025-07-28 07:45:44+00:00
Maybe the problem is just impossible or maybe AI assistance will solve it but it's crazy to me how complex 3d software like Blender/Maya/3DSMax/Houdini etc still are. There are 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of settings, Deep hierarchies of complexity. And mostly to build things that people built without computers and only a couple a few tools in the past. I had hoped VR (or AR) might some how magically make this all more approachable but no, it's not much easier in VR/AR. The only tool I've seen in the last 30 years that was semi easy was the Spore Creature creator though of course it had super limits.

I guess my hope now is that rather than select all the individual tools I just want AI to help me. At one level it might be it trying to recognize jestures as shapes. You draw a near circle, it makes it a perfect circle. Lots of apps have tried this. unfortunately they are so finicky and then you still need options to turn it off when you actually don't want a perfect circle. Add more features like that and you're back to an impenetrable app. That said, maybe if I could speak it. I draw a circle like sketch and say "make it a circle"?

But it's not just that, trying to model almost anything just takes soooooooooo long. You've got learn face selection, vertex selection, edge selection, extrusion options, chamfer options, bevel options, mirroring options, and on and on, and that's just the geometry for geometric based things (furniture, vehicles, buildings, appliances). Then you have to setup UVs, etc.....

And it gets worse for characters and organic things.

The process hasn't changed significantly since the mid-90s AFAICT. I leared 3ds in 95. I learned Maya in 2000. They're still basically the same apps 25-30 years later. And Blender fits right in in being just as giant and complex. Certain things have changed, sculpting like z-brush. Node geometry like Houdini. And lots of generators for buildings, furniture, plants, trees. But the basics are still the same, still tedious, still need 1000s of options.

It's begging for disruption to something easier.
by saghm | 2025-07-28 07:46:03+00:00
It seems like a stretch to argue that we have any clue what the evolutionary consequences would be for something that's been around only a couple of years. Human-level intelligence took millions of years to evolve even when the lifespans of our ancestors were shorter than they are now, so trying to predict how something so new will affect the biology of future generations seems like it would be pretty much impossible to reason about. Even trying to predict how technology will affect society in a single generation is hard enough, and that's hardly long enough for any noticeable evolutionary changes to our intelligence as a species to become noticeable.
by m-a-t-t-i | 2025-07-28 07:46:51+00:00
Here's a recent interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85fy8cXpkyk

Also, I've been working on this for a while under a beta version called Self-Assembly, which was a bit more fashion oriented. New i-t-s-e rebranding is to be more Lego like. Here's the old website: www.self-assembly.fi
by watwut | 2025-07-28 07:47:18+00:00
Sanewashing would be better word ... it is kneed jerk tendency with anything republicans and especially Trump related. Even when what they do is clearly crap, people find ways to rationalize it and make it sound better then it is.

Sometimes better amounts to "still bad" as in here, but it is still a bunch of claims that make Conservatives lead by Trump sound much better then what they actually are.
by scaramanga | 2025-07-28 07:47:28+00:00
Yeah, the details are scattered through the article, so you've got to pay close attention. It says that the LCA that the industry produced ignored the carbon intensivity of draining wetland, creating more farmland, and fertilizing it. When that's accounted for (last 2 paragraphs, the bit of hagiography on Searchinger), biofuels isn't a climate policy anymore. Using an LCA that ignores the carbon emissions you're creating, misleads people, whether done on purpose or not.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1151861

"These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years"
by rklaehn | 2025-07-28 07:47:44+00:00
Dumbpipe is using our set of relays. It is meant as a standalone tool as well as a showcase for what you can do with iroh.

If you use iroh as a library, you can specify your own relays.

It is important to mention that relays are interoperable, so you don't have isolated bubbles of nodes using certain relay networks. I can have the n0 relays specified and still talk to another node that is using a different set of relays.
by jjcob | 2025-07-28 07:47:53+00:00
In general I agree that messing with ecosystems sometimes has unpredictable consequences.

In the case of mosquitos, though, they cause so much suffering, that it would be stupid to not work on eradicating them because of possible negative consequences.

We have to be careful, of course (widespread use of insecticides is a problem), but targeted measures are really unlikely to cause more harm than mosquitos already do.
by niffydroid | 2025-07-28 07:48:53+00:00
In the UK the NHS/local health trusts actually have a few fast response cars which contain at least a paramedic but more often someone who is trained higher. Even the fire service will have a small car as part of an incident response team.

