MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by kouru225 | 2025-07-28 17:33:14+00:00
I’m surprised that someone who studied moral philosophy doesn’t think we’re moral because it’s functional to be moral: We want something done in a sustainable way so that we don’t need to constantly spend resources monitoring and fixing it, and so we can’t get it done with slave labor. We have to actually educate the laborer until they fully understand it, and give them a reason to live and be interested in what they do or else they won’t be able to operate independently.

If you consider that as one of the main forces behind morality, then an AI that wants to get something done in the best way possible would clearly choose a moral solution over and immoral solution every time.
by 9rx | 2025-07-28 17:33:43+00:00
> Unfortunately, tests can never be a complete specification

They are for the human, which is the intended recipient.

Given infinite time the machine would also be able to validate against the complete specification, but, of course, we normally cut things short because we want to release the software in a reasonable amount of time. But, as before, that this ability exists at all is merely a secondary benefit.
by moolcool | 2025-07-28 17:33:55+00:00
NASA and SpaceX aren't competitors.

NASA's mission statement is "explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery".

SpaceX is a p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶l̶y̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶d̶e̶d̶ privately held company whose mission is to increase shareholder value.
by cleverwebble | 2025-07-28 17:34:03+00:00
If you want to generate a heatmap of existing text, you will have to take a different approach here.

The naive solution I could come up with would be really expensive with openai, but if you have an open source model, you can write up custom inference that goes one-token-at-a-time through the text, and on each token you look up the difference in logprobs between the token that the LLM predicted vs what was actually there, and use that to color the token.

The downside I imagine to this approach is it would probably tend to highlight the beginning of bad code, and not the entire block - because once you commit to a mistake, the model will generally roll with it - ie, a 'hallucination' - so logprobs of tokens after the bug happened might only be slightly higher than normal.

Another option might be to use a diffusion based model, adding some noise to the input and having it iterate a few times through, then measuring the parts of the text that changed the most. I have only a light theory understanding of these models though, so I'm not sure how well that would work
by ToDougie | 2025-07-28 17:35:24+00:00
Great example. I used to love rip currents as a youngin. Just swim parallel and body surf back to shore. Sometimes I used to just swim into them for the workout and amusement. But I got older and it had been about a decade since I had ventured out into the ocean -- was out body surfing for about 20 mins before I got caught in a fairly normal riptide and ran out of energy really fast. Would have been really unfortunate if I hadn't been in the same situation hundreds of times before. I was panicked and debated yelling for help lol.
by zackmorris | 2025-07-28 17:36:04+00:00
It would be nice if dumbpipe revealed the local and remote IP and UDP port numbers via something like STDERR or a signal so that apps could send UDP datagrams on them with ordinary socket calls. I'm guessing that QUIC uses a unique header in its first few bytes, so the app could choose something different and not interfere with the reliable stream.

A better solution would be to expose the iroh send_datagram and read_datagram calls somehow. Maybe if dumbpipe accepted a datagram flag like -d, then a second connection to a peer could be opened. It would recognize that the peer has already been found and maybe reuse the iroh instance. Then the app could send over either stream when it needs to be reliable or best effort.

This missing datagram feature was the first thing I thought of too when I read the post, so it's disappointing that it doesn't discuss it. Mostly all proof of concept tools like this are MVP, so don't attempt to be feature-complete, which forces the user to either learn the entirety of the library just to use it, or fork it and build their own.

IMHO that's really disappointing and defeats the purpose of most software today, since developers are programmed to think that the "do one thing and do it well" unix philosophy is the only philosophy. It's a pet peeve of mine because nearly the entirety of the labor I'm forced to perform is about working around these artificial and unintentional limitations.

Ok I just looked at https://www.dumbpipe.dev/install.sh

if [ "$OS" = "Windows_NT" ]; then echo "Error: this installer only works on linux & macOS." 1>&2 exit 1 else

So it appears to be linux and macOS only, which is of little use for games. I'm shocked, just shocked that I'll have to write my own..
by the_other | 2025-07-28 17:36:31+00:00
You can write to several climate activists in prison if you would like first hand accounts. I means ones who held up placards, rather than the ones that climbed onto trains or glued themselves to roads.

Just weeks ago a couple of pop bands got hauled in front of judges or had police investigations aimed at them for voicing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. (Ok, so they used incediary language, but they’re 20-somethings at festivals and the Gaza situation is abhorrent).

