MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ubermonkey | 2025-07-30 13:23:27+00:00
I've been a pretty enthusiastic amateur photographer for a long time, though COVID broke a good part of that habit.

Even so, though, 5 or 7 years ago it became clear that I could absolutely use some iPhone shots as part of my travel sets. Yeah, you could tell they weren't from the full-frame Sony, but the delta was small enough that it was okay. Now that delta is narrower.

But the BULK of the photos I end up sharing are still from a real camera. Some of that is the lack of distortion, and some of that is likely the intentionality of Using A Camera vs. whipping out one's phone, and a good chunk of is the level of control a competent shutterbug has with a proper camera that is mostly absent, or at least harder to manipulate, on a phone (aperture, shutter, ISO, etc).
by Aurornis | 2025-07-30 13:23:37+00:00
> If the users are from those companies, this is not lying.

Do you really believe all of those companies allow employees to install pre-release software on their computers which records company meetings and interacts with a long list of 3rd party APIs? I doubt it.

They could have had people who are employed by these companies use it on their personal computers for some purpose, but the implication they’re trying to make is that those companies have chosen this software. That’s a lie.
by mystraline | 2025-07-30 13:23:42+00:00
I see a lot of 'what about the children' (whataboutism). And I look at various laws in the Western countries, and there is a consensus-ish that under majority age can still be treated as an adult.

Why does this matter? Why aren't we asking the 17, 16, 15, 14 year olds and down about their situations instead, including opening up the vote to them?

The big problem with all these 'butwhataboutthechildren' laws, is they are by definition, disenfranchised, but they are also subject to the whims of the voters.

Now people will naturally say 'something something prefrontal cortex'. Even the UNCRC 2019a says that. However, we're not running fMRI on children and adults as a permission to vote - its just a simple age gate. And I would argue, that another commentor's parent who thinks Pokemon were demon names probably wouldn't pass that either.

But we end up with garbage laws, and only exist to make those who can vote feel good, while doing damage to those who can't vote.

And as an aside, if companies are doing predatory and illegal things, then the companies should be punished appropriately.
by wonderwonder | 2025-07-30 13:24:05+00:00
Is there anything that could be done to stop this? Anything that a hypothetical terrorist organization that raped and murdered 1,000 men, women and children could give back that would lead to an immediate ceasefire?

If only there was but I guess we will never know as I am sure there is not an organization so evil that while claiming to represent its people gleefully causes their deaths. An organization so evil that it builds its bases under schools and hospitals to ensure civilian deaths if anyone comes for them.
Show HN: An AI agent that learns your product and guides your users
by pancomplex | 2025-07-30 13:24:50+00:00
Hey HN! My name is Christian, and I’m the co-founder of https://frigade.ai. We’ve built an AI agent that automatically learns how to use any web-based product, and in turn guides users directly in the UI, automatically generates documentation, and even takes actions on a user’s behalf. Think of it as Clippy from the old MS Office. But on steroids. And actually helpful.

You can see the agent and tool-calling SDK in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPe0t3A1Vpg

How is this different from other AI customer support products?

Most AI "copilots" are really just glorified chatbots. They skim your help center and spit out some nonspecific bullet points. Basically some ‘hopes and prayers’ that your users will figure it out. Ultimately, this puts the burden on the user to follow through. And assumes companies are keeping their help center up-to-date with every product change. That means constant screenshots of new product UI or features for accurate instructions.These solutions leverage only a fraction of what’s possible with AI, which can now reason about software interfaces extensively.

With Frigade AI, we guide the user directly in the product and build on-demand tours based on the current user’s state and context. The agents can also take actions immediately on a user’s behalf, e.g. inviting a colleague to a workspace or retrieving billing information (via our tool calling SDK).

This was only made possible recently. The latest frontier models (GPT 4.1, Claude 4, Gemini 2.5, etc.) are able to reason about UIs and workflows in a way that simply didn’t work just 6 months ago. That’s why we’re so excited to bring this technology to the forefront of complex legacy SaaS applications that are not yet AI enabled.

How does it work?

1. Invite agent@frigade.ai to your product. You can send multiple invitations based on distinct roles.

2. Our agent automatically explores and reasons about your application.

3. Attach any existing help center resources or training documentation to supplement the agent’s understanding. Totally optional.

4. Install the agent assistant Javascript snippet (just a few lines).

5. That’s it. Your users can now start asking questions and get on demand product tours and questions answered in real time without any overhead.

This process takes only a few minutes. Once running, you can improve the agent by rating and providing feedback to the responses it provides. If you want to integrate further, you can also hook up your own code to our tool calling SDK to enable the agent to look up customer info, issue refunds, etc. directly. These calls can be made with just a few lines of code by describing the tool and its parameters in natural language and passing a single Javascript promise (e.g. make an API call, call a function in your app, etc.).