I've also seen more ambulances that are based on a transit/mini bus platform for call outs that aren't major, think old person falling over. They save the big boxy ones for more serious issues.
by TXTOS | 2025-07-28 07:49:25+00:00
haha fair — guess I’ve just been on the planet where the moment someone asks a followup like “can you explain that in simpler terms?”, the whole RAG stack folds like a house of cards.

if it’s been smooth for you, that’s awesome. I’ve just been chasing edge cases where users go off-script, or where prompt alignment + retrieval break in weird semantic corners.

so yeah, maybe it’s a timezone thing
by invalidusernam3 | 2025-07-28 07:49:50+00:00
I recently launched one of my small side projects. It's quick online multiple choice code tests aimed at recruiters to evaluate applicants: https://hashtagcode.io

The goal was to make a simple way for recruiters to create coding tests to screen people applying for jobs, and to make the process quick and easy for applicants. The default is a 15 minute multiple choice test across a few different domains.

I will eventually monetise it (when I have more free time) but for now it's free (1000 invites) so I can get feedback and improve it
by TXTOS | 2025-07-28 07:49:56+00:00
agree — I’ve used Q/S with AI-assisted query shaping too, especially when domain vocab gets wild. the part I kept bumping into was: even with perfect-looking queries, the retrieved context still lacked semantic intent alignment.

so I started layering reasoning before retrieval — like a semantic router that decides not just what to fetch, but why that logic path even makes sense for this user prompt.

different stack, same headache. appreciate your insight though — it’s a solid route when retrieval infra is strong.
by steven555 | 2025-07-28 07:50:38+00:00
Im hacking my fridge, its not software but a hardware hack, its an expensive motorhome fridge, runs on gas, 12vd, and 220v, it had an internal fire on the electronic controller, so it fried the cables and internals but the fridge is still more or less ok. the idea, is to rather than buying a new control board (250usd) which would need extensive work to refit as all plugs cables are shot, to replace this with a new system that i basically cobble together out of parts from an old gas boiler, so the gas boiler has all the parts on the motherboard to make the spark generator, for the gas burner, then all i need is the logic and safety, and i might be able to have it run on gas only with some different logic and control, it saves me a new fridge, and its a fun project to show my 9 year old boy about electronic engineering. I know its not a job for everyone as there is gas involved etc. but normally I get a lot of resistance on my similar hacks but when there finished the blowback normally dies down. It's a fun job, if anyone is interested in hearing how it will go, let me know and ill consider making a full post about it.
by alwa | 2025-07-28 07:51:03+00:00
Night-vision optics come to mind: prone to noise and visual artifacts, and especially strange under certain edge conditions. Some of their specs tend to be strictly inferior to a Mark I Eyeball—narrow FOV, limited focusing power, whatever else.

But an operator learns to intuit which aspects to trust and which to double-check. The fact that it’s an “extra sense” can outweigh the fact that it’s not a perfect source of truth, no? Trust the tech where it proves useful to you, and find ways to compensate (or outright don’t use it) where it’s not.
by jillesvangurp | 2025-07-28 07:51:12+00:00
That's a misconception about military aid. That money is flowing straight back to US defense companies. It's not actually costing the US; it's profiting from this. And it's not actually tax payer money but freshly minted dollars that are created through debt. Nobody is getting taxed "extra" to pay for all this.

If you strip away all the moralism and suffering, the conflicts (plural) in the middle east and increasingly Ukraine are all about keeping the defense industry and the economy going. Same with Ukraine. Same with just about any other conflict where countries like the US supply the weapons.
by PeterStuer | 2025-07-28 07:51:55+00:00
It is POLITICO. Always a mess of emotional appeal and misty allegations trying to launder editorials as 'news'.

Run their articles through NLP and ask about facts and cited evidence to support those facts and most of the time their will be 'very' little. Ask which type of audience the articles are written for, and you will find the writing style alligns with an audience driven by emotional appeal rather than fact or reason.

And yes, most of our media has devolved in the same way, but nearly every time I come across a POLITICO article, it seems to go out of its way to confirm this and then some.
Show HN: AllEars – Automate Your Phone Based on Sounds (Offline, No Cloud)
by sanjeev309 | 2025-07-28 07:52:03+00:00
Hi HN,

I built AllEars, an Android app that listens for real-world sounds — like snoring, coughing, barking, alarms, glass breaking, and more — and lets you automate actions on your phone using simple IF–THEN flows.

It runs fully on-device, with no cloud, no mic streaming, and no internet requirement. Your phone detects sound events locally using TensorFlow Lite (YAMNet) and executes your defined actions.

Examples:

IF snoring AND coughing THEN vibrate + log timestamp

IF glass break THEN trigger webhook

IF dog bark OR doorbell THEN send notification

Each flow uses flat AND/OR logic, supports multiple actions, and can include time filters. The app runs as a low-power background service with a persistent notification for transparency.

Available actions:

- Play a sound

- Vibrate

- Send a notification

- Log a timestamp

- Trigger a webhook

Why I built it: I wanted user-programmable automation driven by ambient sound — without sending any audio to the cloud.

Think of it as IFTTT for offline sound events.