Fairly recently, an activist group which uses tactics reminiscent of the anti-nuclear-proliferation movement and animal rights movements of the 70s-90s got proscribed a terrorist organisation. At present, the law around this and recent implementations of its enforcement are such that I can’t tell if I’ll be arrested for writing this paragraph. I’ve tried to stick to the facts, but interpretation can get you locked up.
by luqtas | 2025-07-28 17:36:58+00:00
even a simple rotation like corn -> soybeans can aid some bacteria recover, thus a better soil lifespan (high productive areas with proper management (beyond rotation, like some rest and proper fertilization can last ~ 120 years being abused all the year long)

probably hundreds of years if erosion wasn't a thing [0]

but "regenerating" as the OP types is probably about actively managing land recover while planting some sugarcane in between the process. now. if the harvest will be profitable for making biofuel is probably another talk

[0] just a guess
by slig | 2025-07-28 17:37:38+00:00
Hoping to see the English version soon! By the way, I'm also working on a daily games website with a subscription model (it's not live yet!), and I'm considering a price range exactly like yours. Are you having success with your subscription model? This thread [1], specifically this comment [2], was a letdown, but I haven't given up.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595184 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43600346
by ryandv | 2025-07-28 17:37:44+00:00
You're right, discussion's open to the clergy only. Any laymen who continue to discuss this infohazard will be banned.

the clergy, such at least as can be fully confided in, may admissibly and meritoriously make themselves acquainted with the arguments of opponents, in order to answer them, and may, therefore, read heretical books; the laity, not unless by special permission, hard to be obtained. This discipline recognises a knowledge of the enemy's case as beneficial to the teachers, but finds means, consistent with this, of denying it to the rest of the world: thus giving to the élite more mental culture, though not more mental freedom, than it allows to the mass [0].

[0] John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty." 1859. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm
by vpShane | 2025-07-28 17:37:58+00:00
> SpaceX and friends don’t do scientific research.

They do though. That's the premise of xAI and even on their website is that they have all this 'research' and are feeding it to that 'grok' to establish even more scientific 'discoveries'

I use quotes because I value the human side of things and like to enjoy the excitement and joy of collaboration and people coming up with new stuff.
by tracker1 | 2025-07-28 17:38:14+00:00
Just a +1 for browser encryption... you should be able to use pbkdf2 + aes to take an input passphrase with pbkdf2 to generate an aes key to then encrypt an input file in the browser, I'm not sure if you gain much via gzip before/after depending on the document that may already be a zip file (for word/oo, etc).

On the file storage, I generally recommend going straight to a cloud interface to separate storage backend from the actual storage medium... There are self-hosted options for an S3 compatible backend you manage, or you can use actual S3 or one of several other providers for S3 style storage.
by kjkjadksj | 2025-07-28 17:38:20+00:00
The ae1 was fine unless there was some junk lens from a department store on the end of it. Canon lens would have been fine. It is true color film however is usually of lower apparent quality than black and white films. A lot of people would buy consumer films that are worse than pro films (true for today as well, compare portra 160 to gold and theres noticable difference in grain size and overall fidelity). Printing was also bad. You could probably make higher quality scans or prints today if you had access to the negatives.

Slide film is great though if the scene was appropriately lit. Better colors than digital even today. All the catalog photography from the late 90s was medium format slide film and you could blow it up billboard size it had so much fidelity.
by sheepscreek | 2025-07-28 17:39:08+00:00
All aside from the healthy criticism on the clickbait title, I found the approach to make it royalty-free (presumably for generic production) and free of cost access to uninsured individuals incredibly fascinating. How will they manage to cover R&D costs? That’s the primary reason pharmaceutical companies use to justify exorbitant drug prices. Was this a result of a philanthropic endeavor?
by kayodelycaon | 2025-07-28 17:39:32+00:00
The really strange thing is no one seems to be doing anything material against Israel. No real sanctions, etc.

And it’s not because they are afraid of America. Some European countries stopped sending military supplies a while back.

Everyone is just standing around saying how bad it is but they are perfectly content to let Gaza be leveled while they keep trading with Israel.

The only people taking meaningful action seems to be Iran and the terrorist groups they support. And that seems more opportunistic than anything else.

Then again, who really cares about genocide in Africa? Maybe there isn’t anything different when it comes to genocide elsewhere. :(
by jotux | 2025-07-28 17:39:33+00:00
>SpaceX making such leaps and bounds over NASA had to be a shot across the bow.

SpaceX, which has been awarded tens of billions in government contracts from NASA, is making leaps and bounds over NASA? I think in 2022 almost 50% of SpaceX revenue was NASA contracts. All those leaps and bounds over NASA are literally NASA funded.
by seec | 2025-07-28 17:39:37+00:00
To be fair, email was not something that people really paid for, ever. It was bundled with your internet subscription service, at least in France, this is how the vast majority of people got their first email address (some still use it, some accounts being over 20 years old).

What Google did was actually provide a better service at no added cost, so technically "free" competing with already "free" (you were paying for it in the internet subscription but since it is bundled, there was no way to offload the cost anyway). The reason I got my google account was bigger storage (1GB was a lot back then), bigger joint files support and just better webmail overall.