Would love to hear what the HN crowd thinks about this approach! Are you building your own AI agent from scratch, or looking to embed one off the shelf?
by taylodl | 2025-07-30 13:25:00+00:00
Quantum Mechanics (QM) is to Quantum Field Theory (QFT) what Newtonian mechanics is to Einsteinian relativity. QM remains useful in many domains - just as Newton does - but it’s not the fundamental framework. The Standard Model is built on QFT, not QM. We should be cautious about extracting philosophical conclusions from QM, just as we wouldn’t from Newton.

The upshot is that QFT makes it much clearer that we’re working with mathematical models of reality, not direct representations of ontological truth. QM tends to blur that distinction, which contributes to the proliferation of divergent and often misleading interpretations.
by Aurornis | 2025-07-30 13:25:07+00:00
> Most commonly for newly launched things it means someone with an @company email has tried the tool (even if they didn’t pay)

The current growth hacking play is to have people look through their personal network to find friends who work at those companies, then to have those friends say they’ll try the software

So it’s unlikely not even organic signups. It’s being pushed to friends and friends-of-friends who are unknowingly being used for their company affiliation.
by brianmcc | 2025-07-30 13:26:00+00:00
>> The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us

This is why my Canon 80D sits and gathers dust. Too many family moments fluffed, vs my Android's basically 100% hit rate. Yes this is largely a skill issue on my part, which is sad, but modern phone photos are more than adequate these days.
by thefluffytoucan | 2025-07-30 13:26:37+00:00
Colors are always subjective, so it’s totally fair to not like them.

But why does the article compare what I assume is the iPhone’s ultra wide angle lens (incorrectly referred to as a “fish eye” lens) with a different focal length on a different camera without specifying what exactly it is being compared to? That’s apples to oranges.

Distortion from focal length can only be meaningfully judged in combination with sensor size and subject distance.

Example: iPhone 16 Pro ultra wide focal length is 13mm (equivalent to full frame). So the comparison shots need to be taken from the same spot and with another 13mm equivalent focal length, for example a full frame camera with a 13mm lens or a micro four-thirds camera with a 6.5mm lens.
by trentnix | 2025-07-30 13:27:05+00:00
I'll eventually make my repo public on Github, but I'm hesitant because it's still pretty half-baked. In the meantime, I'll do my best to capture the essentials. It's been a minute since I implemented it, so I apologize if I miss some details.

I use the same ViewModel structure for all renders, a struct called Content. It has a members to help with rendering and whatnot, and the data being rendered in my HTML template is stored in a Data type for the content that will be displayed:

Data any

So whether I'm rendering complex data, a form, or just a snippet of text, that's where it lives. That allows for all sorts of patterns for rendering data and re-using templates if that's what you want to do. Or you can just keep things simple.

Hat-tip to the Pagoda framework, which was used sometimes as an inspiration and other times as a guideline for this (and other) patterns that I used. You can find it here: https://github.com/mikestefanello/pagoda

I also have, as part of my ViewModel, a `Notifications` slice that specifies messages to send to the user and their type:

Notifications []messages.Notification

I have a HTML layout for my full page that includes a section that CSS uses to pick up notifications and display them via a toaster message:

<div id="user-notifications" class="toaster-container"> {{ range .Notifications }} <div class="toaster{{ if .IsSuccess }} success{{ else if .IsError }} error{{ end }}"> {{ .Message }} </div> {{ end }} </div>

I managed to get it working without any need for JavaScript (other than what HTMX needs to work).

My partial renders use a layout that includes a section for the partially rendered code and my oob Notifications:

{{ block "Content" . }} Loading content. {{ end }} <div id="user-notifications" class="toaster-container" hx-swap-oob="true"> {{ range .Notifications }} <div class="toaster{{ if .IsSuccess }} success{{ else if .IsError }} error{{ end }}"> {{ .Message }} </div> {{ end }} </div>

So the hx-swap-oob results in my user-notifications <div> being replaced with new notifications content, if there is any. I have a base renderer that handles injecting the layouts and injecting data into `Notifications`. As a result, my handlers can be generally oblivious that this is all happening underneath.

This model can work for updating links, updating breadcrumbs, writing messages to the console, or whatever.

I'm still scratching the surface with HTMX, but I'm convinced HTMX is perfectly appropriate and a much simpler alternative for 95% of the web dev being done today.
Show HN: AI personas in executable .aix files (run like containers)
by BlackWater85 | 2025-07-30 13:27:28+00:00
Instead of prompts or retraining entire models, you can now drop a .aix file → parse → run, and load a scoped AI persona instantly.

Think Docker, but for AI behavior—modular, sandboxed, and execution-safe. Feedback welcome!
by nerdjon | 2025-07-30 13:27:38+00:00
I am just going to reply to this comment instead of going through each of yours. You are saying a lot about "Tact" but have yet to actually propose an alternative to how the OP said what they said.