Try it on Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cliqueraft... — no signup needed. Free plan includes 3 flows.

Looking for feedback on:

1. What sounds would you want to detect and respond to?

2. What other actions/triggers would make this genuinely useful (keeping things offline and safe)?

3. Any UI feedback on the flow builder logic?

Thanks! Happy to dive into anything technical
by strken | 2025-07-28 07:52:09+00:00
The issue is that you're expecting trucks to go out in conditions like https://youtube.com/watch?v=7IFEiwNMrZ8, particularly if your volunteer brigade operates in a rural area, and they therefore have to keep crews alive in those conditions. This puts a minimum cost on each one.

Yeah, the minimum cost isn't $2M, but it's probably pretty close to $400k a truck. Then you add on urban rescue equipment if you're not in a rural area and things start to get very expensive.
by kenz0r | 2025-07-28 07:52:54+00:00
I've found the OnShape flow pretty good for this, using the Laser Joint and Auto Layout scripts he referenced - thread here: https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/14166/designing-laser-c...

One thing that wasn't mentioned is that its important to measure the plywood you're using. 18mm ply can vary from 17 to 19mm so when you're making tight finger joints its important to know the thickness of the sheets that the parts will be made from.

Once it comes to actual cutting, the tool (in my case, a water jet) will often have an auto-nester to lay out the parts, but being able to prototype the part nesting in CAD means its faster to optimise the design to fit the sheets you've got.
by edfungus | 2025-07-28 07:53:19+00:00
Been working on a real time public transit app for the Bay Area and New York but recently decided to use the same data to create a visualization of all the transit vehicles moving in real time!

Initially wanted to make this before my app but it was quite a bit to process all the GTFS data. But now that the data is already processed for the app, the visualization was quite easy to make!

Currently trying to add geocoding so users can search for destinations for routing. Been interesting as I want to avoid Google Maps and other private data sources so open street maps it is.

https://realtime.abetterride.app
by thbb123 | 2025-07-28 07:53:46+00:00
> keep a human in the loop before executing the kill chain, or to reduce Skynet-like tail risks in line with Paul Christiano's arms race doom scenario.

It is a little known secret that plenty of defense systems are already set up to dispense of the human in the loop protocol before a fire action. For defense primarily, but also for attack once a target has been designated. I worked on protocols in the 90's, and this decision was already accepted.

It happens to be so effective that the military won't bulge on this.

Also, it is not much worse to have a decision system act autonomously for a kill system, if you consider that the alternative is a dumb system such as a landmine.

Btw: while there always is a "stop button" in these systems, don't be fooled. Those are meant to provide semblance of comfort and compliance to the designers of those systems, but are hardly effective in practice.
by lb1lf | 2025-07-28 07:54:19+00:00
Back in the day when the Internet was still full of whimsy, the computer club at my alma mater had acquired nuts.edu.

I still have a T-shirt somewhere proudly sporting the domain name under the NTNU (Norwegian abbreviation for Norwegian University of Tecnology and Science) logo, slightly modified - the real logo is a circle bounded by a rounded square; the T-shirt has a hazelnut standing in for the circle.
by tifa2up | 2025-07-28 07:56:22+00:00
Working on an open source RAG-as-a-service platform that bakes in the best practices and continues to evolve them so that customers get the best retrieval without having to go deep or stay up to date.

Our flagship feature is Agentic RAG, which is quite difficult to build from scratch.

https://agentset.ai https://github.com/agentset-ai/agentset
by Aachen | 2025-07-28 07:57:03+00:00
> Uploading (partially redacted) scans of your ID like you would be obligated to today

Redacted, I wish...

To vote in the upcoming election, I was asked to upload an uncensored copy of an identity document to the website of the municipality of The Hague

To keep the domain I registered in 2014, the French TLD required me to send them the same thing by unencrypted email a few months ago. I tried sending a link to a PNG so it wouldn't linger in their inbox forever but they absolutely required it to be an attachment

To buy a prepaid card in Germany, I was required to show an uncensored identity document. I had put a tiny piece of tape tape over only the burgerservicenummer that the germans can't make use of anyway because it's the Dutch numbering system that's beholden only to specific authorities

There's scarcely anyone who appears to know what EU legislation says on identity numbers. The Dutch government themselves apparently don't
by seec | 2025-07-28 07:57:15+00:00
Yes, I didn't keep up with the times. Nowadays both macOS and Windows support USB Class 2 for Audio Devices, which does add a lot more capacity, within the limits of the 480mbps bandwidth.

https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/Audio2_with_Errata_a...

Version 4 is in the works, not sure what/how much is implemented in which OS.

My point still stands (even more), if you have such low requirement for your audio, the OS really doesn't matter, you can be fine with an iPad or Android tablet even. If you really are working somewhat professionally with a pro level audio interface, you are installing the drivers regardless of native driverless support, rendering the "advantage" of macOS rather moot.