To get your Gmail there was even a waiting list if I'm not wrong, it was just that much better! Nowadays things are a bit different since email has become something everybody relies on instead of just a new cheaper way to communicate, so the case could be made that it should be paid for. But at this point everybody would go back to their provider supplied address.

The rest of Google stuff was built with ADS money but the thing is that they kind of stand on their own nowadays. Plenty of businesses use their suite and regular users having access for free is a nice side effect. I do agree that it's a kind of distorted competition since you can't really compete with all the "free" money Google is getting. But what are you going to do? I feel like most things in the world got there by not playing by the rules. I do wish it was a more even playing field, but at least Google is providing a lot of value unlike Apple that makes you pay for subpar stuff and still find a way to abuse the rules in a worse way. Some Google properties like Maps have no alternative that is on the same level and not even Apple with all its money has gotten close (today's Apple is seriously incompetent but that's another story).

The problem is at the core of internet economics, the network/scaling effects are so huge that it feels like it should basically be a public utility. Not unlike a national train network, it would be wasteful to build multiple parallel tracks and have them compete.

As for YouTube, I feel that's actually the thing that is the least legitimate. If it weren't "free", I wouldn't pay for much of the content on there, much of it being low quality entertainment and a lot of the good stuff competing for funding from other media businesses. The problem is that payment isn't really a solved problem on the internet, I can't buy a single video for say, 1€, as I would for a single baguette. So, the incentive is to bundle everything into a subscription indiscriminately. At least the deal is better for content producers than it is for music subscription services.

It feels like much of the web is being held back by the lack of true innovation in the financial sector, that are really happy to take a cut from every subscription and thus have no real incentive to provide micro transactions that could support another type of economy for the web.
by vpShane | 2025-07-28 17:39:39+00:00
The top comment on the main thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699052

> SpaceX and friends don’t do scientific research.

They do though. That's the premise of xAI and even on their website is that they have all this 'research' and are feeding it to that 'grok' to establish even more scientific 'discoveries'

I use quotes because I value the human side of things and like to enjoy the excitement and joy of collaboration and people coming up with new stuff.
by mbowcut2 | 2025-07-28 17:39:46+00:00
You can, and there has been some interesting work done with it. The technique is called LogitLens, and basically you pass intermediate embeddings through the LMHead to get logits corresponding to tokens. In this paper they use it to investigate whether LLMs have a language bias, i.e. does GPT "think" in English? https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.10811

One problem with this technique is that the model wasn't trained with intermediate layers being mapped to logits in the first place, so it's not clear why the LMHead should be able to map them to anything sensible. But alas, like everything in DL research, they threw science at the wall and a bit stuck.
by alias_neo | 2025-07-28 17:39:48+00:00
Tax free childcare is already extremely lacking in my opinion, if you want professionals to work, it shouldn't be extortionate to have your children in nursery, and costing you 2000 per child per year for one parent earning 100,000 when two parents can earn 99,999 each is also ridiculous.

The real kicker is the 99,999->100,000 trap where you lose all tax free childcare care allowance, £2000 per year per child, it's assessed quarterly, and if you exceed it by a single penny, not only do you lose it, they also demand immediate repayment of all childcare allowance so far that year.
by raincole | 2025-07-28 17:40:29+00:00
Whether age verification is a justified idea or not, it feels awfully like the UK is createing a new generation of single-issue voters here.

Even wilder, they're lowering voting age to 16 [0]. So there would be a demographic group who can vote but cannot watch porn...?

[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c628ep4j5kno
by lenerdenator | 2025-07-28 17:40:54+00:00
At the end of the day, you still have to have humans to both carry out certain labor tasks and consume the outputs of that labor. For example, having the ability to manufacture a car with minimal human intervention doesn't mean that you can ship steel to the stamping plant without human intervention, and it doesn't mean that the robot used to weld the car will buy one after it's built. And since "real" Americans/Canadians/Brits/etc. haven't made the babies to do the labor and consumption demanded by capital for almost 60 years now, the labor and consumption must be brought in some other way.

Ultimately you have to balance the incoming immigration with the demands that produces, and that's where a lot of countries fall short. For being as similar as they are, Americans and Canadians have radically different experiences and opinions on immigration from India, for example. Why? Americans mainly think of them as either business owners providing needed services (even if it's just as the stereotypical convenience store owner) or people working in cutting-edge and important industries, because that's who American immigration policy allows in from India. Canadians have far less charitable views, because over the last decade or so, Canadian immigration policy has been far less discriminatory. Whether it should or not, this produces social friction with people who have roots in the society that receives the immigration.
by jerf | 2025-07-28 17:41:43+00:00
So the piece exhorts us a couple of times to try to just think neutrally about this stuff, and I get the point, but at the same time, can anyone in 2025 think that it's just going to be best most altruistic people armed with highly persuasive AIs who just want to use those AI to persuade us to act in our own best interests, rather than the people who own and are running the AIs?