It is fairly common that because someone is not in a traditionally higher risk group for a common thing that they don't get tested for it, even if they have certain symptoms. This is the case both personally and doctors make this mistake as well.

Pointing out that people that do not fall within the group that is traditionally associated with sleep apnea should likely get tested if they show certain symptoms is valid as is mentioning that group. It is a fairly basic health PSA.

So if you are going to keep complaining about "Tact" than offer your own alternative about how to relay this information. And omitting "obese" is not actually helping anyone.
by PaulHoule | 2025-07-30 13:28:06+00:00
The long-term viability of embryos and gametes is a question for space colonization, which I think is only viable if we can miniaturize our manufacturing base to the extent that a small population (say 10-1000 people) can be self-sufficient in which case you'd want to supplement that initial population with a large amount of genetic material.
by squigz | 2025-07-30 13:28:23+00:00
> The victims should have known better than to trust corporations

Literally yes? Is this sarcasm? Are we in 2025 supposed to implicitly trust multi-billion dollar multi-national corporations that have decades' worth of abuses to look back on? As if we couldn't have seen this coming?

It's been part of every social media platform's ToS for many years that they get a license to do whatever they want with what you upload. People have warned others about this for years and nothing happened. Those platforms' have already used that data prior to this for image classification, identification and the like. But nothing happened. What's different now?
by dfxm12 | 2025-07-30 13:29:21+00:00
And he doesn't do it because he thinks the experience would be so miserable compared to working in tech

I've worked for the US federal government, big tech and another big corp. I would say my experience with the government (and the non tech big corp) was more positive than big tech, as my team was more focused on working/growing together rather than trying to individually outshine everyone else. I feel like we were working towards practical goals that has clear benefits for our customers rather than trying to hit seemingly arbitrary kpi's.

Working for the government I also feel like my work/life balance was most respected as well. YMMV though. Admittedly, N=1 here.
by BlackWater85 | 2025-07-30 13:29:46+00:00
I built this because AI today feels scattered—prompts are fragile, models are hard to scope, and behavior isn't portable. .aix is meant as a building block: a single executable file that can represent a persona, a program, or even a set of environmental controls for AI execution. Think of it as Docker for AI logic—modular, shareable, and safely runnable anywhere.
by bob1029 | 2025-07-30 13:30:28+00:00
Have you looked into the string interpolation & verbatim operators as a templating alternative? These can be combined to create complex, nested strings:

var reportPartial = @$" <h1>{report.Name}</h1> <table> {string.Join('\n', report.Items.Select(reportItem => @$" <tr> <td>{reportItem.Col1}</td> <td>{reportItem.Col2}</td> </tr> "))} </table> ";

In more complex views or reuse scenarios, I'd push the inner interpolation loop to a method.

This is how I've been building my .NET web apps for the last ~3 years. @+$ = PHP in C# as far as I'm concerned.
by getnormality | 2025-07-30 13:31:08+00:00
After almost three years, the knee-jerk "I'm sure humans would also screw this up" response has become so tired that it feels AI-generated at this point. (Not saying you're doing this, actually the opposite.)

I think a lot of humans would not just disregard the odd information at the end, but say something about how odd it was, and ask the prompter to clarify their intentions. I don't see any of the AI answers doing that.
by ivape | 2025-07-30 13:31:21+00:00
Perhaps we need to make some mapbox visualizations about the devastation in Gaza. Then we'll be on theme, but the topic is not going to change. Maybe someone should make a game about it and put it on Steam. Maybe it'll get banned. Then we can have the PERFECT discussion on HN, as so many want:

- About tech

- About a current event

- About censorship

Genocide by itself, that's just not good enough apparently. That's very weird because there's tons of serious discussion on HN about history. This place cares a lot about history. Whatever is happening right now is just real-time history.
by HEmanZ | 2025-07-30 13:31:29+00:00
“ that for the most part regulations and due process emerged to protect public interests from private capture”

I just flat out don’t buy this. The majority of regulations I see “abundance” type people arguing against were never aimed at curtailing private capture. They are aimed at keeping neihborhoods unchanged for generations, making sure everyone up-and-down society gets veto power over any project regardless of type or upside of it, and making sure arbitrary unrelated “goods” are enforced with as much bureaucracy as possible during development (the best example of this is trying to get solar panels built and having to fight many years of “environmental” review for something so desperately needed for our environment).
by amiga386 | 2025-07-30 13:31:45+00:00
Did you not see the panicked, stupid, wrong mob that the vaguepost whipped up, with your own eyes? It is very easy to whip up a mob: 1) be well regarded and trusted, and 2) post a vague statement about a specific target (e.g. "you might want to stop running atop") where a lot of people will see it. The mob will then form, start speculating, and a pile of them won't be able to help themselves and will start picking over every single thing in the repository. "Is this the bug?" "No." "Is this the bug?" "No." "This contributor is Jia Tan, isn't he?" "No they are not." and so on.