Audio latency in DAWs is more related to processing power than purely to the audio interface capacity. People get confused because some audio interfaces actually have accelerators in them that offload some of the audio processing from the CPU to allow for lower latency (because of lower buffer size). However, those are very expensive and have become extremely rare with the massive increase in computing power (as well as explosion of cores, allowing each VST to have its own thread) so it's not something most need to be concerned about.

There is however a performance delta depending on the driver implementation and DAW software of choice. It's in the single digit ms range but it still exists. The good thing is that as usual, more expensive is often better and you would only care about that if you are really professional, meaning you already buy the expensive stuff for many other reasons.

Here is some reading if you wish to educate yourself. On latency: https://www.original.dawbench.com/audio-int-lowlatency.htm On the funny idea that Macs are inherently better for audio: https://original.dawbench.com/win7-v-osx-1.htm Make sure to use the part links in the bottom right corner to get the full story.

There are many reasons to like and use Macs but anytime someone pretends it's for performance I get the hick, having been confronted to precisely the reverse. Both my own experience with Hackintoshes (and comparable PC hardware to Intel Macs) and many experiences supporting musician/recording technicians in studios, there is no real performance reason to use macOS, quite the contrary. People use it DESPITE the mediocre performance, because it allows them to use other tools that make more difference than just a little bit more performance.
by zainbahari | 2025-07-28 07:57:21+00:00
In their FAQ section, they say:

appLie-ai helps you bend the truth in ways that get you noticed, but always encourages you to stay safe and smart. Use your best judgment and never claim skills you cannot back up!

Is this enough? I don't know.

Things are getting a little confusing. Cluely, a startup that helps ‘cheat on everything,’ recently raised $15M from a16z! Is Cluely legal and ethical to use? Legal in some places? Possibly. Ethical? Much harder to argue.
by blitzar | 2025-07-28 07:58:41+00:00
> They all have VPNs on their phones apparently

They listen to podcasts and watch youtube. They know that a good VPN will stop their internet banking details being stolen, protect their family in their home and add 2-4 inches to their manhood.

Use code "Grifter Affiliate Marketing" for 10% off at checkout, thats code "Grifter Affiliate Marketing" for 10% off at checkout. Protect your privacy today.
by poszlem | 2025-07-28 07:58:59+00:00
We haven’t learned anything. We’re already caught in a radicalization spiral between the far left and the far right, echoing 1930s Europe. AfD is currently the most popular party in Germany, France is stuck between the National Rally and the openly communist New Popular Front, and if you think they won’t gladly exploit existing restrictions on free speech once they take power, you’re in for a rude awakening.

You argue about the EU as if we were still living in 2005.
by stahorn | 2025-07-28 07:59:07+00:00
I imagine there will be the same problems as with Facebook and other large websites, that used their power to promote genocide. If you're in the mood for some horror stories:

https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series

When LLM are suddenly everywhere, who's making sure that they are not causing harm? I got the above link from Dan Luu (https://danluu.com/diseconomies-scale/) and if his text there is anything to go by, the large companies producing LLMs will have very little interest in making sure their products are not causing harm.
by oliwarner | 2025-07-28 07:59:10+00:00
I don't care for the framing: users evading the law.

First, this is a law limiting the actions of service providers not users.

But by using a VPN, I'm making my own safety choices. I wish there was an easier opt-out (like an ISP account-level flag), but it I want to present to service providers as (eg) Swedish, so what? I'm an adult, the "safety" laws do nothing for my safety.

The truth is service providers and ISPs have done next to nothing to stop children signing up for (eg) Snapchat, despite a plethora of laws. Of course the parents are to blame, but fixing shitty parenting is hard.
by 4gotunameagain | 2025-07-28 07:59:24+00:00
It is not a matter of opinion, it is widely documented that Israel is blocking any external aid or journalists in Gaza.

And yes, at least it gives some hope that there is still widespread outcry against the atrocities they are committing. Maybe we still have a sliver of humanity left in us amongst all the individualism and profiteering.

(except Germany of course, where protests against the war crimes committed by Israel are routinely dismantled. Two wrongs don't make a right Germany.)
by adrian_b | 2025-07-28 07:59:27+00:00
The ions of magnesium, nickel and cobalt have almost the same size (iron ions are slightly larger, and manganese ions even larger).

That is why nickel and cobalt may easily substitute magnesium in magnesium minerals, being more enriched there in comparison with nearby minerals containing iron oxides or manganese oxides.

However, even the bigger ions of iron and manganese do not differ much in size of the magnesium ions, which is why in olivine some part of the magnesium ions are substituted with iron or manganese ions, besides the nickel and cobalt ions, because iron and manganese are very abundant everywhere, even if they do not fit as well the crystal structure as nickel and cobalt.