Like, I have a hard time even strawmanning such a position. Of course people armed with highly persuasive AIs will task those AIs into doing what is best for the people who own the AIs and the odds of that happening to line up with your own interests are fairly low. What the hell else are they going to do with them?

But then, keep gaming it out. This particular thing isn't exactly completely new. We've seen bumps in persuasiveness before. Go back and watch a commercial from the 1950s. It's hard to believe it would have done a darned thing, but at the time people had not yet had to develop defenses against it.

We had to develop defenses. We're going to have to develop more.

What I forsee as the endgame is not that we become mindless robots completely run by AIs... or, at least, not all of us... but that we enter into a world where we simply can't trust anything. Anywhere. At all. How does any being, human or otherwise, function in an infosphere where an exponentially large proportion of it is nothing but persuasion attempts, hand-crafted by the moral equivalent of a team of PhDs personally dedicated to controlling me? Obviously humanity has never had a golden age where you could truly just trust something you heard, and we can argue about the many and sundry collective failures to judge the veracity of various claims, but it's still going to be a qualitative change when our TV programs are designed by AIs to persuade us, and the web is basically custom assembling itself in front of us to persuade us, and all of our books are AI-generated to persuade us, and literally no stone is left unturned in the ever-escalating goal to use every available channel to change our behavior to someone else's benefit.

When does trying to become informed become an inevitable net negative because you're literally better off knowing nothing?

What happens when the bulk of society finally realizes we've hit that point?
by throitallaway | 2025-07-28 17:41:52+00:00
Yes, the initial setup and troubleshooting of IPSec can be a nightmare. I've spent hours on bridges with people getting it up and running properly.

Wireguard is a damn simple breath of fresh air. There's so little to configure and go wrong. The mental model took a little bit of time click for me (every endpoint is a peer, it's not client/server) but after that it was a breeze.
by Insanity | 2025-07-28 17:42:15+00:00
Yeah to me, these are just educated guesses and thus whenever used the tool needs that disclaimer.

That said - a lot of (ancient) history is educated guesses based on partial information. Even when we have a lot of writing available, like Cicero, we have to admit that we're seeing the events from a particular point of view, someone with his own biases and motives.

So we try to infer what happened in history based on data that has a certain amount of 'data quality issues' regardless.
by tracker1 | 2025-07-28 17:42:35+00:00
I use alarms/timers on my phone for this. Almost always 3-5min before a meeting... I have to make a habit of setting them up each morning, but that isn't too bad. I tend to miss the highlight color on the status bar for calendar or even chat messages/notifications. So the loud/obnoxious alarm is best for me... at least as I work from home.
by bb88 | 2025-07-28 17:42:44+00:00
One thing that's interesting about Django I thought was that tools like celery will "pickle" orm objects, when they really should be passing the pk's of the objects.

The other thing that's interesting about Django is that you can subclass queryset to do things like .dehydrate() and .rehyrdrate() which can do the translations between json-like data and orm representations.

Then replace the model manager (in Django at least) with that queryset using queryset.as_manager().

If you're trying to decompose the monolith, this is a good way to start -- since it allows you an easier time to decompose and recompose the orm data.

The simplest can just be:

def dehydrate(self) -> List[int]: return list(self.values_list("id", flat=True)) def rehydrate(self, *pks) -> Self: return self.filter(id__in=pks)
by efromvt | 2025-07-28 17:42:47+00:00
Still iterating on Trilogy, a SQL variant with an embedded semantic layer that removes the need for joins and better typing/functions.

Spent some time last month improving array handling + error messages and UX and adding an MCP server option; Claude does pretty well already but there's some syntax/error tweaks to make it simpler for it and humans.

Then pivoting back into scheduling + materialization optimizations (identify common aggregates across several scripts and automatically build the common datasets for reuse).

Link: https://github.com/trilogy-data/pytrilogy
by griffzhowl | 2025-07-28 17:43:08+00:00
Still, the 1960s feels very late for something that has become so foundational to our understanding of geology. One obvious analogy is the Copernican revolution where the crazy idea that the entire Earth is spinning on a daily basis was recognized centuries ago.

With plate tectonics there was the major clue with how the outline of South America fits so neatly into Africa, and I assume that it was known that the rocks were similar on each side of the ocean.

Nevertheless, if the idea remained speculative till the sea-floor spreading was observed then I suppose it had to wait till we had robust enough subs to get down there to see it.