Maintainers always welcome genuine security reports, and especially love a working PoC. But they don't have time to deal with idiots, spammers, shysters and chancers who submit bullshit reports, or ask for hand-holding to submit what will turn out to be bullshit reports, and they definitely don't have time to engage in idle speculation. It wastes their time, and reduces the time they have to look at what could be genuine reports.

Imagine what would happen if Project Zero posted "you might want to stop running ffmpeg" with no further details. That's effectively what's being proposed. A million idiots descend upon the project with "Hey guys I heard Project Zero found a vulnerability in ffmpeg. How exciting! Is it this free(NULL)?"

There is nothing wrong with responsible and coordinated disclosures, even if vendors take liberties, and yes you should set an upper bound for disclosure. But if your policy is "I will disclose to the public that I found a bug in specific software, but not what the bug is", accept that you are likely to unleash chaos, especially if you are a well-regarded and trusted researcher.
by AnimalMuppet | 2025-07-30 13:32:18+00:00
> It's hardly a poster child for good governance.

I'd like to see your evidence that it's badly governed, rather than just a one-line condemnation.

Its job is to control the value of the dollar. I think they've done a very good job of that in some very difficult circumstances. Not perfect, but very good. (Compare the crash of 2008 to, say, the Panic of 1893.)

Do you think that, if the Federal Reserve was setting the interest rate at the president's command, that we would be better off? If so, I think you are living in a fantasy land.
by jwr | 2025-07-30 13:32:21+00:00
> something of a curiosity from the past, a what-could-have-been story

This is what I find bizarre: one would think that engineers would take a rational approach and look at technical merit rather than follow hype.

Technically today FDB is state of the art, it's really hard to point to any distributed database that gives you strict serializable semantics and versionstamps (these are very flexible and a great tool to implement things like changefeeds).

But I agree that being bought by Apple killed the momentum and some people don't realize it's been open-sourced since.
by pikminguy | 2025-07-30 13:32:33+00:00
I think most people have an opinion similar to NIMBYism. Everyone agrees there are too many regulations but no one agrees which ones are the extra. Every rule is someone's highest concern.

That's why part of the argument in Abundance is that current processes give too many people too much veto power. When every issue is someone's pet issue nothing can ever get done.
by TimorousBestie | 2025-07-30 13:32:50+00:00
My first thought is that the unilateral murder of nonessential agents is not unethical in this system. The Purge is herd-ethical.

This is a typical problem with utilitarianism and its variants.

My second thought is that MAT is just the anorganic continuum from Fisher’s thesis, Gothic Flatlines.
by potato3732842 | 2025-07-30 13:33:04+00:00
This. They are the problem. Because whatever side they're on they lend political capitol to the stupidity when it's their team doing it. You'll never have enough people to care enough to change things so long as half the people who could care at any one time are actively making excuses or running cover when it's their guy.

People need to have some goddamn principals. Corruption and backroom dealing is bad no matter who's doing it. Even if you like who's doing it you should still not like it because at the very least it de-legitimizes your cause.
by ubermonkey | 2025-07-30 13:33:21+00:00
I don't miss headphone jacks AT ALL.

I mean, I thought I would. I really did. I was VERY salty about their loss. But then I tried the OG Airpods, and then the Pros with ANC, and they were honestly better than any "casual" buds I'd used before that depended on wires.

Still, I harrumphed, wireless can't possibly compete with Real Proper Headphones, or so I thought.

Then I tried the AirPods Max a friend had. I was honestly stunned. I bought a pair, and then compared them directly to a similarly priced set of Sennheisers that I have that require a headphone amp to really shine.

The fancy wired rig probably does sound a LITTLE bit better than the Maxes do, but the logistical cost of the cabling is such that I call it a win for wireless, absolutely. In fact, we recently moved house, and as part of the pre-move purge I gave away the Sennheisers and the little amp. I just wasn't using them.

There's definitely contexts where a wire probably still makes sense. I'm given to believe that latency can be a problem for musical recording, for example, and so those folks still use wired phones. But for me? Yeah, it's wireless all the way now.

(When I say the move is recent, I mean REALLY recent -- like, we're still working around boxes. It sure would be nice to figure out which of the remaining boxes has those Airpods in it.)
by micromacrofoot | 2025-07-30 13:33:27+00:00
the non-native honeybees used in commercial farming are responsible for the diminishing numbers of native honeybees that co-evolved to pollinate native plant life

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-81967-1

we've been screwing up the global ecosystem for hundreds of years at this point with farming techniques spread by european colonization